A Series of Open Letters to My Neighbors

Dear People With The Pergola For Ghosts,

I don't know what possessed you to turn a clawfoot tub into a planter...for grass. I don't know what pushed you from one or two well placed barn stars to wallpapering your random garage shed with them. I don't know how you decided on that exact shade of lavender for the mysterious outdoor sink you have. I don't know why you use gravel where most people would opt for mulch. (Maybe it's just because our neighbor across the street is not on hand to encourage you to steal our other neighbor's mulch because he still hates their ten year old house that they did not personally build.) I don't know how one comes to own a sculpture made out of gardening implements, and I really don't know what that weird long, short building is all about.

What I DO know is that we need to hang out, because at some point you decided to build a patio (fine), put a pergola over it (okay), hang chandeliers from it (um), put a series of indoorsy-looking furniture under it (huh?), top said furniture with a selection of definitely indoor-intended vases, knickknacks and pillows (what in the sam hill), and frame the whole thing with a bunch of filmy curtains that prompted our friends whose parents live near you to refer to the whole affair as "the living room for ghosts" in an agitated tone.

Call me!

Love,

Me

***************************************************
Dear People With The Busy Lawn Decoration Schedule,

I'll admit, after last year's display with the magenta carnival-prize stuffed child-sized gorilla draped in Christmas lights, and the Halloween display featuring faux gravestones saying things like "McCain's Dreams," I did not see the six foot illuminated decorative cross coming. Bravo.

Love,

Me

***************************************************
Dear Trailer People,

I commend you for consistently making your totally normal and non-mobile ranch house in Holden look like the sketchy kind of mobile home via the skillful deployment of select lighted decorations. I am kind of sad that a For Sale sign has materialized in front of your house. I hope you plan to leave some kind of manual for the new owners.

Love,

Me

***************************************************
Dear People With The Lighted Deer Whose Heads Move JUST Slowly Enough That I Get Startled And Think There Are Live Animals On The Loose Like Maybe That Bear That Was Sighted A Couple Streets Over Before Realizing That They're Just Really Creepy Lighted Deer And Then Wondering If They Are Actually Moving Or If I Am Just Hallucinating, Which Leads Me To Stand In The Driveway Staring Intently At Your Stupid Lighted Deer Just Long Enough To Concern The Other Neighbors And Create The Possibility That I Will Make An Appearance In The Police Blotter Section Of The Landmark,

Fuck you guys.

Love,

Me

This Is Your Brain On Academia

For Terrorism In The Modern World this semester, each student chose a terrorist group to follow throughout the semester. Over the course of the class, we have turned in five short briefs on various aspects of the group (history, funding, organization, etc.), and for a final paper will mash all of these together, provide a threat assessment, and then have what will doubtless be a totally horrifying exit interview with the professor. I totally fucking love this. I picked a group called al-Jihad, also known as Egyptian Islamic Jihad (or a million other things), which has been subsumed into Al Qaeda, though unlike many other groups that Al Qaeda has basically eaten, al-Jihad has retained a good amount of autonomy and its members take up six of the nine seats on Al Qaeda's leadership council. Because of this, I've kind of been writing about both al-Jihad qua al-Jihad and also about it in its current role as a part of Al Qaeda.

I have a ton of large final papers to hand in, so I decided on Wednesday to get out in front of them, and started writing my threat assessment. I began with the idea that al-Jihad members might return to their roots with some good ole fashioned political assassination, then moved on to one of two major ideas that I think might fit Al Qaeda's modus operandi and historical tradition. I described a scenario in which the group carried out a coordinated bombing attack in mutiple cities. I wrote for a while and did some statistics tinkering to back it all up, and then put the project aside to focus on downshifting for the holiday.

Well, don't I turn on my TV on Thanksgiving morning post-workout and see that the goddamn Deccan Mujahideen stole my fucking idea and carried out a coordinated bombing attack in Mumbai and the surrounding areas. I would like to note however that MY idea focused on specific cities because of a particular distinguishing characteristic, and that these choices make my plan SUPERIOR to that which the Deccan Mujahideen RIFF RAFF came up with. And in other news, Deccan Mujahideen, you fucks, I KNOW you're an Al Qaeda offshoot, okay? I KNOW! I am on to your tricks. All up in India's shit, right near Pakistan, using Al Qaeda techniques, coming like a bolt out of the clear blue sky...YOU ARE AL QAEDA.

Now, I realize that I've kind of reached a new height of weirdness, having actually reached the point where I am squabbling over credit for ideas with a terrorism group, but I just would like the record to be crystal goddamn clear, regardless of how much I like being right.

Cannonball Read #12: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

I think that a writer has truly succeeded when they have made you believe that there is magic in the world. It doesn't have to be the illusionist type of magic or the kind done by grizzled witches over cauldrons. There is so much magic in the world...the magic of the written word, the magic of flowers blooming despite my best efforts, the magic of running into your old friend in a city miles away from where you first met, the magic of looking just like your grandmother. When a writer has truly arrived when they can tap in to any one of these strains of everyday magic, and remind you to believe in and hope for them.

Sometimes, though, it's about everyday magic AND actual incantations-and-ghosties magic, and Neil Gaiman is an expert in spinning tales abut this particular variety. The Graveyard Book is no exception, following his previous works about the magical worlds whizzing along underneath our ordinary lives. This is a children's book, which makes it exactly 0% less awesome for adult readers, but makes me personally 100% sure that Neil Gaiman is exactly the kind of uncle you would want for your child...someone who will challenge them to think about right and wrong in new ways and understand that they will have to apply it in their lives. So many kids get this weird idea that the difference between good and evil is mostly academic, and I think it's largely because they're frequently told about it rather than learning it through experience and consideration. The Graveyard Book affords the reader no such luxury; you MUST consider how and why good and evil work.

More than the lessons available within its covers, The Graveyard Book works within this incredibly rich world that blends our visible, known world with an unseen universe of ghosts and ghouls and most of all, houses the people who live between both parts. The story follows the young life of Nobody Owens, a boy who came to the graveyard after his family was brutally murdered by a mysterious man named Jack. The small boy winds up in the care of two ghosts, and really of the whole graveyard. His guardians believe that the man Jack is still looking for Nobody in the outside world, and to protect him, they insist that he grow up inside the graveyard, being taught by the ghosts and what his protector, Silas, brings in. Nobody makes several forays into the world beyond the graveyard gates, and each one ends poorly, even as it reveals a little more of the mystery of Nobody's identity and pursuers.

To explain more would be to wreck a brilliantly rendered ending, and I'm certainly not going to be the one to do that. This, though, is the story you read your smart eight year old to make them a lifelong reader. The beautiful illustrations in the book from Dave McKean are just enough to make that transition from picture-heavy books into chapter books, and in their own right are simply gorgeous. It's really a treat for the reader when an illustrator and author find such amazing synchronicity, and it's clear that Gaiman and McKean have something truly special, and have been cultivating it throughout their long relationship; regular Gaiman readers will doubtless recognize the name and corresponding work from the Sandman series.

The first Gaiman book I read was Neverwhere (another fabulous gift of awesome from the book club), and I immediately yelled at the book clubbers for keeping Gaiman from me all this time, then ran out and got my hands on everything I could of his. This book would prompt the same reaction from me, and should in everyone...Gaiman is flawless as always.


320 pages

Election FLASHBACK

So over on Pajiba, they frequently link to an excellent individual who runs a blog called Mighty God King, and every time I hit one of those links, it is hysterically funny and great, and I think "why don't I read more of this blog?" Well, I finally got my ass in gear and while it's worth your time merely for the funny, it also pulled a hardcore one-two punch on the election.

First- funniest election "coverage" this side of the Daily Show special. (NB: Everyone was on Alex Castellanos' nuts that night, eh? MGK refers to him as the "GOP Official Hispanic Guy Alex Castellanos" and Jack texted me around 7:30 that night with the early winner for Funniest Goddamn Text Message Of The Evening with "I want to strangle alex castellanos with his guido mustache.")

Followed closely by one of the best discussions of race, American politics, the state of the world and the general tao of Obama I have read to date.

I have been trying to keep my excitement about this election limited to the actual non-partisan awesomeness that surrounded it, or, failing that, under wraps completely, as I seem to have a lot of conservative friends all of a sudden, but I just thought these two things were really fab and worth mentioning. Enjoy.

Cannonball Read #11: The Ladies of Grace Adieu, by Susanna Clarke

When confronted with an eight hour flight from Italy and an exhausted reading supply, I picked up Susannah Clarke's ponderous tome of historical fiction, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I had seen it before, and had started dancing a ginga around it much like the one I'm currently doing with a stunning new binding of War & Peace that came out last year, but the bricklike heft of it and the exclusive availablity in hardcover held me back. In the Roman airport though, I saw a paperback edition for a pretty reasonable twelve or thirteen Euro, so I picked it up and dug in. It took significant effort to fully engage in the book, not because it wasn't great, because it was, but rather because I personally have some difficulty with adjusting to thinking in a whole other world (this is why I have a hard time getting enthused about science fiction). The work was well worth it - Clarke created an intricate, beautiful story rich in detail and set in 1808, where competing magicians fall in and out of each others' lives. The writing has a great older feel...kind of like Thackeray with a very light modern filter over it?

My aunt, who is a retired librarian and reader's aide, was also on the trip, and asked what I thought of Strange and Norrell. I told her much of what I've already said above, and added that oh, my freaking God, were the footnotes driving me up a wall. There are a lot of goddamn footnotes in that bastard, and the thing is, some are brief and to the point, and some are pages long (No, for real. There was one that was three pages long, in that tiny footnote text). My aunt mentioned that Clarke had gotten her start in short stories, and indeed, it seemed that as she wrote, she came up with smaller side stories that she just wanted to include, so she threw them into footnotes. They're good short stories, they're just...really long footnotes, which means you run into the Footnote Problem, that being the question of whether to stop and read them as they come, or to carry on and only read them in the moment if the narrative doesn't make sense without them. (I usually opt for the latter.) I made a mental note to check out the short stories later, and then went back to school and forgot about pretty much everything not written down on a Post It Note and kept somewhere visible.

So, imagine my surprise when one of the Book Club members from across the pond had selected the very same short story collection for this round of mailings! This is a chain letter-y kind of book club; each person selects a book that they like, and they are assigned a person they pass books along to. Each month, we mail the book we have on to our assigned people, and we get to read a whole bunch of cool books. I received Grace Adieu about a month ago and promptly lost it for about three weeks in my heap of BookMooch books I've been stocking up on for this project. You may have noticed that I've had Nabokov's Pale Fire as the Book In Progress since 'Nam...that one and this book have taken on a certain weird Bermuda Trianglar vibe. I just cannot seem to buckle down to read them. When I finally did sit down with this one, I punched it out in a day, so I suppose I should just sack up and lock myself in a room with Pale Fire (two shall enter...one shall leave).

In any case, I really enjoyed these eight short stories, and I think it's in large part due to the kinds of books that my grandmother and parents read to me when I was a kid and the similarities between Clarke's end product and my personal approach to writing. When I was younger, I got the standard fare, but my family also was in to reading stuff like The Princess and Curdie, which is a fairy tale in the style of those older, trippier, scarier fairy tales from before Disney got to them and sanitized the shit out of them. Fairies are not innately good, they're not servile to human beings, they're not your friends...they have their own society and laws, and are not to be trifled with. Clarke just completely loses herself in this world, and it makes for truly exceptional reading. She has managed to create an incredibly dense, detailed world for her characters to inhabit, and the payoff is huge. It makes it very easy to get into the time and place of her books and stay there, which as I mentioned, I frequently have trouble with. She also has a terrific grasp of the historical mode of speech that she employs. I find that a lot of writers who aim for older dialects wind up sounding very forced, and that the tone often clashes with some of the more modern thoughts and concepts in the story itself, but Clarke is so down in it that it fires on all cylinders. It's a skill not to be scoffed at, because that shit is no walk in the park.

I also love the feeling of these stories...they are so light and easy, and yet still have a solid, grounding core. Much of my creative writing begins with one moment or brief episode that I like the feel of, and then I can pull that feeling out to tell a whole story. This means writing with a lot of aesthetic notation, and a conciousness of how the story's environment works, and Clarke's stories carry a lot of the same feeling. My favorite of all of them was called "Mrs. Mabb," wherein a woman's sweetheart is...kidnapped? Spirited away? Waylaid? by a mysterious woman named Mrs. Mabb. As the woman tries to get to him, she is constantly attacked and confused by strange phenomenae, all of which have a strange connection to the natural world. I can't really explain more than that without spoiling the (excellent) ending, but the real kicker for me was the lush vibe of the story as Clarke detailed the English countryside and the natural elements of the story. The descriptions conjured such wonderful images as I read, and when I finished, I felt like I'd just gone for a walk outside in the spring.

Definitely recommended, as is Strange & Norrell if you have the time and dedication to the project. Neil Gaiman fans will also be excited to see his stamp on the work - one of the stories ("The Duke of Wellington Misplaces His Horse") is set in Gaiman's world of Stardust, and he is a clear influence on Ms. Clarke throughout. Also of note are the stunning illustrations of Charles Vess', who of course was a Gaiman collaborator as well. His illustrations are found throughout the book, especially as fronticepieces for each story, and have this lovely art deco feel to them, with trailing banners and intricate detail. They actually remind me very strongly of W.W. Denslow's illustrations in a copy of The Wizard of Oz I had when I was a kid.

235 pages

Lost In Translation

I am not very good at Italian. That being said, I do make a stab at it every now and then in a social context, and success comes and goes. However, sometimes even my success gets rained on by that bastion of bastardization, FreeTranslation.

Here's an email I wrote:

Il semestre e quasi sopra e cio significa c'e lo tempo per uscire con gli amici! NESSUNE SCUSE, usciamo per il gin. O il vino. O il coca-cola. C'e il usciamo che significa!

Guardiamo le sue prossimo poche settimane e parlarmi quando voi avete un notte libera per uscire e divertirsi con noi. Scusarsi mi italiano cattivo...sono buonissimo per sarcasmo e giochi di bevere! ANDIAMO AVANTI!!

And what I intended for it to say (which it roughly does):

The semester is almost over and that means it's time for going out with friends! NO EXCUSES, we are going out for gin! Or wine. Or a Coke. It's the going out that matters!

Look at the next few weeks and tell me when you have a free night for going out and having fun with us. Excuse my bad Italian...I'm better for sarcasm and drinking games! WE GO FORWARD! [NB: I just like saying "avanti" with wanton enthusiasm.]

But lo, what miracles FreeTranslation creates!

The half-year and almost above and ioc means us and the time to go out with the friends! NO EXCUSES, we go out for the gin. Or the wine. Or the cocaine-cola. Us and the we go out that it means!

We look at little his neighbor weeks and to speak me when you have a free night to go out and to amuse itself with those. To excuse itself me bad Italian. ..sono good for % and games of bevere! We GO AHEAD!!

I'm now fairly sure that irresponsible use of FreeTranslation lead to at least a handful of international wars. It CERTAINLY explains the Italian government. This is why you need to not write your papers with FreeTranslation, ever, people.

Cannonball Read #10: A Wolf at the Table, by Augusten Burroughs

I love Augusten Burroughs.

The first of his books that I read was - like everyone else's first - Running With Scissors, and while it's an insane, unique story, what makes it so good is not the story but the manner in which it's presented. Burroughs' writing is crisp and clear and perfectly conveys not only the facts of the case but the feeling of it all...the claustrophobic Stockholm Syndrome of his time in the care of his mother's deranged "psychiatrist," the unnerving paranoia of his family life that made the psychiatrist's home seem like an upgrade, the feeling of the vibrant personalities around him that taught him and got him through it. Long ago, I read A Child Called It, which is an alarming account of one of the worst cases of child abuse on record, and while it was horrifying in a "my God, that HAPPENED" way, it lacked some of the immediacy of Scissors, because the latter showed how a wide variety of types of people could devolve into madness, and it showed how organic it was, how natural, how easy.

Within a month of reading Scissors, I read Sellevision, Dry, and Magical Thinking, discovered that Burroughs occasionally popped up on NPR, and then when Possible Side Effects came out, I bought it the day it hit shelves and had it read by the time I went to bed. I was totally thrilled to hear about Wolf at the Table, expecting more Augusten-y goodness, and in a creepy, voyeuristic way, probably anticipating more stories about the guy's fucked up formative years. I mean come on...like his Dad could possibly be the one stable figure in the joint and still merit a book?

Maybe my anticipation stole my own juice, but I am left sadly uninspired by this outing. The writing is still good, of course - I find that it is almost always inspiration that leaves writers, and not talent - but the story just isn't as engaging as I expected. It's fucked up, yeah...his Dad, like seemingly everyone else in his young life, is seriously deranged and a menace to just about everyone. But something about the tone of it all seemed like Burroughs was grasping for evidence that his Dad was super extra horribly bad, and not that the actual horror of an unhinged parent was coming through the writing organically. In his other books, Burroughs mentions that he tends toward the melodramatic, but this is the first book in which I felt he really came off that way. And the thing that is so weird is that the shit his Dad pulled throughout his childhood is horrible and is worthy of note and is a study in the kind of insidious child abuse that doesn't tend to get noticed until it's too late, so it's not like the story isn't worth telling or that he's making it all up. It just comes off strangely, and there's even a section of the book that works as an accidental metaphor for the whole exercise...

To my own ear I sounded like a toddler proudly proclaiming, Today I made a pee. And I made poo. And then I walked outside. And then I found a rock. And then the rock was round and so I kept it. And then I found another rock. Only this one was flat and so I kept it, too. And then tomorrow I am going to paint a horse with real paint and paper and everything! And it sickened me, but I could not stop and had to come back for more.

Maybe that's just where Burroughs is at this point - mired in his past for the moment, unable to do anything but regurgitate his daily goings on and how he got there. The thing is that the writing is still so good. It's not that he has lost his touch, just that he's in a holding pattern.

There may also be an element of societal counterbalance at work. With the Internet, any number of pop psychological TV shows and the vogue for memoirists, it seems like we as a culture are stuck in this constant battle of oneupmanship. My childhood was more fucked up than yours was. My parents were shittier than yours were. I had less food. I had less money. I had a harder time. Feel sorrier for me. The reverse of all this is a certain attitude of disdain for those who cannot bear up through all this and become better, stronger, faster as adults. To a certain extent, I feel like we're at a point where if your shitty parent stopped short of testing out the popular methods of the Marquis de Sade and Vlad the Impaler on you, people respond with more with an attitude of "so what's the big deal? Sack up, ho" than one of sympathy. I wonder if some of this thinking has colored my reaction to this book. Like I said, it's beautifully written, very evocative, yet I feel like it's missing a certain extremism that would make the story stand out amongst the sea of woeful tales. I don't know. I think a lot of that very culture that engenders this attitude is dumb as hell, so I respond negatively to that, too, but maybe it's kind of leached into my worldview in spite of me.

This is worth reading, but only after you've treated yourself to the much better earlier works of Augusten Burroughs. He is a wonderful writing, and his books are truly affecting, for better and worse.

242 pages