All the Sad Young Literary Men by Keith Gessen

Producing fiction centered on the current generation of thirty-somethings is an inherently risky enterprise that can either be fraught with superficial insights dressed up as academically inclined rhetoric and self-serving posturing, or, as in the case of Gessen's debut novel, a thoughtful, insightful look at how lives, even those of privilege, can go astray from the once grand expectations of youth leaving those affected to question what went wrong and why. Gessen, the controversial founder of the literary journal n+1 who has incurred the rancor of many literary bloggers due to the strong opinions, which I feel are incredibly accurate, concerning the state of the blogosphere, has, in my opinion, lived up to his own critical sense and produced a novel that is truly memorable, well written, and deeply affecting.

Generally, I would be the first person to rail against a novel with characters who attended Harvard, live in New York City and Boston, and generally have, what I would term, a yuppie-fied lifestyle as being wholly unrealistic, and unrelatable to me. However, Gessen doesn't go for the easy way out and have these characters achieve instant success and turn them into off putting caricatures of the young and educated with their decadent lifestyles. Instead, these characters encounter failures, public and private, in their lives and aren't handed successes that they squander. Perhaps, it's just a reflection of my own standing in life that I can take solace in the portrayal of educated men forced to spend the night in their car, or relate to characters who are genuinely concerned about their aging parents. What I found to be most realistic was the portrayal of graduate students floundering in their studies, procrastinating in their arts, and having the moments of realization that their liberal beliefs are easy to uphold and vehemently defend due to their ability to distance themselves from the issues, in this case the Israelis and the Palestinians. All of this added up to portrayals of people I recognize and can see traits of in myself. Of course, it's also a sad testimony on the state of academia when dissertation students are portrayed as being knowledgeable only on a minute bit of their studies and little of anything else. Is that what we're dealing with when we have a t.a. as an instructor? Hopefully, as in any case, these are the exceptions to the rule.

Gessen, in this case, has produced a book that is the antithesis of all that I find wrong in literature today. He is the anti-Roth, who has floundered for years taking the bare bones of a story and using it as a prop to dress up his standard character, the young Jewish male with an insatiable sexual appetite. Gessen doesn't dwell on the sex. It's there, don't get me wrong, but it's not the focal point, and he seems to recognize how romance and love really works in the world today. Roth, created a simple rubric to work from, and hasn't altered it in nearly fifty years. The issue, though, isn't how offensive the writing is, it is and it isn't, but the fact that Roth is a tremendous talent who has seen his personal stock rise as he puts out increasingly flat books that aren't very good or original. His writing is masterful, but he squanders the opportunity to give us something different. Gessen, a very talented writer in his own right, is the exact opposite. He probes the inner workings of the characters and shows you that lost feeling we all have. In my estimation, this is a much more accurate portrayal of how humans interact than Roth has ever given. Gessen knows people and has been around them, whereas Roth seems like he's operating under the assumption of how he thinks humans act.

What I can't reconcile is the fact that this book has been greeted with an enormous amount of backlash, particularly from the lit-blogs that Gessen has targeted in his magazine writing. Sure, some of this is to be expected, but the particular amount of venom aimed at Gessen seems to do little to dispute his charges and does more to justify them. Lit-bloggers, for all of their high-mindedness and open professing of their love of literature, seem to be more than a tad biased against Gessen and have written his book off from the start. Have any of them actually read it? I'm betting few have. If these bloggers really wanted to refute Gessen's claims about the pack mentality many of these lit-blogs have, then they should read the book and give an honest review instead of posting some juvenile dig at the man. In my estimation, it appears that, like a lot of areas of the media, the blogosphere and the literary world at large have blurred the lines and where, traditionally, never the two shall meet, there is now little to separate the two, gossip and fact go hand in hand, and smear posts pass as inspired, informed critique. Gessen and his ilk have a very high minded opinion on many things, but I would think the wisest policy would not be to lash back with half formed thoughts and taunts, but with an honest assessment of the situation and a thorough refutation of the charges, and you can find those but those aren't the ones making the most noise and thus are drowned out in the lifeless ether.

Gessen is definitely outspoken, and his personal life has become the fodder of gossip blogs as well as lit-blogs, but he's a writer as well, and he's produced an astonishing debut. Will it hold the test of time, or will it be book that reflects a moment, our moment, that will languish, forgotten on the shelves of memory and in the lit world? Perhaps. For now, though, it's one of the better books I've read in long, long time.

The walk to work today brought with it the first hints of what's right around the corner with the coming of spring, a little warmth in the air. What I think is most interesting, however, is the strange contrast between the warmer air and the cold that the snow covered ground still generates. Even stranger are the occasional air pockets that are noticeably warmer than the air around them that one encounters infrequently enough to know that you're not imagining things. A strange phenomenon that I usually encounter by the river, but have noticed more and more in the confines of the land.

Politics
I'm already at wit's end with the seemingly downward spiral Hillary Clinton's personality has been in since the beginning of the year, but over the weekend she made another statement that seemed to indicate both her desperation and her inability to accept the reality of the moment, that being her losing the Democratic nomination to her chief rival Barack Obama. In what seems to be a typical outburst from her, which is hot on the heels of her accusing Obama of plagiarizing a portion of a recent speech, she now accused the Obama campaign of engaging in tactics "right out of Karl Rove's playbook." Rove, George W. Bush's chief political strategist, engaged in some of the more insidious mudslinging in recent memory. Just ask John McCain. So the analogy seems to ring pretty hallow when it's revealed that her comment is in reference to a flier that cites a newspaper article in which Clinton likens Nafta as a "boon" to the economy. Newsday, paper where the article appeared, stopped short of citing the Obama campaign of misuse, but rather said it was "misleading." How this a akin to suggesting the McCain has a "black child," is "insane," or "gay" to South Carolina voters is beyond me. To paraphrase Hillary, I think what we're seeing here are signs that she's clearly frustrated.

Sanctuary by William Faulkner

William Faulkner's novel Sanctuary has the distinction of being the first book I've read in 2008. In short, it was horrendous. A short novel page-wise, although it seems much longer content wise, that is filled with the trappings one comes to expect from Faulkner, the southern setting, a large cast of characters, dense passages of impenetrable text, and what appears to be a total disconnect from the reality that most of us experience. Faulkner is renowned for his characters, some of whom appear to be the product of some form of incest or just happen to be afflicted with numerous mental deficiencies, and Sanctuary is littered with these very types, from Tommy, a stereotypical man-child, to Popeye, an impotent murderer/rapist, to Temple Drake, the main victim of Popeye's violence and sadism who also serves as the one character from civilization; she's a judge's daughter. This is usually a given when approaching a Faulkner novel, and it seems it's something that Cormac McCarthy's novels have picked up on as well, and while the difference between the two writers is vast enough, one can't help but wonder what impression either is trying to convey by littering their writing with these types of people. Furthermore, what Faulkner was pushing for in this novel is anyone's guess. He apparently stated that it was written solely for money at a time when pulp fiction was incredibly popular. However, it's hard to believe that Faulkner was even familiar with the trappings of the tales of Raymond Chandler when this is the type of knock off he produced.

The problems with the novel are numerous, but what stood out for me is the fact that the characters act in ways that are so far removed from how people act in reality, it's hard to generate any sort of feelings, ill or not, about them. A good portion of the novel takes place at the home of some bootleggers where Popeye and other associates linger about in what can only be described as a living nightmare. A sickly baby is kept in box behind the stove, Gowan Stevens, Temple's escort, spends the majority of the novel in a drunken stupor and is the sole reason for their being stranded at the house, a blind old man shuffles about and may or may not have eyes (presumably he's the father of the owner, Lee Goodwin), and Lee's wife, Ruby, when not checking on the child, spends her entire day preparing meals for the numerous criminals and miscreants who frequent the front porch of their house. Pages go by where Gowan and Temple are seemingly held hostage at this house, and the bizarre events that transpire are right out of a horror movie, specifically I was reminded of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Both in that film and this book, young people are held against their will by a family, in the loosest, sense of the term and terrorized for no apparent reason. In that film, though, it's a question of whether or not anyone is going to survive. In this book, you're never given the sense that it's even a question worth asking yourself. It just seems like a never ending nightmare. Incredibly, it doesn't end there.

Temple is later kept captive at a brothel that Popeye frequents, even though he's impotent and has no way to actually engage with the women there. Again, it's Faulkner's hallucinatory writing that suggests a break from reality that one can't really accept or figure out entirely. Furthermore, one can't be sure, but Temple's fragile mental state appears to be the result of Popeye raping her at the bootlegger's farm. It is further exacerbated by the fact the Popeye enlists another man to have sexual relations with Temple as he watches. Why this doesn't work, however, is that it's beyond ambiguous. The scene in question is written in such a manner that it's impossible to determine what occurs in the hayloft that Temple is hiding in other than the fact that Popeye kills Tommy. Subsequent references to her bleeding and the visits by a doctor seem to confirm that she's been raped, but it's too poorly written and bizarrely portrayed to feel like you've witnessed something awful. Finally, it's hard to accept the notion that she's being held captive in this place. Popeye comes and goes, but Temple just stays there. Why? It's suggested that she's been mentally scared and drinking heavily, but it doesn't account for why she just doesn't leave.

The rest of the novel centers around the nonsensical trial of Lee Goodwin for the murder of Tommy. Henry Benbow, a lawyer who left his wife and daughter for no apparent reason, serves as his counsel. Basically, we're witnesses to a public lynching and a poor attempt at courtroom drama.

What makes this book frustrating is that there's nothing in it to suggest that Faulkner was aiming to achieve something other than telling a straightforward story. There's no hidden symbols or writing that one is accustomed to seeing in the modernism of the time, or even in any of Faulkner's other books. Faulkner has admitted that this was done purely for money, although that's up for debate, but he also did some heavy editing on it as well, which leads one to believe that he was proud of this work and tried to polish it somewhat. It stands as one of his failures, though, and a not very interesting one at that.