Enrique Vila-Matas - "Because She Never Asked"

I recently moved into a new apartment in a new neighborhood. A new home needs new books, I reasoned. Two days ago, on my way home from work, I exited the Blue Line subway and stopped by City Lit, an impulse I'm sure I'll indulge many more times. My initial plan was to find Alvaro Enrigue's "Sudden Death" but it was out of stock. Instead I picked up books by two Spanish authors: "On the Edge" by Rafael Chirbes and the book this post is about.

I opted to read Vila-Matas's short book first since I haven't had much time to read recently with the move. I wanted to begin and end something. The book is composed of three parts. A short story written by the narrator about a fictional character obsessed with real life actress Sophie Calle; the narrator's meeting with and interactions with Calle; the narrator's descent into physical illness and ruminations on life and mortality based on the confusing actions of Calle.

After finishing the book, I clicked on over to Goodreads to rate how I felt about it. I hovered between 3 and 4 stars, liking vs. *really* liking. I decided on 4 stars, as it has pretty much everything I want out of a book. Meta-fiction, descriptive language, copious amount of references to other authors/artists, reflections on the meaning of literature in life, various settings (Paris, Barcelona, the Azores), develops coincidences and connections (sorta like how I recently read another novel that fictionalizes an actress), and is shrouded in ambiguity throughout.

Literary Chicago: F. Scott Fitzgerald - 'Tender is the Night'

via Calumet 412

If I knew this book was going to have so many great references to Chicago, I would have read it sooner. The city can be both stuffy and vulgar. Interesting to read about the North and South Sides in literature, particularly from 80 years ago.

"Once in his youth he could have gone to Chicago as fellow and docent a the university, and perhaps become rich there and owned his own clinic instead of being only a minor shareholder in a clinic. But when he had thought of what he considered his own thin knowledge spread over that whole area, over all those wheat fields, those endless prairies, he had decided against it. But he had read about Chicago in those days, about the great feudal families of Armour, Palmer, Field, Crane, Warren, Swift, and McCormick and many others, and since that time not a few patients had come to him from that stratum of Chicago and New York." (126)

"Well there's a North Side and a South Side and they're very much separated. The North Side is chic and all that, and we've always lived over there, at least for many years, but lots of old families, old Chicago families, if you know what I mean, still live on the South Side. The University is there. I mean it's stuffy to some people, but anyhow it's different from the North Side. I don't know whether you understand." (152)

"Suddenly Nicole interrupted in succinct Chicagoese: "Bull!"" (154)

Judge a Book by Its Cover

Dragged kicked and screaming into the digital age (ie, born in 1987), I am forced to admit when some technological advancements are absolutely necessary. The most recent case came from when I was looking at book previews for new releases for the coming year. The Millions massive book preview is always a great resource, and Flavorwire's list wasn't so bad itself. Obviously going straight to a favorite publisher (like Curbside Splendor or Other Press) is the most comprehensive way to find out what new releases are coming out.

You know what's sadly the most helpful out of this whole process though? Book covers. That adage, that cliche, that lie. It may have held weight in the past, but this is the age of design that is inherent in everything. The copies of my books that I inherited from my grandparents, leatherbound copies of Longfellow and Keats and Shakespeare that are too fragile to turn the pages, are absolutely beautiful in their minimal classicism. But they are literature from another era.

Year in Reading 2015

End of year lists. A bit played out and commenting on them being played out is too. But I think it's important to look back on what this year meant for me, literaturely. Along with starting to volunteer at Open Books as well as working on an event with Asymptote (stay tuned!), I've been writing more, sometimes for money, sometimes creatively, sometimes not at all (more often than I should). But the bones of a novel came out of it. If you're reading this blog and are interested in reading a surrealist tale about language, identity, memory, and perception, with indulgent experiments in form and more namedrops to philosophers, writers, musicians, and other pop culture references than I probably should have made, I will absolutely let you read it while I figure out where to go with it next.

But enough about what I wrote, here is what I read:

Punk Rock Lit Month

There is a slough of lit events coming up involving or related to really cool music peoples. Not all are necessary punk rock, but it's a catchy title, innit?

Saturday November 21st - How Many Fingers Am I Holding Up book release at Quimby's.

Andy Slater, more well-known as Velcro Lewis, is a highly respected and recognizable musician in Chicago. I've seen him perform only once, as lead singer for the funky and psychedelic Velcro Lewis Group, but there was that one time he did a karaoke version of STP's 'Plush' at Cafe Mustache. Now the legally-blind musician has drafted Steve Krakow to draft a graphic novel about Lewis' experiences with visual impairment. Lewis will read from the book, share stories, and do a Q&A. Free, all ages, 7 PM, Quimby's 1854 W North Ave; for more info on the band go to Velcro Lewis Group's website.

Sunday November 29th - Empty Bottle Book Club: Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl
 
You don't need me to tell you who Carrie Brownstein is. If for some reason you've made your way to this blog and have never listened to Sleater-Kinney or Wild Flag, or have never seen Portlandia, then do those things now. Brownstein's new memoir has already received high praise and I can't wait to get my hands on it. Free, 21+, 4:30 PM, Empty Bottle 1035 N Western Ave.

Thursday December 3rd - My Kind of Sound: The Secret History of Chicago Music Compendium release party

Speaking of Steve Krakow and speaking of the Empty Bottle, Krakow has his own release show at this swell swill of a venue. You've no doubt seen his illustrations about little known bands in the Chicago Reader. Krakow's dedication to uncovering tunes that time and dirt have piled on top of is impressive and inspiring to every writer no one's read and musician no one's heard of. The compendium finds a home for 200 such columns. $8 or free w/RSVP, 21+, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N Western Ave. Bobby Conn, ONO, Athanor, and VCSR perform.

Saturday December 12th - Joe Carducci and Spot of SST in Conversation

Black Flag, Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Husker Du. All are canon when it comes to punk rock and you'd have no idea who they were if it weren't for these two guys. Carducci, co-owner of SST, and Spot, the label's house producer, both have books out. This afternoon, they'll read a bit from their respective works, interview each other, answer questions, "and lie only when absolutely necessary." Oh yeah, ONO, as you may recall, released their first two albums on Thermidor, also ran by Carducci. The more you know. Free, all ages, 3 PM, Permanent Records, 1914 W Chicago Ave.

Alrighty, now that you know what to do, go on and get out there. This is all assuming you've already read new books by Patti Smith and Richard Hell, right RIGHT ?!

On Writing, On Fiction

Here are a couple quotes I saw recently about writing and what makes fiction work.

The first is from Lauren Groff, the editor of the most recent edition of Ploughshares (which I wrote a bit about here already). She rehashes the age-old idea of the lonely, pain-filled writer, with a bit of twist in her words.

"Writers are perennially lonely, and a writer's longing to connect is what fills her work with urgency." 

Key words: longing, connect, urgency. Of course, the other side of the debate, and one I struggle with, is how much importance do I place on making a "connection?" Isn't it more about just getting the story out there that I believe needs to be told, and to express myself in the artful medium I chose (or chose me if you want to get all whimsical about it)? You can read more about Groff and her writing process on Ploughshares ("She writes early drafts by hand, on legal pads. Once she has a complete draft of a novel, she throws the pages away, and begins again, writing the new draft (again by hand) from memory.").

Ron Currie Jr. - 'Everything Matters!'

I had high hopes for this book especially after how much I gushed about God is Dead. I don't know, even though I finished this book within 36 hours, I wasn't as blown away as I expected to be.

On the plus side, there was plenty of Literary Chicago, since one of the main characters plays for the Cubs.

"Partying means drinking. It also means playing records by Lou Reed and Chicago, which I thought was a city but is also a band it turns out. Uncle Rodney explained this to me. It's a band and a city and when I'm older he'll take me to Chicago to see Chicago play, he says."

"Chicago is not the ideal place to go to when you've recently lost your mind and plan to curl up in the bottom of a bottle and wait for the feeling of having your insides ripped repeatedly from your body to subside."

"...except this time you were not a toddler but a twenty-year-old man, lying on a bench near the Dearborn Street bridge, staring straight up to where the stars would have been were they not  obscured by the megawatt towers..."

Reading list (1/2)'15

First half of 2015 is up. Been keeping busy this year. I'm a firm believer that you can't be a better writer without being a better reader. Here's what I read for the first half of the year. Bolded my favorites. Gonna try to devote the second half of the year to reading more 2015 stuff.

Uki Goni - The Real Odessa (2002)
Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go (2005)
James Tadd Adcox - Does Not Love (2014)
Jami Attenberg - The Melting Season (2011)
John Darnielle - Wolf in White Van (2014)
Leslie Jamison - The Empathy Exams (2014)
Aleksandar Hemon - Nowhere Man (2002)
Eugene Ionesco - Rhinoceros and Other Plays (1994 edition / originally written in 1959)
Louise Erdich - The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (2001)
Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red (1998)
Ron Currie Jr - God is Dead (2007)
Albert Camus - The Rebel (1951)
Djuna Barnes - Nightwood (1936)
Wallace Shawn - the Fever (1990)
Italo Calvino - Marcovaldo (1963)
Jack Kerouac - The Dharma Bums (1958)
Jessica Hopper - The First Collection of Criticism By A Living Female Rock Critic (2015)
Aleksandar Hemon - The Making of Zombie Wars (2015)
Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)

Ron Currie, Jr. - Everything Matters! (2009)

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. - Slaughterhouse Five (1969) (reread) (just as good as it was in high school)
Wallace Shawn - The Designated Mourner (1996) (reread)

Apparently The Empathy Exams is my favorite book I've read recently I haven't written about. I think I was so surprised by how captivating it was that I didn't realize how much I was in love with it until much later on. Not to mention it's one of the few non-fiction books I've read this year. Anyway. That is all. On to the next ones...

Wallace Shawn's 'The Fever'

One day last week, I woke up with one thing on my immediate to-do list: read The Fever by Wallace Shawn. So I did it. I bought the book at Open Books during their final weekend at the River North location. It was listed in the theater section (or was it dramatic literature?) but it's not a play in the conventional sense. There is no action, no dialogue, no characters really. Rather, it is a 67-page monologue about celebrating life and the inherent guilt that thrives in the awareness of living a privileged existence. The fever of the title strikes the narrator while traveling in a country in which they do not speak the language and in which they are forced to viscerally confront poverty and suffering, in a way which their cushy life never even thought to contemplate before hand.

I've read some of Shawn's essays in the past and the dramatic work The Designated Mourner is one of my favorite pieces of anything ever. The Fever, in fact, could be considered a precursor to The Designated Mourner, that although features three characters, they still depend on monologues and rarely interact with each other. I found The Designated Mourner to be more compelling and to go deeper than The Fever, though that may be because it came out seven years after, giving Shawn plenty of time to ruminate on identity, anxiety, man's relationship to the exterior world, and other themes that pop up in his work. In fact, I'll probably reread The Designated Mourner (soon) (again) and see if it's still as compelling (it will be).

Size Doesn't Matter

You know what's fucked up? I've been working on this book for over a year and a half. I'm almost at 64,000 words. I entered super hibernation mode and ignored the entire world for three weeks to write the bulk of this. I've grown narcissistically insane thinking about what a great fucking writer I'm turning into and how this thing is going to change lives.

And this whole document, all of it, all of my random and twisted thoughts, all of the name-dropping and cultural references, all of my pseudo-philosophical meanderings on how technology is threatening (dismantling?!) free will, a fuckton of obscenities, all of it occupy an open office document of 175 KB.

That is such an incomprehensibly tiny speck of data on this machine that can hold 500 GB.

It's nothing.

Now that's what I call an ego killer.

I think I needed that.

Anyway.

Back to editing.

Mo Yan

Mo Yan first came to my attention (as most likely many others, even if they won't admit it) when he was awarded to Nobel Prize for Literature in October. He is a Chinese author, who has had some books translated into English, but apparently not enough to become as big as other Eastern writers, such as Murakami (who many were disappointed got snubbed for the prize). But now he almost seems inescapable. Particualarly today there have been a few pieces I've stumbled upon, as he gave his acceptance to the prize earlier on.

To get yourself acquainted with him, here is a piece called "Bull," which is excerpted from the forthcoming novel Pow! It was published in China in 2003, but just now being translated into English. For a more behind the scenes take, here's an interview the New Yorker did with the translator Howard Goldblatt.

(tangent: Yan teaming up with Goldblatt reminds me of this article: Oh, To Be Jewish in China)

As for the articles of today:

Salman Rushdie calls out Mo Yan as a "patsy of the regime."

Beijing Cream comes in with two. They shared an essay by Anna Sun (looking into relation with Walk The Moon's Anna Sun) on his "diseased language." There is also this Red Sorghum flashmob in a strip mall in Stockholm.

I haven't read any full novels by him yet, but Pow! is certainly on my list when it's released next year.