Mix Bag #3: Real Change in the Air, Ghosts Among Pyramids, and a Fictional Rock Bio

Mix Bag is a regular feature that brings together a random collection of media and highlights why it all matters to you.

I can't begin this week's Mix Bag without mentioning a very important and historic moment in American history: the Democratic party electing the first African-American presidential candidate. It's not only significant because of its symbolism -- after all, we've struggled for generations in America to transcend racial boundaries -- but it's also significant because of the candidate itself. When Barack Obama started his campaign, most people said he didn't have a chance. Party insiders favored Hillary Clinton, and the other candidates could never break through to the American peoples hearts (or wallets). While Clinton's campaign operated as the presumptive front runner and controlled the candidate in a robotic, corporate PR bubble, Obama gained the trust of voters in Iowa, and from there, Clinton was in trouble. Knowing that Obama was the popular candidate, the Clinton people scrambled to put together ways to discredit him, often in very negative and divisive ways.

By the time Obama wrapped up the nomination, the damage had been done among many of Clinton's core demographics, especially white women, who have been so adamantly opposed to Obama because of perceived misogyny and his lack of connection with working class people. Of course, the Clinton camp was all too eager to play up these perceived biases, and it helped divide the party up among differing demographics.

But among young Americans, Barack Obama was their candidate. Obama had difficulties winning among older whites, especially blue collar workers and those over 40. However, the enthusiasm among young Americans suggests that we are finally emerging from the past battles over civil rights into a post-racial America, an America that can't remember a time when race actually mattered but instead judge a person by their character, not the color of their skin. I will not for a minute sit here and naively pretend that America no longer suffers from racism; indeed, the racial wounds are still fresh, but for many Americans who grew up in an integrated society, race is not the determining factor. Barack Obama is the candidate who is prepared to bring America out of its racist past and into a new century that respects people for who they choose to be, not what they look like.

This is especially important for how America is perceived around the world, and thanks to the Bush administration, we are perceived as aggressors who have no decency or respect for the true rule of law and wage unnecessary wars under the guise of freedom. Barack Obama represents an America that is open and forthright, and an America that is inclusive and respectful, not brash and arrogant. I often read The Huffington Post for my political information, and for a perspective on how the world perceives an Obama administration, read this article, which suggests the world is ready for real change.

Also, Clinton's run for the White House was one full of many missteps and outright hypocrisy (i.e. Michigan and Florida), and to be honest, Bill owes her big time. Much has been said about her poorly managed campaign and mounting debt, and CNN currently has an article up explaining what Clinton should do next.

At this point, I'm willing to throw in my support for Barack Obama, because I see him as our only hope to reinvigorate America's standing in the world. On the other hand, McCain represents more of the same and plans to keep our disrespectful policies intact. Culturally, Obama represents the future of America; young Americans are energized and ready for a civilized discourse about our future.

With all of that politics behind us, let's look at what's going on in music and literature right now. I'm not really sure where to begin, considering we've missed out on a lot since our last Mix Bag (yeah, sorry about that). However, there's plenty going on right now, especially in the world of music. Taking on the cacophony of sound and turning it into art, the Pyramids' latest self-titled album has given me a new perspective on how beautiful sound can be found underneath lots of loud noises. The album takes a lot of the traditions of death metal and combines it with the electronic experimentation that's revived the modern indie underground. They even take on the presidential election in their chaotic song "Hillary."

Equally, Nine Inch Nails has come off their wildly successful break from Interscope Records with Ghosts I-IV, an excellent denouement from the fairly standard NIN styles of Year Zero. Ever since Reznor branched out on The Fragile, he's consistently shown that he's more than another bonehead Marilyn Manson-esque industrial rocker, and Ghosts I-IV is the perfect example of this. At times, the album seems pastoral and reflective, and at other times, anarchic and unpredictable. It's definitely worth purchasing or downloading, and we'll have a review of it up here soon.

In the literary world, I'm currently enjoying Andrew Foster Altschul's Lady Lazarus. Following in the footsteps of many 20th Century authors, Altschul has crafted an ironic account of a fictional rock star's daughter/poet Calliope Bird Morath, and makes use of all sorts of pieces of pop culture and literary history to keep it all together. It's an excellent novel, one that is both a convincing satire of rock biographies and a heartfelt story; you feel connected to the characters in a similar way to how fans get connected to their rock idols.

Well, that's it for now. Of course, we can continue this conversation in the comments section if you're interested...

Review: Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk

by Matthew Ryan


Naughty words have an unmistakable demoralizing toll on an uptight culture. But shocking a (comparatively) puritanical society sometimes has another point, such as George Carlin’s “Seven Dirty Words” monologue in 1972. He was trying to say that an irrational fear of naughty words gets in the way of healthy human discourse. To illustrate the point, he used a lot of naughty words. Not everyone got the joke. That monologue was broadcasted over airwaves and lead to a landmark obscenity law case. As a result, the FCC has more control in regulating the messages that come to us over the air.

Chuck Palahniuk’s message also has a way of being taken the wrong way. Consider the (now) wildly popular film adaptation of his book Fight Club. The core of the movie has a character coming to grips with personal responsibility and had suggestive gay imagery. Much of these meaning was lost on young males who only responded to the brawling and angst. The number of Fight Club posters in fraternity houses and the videogame featuring Fred Durst is proof of the misunderstanding.

Palahniuk’s most recent twisted journey, Snuff, could be misunderstood only if there was some substance behind the naughty words to misunderstand. This novel concerns the fate of porn diva Cassie Wright as she embarks on what is to be her final, historic adult odyssey: World Whore Three. It’s a knock-down, drag-out kind of hardcore production, with a gangbang cast of 600 from all walks of life, including a baseball team straight from the Special Olympics. She doesn’t intend to make it out alive, opting instead to use the royalty and insurance money as a final charitable contribution to her unplanned child, conceived in World Whore One, whose identity is unknown at the outset.

But Cassie, who would have made the most interesting character of all, is behind the scenes for the most part. Our vantage point is limited to dudes 72, 137 and 600; a Wright-obsessed high schooler, a desperate and once-famous TV actor and an experienced “woodsman,” respectively. There’s also the ringleader, Sheila, an angsty sort of feminist with an endless supply colloquialisms for male porn actors. While various incarnations of pud-pullers, yogurt-squirters, shank-shuckers and the like might count as edgy for the MTV demographic, it gets old for anyone with sophistication.

As for the dudes, each fit conveniently into classic porn stereotypes, and all seem to suffer from a bad case of snarkyness and a deficiency of real conflict. Dude 72 is youth whose sex drive is subverted by conservative mother who hypocritically indulges her own appetite via erotic cake-making. Dude 137 is trying to revive his career through the historic gangbang and grapples fears that his past performance in gay porn just was an act of retribution for his Oklahoma upbringing. Dude 600 hasn’t cared since his first love left him. These roles haven’t been cutting-edge for a long time.

The plot is stringy and unremarkable. Events move forward slowly, as most of the time is spent bogged down in the history of each pud-puller. Once the story gains critical momentum, the book has just about reached its overblown finale. The only points Palahniuk earns in plot are some decent twists, which are not as exciting as his previous works but keep the reader invested for a little while longer.

Another hallmark of Palahniuk’s work is an abundance of trivial knowledge, and this book does not break from tradition. There’s mention of the Roman Empress Messalina, who moonlighted as a prostitute and a won an epic sex competition against another famous prostitute of the time. There’s also talk of Marilyn Monroe’s double-life as the intellectual Zelda Zonk, and the harmful effects of Kegel exercise balls filled with mercury. These factoids typically unfold as bite sized stories in themselves, and are mostly allegories for the novel’s subtext. Palahniuk studied journalism in college and its shows in his compulsion to use these elements as much as possible, but the effectiveness of each element is based on how relevant it is to the story.

This time around, most tidbits miss the mark. Sheila has an uncommon medical vocabulary and uses it with reckless abandon. Number 137 is a veritable cornucopia of Hollywood trivia, and Number 600 is the same when it comes to the porn industry. These characters are walking, talking encyclopedia Erotica, but it does little more than give the scene some colorful jargon to match the drapes. At its worst, it comes off as pretentious and distracting.

The sum of Snuff’s parts is an attempt to assess the state of the sexual revolution from several points of view. From Sheila’s perspective, there’s the renewed feminist effort to portray women as studs, conquering male after male to establish as sort of balance of power. From 72’s vantage point, there’s a rebellion against hypocritical sexual repression. We get some gay perspective courtesy of 137, and a nihilistic impression of love from 600. But there’s nothing that goes beyond the most superficial critique of American sexuality, and it all gets diluted with large swaths of naughty words. After the last milk monkey standing, this book delivers as advertised: snuff.

Review: The Dumbest Generation - How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future by Mark Bauerlein

by Kevin Eagan

It is an inevitability that with every generational change, the older generation will complain about the new generation and reminisce on the past - the "good ol' days," if you will. It's not a surprise when the new fashions and trends of youth culture get misunderstood by the adults who say they know better, and as those fashions and trends become the accepted norms, those youth turn into the wise adults, criticize their children's youthful ways, and continue the vicious cycle into the next generation.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, for many reasons. When cultural norms change, art, literature, and other creative outlets become more fluid, and people respond to the spirit of the age with an intelligent and relevant civic discourse. Only the old school traditionalists - those curmudgeons who see change as the end of the world as we know it - lambast and discourage this healthy pattern, a pattern that has made our great democracy run efficiently enough throughout the 20th Century.

That's why Mark Bauerlein tries to distinguish himself from these old fogey stereotypes early in his book The Dumbest Generation, and states that his book is not an attempt to insult or undermine the youth of today, but to show "with empirical evidence" that those in Generation Y (or The Millennials, Generation Next, DotNetters, what have you) are truly stupid.

Despite being surrounded with more information than ever before, the generation that grew up on the Internet has become intellectually lazy, and that's not just one man's opinion, it's supported by statistical fact, Bauerlein says. He won't look at their attitudes, behaviors, or values, he states in his introduction, just their capacities for intelligence. And then he spends the rest of his book looking at their attitudes, behaviors, and values (in between his hefty doses of statistics and data), judging them unsound and lamenting the end of intellectualism in America.

It's not the fairest assessment, especially since his metrics of evaluation don't fit with his original premise. After all, can you really measure the intelligence of an entire generation based on samples of surveys and testing data without looking at their changing attitudes? Bauerlein's opinion seems to be that the statistics reveal a surprising move toward stupidity, and that this stupidity manifests itself in Generation Y's anti-intellectual attitudes.

Within Bauerlein's collected research, several disturbing trends among young people do emerge. The fact-based, multiple-choice approach to education has hampered our ability to "think historically," meaning young Americans have difficulties placing current events in relation to their historical contexts. Only 22 percent of those involved in one survey could identify key phrases from the Gettysburg Address. Yet in the same survey, 99 percent could identify Beavis and Butt-Head.

Equally, our ability to do basic math and our reading proficiency continues to drop. In a 2005 survey cited in the book, respondents aged 15-to-24 only read anything for eight minutes on a weekday and nine minutes on the weekend, while clocking hours and hours watching TV or surfing the Internet. These are just a few shockers that Bauerlein reveals, but not all of his statistical evidence points toward depressing trends.

At the same time, technology is making our IQ's go up, and Bauerlein reveals how IQ tests have become more complex to meet our growing intelligence. In theory, having higher IQ's would go against Bauerlein's original assertion that we are all getting dumber, but Bauerlein quickly dismisses this idea, saying that today's youth aren't reading enough and aren't interested in the arts in the ways previous generations were.

Despite contradictory evidence in other peer reviewed articles - after all, an author's evidence is only what he or she is willing to offer the reader - that shows young Americans are more involved in civil discourse than ever before, Bauerlein sticks to his assertion that intelligence will continue to drop until it eventually threatens democracy as we know it. Of course, Bauerlein ignores the fact that the generation before was just as disinterested in high art (and the traditionalists blamed MTV), and the generation before them also seemed more interested in teen escapism than classical music or Victorian literature (and the traditionalists blamed rock and roll).

Is this really all that shocking? Not really. Bauerlein seems to think things are different because the Internet has only given teens one more way to escape adult life. And to a certain extent, he's right; the Internet is not used by teens to further their intellectual pursuits, at least, not in the way educators would like. But as with all new technologies, the Internet is currently going through a teething stage, and it's too early to say if our new digital lives will mean the next generation will forever ignore civil discourse and become apathetic toward art and history as adults.

Although the digital age has created one of the largest generational rifts in modern history, it is not the only time America has gone through major cultural changes as a result of youth rebellion. As postwar American youths tried to make sense of a difficult time in American history, Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel On The Road became a bestselling novel and rock and roll replaced jazz as the rebellious music of the day. Changes in American culture spiraled out of control in the 1960s, and as this young generation was shipped off to Vietnam after enduring the Cold War fears of nuclear war, a resentment toward authority grew. Despite what the powers-that-be said at the time, this age of American uncertainty created a new surge of art and cultural veracity that not only brought about new labels (Postmodernism, Deconstructivism, et cetera) but a new wave of tolerance and accessibility that continues today.

Bauerlein, of course, doesn't have a problem with what happened during this period of American history; after all, Kerouac and the beats actually had something to say, unlike teens today, who aren't reading, and are therefore clearly not writing. Yet, Bauerlein fails to find out exactly what is going on among The Millennials in terms of art and literature, and just like the beats and the pop art afficionados of the '60s, art is flourishing among the fringes of our young generation. With independent artists and musicians trying new things on the internet to poets exploiting their spam folders for artistic inspiration, a thriving art community has used the Internet to push new boundaries. If Bauerlein had merely interviewed a couple of his English students (he is a professor at Emory University) or spoken with some art students, he would realize that there is some hope for the future, and that some Gen-Y'ers are bucking the trends.

Although some of the statistics cited by Bauerlein point to disturbing changes in how Millennials process information, he seems to overlook many of the positive changes - and the potential for a new approach to civil discourse - that will inevitably occur as the youth of today come of age. The Dumbest Generation is certainly a necessary part of this new discourse (after all, we do want to improve), but it drowns in its heavy reliance on statistics that range from mildly convincing to flat out contradictory.

Bauerlein's approach reveals a one-sided argument, one that forgets that art is created on the fringes of society and that young people rarely get involved in these pursuits since, after all, they're too busy trying to impress their friends. The Dumbest Generation is a great book for those who already agree with Bauerlein's main thesis, but won't change the opinions of those who disagree and see a lot of potential in young people today.

Originally posted on Blogcritics.org.

Review: I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley

by Kevin Eagan

Growing up in middle class suburbia has become the height of American comfort, but it's also true that it breeds a certain level of eccentricity - at least, for those who came of age in all of its pre-packaged glory. Blame it on the lack of originality; the strip malls, the four-lane divided highways, and the big box retailers all start to look the same after a while, and those seeking a thrill end up in the city trying to make it in a completely different world.

While David Sedaris' bestselling essays have shown that coming of age in suburbia can be an absurd experience, he's not the only writer who portrays the urban-suburban divide in a hilarious way. As America has moved out of the urban centers and created a new level of urban sprawl, it could be said that the suburban life is about as American as you can get.

Count Sloane Crosley as one more essayist who has endured a childhood in the suburbs, and has a hilarious (albeit slightly eccentric) way of looking at her upbringing. For Crosley, childhood was about working at the mall, surviving the rigors of an all-girls summer camp, and getting a high score on the computer game Oregon Trail.

I Was Told There'd Be Cake is Crosley's first collection of essays, and nothing is held back. Throughout the 15 essays, Crosley takes us on a trip through some of her most hilarious and heartfelt experiences, both as a successful urban woman in New York City and as a self-conscious girl growing up in Westchester, NY ("I came to understand that being born and raised in suburbia makes it difficult to lay claim to a specific type of childhood," Crosley writes).

Crosley's clever way of looking at life and her unique use of language makes I Was Told There'd Be Cake a fun read, and each essay will have you laughing at the odd and bizarre situations Crosley gets herself into. In the first essay, "The Pony Problem," Crosley's attempts at finding uniqueness (by making jokes about ponies) gets interpreted by everyone around her that she really likes ponies, and before you know it, she has a drawerful of plastic ponies that she just can't bring herself to throw away, even though she thinks they are "insanely creepy."

"The Pony Problem" is just one example of how Crosley's dark humor creates an engaging and unique look at life. In "Bring-Your-Machete-To-Work Day," Crosley's inner child and "awkward" transition into teenager left her abusing her favorite computer game Oregon Trail by naming all of her characters after people she knew, and then watching them suffer: "Eventually a message would pop up in the middle of the screen, framed in a neat box: MRS. ROSS HAS DIED OF DYSENTERY. This filled me with glee."

In "You On A Stick," Crosley also re-visits her childhood through her "best" friend's wedding, and her sardonic inner monologue reveals the friendship as a complete fraud, but one that works well for the wedding cameras. Of course, Crosley lets us know the truth, that being maid of honor is a chore that's not worth the brouhaha: "'Horror is a six-letter word. So is 'fuck me.'"

Throughout the collection, language is used to great effect, and Crosley's clever word play portrays otherwise mundane events in an original way. In "Lay Like Broccoli," Crosley defends her vegetarian diet by "[keeping] a set of (vegetable) stock answers at my disposal for all queries about my diet," and in "Smell This," Crosley discovers an unpleasant object on her bathroom floor after a party, and tries to deduce who left the surprise: "Jesus, she's got shit on her floor."

I Was Told There'd Be Cake is an excellent start for a writer who has spent most of her career surrounded by books (she also works as a publicist for Vintage/Anchor books), and it certainly suggests that Crosley has more to come. The collection is both a wonderful read and an excellent critique of the suburban upbringing. Crosley's Web site also provides an interesting extension to the book, and adds a level of multimedia output that sets her writing ahead of many of her predecessors. Overall, I Was Told There'd Be Cake won't take long to read and will have you laughing the whole time.

Originally posted on Blogcritics.org

Review: You Don't Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem

by Kevin Eagan

Jonathan Lethem's fiction has never been the type to conform to genre restrictions. If anything, Lethem has become the master of exploiting the trappings and clichés of genre to great effect, and given his track record so far, he's not afraid to use these clichés as an artful indictment of our consumer society. Subsequently, Lethem also shows that literature and art thrive on mimicry, and that the best artists borrow from the past.

In his critically acclaimed novel Motherless Brooklyn, for example, the great tradition of the detective novel is thoroughly deconstructed through Lionel Essrog, a bumbling former orphan with Tourette's Syndrome. Equally, in The Fortress of Solitude, Lethem uses the mysticism of the comic book superhero to give his young protagonist Dylan Edbus some of his own super powers, and in the process revealing why comics have had such a profound effect on young Americans, especially those who struggle socially.

So it's not all that surprising that Lethem's most recent novel You Don't Love Me Yet exposes another literary phenomenon: the love story. At the same time, You Don't Love Me Yet is full of all of the pop culture references and obscurely artful situations that have made Lethem unique, and Lethem's love for music is put front and center in a way we haven't seen from him in a long time.

Recently released on paperback, You Don't Love Me Yet follows the impressionable Lucinda Hoekke, a bass player who plays in a band struggling to find their sound. After quitting her job at a coffee house and breaking up with her boyfriend Matthew (the band's guitarist), Lucinda takes a job at a faux call center set up by her artist friend Falmouth as part of an art experiment. While the band is struggling to find a unique sound amidst the glamor of Los Angeles, Lucinda beomes enamored by "the complainer," a man who dials the call center frequently and gives Lucinda a fresh batch of original material for her songwriting. The band goes through a musical renaissance, Lucinda meets and begins a romantic affair with Carl (the complainer), and the band finally gets exposed to the masses at their first gig.

Although there's much more to the story than that, You Don't Love Me Yet is less about the plot and more about the underlying message, and that underlying message isn't easily accessible. At the surface, Lethem has exposed how genre can shape our expectations, and just like he has done from the beginning of his writing career, he successfully uses those genre motifs to create a brilliant work of satire.

But this book is also about the meaning of ownership, an indictment of the corporate copyrighting of everything (and everyone) that's marketable. As the band's new songs (inspired by Lucinda and Carl's phone conversations) take shape and warrant interest among fans and promoters, Carl weasels his way into the band as the fifth member, a "fifth Beatle" in an already crowded band. From there, the band loses its artistic way, and Lucinda's love for Carl wavers. Carl's belief is that he essentially "made" the band because his catch phrases helped form their songs, but the truth is that the band's musical ownership was a collaborative effort. Of course, Lethem is targeting the very idea of corporate ownership, especially in a time where music and art are stymied by what is easily marketed and palatable to the masses.

While Carl may represent the old school thinking of corporate ownership, Lucinda and Matthew seem to represent the burgeoning underground, where art becomes a do-it-yourself experience that thrives on community interaction and trust. Just as people see through the insanity of copyright lawsuits and the infighting between artists and their record labels over artistic control, Matthew and Lucinda learn that a lucrative record deal and band promotion are for nothing. At the same time, artists like Falmouth and the band's songwriting guitarist Bedwin try and make sense of all of the absurdity. Through these three opposing viewpoints of the band, You Don't Love Me Yet effectively summarizes how Lethem views the world of art, literature, and pop culture.

You Don't Love Me Yet is an interesting story that works well as a social critique, but it's not flawless. At times, the plot itself becomes trite and difficult to follow; the dialogue throughout seems rushed and hollow, and the sex scenes between Lucinda and Carl are god awful. Although it seems that these bad clichés are part of the point, it's not done as effectively as some of Lethem's past fiction, blunting the effect and message he is after. At the same time, You Don't Love Me Yet speaks a truth about modern society, one that is often missed in the maze of clever marketing and confusing copyright laws.

Originally posted on Blogcritics.org

Review: Last Last Chance by Fiona Maazel

by Kevin Eagan

The idea of "making it" in the world, to come from nothing to something through hard work and persistence, is such a deeply held American principle that we don't give it a second thought. When a child declares he will grow up to be an astronaut or top-forty musician, we encourage it — hell, it might come true. When he does grow up and he's struggling to make manager at McDonald's, we still don't discourage his dreams when he spends his days crooning out of key at his favorite karaoke bar, or watching episodes of NOVA in hopes to learn something about his astronaut life goals.

Of course, our cultural aptitude towards making it big doesn't fit with reality. In fact, it's one of the reasons why we celebrate the small things in life, like the single mother who manages to feed her children and pay her bills on time, or the drug addict who manages to kick her addiction. These are honorable goals, but still reflect the many divisions we still have between rich and poor in America.

Fiona Maazel's debut novel Last Last Chance attempts to demystify these preconceived ideas of success through her main character Lucy Clark, a drug addict trying to kick her addiction and find love along the way. In the process, she points a lot of the hypocrisy and fear America faces in a post-9/11 world, and she throws in the apocalyptic threat of a superplague for good measure.

Last Last Chance follows the chaos and mystery of drug addiction and impending plague through the first-person narration of Lucy, who has so many things going on in her life at once, it becomes difficult to follow. Despite being in her early thirties, Lucy's had a hard time making her way through life; as the novel begins, she's been kicked out of her home and is searching for some sense of purpose while working and living at a kosher chicken-processing plant. As she returns to her home in New York to attend her best friend's wedding, things in her life spiral out of control: she misses her friend's wedding after getting the dates mixed up (but no matter, her friend married the only man Lucy ever loved), her mom is willingly trapped in a serious crack addiction, and her father, a former scientist for the U.S. government, has just committed suicide because vials of the plague were stolen from his lab, unleashing a superplague. It's a lot to take in, but Maazel's sense of humor, irony, and her engaging prose style make for a great read.

As Lucy falls back into old patterns in her childhood Manhattan home, apathy sets in. Although she tries to break her addictions, she watches her mother die slowly from crack addiction (a very wealthy one, at that). Lucy tries to seek help for her own drug problems from local 12-step programs, and eventually rehab. While all of this takes place, the strain of superplague is making its way across the country, striking fear and uncertainty in an America that is already full of fear and uncertainty.

The superplague seems like a minor part of the plot in comparison to Lucy's many personal problems, but Maazel uses it to make some profound observations of modern America. The idea of bio-terrorism doesn't seem all that ridiculous — at least, no more ridiculous than the threat of nuclear war felt when Kurt Vonnegut began writing his post-apocalyptic prose in the 1950s and '60s.

It's this threat — one that has remained in the back of people's minds since 2001 even if it still hasn't happened — that makes Maazel's story work, because Last Last Chance becomes more about real fear of death than the self-absorbed complaints of a drug addict. It's not just the threat or the panic felt throughout the novel, it's the apathy and selfishness that comes as a result of bio-terrorism. As the cable news programs hype up the threat of superplague, Lucy observes that "panic is understudied for something so destructive and ubiquitous...What of the people whose panic results in apathy? The mind scrambling for purchase. Indecision or madness. Flee to the suburbs or flee this life." Through Lucy's narration, Maazel suggests that fear of the unknown can breed panic, and this is an apt observation in a time where we fear terrorism.

At the same time, Maazel has weaved an excellent story about the dangers of addiction. It's not a cautionary tale, but it does show how drugs have ruined Lucy's life. Unlike her mother Isifrid, Lucy is willing to try to overcome her addictions, and does learn to manage them in the end. Yet, the damage of addiction is still felt; she has difficulties with real relationships, and even though she spends time in rehab and frequents her 12-step meetings, she still deals with anxiety and her own personal fears. Lucy also seeks out a spiritual life, and at the end of the novel she speaks to God but hears nothing in return. Even though she manages to overcome drugs, not everyone does, and her sense of "making it" is never fully restored.

Throughout Last Last Chance, Maazel isn't after happy endings. Instead, Last Last Chance is a book about recognizing fear and uncertainty, and showing that even in the lowest places of society, the American dream of rags to riches isn't always possible. Maazel's voice is bitingly satiric and hopelessly pathetic, the exact opposite of a novelist out to make the world a happy place. As a result, Last Last Chance is the right portrayal for a 21st Century America, an America trying to make sense of chaos and fear despite our growing apathy.

Originally posted on Blogritics.org.

Review: Psychic Confusion - The Sonic Youth Story by Steve Chick

Sonic Youth have always been a band shrouded in mystery. Spanning a career that's about to finish off its third decade, the band have carried with them both the avant garde and experimentation of the indie underground, as well as the commercial excess of the 1990s "Alt-rock" scene. With over 15 studio albums and countless EP's, solo, and side projects, the band is still strong today -- and not only strong, they're still influencing young indie rock acts and bucking the trends of commercialism. Even though band members are now in their fifties, they exude an energy not seen in many aging rock bands, and they continue to seek out new trends and sonic explorations.

My first experience of Sonic Youth came, as it did for many Americans, when The Simpsons did a parody of the band and the scene that made them a mainstream success in the episode "Homerpalooza." The Simpsons nod was the ultimate 1990s compliment of success, and for many of their young fans (like myself), it was an opportunity to seek out the band's back catalog, especially their most successful albums up to that point, Dirty, Goo, and Daydream Nation. As the band continued to inspire and mature beyond the confines of the grunge era, albums like 1986's EVOL and 1985's Bad Moon Rising were also cited as influences on many burgeoning indie rock acts.

Psychic Confusion - The Sonic Youth Story by Steve Chick tracks Sonic Youth's career from the dirty New York venues of the early 1980s to the band's recent resurgence in the 21st Century, and everything in between. Chick's exhaustive research and ability to connect the band's musical evolution to cultural changes makes this book an excellent read, one that would interest both fans of Sonic Youth and casual music lovers.

Psychic Confusion starts off with back history of where, why, and how Sonic Youth came about. Chick gives a background of some of the bands and movements within the punk rock community that go back to The Stooges and The Velvet Underground, tracing everything up to the New York punk movement No Wave, which bred Sonic Youth. From there, the book goes in chronological order, covering every major album release along with the band's personal and professional side projects.

While Sonic Youth relied heavily on bizarre alternate tunings and mind numbing effects (including an amplified power drill, of all things) on their early albums (Sonic Youth and Confusion is Sex, specifically), the band would go on to fashion these bizarre sounds into veiled political messages (Bad Moon Rising), accessible melodies (EVOL), and commercially accessible "grunge" rock (Goo and Dirty). As Sonic Youth forged their sound into the 21st Century, they'd take a slight detour (A Thousand Leaves and NYC Ghosts & Flowers) only to come back with their tightest and most familiar sounds since their early to mid career (Murray Street, Sonic Nurse, and Rather Ripped).

Chick's research shows that he is not only concerned with giving an exhaustive biography of the band's successes and failures, but also with putting everything in its social context. Chick reveals the social forces surrounding the band in America and around the world, and how Sonic Youth remained socially conscious without being obnoxious or preachy. In the midst of the Reagan era, the band, like many in the punk and hardcore community, felt disillusioned by the politics of the time. 1985's Bad Moon Rising (the title a reference to Creedence Clearwater Revival's socially conscious song of the same name) would be the album that revealed the most about the community's disillusioned feelings. Later, as the band experienced New York's lock down in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the band's 2002 album Murray Street would express some of their most intimate thoughts about the attacks. Equally, the band would tap into pop culture through their lyrics, and although the band has remained distinctly "alternative," they have always used pop culture and mainstream attitudes to shape their songs.

Psychic Confusion also reveals a band not afraid of the latest trends in the indie underground. Throughout their career, Sonic Youth always brought young indie bands along with them on tour, giving the band a reputation for being the "Godparents" of indie rock. Some of the bands they helped nurture have had their place in rock history, such as Nirvana, who always cited the band as a main reason for their success (Nirvana was signed to Geffen records on the advice of Sonic Youth, for example). Although the band are practically the grandparents of many young new bands, they continue to inspire; musicians like Devendra Banhart and Cat Power owe their success to Sonic Youth's influence and support. While many fans of the band may already know of their influential status, Chick is able to show that their influence continues and may not waver for a long time.

Although Psychic Confusion is exhaustive in its approach, there are times where Chick's historical account digs deep in the cultural history while forgetting to reveal much about Sonic Youth. For example, Chick spends part of the book discussing the grunge movement of the early 1990s, and even discusses the profound influence of heroin on some of these young acts. But in the process, he fails to mention that Sonic Youth was moving away from this scene, a rock scene that had morphed into everything they once railed against. Chick only briefly mentions the band's purposeful move to the art underground, but doesn't go into the profound changes going on in their perspective, even as they continued to release albums on major label Geffen. At the same time, Chick does a great job of explaining Sonic Youth's latest anti-Bush projects, but doesn't give enough background information about the many bands who feel disillusioned by current events, or how these bands are influencing the indie community and spurring activism.

Either way, Psychic Confusion is an excellent biography of Sonic Youth that is both exhaustive and entertaining. Chick not only covers Sonic Youth's many changes over the years, he also reveals a band that's thriving and alive. Although 2006's Rather Ripped was the band's last release on Geffen, Chick taps into the band's profound indie connections to show that they'll still thrive, even if they choose to return to their indie label roots. Even though Psychic Confusion summarizes everything the band has done so far, it leaves open the possibility of many more years of Sonic Youth history, and I'm sure Chick would be just the music writer to continue the story in the future.

Originally published on Blogcritics.org.

Mix Bag #2: Fictitious Non-Fiction, Cake, and a Bloody Massacre

Mix Bag is a weekly feature that brings together a random collection of media and highlights why it all matters to you.

After an extended weekend off and a handful of other things to write, I haven't had too much time to peruse what's interesting out there this week. Usually, I'd say it's disappointing to put off a feature for a few days, but then I remind myself that with only a handful of readers to brag about, There There Kid is still too little of a start up for anyone to complain about Mix Bag coming out late. But I digress...

Anyway, we might as well jump right in and examine the world of cultural activity that I've found interesting lately. First, The New York Times' literary blog Paper Cuts has an interesting article up about yet another fabrication coming to light in a major non-fiction book. This time, it's not one of the infamous memoir fabrications marketed for mass appeal. Instead, it's a work of journalism that takes some liberties at truth or, as Stephen Colbert would put it, truthiness (that word makes a lot more sense now than it did when it came out). It's a book called Bringing Down the House, and it's the book that the latest blockbuster 21 was based on. But as it turns out, many sections were exaggerated to the point of being completely false; at one point in the book, for example, the team of gamblers supposedly strapped thousands of dollars to their bodies before boarding planes, which apparently never happened. There are other dramatic scenes that the real-life characters of the book deny ever happening, and this is all coming out right when 21 is out in cinemas across the country. Ouch.

There's also a collection of essays that just came out called I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley. They sound quite interesting, blending comedy with the mundane parts of daily life. Sloane works as a publicist for Vintage/Anchor books during the day, so her understanding of the absurdities surrounding literary publicity and the 9 to 5 office job could make an interesting read. I've ordered a copy and hope to read it soon. Sloane's Web site is also a lot of fun, adding art and excerpts/blurbs for her book.

There's also a book coming out in May that takes our current generation to task, called The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupifies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future by Mark Bauerlein. Despite the pretentious sounding title, the book actually looks like it smartly dissects exactly why, with more and more information at our fingertips, we keep getting dumber. Is there really a reason, or is this guy just a cranky old man? I hope to find out, and I'll probably have a review up later on.

In the world of music, things keep getting more and more interesting as the year continues. People seem in awe of R.E.M.'s latest (I'm still on the fence, personally), but most reviews seem to recognize that it's just about the best you can get from a band that's become increasingly less relevant over the years.

In jazz, I like Pete Robbins' Do the Hate Laugh Shimmy, and the album title gives the vibe of the album away. It's quirky and experimental, yet rooted in something whole and tangible. It's an excellent album that comes out later in the month.

And there are a lot more albums coming out this week. I've been on a Sonic Youth kick lately, so it's nice to see that Thurston Moore is releasing another solo album called Sensitive/Lethal. The Microphones and Man Man have new albums out as well.

Next week, the eclectic weirdos that make up Brian Jonestown Massacre are releasing their 13th album called My Bloody Underground. It's very experimental, and gives off a different vibe from some of their past work; to be honest, it sounds more like a collection of demos than a full-length LP. But there are some gems, and the experimentation is more in line with TV On the Radio than some of the blues influences of past albums. It took a few listens for me to get into it, and I'm still not fully convinced. But that doesn't matter, it's still a lot of fun.

That's about it for now, I'd love to see what everyone else finds interesting out there in the internet world.

The "Fake Empire" of Joshua Ferris' Then We Came to the End and The National's Boxer

"We're half-awake, in a fake empire."

So declares singer Matt Berninger of The National in "Fake Empire," the song that kicks off their latest album Boxer. The entire album continues in this vein, suggesting that American life has become a life "half-awake," one of suburban efficiency and catchy marketing.

And that's essentially where the members of The National are coming from, having endured the life (career, rather) of catchy marketing; most of the members gave up the high life of a career in marketing to form a band that tackles the issues facing our "fake empire." There's something wrong with us, and it's kind of ironic that those who once helped with marketing the things that supposedly will make us feel better are now the ones trying to warn us that we are about to collide into a brick wall.

Boxer is an album that digs deep into the upper middle class life of corporate America, the guy who is stuck, but has a numbing acceptance of it all ("I can tie my tie all by myself / I’m getting tied, I’m forgetting why"). The National have tapped into a sentiment that simmers on the surface, but rarely gets discussed directly: that conformity becomes numbing, and none of the quick fixes we give ourselves will work. It's an essential question that goes to the heart of what it means to be American: to conform -- chasing the elusive "American Dream" -- or not to conform, and transcend societal expectations.

Equally, Joshua Ferris' latest novel Then We Came to the End speaks to the essential questions of conformity and what it means to be American. In the epigraph, Ferris quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson, who urges against being "reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the thousand, of the party, the section, to which we belong." This quote shows what we face within our society: we celebrate independence, but expect conformity. It's both the essential elements of human nature and what makes corporate America tick, yet we put up with it all, accepting it as reality and popping pills along the way.

Since this lifestyle is so deeply embedded in the American consciousness, it was only a matter of time before a novel would attempt to tap into the reasons why we've let ourselves become obsessed with work. Ferris' Then We Came to the End is such a novel. Chronicling the office lives of a marketing agency in Chicago, Then We Came to the End is both a hilarious and heartwarming account of how and why we endure such work-focused lives.

Ferris' novel follows the copywriters and art directors of the agency as they endure cutbacks in the wake of the dot-com crash, and as they watch their colleagues get the ax -- or, as they coin it, "walking Spanish" -- they huddle in the corners of offices speculating why, how, and who is next to go. In the midst of all these layoffs, the agency takes on a mysterious pro bono breast cancer awareness case at the same time they discover (through office rumor, of course) that their supervisor Lynn Mason has breast cancer. Their task is to create ad copy that will make a breast cancer patient laugh, but the group is experiencing an extreme case of writer's block.

The novel is written in first-person plural to reflect the collective "we" of modern corporate culture. As each character goes through his or her own personal conflicts, the group experiences these as a whole, or so it seems; Ferris' "we" is actually an ironic critique of the groupthink that pervades throughout corporate America. "We were corporate citizens," Ferris writes, "buttressed by advanced degrees and padded by corporate fat...What we didn't consider was that in a downturn, we were the mismanaged inventory, and were about to be dumped like a glut of imported circuit boards." So essentially, this "we" is nothing more than a commodity, the worker bees whose only goal is to keep the colony alive and fed.

Ferris uses two characters in particular to stress these distinctions between independence and conformity. Tom Mota, a disgruntled office worker who tries to shake things up through pranks, tries to find a level of transcendence but is eventually fired and doesn't handle it too well. Although those at the office have termed him the office Emerson scholar (he quotes him throughout the novel), Tom never actually transcends anything, and eventually falls back into conformity (albeit in a completely different way). Even though Tom can never bring himself to fully reject societal pressures, he does introduce his office friend Carl Garbedian to the words of Emerson. Carl suffers from depression, and the pills designed to level him out never work, so he takes matters into his own hands, resigning from the agency and starting a successful suburban landscaping company. He ends up transcending the politics of corporate groupthink by returning back to nature, so to speak. Essentially, these two characters represent something profound about America: that conformity is difficult to understand, but even more difficult to break away from.

The National's lyrics, like Ferris' novel, don't tell us how to live -- rather, they show the parts of society that are numbing and inconsequential. In their song "Apartment Story," Berninger sings about the apathy of a society that is "tired and wired" and "ruined to easy" where "we’ll stay inside 'til somebody finds us / do whatever the TV tells us / stay inside our rosy-minded fuzz for days." And fuzz is a good way of putting it; it's comfortable, but not entirely exciting. It's shopping at Target and golf at the country club, but not life to the fullest, or the elusive "pursuit of happiness" promised to us.

It seems relevant that in 2007 -- in the midst of a war with no end and the glut of a sub-prime mortgage meltdown -- two works of art come out and to the same concerns about society. And here we are in 2008, our politicians promise "change" and our artists recognize that this numbing groupthink is hurting America (Then We Came to the End was nominated for the National Book Award and The National's Boxer was voted album of the year by Paste magazine), and we still don't have any definitive answers. Just like Emerson didn't advocate changing society, but rather, removal from society, so to do artists in the 21st Century point out the absurdities and inconsistencies of our society and hope that someone out there is listening.

Mix Bag #1: Elbow, Books on the Music Industry, and Games to Waste Time and Sharpen Your Mind

Mix Bag is a weekly feature that brings together a random collection of media and highlights why it all matters to you.

Mix Bag #1: Elbow, Books on the Music Industry, and Games to Waste Time and Sharpen Your Mind

Since this is our very first Mix Bag here at There There Kid, we'd like to explain the purpose for this weekly feature. As you may know, There There Kid distinguishes itself from other entertainment related blogs by attempting to connect otherwise disparate works of art or media through central themes. Since there's so much going on out there, Mix Bag is our opportunity to just throw everything we find interesting out there, allowing you to find something new or make your own connections. So, this first Mix Bag might be a little rough, but as we get going, we hope it will develop into an important event on its own.

Let's get started...

The first thing of interest involves music, and there are (finally!) some interesting albums coming out this year. First, Elbow have finally released their third studio album, The Seldom Seen Kid. It's been four years since we've seen this band release new material, so this is nice to see. The thing is, the album's only out in the UK, and won't be released in the US until April 22. However, I have a copy of the album in hand, so expect a review soon (trust me, it's good). Cloud Cult will release their latest, titled Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes), on April 8. Plus, there's been a lot of buzz surrounding R.E.M.'s latest Accelerate , which comes out tomorrow. Will Michael Stipe and crew actually wow us, or will Accelerate be as stale as its predecessors? We'll know soon enough. Other interesting new releases include Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks' latest Real Emotional Trash -- which is much more upbeat than the albums that came before it, even if some of the tracks (especially the title track) feel a little stale -- Destroyer's Trouble In Dreams, She & Him's Volume 1 (which has actress Zoey Deschanel on vocals), Spoon's Don't You Evah EP, and the good albums just keep coming. Which is great, because 2008 started off with a lot of disappointment.

On the jazz front, I've had a chance to listen to Dave Douglas & Keystone's Moonshine, and it's a great album, albeit a little weird (but I like weird).

Speaking of all of this great music, I can't help but notice how a majority of it comes from indie label acts. Is there a reason why all of this great music comes from indie labels, while the major labels eat each other whole? According to Dan Kennedy's latest memoir Rock On, the reason is because the music industry is still completely oblivious to what people in the 21st Century still want. Ever since that whole Napster debacle, the RIAA has imploded on itself, causing the rise in indie labels that snatch up the good acts before the "man" gets them. Just take a look at that little Radiohead experiment, or the recent move by well established artists to the Starbucks label. According to the New York Times Book Review, Kennedy "doesn’t expound on the music industry’s decline; instead, he simply lays out reams of damning evidence," and although that seems fairly obvious, Rock On is here to hilariously confirm our worst fears and further the music lover's move to indie.

All of this music industry talk reminded me that Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins is suing his former record label, Virgin Records, for using the band's music in an advertising campaign the band did not approve. We'll see how that one turns out.

In other books news, Owen Shears' Resistance is a novel that, like Phillip Roth's The Plot Against America, revises the history surrounding World War II and Nazi Germany. Shears' novel has the British losing against the Germans in the D-Day invasions, and as German forces attempt to establish themselves, a secret movement against the Germans forms in Britain. I haven't yet read this, but there's supposedly a love story thrown in there as well. Also, I've just discovered Stephanie McMillan, an excellent graphic novelist and comic writer. Blogcritics.org has an interview with Stephanie McMillan up on their site right now, where she explains how she connects comics to the larger good of society: "I think many people want more art that challenges the status quo, and they appreciate it when they find it." True True.

Even if art isn't specifically challenging the status quo, can't it at least challenge the mind? According to the makers of Guest House, there are games that are challenging, yet seem simple on the surface. Of course that seems kind of obvious, until you've played Guest House, then you'll understand that this game is much more complex than it seems. What seems like a simple flash game turns into a real difficult challenge that moves from the surreal to the sublime.

There's so much more we have to cover, but for now, that's it. Next week, we'll dig through a couple more CD's, take a look at some new books, do some critiquing of the media, and find some new time wasters.

Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke and the Endless War in Iraq

Out of all the major upsets, tragedies, and failures America has experienced in this new century, none will be as damaging to American morale as our current war in Iraq. We've just marked two major milestones in Iraq--five years of direct conflict and war, and four thousand troop deaths--and yet, the powers that be, those taking on the unenviable task of trying to fix this mess, have not improved conditions for the Iraqi people or for America's safety and standing in the world.

And yet, we knew it was inevitable. We knew that our relationship with the Middle East was contentious and multi-layered, and that a military occupation of a nation that did not provoke or attack us would stir up resentment and anger in that region. We may never recover from these fractured relationships, much less win militarily.

Those who warned against war in 2003 had their patriotism questioned and their voices silenced, and now that their fears of the worst have come true, they now seem to represent the mainstream opinion. Yet, the Bush administration and Republican Presidential nominee John McCain continue to support this war without an end, and their poll numbers continue to fall.

Of course, the War in Iraq is not the first war America has messed up. The obvious one was Vietnam, but there were plenty that came before that, and even the ones that we won had their problems and setbacks. These wars, and the effects they have on an entire population of people, seem to come and go throughout history. Yet nothing seems to change; every other generation or so, we start the pattern of fear, war, remorse, and peace over again and then promise that we'll never do it again.

Denis Johnson's 2007 novel Tree of Smoke speaks to a war-torn generation in the ways that previous war novels have spoken, and all the elements of a classic are built right in. First, Johnson writes of a different era (the Vietnam war), a grand but elusive objective controlled by the mythical powers that be (the CIA's secret operations), and a resolution that leaves our heroes as washed up failures. Like Joseph Heller's World War II novel Catch-22, Johnson's characters are left without a definitive purpose or objective except to stay alive and trust their commanders. The commanders, and those who assume the roles of authority, have their own things going on and no one knows exactly what might happen.

The novel follows several characters that are directly involved with the Vietnam war effort, but mainly focuses on CIA operative William "Skip" Sands and his uncle Colonel Sands ("the colonel") as they attempt to win the war. The colonel is essentially operating a proxy war through the psy-ops division of the CIA, attempting to attack the Vietcong through double agents and their own superstitions. But as the colonel operates in the shadows of the war, he becomes a larger-than-life myth himself. Those around the colonel see him as much more than a mere operations manager, and the colonel begins to lose focus of the war on the ground.

The colonel will eventually die, but his death will remain a mystery that Skip and the colonel's confidant, Sgt. Jimmy Storm, try to understand and figure out. After the war, both Skip and Storm will attempt to discover the truth behind the colonel's disappearance, and their lives will become muddied versions of the lives they led before the war. The end of the war brings with it disillusionment and sacrifice that is far removed from the idealistic beliefs of morality and justice they were taught.

Just as the title suggests, Johnson's characters operate under the false myths that America's might will ultimately win, and that in a war against an inferior nation, America automatically assumes the role of morality and righteousness. These myths, like the tree of smoke, are abstract; they are impressions of the thing itself, just like a tree of smoke isn't actually a tree, but rather, smoke plumes shaped like a tree. Equally, the title shows Johnson's grasp of the intricate complexities of war. "Tree of smoke" is biblical (“'There shall be blood and fire and palm trees of smoke' - from Joel, wasn’t it?” says a Catholic priest in the novel), but it also represents a philosophy of warfare that the colonel embodies, a "sincere goal for the function of intelligence--restoring intelligence-gathering as the main function of intelligence operations, rather than to provide rationalisations for policy." Essentially, the colonel's proxy war in Vietnam is a war of conflicting cultures and myths that fails, and leavs the characters that surround him confused about their purpose in Vietnam.

It's this idea that permeates throughout entire novel. Johnson's fluid prose style, mixed with the grander themes of war and morality, point to our current war in Iraq. They leave open the many questions we now have about the Bush administration's flawed logic that got us into this war in the first place. Just like the colonel's flawed philosophy regarding the "function of intelligence," the Bush administration's flawed philosophy of pre-emptive war has turned out to be a "tree of smoke" in its own right. The "smoke" just happens to be claims of weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein's plans to attack America, and the exploited fears of American's living in a post-9/11 world.

Most Americans see the war in Iraq with much clearer eyes, and a strong majority of Americans believe it's time to withdraw. As the major characters in Tree of Smoke become confused about their role in the Vietnam War, Americans at home doubted the purpose of the war as well. Sound familiar?

Tree of Smoke may use a historical turning point in American history as a way to tell a fictional story, but its story feels more relevant now than ever before. Five years into it, the Iraq war has no major turning point or sense of resolution, leaving Americans uneasy about the future. Denis Johnson knows this, and so do his readers; the myths that shaped our policies in the past continue to shape our policies now, and America will continue the cycle throughout the rest of the century.

Review: Willing by Scott Spencer

Of all the great thinkers of the 20th Century, Sigmund Freud's theories on the inner workings of the mind have affected our perceptions of reality the most. Freud's psychoanalytic theories have become such a prominent aspect of culture--both pop culture as well as critical theory and analysis--that it has shaped how we view our world, and we've all become a little more self-conscious as a result.

In Willing, author Scott Spencer is clearly playing with some psychoanalytic ideas. He follows in the footsteps of authors such as Vladimir Nabokov and Saul Bellow by revealing plot through the skewed lens of his protagonist Avery Jankowsky. Of course, what we are allowed to see is never the full truth, and we must take Avery's experiences at face value.

Willing follows Avery, a 37-year-old Manhattan freelance journalist whose young girlfriend Deirdre cheats on him with her grad school classmate Osip. When Avery finds out about the affair, he falls into a deep funk. Unable to find decent freelance work, his uncle refers him to his longtime friend Lincoln Castle, who hosts (at $135,000 a trip) a world sex tour for wealthy executives. Avery sees a book opportunity, gets a book deal, and embarks on the sex tour to "research" for his book.

Of course, Spencer doesn't let his protagonist off with an easy assignment like that, and Avery faces his own personal demons along the way. Despite declaring himself as "the guy in the stands at the World Series, ...[with] his hand on his heart and his eyes bright with belief," Avery has a past that haunts him. The first sign that something is not all right with Avery is the way he internalizes his mother's four past marriages, his "four fathers" that he wears with pride in public but rejects in private. Not only does Avery deal with his own father issues, he has to face his mother's overbearing nature both directly and indirectly.

As a result of Avery's inner struggles, Spencer suggests that what's more important in Willing is not the bawdiness of a sex tour, or even the outright hypocrisy of those rich CEO types on the tour, but the conflicts faced by a man who has never actually confronted them. For example, Avery's mother seeks him throughout the novel (Avery keeps "seeing" his mother in various locations around the world) and Avery must face her directly in the middle of his sex tour escapades. Avery's response is not to assert himself as an adult male, but rather to seek her comfort. He also never faces his reaction to Dierdre's infidelity; even as he desperately wants to be with her, he assumes that his own insecurities will never allow him to connect with her directly. Avery's whole bizarre, textbook Oedipal complex approach to life is both pathetic and comic at the same time.

One of Willing's strengths, and a strength of Spencer's prose style in general, is that we never know where reality and the fantasy of Avery's narration actually meet. There is a dreamlike quality to the entire novel, and Avery's self-deprecating tone and recollection of events is full of the random and surreal. Spencer reflects this dreamlike quality on a technical level as well through his lack of quotation marks and stripped-down dialog.

Even though Spencer is successful in creating a bizarre, psycho-sexual narrator and protagonist, he is not as successful with some of the basic elements of continuity and plot. At times, Avery's experiences don't make sense. For example, Avery is able to secure a $400,000 book deal within 24 hours after sending off his pitch, justifying his sex tour trip. I wish I lived in that type of world, where a struggling freelance journalist can sign an amazing book contract deal that fast. Spencer also loses the reader at the end, when Lincoln Castle kicks Avery off the sex tour because of a string of unfortunate events and because he was "pulling the plugs out of computers" at his Reykjavik hotel. Seems like such a minor reason to be kicked off a sex tour. At the same time, Spencer's comic portrayal of Avery's antics makes up for it, even if it's a bit unbelievable.

Willing may have its flaws, but it is, for the most part, an enjoyable read. Spencer's portrayal of Avery is hilarious, and Avery's personal demons interweave with the plot well. Willing leaves the reader with an understanding that, in this world of psychoanalysis and obsession, there is still hope to laugh at our mistakes.

Rating: 6/10

Originally published at Blogcritics.org: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/03/27/050653.php

Review: Things Fall Apart, 50th Anniversary Edition by Chinua Achebe

Fifty years ago, Africa was a continent struggling to find identity and freedom, despite centuries of control and change that destroyed the cultures of a diverse group of people. As Africa struggled to free itself from colonial rule in the second half of the 20th century, there were many who wondered if Africa could survive in the industrial age and move beyond colonialism.

In 2008, it's hard to say whether Africa's independence from colonial rule has resulted in freedom. It has certainly allowed many nations, such as Nigeria and South Africa, to compete globally, but it has also left many others in the throes of poverty, genocide, and war. As African nations found their independence throughout the '60's and '70's, many hoped Africa would become a new world superpower, but it never happened. It has been a tumultuous time, and Africa continues to struggle with the scars left by colonial rule.

Recognizing Africa's struggles between the traditions of the past and the turmoil left by colonialism, Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart shows how these struggles are not always simple to understand. Originally published in 1958, Things Fall Apart has become a modern classic, and a 50th anniversary edition was released this month to celebrate the novel's lasting impact.

Things Fall Apart follows Okonkwo, a village leader who becomes one of the most powerful men in Umuofia, his ancestral village. As Okonkwo strives to rise from obscurity to importance, he brings along with him the traditions that his village requires of him. Even though Okonkwo faces hardship throughout the novel, Achebe shows us that the cultural expectations and beliefs of this region are complex and difficult to understand, but more powerful than the Western world portrays it, especially in 1958.

Okonkwo's rise to a powerful position in Umuofia also reveals the struggles of a man torn apart by a multiplicity of emotions, and Okonkwo faces these throughout the novel. At one point, Okonkwo breaks the customs of Umuofia, and Okonkwo and his family are exiled from the village for seven years. Okonkwo is forced to start over, and he does so, building his power and manhood back.

Achebe's novel takes an interesting turn when Okonkwo returns to Umuofia, and he finds a village changed by outside forces. British missionaries have set up a Christian church in the village, and are trying to convert the villagers to Christianity. While many of the villagers convert to the new religion, Colonial forces take over the political and cultural beliefs and customs of the region, and Okonkwo, a man rooted in the traditions of the past, feels lost. Instead of portraying the British empire as the enemy and the villagers as the heroes, Achebe puts these political changes within their historical context; it becomes clear that the events take place at the height of Victorian Britain, and the fervor surrounding the Colonial government becomes a fact that Okonkwo must face. By showing the nuances and multiple customs and traditions that Okonkwo knew as a young man, Achebe shows how difficult it is for Okonkwo to face these outside forces.

In the end, Okonkwo won't face them with honor. Achebe then shows how complicated Colonial Africa has become, that it is a region full of turmoil that will last for years to come. In 1958, a time of change for post-colonial Africa, Things Fall Apart became a way for Africans to respond to their colonists, and in the decades after its publication, the novel would represent why change in the region was so necessary.

Now that fifty years have passed, Things Fall Apart is still an important novel because of its complex portrayal of colonialism. Although the novel seems simple at face value, it shows how difficult it is to overcome centuries of colonial rule that uprooted so many people and customs, and left them at the mercy of corporate and political greed. Achebe doesn't paint a black and white world when he describes Okonkwo's struggles; instead, he shows that things are difficult to fix once they have been broken.

Africa may one day become the prosperous world power that seemed possible fifty years ago, as nation after nation found their independence from colonial rule. Achebe's novel shows that it's too difficult to view Africa from one perspective, and the story will remain a powerful force in African literature.

Originally published at Blogcritics.org: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/03/01/123602.php

Review: Ralph Ellison - A Biography by Arnold Rampersad

Ralph Ellison began his life in Oklahoma in 1913, an area far removed from the cultural changes happening in America and an area that, despite its promise of a new life, still held blacks in the throes of Jim Crow racism. As a child, Ralph desired more from the America he grew to love and respect, and he would reach new heights through an unwavering love for the arts, especially jazz; he saw musicians like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington as heroes because they made it into the heart of American society, despite their skin color (later, in his novel Invisible Man, Ellison's unnamed narrator would also find solace in Armstrong's music).

Ralph would eventually get there. His life ended in 1994 as a man who overcame odds against him as a kid to become a literary icon whose novel Invisible Man is still revered today. He was a man who always set the bar high, and despite accomplishing much in his life, he never finished the second novel he always promised would be a novel about the African-American experience that would rival Faulkner and Melville. In many ways, Invisible Man became that novel, and Ellison's short stories, essays and literary criticism would become standards for reading America and American literature.

It was the second novel that would always weigh on Ellison's mind. With his heightened expectations, the novel would fall under the weight of prestige and fame. Ellison also became the victim of time, and the longer he waited to bring his novel out, the more America--and, therefore, Ellison's expectations of America--changed. He would blame everything from writer's block "as big as the Ritz," the changing cultural expectations of black writers, and a house fire in 1967 that Ellison claimed destroyed the majority of his novel.

In Ralph Ellison: A Biography by Arnold Rampersad, the myths surrounding Ellison is finally rebuffed. Rampersad's biography digs deep into every event surrounding Ellison's career, and strikes a balance between his personal demons and his public persona without placing the writer on a pedestal. Ellison is shown not only as an intelligent voice for his generation, but also as a man prone to anger and a man who stubbornly stuck to what he knew to be true.

Rampersad begins his story by looking into Ellison's tumultuous childhood in the segregated Oklahoma City, where his mother raised him and his younger brother Herbert with the help of neighbors and friends (his father died early in Ellison's life when a shard of ice stabbed him in the stomach after lifting a block of ice). He recalls the difficulties of Jim Crow in Oklahoma; at one point, Ellison's mother was turned away from the city zoo with both her sons, embarrassed by the white security guard. Rampersad does not just focus on Ellison's career, but shows how Ellison's early years helped shape his literature.

When Ellison grows up and heads to college, Rampersad shows a life that closely reflected Ellison's fiction, especially his most famous novel Invisible Man. Ellison's time at Tuskegee, and his reasons for leaving the institution, shape how the narrator of Invisible Man will form his own identity. Rampersad sweats the small details, showing the progression Ellison took as he moved to Harlem in the 1930's and became a writer. Writers such as Langston Hughes and Richard Wright directly influenced Ellison's desire to write a great novel, even though Ellison would later distance himself from these writers due to his changing political beliefs. Rampersad also tracks Ellison's political evolution, from Communist sympathizer in the 1930's to moderate Democrat in the 1960's and beyond. In Invisible Man, Ellison's narrator would make a similar political change, albeit on a smaller level. Indeed, Ellison's fiction was often closely linked to his own changes.

Rampersad's exhaustive research also reveals a man who was prone to arrogance and, as a result, was often viewed as out of touch with modern American literature, especially in the ever changing 1960's. While Ellison worked night and day on the novel that would rival Faulkner (that he ultimately never finished), a new perspective on race relations, especially among blacks, emerged. Ellison was stuck between two conflicting worlds: a white America that accepted Ellison and allowed him to move up in society, and a black America that accused Ellison of being an "Uncle Tom." Ellison never backed down; despite younger writers seeing him as out of touch with the struggles of the modern world, Ellison always believed that race relations were more complex than black versus white, and that African-American culture was distinctly American. As he aged and black radicalism subsided, many young scholars turned back to Ellison's words, and his view of America endures today.

Perhaps the most interesting section of Rampersad's biography is his mention of the 1967 fire that destroyed Ellison's Plainfield, Mass. estate. What is interesting about this event is how minor it truly was. As Ellison continued to labor away with his novel-in-progress, he would claim to those who asked him that most of it was destroyed in the fire, and therefore spent years trying to re-write the novel from memory. The truth, according to Rampersad, was that Ellison lost only a small portion of the novel, since most of the novel was left at his home in Harlem. The novel was never finished or published during his lifetime because Ellison fell under the weight of it, as it grew to be well over 1,000 pages long without any real direction. Later, a portion of the novel would become Juneteenth, published posthumously (the rest of the novel is supposed to be published later this year).

Rampersad ends his biography with Ellison's 1994 death. Suffering from pancreatic cancer, Ellison went peacefully at his Harlem apartment. While listening to a Louis Armstrong song, Ellison signaled to his wife Fanny that the song was perfect, suggesting that Ellison, even on his deathbed, still regarded jazz as one of the most important experiences of his American adventure.

Ralph Ellison: A Biography is an excellent look at a man and a career that, despite its ups and downs, deserves respect. Although he faced his critics (sometimes head on) with a bullish attitude, it was done because of his true belief that America would endure. Although he never finished the second novel he always promised, Invisible Man and his collections of literary and cultural criticism have become classics. Rampersad's exhaustive research leaves nothing behind, revealing a conflicted man who still knew what he ultimately wanted, an integrated America that recognized a multiplicity of views, and in many ways, he got just that.

Originally published at Blogcritics.org: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/02/21/144546.php

Book Review: Down to a Sunless Sea by Mathias Freese

If there's one thing we share collectively as human beings, it is the growth and maturity experienced through childhood and early adulthood. While everyone may have different experiences, childhood has certainly been the subject for countless writers throughout the ages. Whether it's James Joyce's Stephen Daedalus or Charles Schultz's Charlie Brown, artists have tried to make sense of their childhood while explaining essential parts of human experience.

In Down to a Sunless Sea, Mathias Freese delves into the darker aspects of childhood through 15 excellent stories. Freese's protagonists share dark secrets and tragic experiences, but by the end of each story, Freese leaves the reader with a sense of empathy for his young protagonists. They all deal with the things that plague young men in the 20th century (and beyond), such as shaving, making sense of friendship, parental abuse, and sexual desire, yet Freese's stories tackle these subjects head-on, giving each character depth and perspective beyond an idealistic view of childhood.

Freese allows his characters to speak for themselves, but uses his own experiences as a social worker to shape each character. In "I'll Make it, I Think," for example, the main character is a crippled young man who tries to make sense of his teenage life by naming his body parts, his new best friends: Ralph, his "bad hand," Lon, his other hand, and David, his penis. As he makes sense of his sexual desires, he wishes he could "go out with normal girls" but his webbed hands scare them away ("unless she's into frog"). According to the introduction, the character is based in part on Freese's crippled cousin. Freese doesn't just look at the young male's teenage years and leave it at that. Instead, Freese brings us into the young man's mind, showing us his pain and realization that he's different from others. Through physical frustration, Freese shows that the character has trouble dealing with his life and imagines taking "practice slashes" at his throat with his razor.

The characters in Down to a Sunless Sea are often coping with loss, and unavoidable pain, but somehow these characters show strength. "Herbie" is a story that deals with an abusive father's control over a son who still looks up to him. After Herbie's father shows him how to shine his shoes, Herbie and a friend hope to set up a shoe shine business, but his father won't have a son who shines shoes in the street. Herbie's situation (and his mixed feelings toward his father) is a scenario that Freese reveals without judgment; he shows how feelings toward loved ones are never cut and dried, especially in adolescence.

Freese's stories have similarities with Charles Bukowski in theme, and Raymond Carver in writing style. Instead of trying to make sense of a dark and lonely world, Freese (like Carver) shows us the world each character lives in and leaves it at that, allowing the reader to make sense of it all at face value. In this way, Freese's stories successfully make sense of otherwise senseless moments in childhood. At the same time, he shows there might be hope in the future; in "Alabaster," for example, a young boy meets an elderly Polish woman and her daughter who have moved to his neighborhood. He sees the seven digit tattoo on her arm, and sees that she is "numbered." Freese doesn't say whether or not the young boy knows he has met a holocaust survivor, but leaves open the possibility of hope in the child's future while suggesting the pain of the woman's past.

Of course, Down to a Sunless Sea isn't entirely heavy-handed and depressing (not that sad stories are depressing anyway). At times Freese's stories are quite humorous, as in "Arnold Schwarzenegger's Father Was a Nazi," where Freese has some fun with Schwarzenegger's past. And future, for that matter; the story reveals Schwarzenegger's attempts to re-make his upbringing to fit with his new-found fame and marriage into a heavily political family. Any story about Schwarzenegger in 2007 would be funny, but the story is especially interesting because it was written in 1991. Not only does it reflect a pre-"Governator" Arnold, but also an Arnold Schwarzenegger who hadn't yet graced the world with his god-awful comedies Jingle All the Way and Junior.

Overall, Down to a Sunless Sea is an excellent portrayal of the heartaches and troubles of childhood and adolescence. The short story has become one of the most important literary genres in modern history, and Freese's grasp of the genre is certainly up there with the best modern writers out there. With its important themes and literary allusions, Down to a Sunless Sea is well worth a read.

Originally published at Blogcritics.org: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/12/31/175731.php

Review: Jack Kerouac's American Journey - The Real-Life Odyssey of "On The Road" by Paul Maher Jr.

Jack Kerouac has become one of those larger than life characters from American literature. Like Ernest Hemingway and Walt Whitman before him, Kerouac's mythic status as a road-weary traveler and writer of spontaneous, explosive prose is the reason readers are still drawn to his work.

Of course, the real Jack Kerouac was quite the opposite. Although he truly believed in an America that's only discovered on society's fringes, and tried to express this by writing in a prose style that mimicked jazz music's improvisational techniques, he was still a self-conscious writer who worried about what people thought of him and who methodically mapped out every word he wrote, constantly self-editing and re-writing as he went along. While Kerouac's fans thought of him as an independent man who was just out for kicks, Kerouac's reality was that he longed to settle down, own a ranch in Colorado, and marry a perfectly submissive and quiet wife who would bake and clean for him. At the same time, Kerouac was trying to come to terms with his Catholic past and his changing spiritual views that eventually led him to Buddhism (and, later, back to Christianity).

In Jack Kerouac's American Journey, Paul Maher, Jr. shows how a young man with grand ideas tries to seek out meaning in an America that became increasingly meaningless to him. Along the way, Kerouac decides that he must write the perfect modern American picaresque that would rival anything his heroes Mark Twain and Thomas Wolfe ever wrote; in On The Road, Kerouac takes his adventures and desires to new territories and American experiences and creates the perfect novel to express the yearning Americans felt at the time.

Maher's well-researched book about Jack Kerouac's journey as he wrote and published On The Road begins with a young Kerouac attending classes at Columbia University, when he meets his lifelong friends and literary confidantes Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. At the time, Kerouac was obsessed with writers like Thomas Wolfe and Fyodor Dostoevsky who inspired him to keep writing. Kerouac sees in these writers and friends that life is lived best on the fringes of society, or, as Sal Paradise puts it in On The Road, life is lived best with "the mad ones ... desirous of everything at the same time."

Maher's research of this first trip shows that Kerouac's re-telling of it in On The Road is almost exactly as it happened, but it took Kerouac a while to finally decide to make it out on the road. As Cassady and Ginsberg moved out to Denver, Colorado, Kerouac finally got the nerve to get up out of his mother's home (where he had spent several months typing out his first novel The Town and The City) and travel by bus to Denver. Maher dives into Kerouac's personal journals and letters to Cassady and Ginsberg (plus interviews with the girls he met along the way) to reveal a lost man trying to find some meaning in what seems completely meaningless. Through his many other trips across America and into Mexico, Kerouac realizes the hope and dreams of the America he tries to re-create, and as a result, Kerouac is able to find his way along the road to self-fulfillment.

Jack Kerouac's American Journey also takes us into Kerouac's process of writing, and reveals a man who was a careful recorder of his life. Maher explains that the crazy spontaneity of Kerouac's life is more of a front than anything else. The Kerouac who sat in the bedroom of his mother's house typing away was not nearly as improvisational as we may think. After late evenings typing away, he would write ideas and criticism of his favorite writers in his notebook, and he'd also write an exact number of words he had typed up that day. Sometimes, the number would be near 3,000. Other times, 800 or so. But he was careful to write down the number, especially in the early days while working on The Town and the City.

Of course, Kerouac's life was more than just the subterranean life of a hobo on the road. By the time Kerouac sits down to re-write On The Road from scratch, he is married to Joan Anderson and trying to settle down. He also "took eight sheets of drawing paper and Scotch-taped them together, end to end, creating one continuous roll that he could feed into his typewriter," a typing technique that he used to create the scroll version of On The Road and establish the myth that he was a spontaneous writer who never self-edited (he would allow this myth to carry on until his death). Maher, of course, demythologizes this myth and carefully puts Kerouac among other literary giants of the 20th Century, such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, showing that Kerouac spent years and meticulous planning in order to create his great American novel.

Kerouac's world, of course, was ever changing. Maher shows how the changes in post-World War II America affected Kerouac and his fellow "beat" writers, and how Americans slowly move to the suburbs and into lives of domesticity. At the same time, Maher is quick to show that Kerouac was heavily offended by this new found domestic world, and America's increasing desire for conformity and restraint deeply affected how he shaped his novel. By 1957, the year On The Road was finally published, America was a much different place. Rock and Roll had taken over, the civil rights movement was finally taking hold, and Americans didn't know it at the time, but they were about to elect their first Catholic president in the 1960 presidential elections. Although Kerouac had wanted the novel published earlier and had moved on from its themes by 1957, he was happy to see his American picaresque find a place in the youth of the time.

Jack Kerouac's American Journey is a carefully recorded book about one of the greatest novels of the 20th Century, and unlike many other Kerouac scholars, Maher doesn't fall into the traps of myth and legend. Instead, Maher shows the real-life struggles Kerouac faced to create On The Road, and as a result, Maher reveals the profound influence the novel would have on America's changing and maturing attitudes through the 1960s and beyond. Today, Kerouac's novel still influences new generations of readers to live out their own personal fantasies of the American dream, whether those fantasies are in their home, on the page, or out on the road discovering the mad corners of America.

Originally published at Blogcrics.org: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/12/20/031429.php