The Corrections
It's been eight years since the initial release of Johnathan Franzen's eagerly anticipated novel, The Corrections. Upon its release in 2001, it was heralded as a masterpiece by a virtually unknown but promising Franzen. It was a book that was supposed to be as close to the Great American Novel as anyone could get within recent memory and came with about as much buzz as a book could get. It contained within it the portrait of a contemporary American family that spoke volumes about our condition and the state of the United States. It wasn't pretentious or postmodern in the least. It was accurate, and it told a straightforward tale that was moving in its portrayal of us. It did not fail to deliver on that wave of anticipation. A National Book Award winner proved that it was nothing short of a success.
Eight years, however, have blunted its affect in numerous ways, or maybe it's just in the eyes of this reviewer who has aged in those eight years. I don't feel the connection any longer to the Lambert family that I once did. The prose is still beautifully constructed, but the family portrait that once resonated with me, no longer does. Each member of the Lambert family is flawed to some extent, but, at one time, they held so much more that made you care about them that it was easy to overlook the superficial aspects that were lurking in the background. Now, it's not that easy.
Alfred Lambert, the focal point of the book, suffers from Parkinson's Disease and dementia, and his struggle is still painful to witness and heartbreaking in its brutal swiftness. What stands out on a second reading is just how normal and besieged the patriarch seems. Often, the sections depicting his decline are wrenching, especially when put into the context of one's own aging parents. However, what starts out promising takes a leap into the commonplace when Alfred and Enid's sexual lives are probed in ways that aren't necessary to complete the character. Alfred, a staunchly proud worker, amid a railroad system that's on the verge of being bought out, is surrounded by lesser men who can't control their impulses, or at least try to act on them in ways that society accepts. Alfred, on the other hand, seems repressed and nearly puritanical in his own silent suffering. His cold and brutal manner is mirrored in his frigid handling of Enid in all matters. Nearly halfway through the text, all sympathy for this afflicted individual has been exhausted. It's shameful that Franzen resorts to this tired and overplayed aspect of a man's character, because Alfred really could be more than just the sexually repressed head of, what is supposed to be, a typical family.
Enid and the children, Gary, Chip, and Denise, are likewise all deprived of sympathetic characteristics. Instead, Enid seems to exist in a state of denial and perpetual stupidity. A character that should be sympathetic throughout is tossed around as some sort of country rube in all matters, from Chip's non-existent job at the Wall Street Journal to her desire for one last Christmas at their home in St. Jude. Her struggles with maintaining anything that even resembles a normal home life with the deteriorating Alfred starts out as quite affecting, but the aforementioned aspects of her character quickly emerge and take over. Her fate, saved at the end, by a glimmer of hope and liberation is hardly worth the wait.
As for the children, basically all of their problems are the result of some sort of sexual or monetary proclivities and obsessions. All three suffer some form of a fall from grace, whether it's Gary's troubles with his all too perfect family to Denise's sexual dalliances with her boss and his wife to Chip's squandered academic career after having a drug and sex fueled encounter with a student. In all manners, the three are yuppies and betray any resemblance to most siblings from small town America.
And this is where Franzen falters. After such a strong set up, the entire family turns out to be nobody you can relate to on anything but a superficial level. They occupy an economic strata of society that demands that their problems, even one as serious as the impending death of the head of family, seem to be nothing more than minor disturbances in a life that's wholly owned and fueled by money and sexual appetites. Most small town families aren't like this in the least, mine isn't, and it strains credibility to think that anyone with a predominantly middle to lower class background could think anything remotely positive about the Lamberts.
Reading this book eight years ago, I'm sure I was blown away by the prose and the stunning portrayal of, what I thought at the time to be, a typical American family. Most of the postmodernist fiction that I was consuming at the time gave nothing but the barest bones in terms of characters, many of whom signified something else in terms of the greater narrative. Eight years and a growing appreciation for the realities of economic independence, have blunted the initial wave of awe. Franzen is a talented writer, to be sure, but in terms of portraying a typical family in the throes of disarray, he has some work to do.
My Own Personal 6 a.m. A vast wasteland where word bombs explode with ferocity and provoke rage, sadness, and glee.
Saturday, January 02, 2010
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Saturday, April 11, 2009
The Savage Detectives
Certain books haunt you long after you're done reading them. Images, passages, scenes, or entire texts can remain as reminders of another world for months. Not all writers strive for this affect, that's for sure, but it's a rare writer indeed, Roberto Bolano for one, who seems to create in such an ethereal manner that you're not quite sure why you're entranced by the prose or enchanted by the characters or their situations. A love for literature, poetry primarily, infuses his novel The Savage Detectives. Lost souls in search of the written word, who in fact have the written word infused into their DNA, populate the world Belano has created, one very much based on real life. Reading the book, however, bordered, at times, on the burdensome in nature. It was only after the book was long finished that I realized that I was missing it in so many ways. It gave a portrait of a world entirely alien to me, but at the same time infinitely ideal. Living a life as such a literary vagabond borders on the cliche and tiresome, but it's certainly one of the more dreamlike occupations anyone who feels the written word fantasizes about.
Certain books haunt you long after you're done reading them. Images, passages, scenes, or entire texts can remain as reminders of another world for months. Not all writers strive for this affect, that's for sure, but it's a rare writer indeed, Roberto Bolano for one, who seems to create in such an ethereal manner that you're not quite sure why you're entranced by the prose or enchanted by the characters or their situations. A love for literature, poetry primarily, infuses his novel The Savage Detectives. Lost souls in search of the written word, who in fact have the written word infused into their DNA, populate the world Belano has created, one very much based on real life. Reading the book, however, bordered, at times, on the burdensome in nature. It was only after the book was long finished that I realized that I was missing it in so many ways. It gave a portrait of a world entirely alien to me, but at the same time infinitely ideal. Living a life as such a literary vagabond borders on the cliche and tiresome, but it's certainly one of the more dreamlike occupations anyone who feels the written word fantasizes about.
Thursday, July 03, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, March 03, 2008
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.
Monday, February 25, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Exit Ghost by Philip Roth
The latest novel by Philip Roth continues the trend of books some of my favorite writers that have infuriated me to the point of rage. Most of this is due to my immediate sense of disappointment at the efforts from artists I consider to be above the norm in their output and who seem to be settling for lesser works. Starting with DeLillo's last novel, Falling Man, or more specifically his last three books, and Roth's last four, The Plot Against America being mostly unobjectionable, these two titans have produced nothing of real merit, and in Roth's case it's been nothing but a rehashing of the same basic plot over and over. The boilerplate version seeming to be: older male with unquenchable sexual drive cheats on wife or wives with mistresses who are either younger, dumber or both and who inevitably have something awful happen to them for their efforts. And yet it's amazing to see that the critical appraisal of these last few books, regardless of their sameness and seemingly uninspired writing, has remained virtually the same, highly praiseworthy, and Roth's popularity and literary standing have done nothing but rise.
What is it that bothers me about these books? It's probably easier to say what doesn't first. Roth's writing is incredibly good in every sense of the word. He's a master wordsmith who has a commanding grasp on the language and is never one to write sparsely. There are passages of dense beauty in every one of his books, and he has a true knack for the ability to alternate between books of sweeping magnitude and novella length works that never fail to showcase his true ability as a writer. As for the plots of the novels themselves, it almost seems secondary at this point for certain writers that I follow. I would pretty much read anything put out by the list of writers I’m devoted to or at least give them the old college try. As I said, the plots of Roth's last few novels are more or less indistinguishable from one another. If not for the changing titles, which seem interchangeable and highly irrelevant, one might not be mistaken in thinking that they'd read the book before. Even knowing that, I'm compelled to read his works again and again, and that's where the burn set in.
Where to begin?
After the aforementioned praise I've heaped on Roth, now it's time to turn my sights to what's wrong with Roth. To start, much like DeLillo, Roth apparently believes that there are no stable marriages, only unstable ones that deteriorate into shattered husks of what marriages represent. The men, again like DeLillo, are almost always too complex for their wives and need to seek solace in the arms of another woman, usually, as I said, someone of far lesser intellect and shallowness beyond the pale. The men, rarely portrayed as being overly handsome seem to be irresistible to these much younger, voracious women. In one novel this is an acceptable plot device, but in novel after novel, it begins to wear thin. Marriage in America is not sacred, not as valued as it once was, not devotion but an act of convenience for the couple, and apparently never based on true love. Fine, the point has been made, and it's time to move on.
Even when the real narrative is supposed to be focusing on another aspect of the character, as in Everyman where we're supposed to be witnessing the slow deterioration of an unnamed protagonist, we are still treated to passages describing his infidelity to his wife. If ever there was a plot device that needed to be buried, this is it.
I also find it odd that no one has really picked up on this repetition in his work, or if they have, and it’s hard to believe that they haven’t, no one is objecting to it in the least. Roth, at this point in his career, seems to have obtained the untouchable status, or that of a literary sacred cow, who is beyond reproach. His writings, if one believes the critics, are full of fresh insights, or they are at least insightful into the human condition, revealing something about ourselves that is rarely spoken aloud. But considering that three of Roth’s last four novels were barely over two hundred pages and with plots wholly reminiscent of one another, it’s hard for me to imagine or detect what that insight is or how fresh it might be. I recently read about the use of coincidence in the "big novel,” and it struck me that if that's a big deal to critics, then why isn't Roth skewered by those very same critics for relying on these tiresome portrayals of suburbia that even Updike has forsaken in favor of other pursuits. Sure, the fifties and sixties were ripe with sexual freedom and a more radical willingness to experiment in many ways, but hasn’t that been established, and how is it that this type of culture hasn’t progressed in the last thirty years? If one looks to Roth as a cultural barometer, then it hasn’t all that much. Roth might be saying that we’re all still prudish and repressive, and that might be true, but he isn’t revealing anything in his writing that would suggest that he’s trying to do anything other than to shock us into awareness that there are a lot of unhappily married people out there.
Accompanying these portrayals of shattered marriages, are the inevitable passages detailing the sexual acts between the male and the mistress, presumably portraying those acts that the wife would not or could not provide the husband. Anal sex, oral sex, women gagging, women biting, masturbation and all sorts of portrayals of sex are thrown in to all of Roth's novels. Sure, sex is a part of life, but Roth's obsession, or his perception that everyone is society is obsessed with sex, is ludicrous. All of Roth's characters seem to engage in is having sex, talking about sex, or thinking about sex, that is when they aren't engaged in conversations leading up to it or fighting about the after affects of it. You'd be hard pressed to find such portrayals of sex anywhere outside of a Penthouse Forum. Does this happen everyday? Sure, but, again, hasn't Roth made his point in countless novels? What more does he hope to accomplish by repeatedly driving this point home?
To round it all out, Roth has every woman in every one of his books posses breasts that are worthy of comment, repeatedly. Now, breasts are as important to me as the next guy, but Roth takes this to another level. Women, even well educated successful ones, are portrayed as using their sexuality as a means to manipulate, and their breasts are the main source of this power. Jamie Logan, the woman in Exit Ghost whom Nathan Zuckerman is so taken with, is a successful writer with a story published in the New Yorker, but that all goes by the wayside, and is apparently not credited to her talent and ability as a writer, but as a woman manipulative enough to ensnare multiple men in her web. And most of the women are like this in Roth's books. Rarely are they blessed with any real talent. As I mentioned, most of these women are then stricken with disease or just plain old age that removes them from the game that men and women play. Amy Bellette's torturous decline is of particular note. Her brain has deteriorated to the point where she's in dialogue with her own brain tumor, one that acts on her behalf, or at least is culpable for all of the bad decisions she’s made lately. And yet one couldn't be blamed for mistaking that this fate is much more preferable to the impotence and incontinence that have beset Nathan Zuckerman. The male deterioration is obviously given greater weight and significance in Roth's world.
Next there's the dialogue that Roth has his writers spout out. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I know that people don't speak the way they speak in novels, but Roth's dialogue is atrocious. It's almost as if he's never actually spoken to another human being and has no idea how people talk, and I'm not referring only to the sexual nature of his dialogue, which is a whole other creature in and of itself, I'm also referring to his dialogue between characters. The scenes in Exit Ghost between Nathan Zuckerman and Richard Kliman, a boisterous writer who wants to reveal a dirty secret regarding Zuckerman's hero E.I. Lonoff, contain some of the worst dialogue I've ever read. "Caligula wins" is a line that Kliman uses upon answering the phone the day after George W. Bush won his second term. Does anyone talk like this? I doubt even the most theatrical of political beasts would be so inclined to use language like that upon answering a phone. There's also a particularly nasty exchange between Kliman and Zuckerman where the former tells the latter, "You stink, you smell bad! Crawl back into your hole and die! You're dying, old man, you'll soon be dead! You smell of decay! You smell of death!" Roth’s writing borders on farce at this point.
Finally, and perhaps most quizzically, Roth devotes several pages to Zuckerman's reaction to the death of George Plimpton. Not only is it an odd choice on Roth's part to add this in the midst of the narrative, but it also stresses the credibility of it. If Zuckerman and Plimpton were the close acquaintances as is portrayed, doesn't it seem odd that more than a year after the latter's death the former is still unaware of it? Sure, Zuckerman is in near isolation in his remote sanctuary, but it seems unrealistic that he's so cut off, even from his publisher or any sort of acquaintance, that the death of a fellow writer, and one who is held in such high esteem by the narrator at that, is a nonevent. It's almost as if Zuckerman's reaction to Plimpton's death is a literal example of the eternal question of if a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound, but in this case it's if you live in isolation for so long, does life around you stop?
There's much more I could criticize about the novel, like Zuckerman's repeated claims that his deteriorating mind leaves him grasping for words and memories yet he can still write a flawless sentence, or the totally extraneous dialogues that appear throughout the text that are between an unnamed "He" and "She" who represent Zuckerman and Jamie Logan. Roth and numerous critics apparently believe that this is a stunning novel and a fitting epitaph to the Zuckerman saga, but I'm afraid they are wrong, especially when one considers that Roth has been writing the same novel repeatedly for years now.
The latest novel by Philip Roth continues the trend of books some of my favorite writers that have infuriated me to the point of rage. Most of this is due to my immediate sense of disappointment at the efforts from artists I consider to be above the norm in their output and who seem to be settling for lesser works. Starting with DeLillo's last novel, Falling Man, or more specifically his last three books, and Roth's last four, The Plot Against America being mostly unobjectionable, these two titans have produced nothing of real merit, and in Roth's case it's been nothing but a rehashing of the same basic plot over and over. The boilerplate version seeming to be: older male with unquenchable sexual drive cheats on wife or wives with mistresses who are either younger, dumber or both and who inevitably have something awful happen to them for their efforts. And yet it's amazing to see that the critical appraisal of these last few books, regardless of their sameness and seemingly uninspired writing, has remained virtually the same, highly praiseworthy, and Roth's popularity and literary standing have done nothing but rise.
What is it that bothers me about these books? It's probably easier to say what doesn't first. Roth's writing is incredibly good in every sense of the word. He's a master wordsmith who has a commanding grasp on the language and is never one to write sparsely. There are passages of dense beauty in every one of his books, and he has a true knack for the ability to alternate between books of sweeping magnitude and novella length works that never fail to showcase his true ability as a writer. As for the plots of the novels themselves, it almost seems secondary at this point for certain writers that I follow. I would pretty much read anything put out by the list of writers I’m devoted to or at least give them the old college try. As I said, the plots of Roth's last few novels are more or less indistinguishable from one another. If not for the changing titles, which seem interchangeable and highly irrelevant, one might not be mistaken in thinking that they'd read the book before. Even knowing that, I'm compelled to read his works again and again, and that's where the burn set in.
Where to begin?
After the aforementioned praise I've heaped on Roth, now it's time to turn my sights to what's wrong with Roth. To start, much like DeLillo, Roth apparently believes that there are no stable marriages, only unstable ones that deteriorate into shattered husks of what marriages represent. The men, again like DeLillo, are almost always too complex for their wives and need to seek solace in the arms of another woman, usually, as I said, someone of far lesser intellect and shallowness beyond the pale. The men, rarely portrayed as being overly handsome seem to be irresistible to these much younger, voracious women. In one novel this is an acceptable plot device, but in novel after novel, it begins to wear thin. Marriage in America is not sacred, not as valued as it once was, not devotion but an act of convenience for the couple, and apparently never based on true love. Fine, the point has been made, and it's time to move on.
Even when the real narrative is supposed to be focusing on another aspect of the character, as in Everyman where we're supposed to be witnessing the slow deterioration of an unnamed protagonist, we are still treated to passages describing his infidelity to his wife. If ever there was a plot device that needed to be buried, this is it.
I also find it odd that no one has really picked up on this repetition in his work, or if they have, and it’s hard to believe that they haven’t, no one is objecting to it in the least. Roth, at this point in his career, seems to have obtained the untouchable status, or that of a literary sacred cow, who is beyond reproach. His writings, if one believes the critics, are full of fresh insights, or they are at least insightful into the human condition, revealing something about ourselves that is rarely spoken aloud. But considering that three of Roth’s last four novels were barely over two hundred pages and with plots wholly reminiscent of one another, it’s hard for me to imagine or detect what that insight is or how fresh it might be. I recently read about the use of coincidence in the "big novel,” and it struck me that if that's a big deal to critics, then why isn't Roth skewered by those very same critics for relying on these tiresome portrayals of suburbia that even Updike has forsaken in favor of other pursuits. Sure, the fifties and sixties were ripe with sexual freedom and a more radical willingness to experiment in many ways, but hasn’t that been established, and how is it that this type of culture hasn’t progressed in the last thirty years? If one looks to Roth as a cultural barometer, then it hasn’t all that much. Roth might be saying that we’re all still prudish and repressive, and that might be true, but he isn’t revealing anything in his writing that would suggest that he’s trying to do anything other than to shock us into awareness that there are a lot of unhappily married people out there.
Accompanying these portrayals of shattered marriages, are the inevitable passages detailing the sexual acts between the male and the mistress, presumably portraying those acts that the wife would not or could not provide the husband. Anal sex, oral sex, women gagging, women biting, masturbation and all sorts of portrayals of sex are thrown in to all of Roth's novels. Sure, sex is a part of life, but Roth's obsession, or his perception that everyone is society is obsessed with sex, is ludicrous. All of Roth's characters seem to engage in is having sex, talking about sex, or thinking about sex, that is when they aren't engaged in conversations leading up to it or fighting about the after affects of it. You'd be hard pressed to find such portrayals of sex anywhere outside of a Penthouse Forum. Does this happen everyday? Sure, but, again, hasn't Roth made his point in countless novels? What more does he hope to accomplish by repeatedly driving this point home?
To round it all out, Roth has every woman in every one of his books posses breasts that are worthy of comment, repeatedly. Now, breasts are as important to me as the next guy, but Roth takes this to another level. Women, even well educated successful ones, are portrayed as using their sexuality as a means to manipulate, and their breasts are the main source of this power. Jamie Logan, the woman in Exit Ghost whom Nathan Zuckerman is so taken with, is a successful writer with a story published in the New Yorker, but that all goes by the wayside, and is apparently not credited to her talent and ability as a writer, but as a woman manipulative enough to ensnare multiple men in her web. And most of the women are like this in Roth's books. Rarely are they blessed with any real talent. As I mentioned, most of these women are then stricken with disease or just plain old age that removes them from the game that men and women play. Amy Bellette's torturous decline is of particular note. Her brain has deteriorated to the point where she's in dialogue with her own brain tumor, one that acts on her behalf, or at least is culpable for all of the bad decisions she’s made lately. And yet one couldn't be blamed for mistaking that this fate is much more preferable to the impotence and incontinence that have beset Nathan Zuckerman. The male deterioration is obviously given greater weight and significance in Roth's world.
Next there's the dialogue that Roth has his writers spout out. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I know that people don't speak the way they speak in novels, but Roth's dialogue is atrocious. It's almost as if he's never actually spoken to another human being and has no idea how people talk, and I'm not referring only to the sexual nature of his dialogue, which is a whole other creature in and of itself, I'm also referring to his dialogue between characters. The scenes in Exit Ghost between Nathan Zuckerman and Richard Kliman, a boisterous writer who wants to reveal a dirty secret regarding Zuckerman's hero E.I. Lonoff, contain some of the worst dialogue I've ever read. "Caligula wins" is a line that Kliman uses upon answering the phone the day after George W. Bush won his second term. Does anyone talk like this? I doubt even the most theatrical of political beasts would be so inclined to use language like that upon answering a phone. There's also a particularly nasty exchange between Kliman and Zuckerman where the former tells the latter, "You stink, you smell bad! Crawl back into your hole and die! You're dying, old man, you'll soon be dead! You smell of decay! You smell of death!" Roth’s writing borders on farce at this point.
Finally, and perhaps most quizzically, Roth devotes several pages to Zuckerman's reaction to the death of George Plimpton. Not only is it an odd choice on Roth's part to add this in the midst of the narrative, but it also stresses the credibility of it. If Zuckerman and Plimpton were the close acquaintances as is portrayed, doesn't it seem odd that more than a year after the latter's death the former is still unaware of it? Sure, Zuckerman is in near isolation in his remote sanctuary, but it seems unrealistic that he's so cut off, even from his publisher or any sort of acquaintance, that the death of a fellow writer, and one who is held in such high esteem by the narrator at that, is a nonevent. It's almost as if Zuckerman's reaction to Plimpton's death is a literal example of the eternal question of if a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound, but in this case it's if you live in isolation for so long, does life around you stop?
There's much more I could criticize about the novel, like Zuckerman's repeated claims that his deteriorating mind leaves him grasping for words and memories yet he can still write a flawless sentence, or the totally extraneous dialogues that appear throughout the text that are between an unnamed "He" and "She" who represent Zuckerman and Jamie Logan. Roth and numerous critics apparently believe that this is a stunning novel and a fitting epitaph to the Zuckerman saga, but I'm afraid they are wrong, especially when one considers that Roth has been writing the same novel repeatedly for years now.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Friday, September 21, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
The Terror Conspiracy: Deception, 9/11 and the Loss of Liberty by Jim Marrs
Almost as an antithesis to the DeLillo novel, Jim Marrs' book is a lengthy dissection of the events of September 11, 2001 along with a thorough history of not only what led up to it but also the many events that have proceeded as a result of the worst terrorist attack on United States soil since Pearl Harbor. The conceit one must buy into when approaching this work is that the events that day were not as they seemed and not only were distorted substantially but, even worse, maybe even allowed to happen. Yes, it was a huge conspiracy that is so vast and complex that I'm not sure anyone can really comprehend it. Marrs is a good writer, and he definitely pulls you in with a brisk writing style that keeps the reader enthralled with the plethora of revelations, or quasi-revelations, that he throws out there with much supporting evidence and cited sources. In other words, it's not as if he's just making this stuff up off the top of his head or it's something he's gleaned from the many conspiracy sites on the web.
As with any book on this type of subject, though, it's hard to swallow all of it. Were the towers brought down by explosives? Were the planes remotely piloted? What happened at the Pentagon? What happened to Flight 93, and was it really flown into the ground after a passenger revolt? These questions and many others are pretty interesting to explore because there's a certain plausibility to them. On the other hand, Marrs mires the entire scenario with tons of information regarding secret societies and organizations that many of the main players involved are supposedly a part of. I find it interesting to contemplate, but it seems, at points, to be more than one can handle.
The fact that this post is actually getting published on 9/11 adds a certain sense of irony to the post I hadn't intended, and it's always best to be mindful of the fact that while many find conspiracies interesting to ponder, there's also the flip side to consider, the actual victims of the tragedy or event. I'd like to imagine that those who put so much effort into constructing these elaborate theories do in some sense have the victims in mind and that the search for an ultimate truth is really what this is all for. However, I don't think it necessarily happens that way, which is unfortunate. To some people, I'm sure this is just a hobby or interesting area of study, as with the JFK assassination, which coincidentally or perhaps not Marrs wrote extensively on, but for the victims wild theories of remote controlled planes and a government complicit in the very tragedy that took their loved ones from them are not just areas of interest.
The thing with events like 9/11 is that people can have it both ways. It was either a massive intelligence failure on the part of our government, or it was a coordinated attack propagated by vast numbers of people in power from governments far and wide. Either way, one can see that something led to these events. One just needs to choose whether to accept them as fantastical in nature or merely tragic.
Almost as an antithesis to the DeLillo novel, Jim Marrs' book is a lengthy dissection of the events of September 11, 2001 along with a thorough history of not only what led up to it but also the many events that have proceeded as a result of the worst terrorist attack on United States soil since Pearl Harbor. The conceit one must buy into when approaching this work is that the events that day were not as they seemed and not only were distorted substantially but, even worse, maybe even allowed to happen. Yes, it was a huge conspiracy that is so vast and complex that I'm not sure anyone can really comprehend it. Marrs is a good writer, and he definitely pulls you in with a brisk writing style that keeps the reader enthralled with the plethora of revelations, or quasi-revelations, that he throws out there with much supporting evidence and cited sources. In other words, it's not as if he's just making this stuff up off the top of his head or it's something he's gleaned from the many conspiracy sites on the web.
As with any book on this type of subject, though, it's hard to swallow all of it. Were the towers brought down by explosives? Were the planes remotely piloted? What happened at the Pentagon? What happened to Flight 93, and was it really flown into the ground after a passenger revolt? These questions and many others are pretty interesting to explore because there's a certain plausibility to them. On the other hand, Marrs mires the entire scenario with tons of information regarding secret societies and organizations that many of the main players involved are supposedly a part of. I find it interesting to contemplate, but it seems, at points, to be more than one can handle.
The fact that this post is actually getting published on 9/11 adds a certain sense of irony to the post I hadn't intended, and it's always best to be mindful of the fact that while many find conspiracies interesting to ponder, there's also the flip side to consider, the actual victims of the tragedy or event. I'd like to imagine that those who put so much effort into constructing these elaborate theories do in some sense have the victims in mind and that the search for an ultimate truth is really what this is all for. However, I don't think it necessarily happens that way, which is unfortunate. To some people, I'm sure this is just a hobby or interesting area of study, as with the JFK assassination, which coincidentally or perhaps not Marrs wrote extensively on, but for the victims wild theories of remote controlled planes and a government complicit in the very tragedy that took their loved ones from them are not just areas of interest.
The thing with events like 9/11 is that people can have it both ways. It was either a massive intelligence failure on the part of our government, or it was a coordinated attack propagated by vast numbers of people in power from governments far and wide. Either way, one can see that something led to these events. One just needs to choose whether to accept them as fantastical in nature or merely tragic.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Falling Man by Don DeLillo
Finally, Don DeLillo has written a novel about September 11, 2001. I say finally because it seems that everyone in the literary world has been waiting for DeLillo more than any other author to address the events of that day, events that reverberate to this day nearly six years later. Sure, other writers have attempted to write 9/11 novels, but only someone of the stature of DeLillo could truly address it on not only on a worldwide scale but also probe deep into the psyche of those affected and dissect the mood in which the events of that Tuesday morning changed us all, for better or worse. As he has shown in the past, DeLillo can dissect the mood of America and place it in a more stable context. His previous novels have shown that much. Underworld, a sprawling epic that addressed the effects of the Cold War on society, happened to also have the Twin Towers as its cover image. But more than that, DeLillo has addressed issues of terrorism in Mao II, an "airborne toxic event" in White Noise, and the Towers themselves have been featured in his books for quite some time. So if anyone is qualified to analyze the affect of 9/11 on us as a society, it's Don DeLillo.
I'm sorry to say that it's not the case. Falling Man is a failure on all fronts, and one of the worst novels I've ever read.
DeLillo's writing isn't the problem in this book; it's how he chooses to deconstruct the events of that day and tries to put them in a proper context that falls flat; it's also the execution. Many factors contribute to this.
First, as with many of DeLillo's novels, there is no real sense of narrative. Reality, in his eyes, doesn't flow forward fluidly, but is simply a series of vignettes that bare little or no relation to the previous ones. That's not a problem when he's addressing something as sprawling and epic as the Cold War. After all, that took place over decades of time, and to think that all the events flowed one into the other seamlessly is probably asking for too much and would lead to nothing short of an unreadable list. However, when addressing an event like 9/11, it seems to me that it might require a more deliberate exactitude in dissecting the inner lives of those affected, especially since it occurred on United States soil and, clearly, affected everyone in some way or another. What DeLillo settles for, though, is a novel that has 9/11 on the periphery and not as an overarching event that drives the novel forward. One can easily take the characters and replace 9/11 with any number of tragic events and one would hardly notice the difference in the text.
Second, the characters themselves are so far from being sympathetic that it's tough to even imagine DeLillo thinking that we as readers would have any sympathy for them. Keith is a stereotypical male in fiction these days that I could really care less about, and he's the one who survived the attack. I'm so sick of the "I'm too complex for any woman to understand me, so I'll cheat on my wife and go live in a bachelor pad" male. It's an insult to men, and I find it hard to believe that DeLillo would think this type of character would be a wise choice to have survive the attack. And DeLillo compounds this with having Keith seem to spend the entire novel in some sort of "postmodern" fugue. There is nothing that would suggest that Keith is actually, say, human in any sense of the word. Again, this is typical DeLillo, but the effect does not work in this context and seems rather alien to me.
Third, and related to the above, DeLillo chooses to focus on characters that are, what I would term, yuppies. Keith is obviously a yuppie since apparently only yuppies worked in the World Trade Center, or could afford a pricey bachelor pad close to Ground Zero, or play professional poker instead of returning to his real line of work. Lianne, his estranged than reconciled wife, is even worse. A freelance book editor, another total New York cliche, and who runs an Alzheimer's support group, but apparently does little else other than sit and ponder in a confused state of being. Her mother, Nina, is an art historian with, of course, a married lover, Martin, who is yet another typical DeLillo character, a mysterious art dealer who has changed his name and who used to be involved in some sort of radical organizations in the 1970s. He is annoying for many reasons, but most of all for his all knowing demeanor that offers explanations for everything but leaves one more confused than previously thought. He knows why we were attacked and why we deserved it. If one can determine why from his scant dialogue, I'm not one of them.
As an aside, apparently there aren't any marriages in the world where the men are faithful to their wives, and, to some extent vice versa, but primarily the former. That's such a tiring attribute, and I'm not sure what that has to do with making any character more interesting, and in this book, as with most male writers, it's the male who is unfaithful, while the one woman, Nina, was involved with Martin while she was married, but her husband killed himself, so, apparently, that excuses some of that transgression. It's another cliche that I find troubling, insulting, and just plain stupid, and it seems to proliferate with writers like DeLillo and Philip Roth, or anyone who focuses primarily on domesticity. The males are inevitably portrayed as being too complex and too restless to be devoted or satisfied with one woman, while the women are either hapless victims wracked with some form of mental deficiency, willing participants on their own, or simply powerless. What's troubling is that's it seems to be thrown in simply as an aside, especially in this novel. Martin, "might be married." Is that supposed to add some sort of intrigue to him that couldn't be achieved by simply having him be mysterious in other ways? It's also troubling that it's just so effortlessly pulled off in the course of a novel. Keith, for instance, after the attacks starts visiting another survivor, a woman of course, whose briefcase Keith unbelievably made it out of the Towers with. It's hard to tell if the affair is sexual in nature, as with much DeLillo it's rather vague, but it does present a problem for Keith, briefly albeit, regarding how to explain the time he was spending with this woman. Finally, what's troubling is that it never seems to be about sex, rather it's about something else, what I'm not sure, but it ventures pretty closely to, what I would almost term, obligation. Marriages are apparently obligated to disintegrate like this.
Finally, DeLillo's use of dialogue to further muddy the waters of the fugue like state of all involved is by now a given in his work. His dialogue has always been odd in structure and cadence, more like random thoughts or observations than fully formed ideas and real conversations. Nobody talks like they do in novels, but really nobody talks like they do in DeLillo's novels.
Ultimately, the novel is an exercise in creating a mood that provides little or nothing close to insight into how the events of 9/11 affected us as a society. DeLillo took a stock set of characters, had 9/11 occur in the background, and decided to let the novel run its course. It almost appears as if it were a novel written out of a sense of obligation rather than a real desire to provide insight or actual interest. I, personally, have a problem with the idea that 9/11 is something that could and should be used as an emotional provocation. But I'm not opposed to the idea of someone, especially a novelist, attempting to capture the mood of that day. DeLillo, though, isn't the one to do so, and it appears to me that he isn't very interested in it anyway.
Finally, Don DeLillo has written a novel about September 11, 2001. I say finally because it seems that everyone in the literary world has been waiting for DeLillo more than any other author to address the events of that day, events that reverberate to this day nearly six years later. Sure, other writers have attempted to write 9/11 novels, but only someone of the stature of DeLillo could truly address it on not only on a worldwide scale but also probe deep into the psyche of those affected and dissect the mood in which the events of that Tuesday morning changed us all, for better or worse. As he has shown in the past, DeLillo can dissect the mood of America and place it in a more stable context. His previous novels have shown that much. Underworld, a sprawling epic that addressed the effects of the Cold War on society, happened to also have the Twin Towers as its cover image. But more than that, DeLillo has addressed issues of terrorism in Mao II, an "airborne toxic event" in White Noise, and the Towers themselves have been featured in his books for quite some time. So if anyone is qualified to analyze the affect of 9/11 on us as a society, it's Don DeLillo.
I'm sorry to say that it's not the case. Falling Man is a failure on all fronts, and one of the worst novels I've ever read.
DeLillo's writing isn't the problem in this book; it's how he chooses to deconstruct the events of that day and tries to put them in a proper context that falls flat; it's also the execution. Many factors contribute to this.
First, as with many of DeLillo's novels, there is no real sense of narrative. Reality, in his eyes, doesn't flow forward fluidly, but is simply a series of vignettes that bare little or no relation to the previous ones. That's not a problem when he's addressing something as sprawling and epic as the Cold War. After all, that took place over decades of time, and to think that all the events flowed one into the other seamlessly is probably asking for too much and would lead to nothing short of an unreadable list. However, when addressing an event like 9/11, it seems to me that it might require a more deliberate exactitude in dissecting the inner lives of those affected, especially since it occurred on United States soil and, clearly, affected everyone in some way or another. What DeLillo settles for, though, is a novel that has 9/11 on the periphery and not as an overarching event that drives the novel forward. One can easily take the characters and replace 9/11 with any number of tragic events and one would hardly notice the difference in the text.
Second, the characters themselves are so far from being sympathetic that it's tough to even imagine DeLillo thinking that we as readers would have any sympathy for them. Keith is a stereotypical male in fiction these days that I could really care less about, and he's the one who survived the attack. I'm so sick of the "I'm too complex for any woman to understand me, so I'll cheat on my wife and go live in a bachelor pad" male. It's an insult to men, and I find it hard to believe that DeLillo would think this type of character would be a wise choice to have survive the attack. And DeLillo compounds this with having Keith seem to spend the entire novel in some sort of "postmodern" fugue. There is nothing that would suggest that Keith is actually, say, human in any sense of the word. Again, this is typical DeLillo, but the effect does not work in this context and seems rather alien to me.
Third, and related to the above, DeLillo chooses to focus on characters that are, what I would term, yuppies. Keith is obviously a yuppie since apparently only yuppies worked in the World Trade Center, or could afford a pricey bachelor pad close to Ground Zero, or play professional poker instead of returning to his real line of work. Lianne, his estranged than reconciled wife, is even worse. A freelance book editor, another total New York cliche, and who runs an Alzheimer's support group, but apparently does little else other than sit and ponder in a confused state of being. Her mother, Nina, is an art historian with, of course, a married lover, Martin, who is yet another typical DeLillo character, a mysterious art dealer who has changed his name and who used to be involved in some sort of radical organizations in the 1970s. He is annoying for many reasons, but most of all for his all knowing demeanor that offers explanations for everything but leaves one more confused than previously thought. He knows why we were attacked and why we deserved it. If one can determine why from his scant dialogue, I'm not one of them.
As an aside, apparently there aren't any marriages in the world where the men are faithful to their wives, and, to some extent vice versa, but primarily the former. That's such a tiring attribute, and I'm not sure what that has to do with making any character more interesting, and in this book, as with most male writers, it's the male who is unfaithful, while the one woman, Nina, was involved with Martin while she was married, but her husband killed himself, so, apparently, that excuses some of that transgression. It's another cliche that I find troubling, insulting, and just plain stupid, and it seems to proliferate with writers like DeLillo and Philip Roth, or anyone who focuses primarily on domesticity. The males are inevitably portrayed as being too complex and too restless to be devoted or satisfied with one woman, while the women are either hapless victims wracked with some form of mental deficiency, willing participants on their own, or simply powerless. What's troubling is that's it seems to be thrown in simply as an aside, especially in this novel. Martin, "might be married." Is that supposed to add some sort of intrigue to him that couldn't be achieved by simply having him be mysterious in other ways? It's also troubling that it's just so effortlessly pulled off in the course of a novel. Keith, for instance, after the attacks starts visiting another survivor, a woman of course, whose briefcase Keith unbelievably made it out of the Towers with. It's hard to tell if the affair is sexual in nature, as with much DeLillo it's rather vague, but it does present a problem for Keith, briefly albeit, regarding how to explain the time he was spending with this woman. Finally, what's troubling is that it never seems to be about sex, rather it's about something else, what I'm not sure, but it ventures pretty closely to, what I would almost term, obligation. Marriages are apparently obligated to disintegrate like this.
Finally, DeLillo's use of dialogue to further muddy the waters of the fugue like state of all involved is by now a given in his work. His dialogue has always been odd in structure and cadence, more like random thoughts or observations than fully formed ideas and real conversations. Nobody talks like they do in novels, but really nobody talks like they do in DeLillo's novels.
Ultimately, the novel is an exercise in creating a mood that provides little or nothing close to insight into how the events of 9/11 affected us as a society. DeLillo took a stock set of characters, had 9/11 occur in the background, and decided to let the novel run its course. It almost appears as if it were a novel written out of a sense of obligation rather than a real desire to provide insight or actual interest. I, personally, have a problem with the idea that 9/11 is something that could and should be used as an emotional provocation. But I'm not opposed to the idea of someone, especially a novelist, attempting to capture the mood of that day. DeLillo, though, isn't the one to do so, and it appears to me that he isn't very interested in it anyway.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
iPod Song of the Day
For the second iPod song of the day, I decided to pick a song from one of my favorite bands that don't exist any longer, Stone Temple Pilots. Now, members of the band are still active in the music world, most notably Scott Weiland with former members of Guns N' Roses in Velvet Revolver, but it's not really the same in terms of either band.
Stone Temple Pilots released five albums along with an obligatory greatest hits disc, and the first three are three of my favorite albums of all time. They started out as a typical grunge band, but the evolved to incorporate elements of many different styles of music, from the Rolling Stones to glam infected David Bowie and Roxy Music. Their last two proper albums, while okay, aren't anywhere near as good as the first three.
Today's track comes from their first album Core and is entitled "Creep." It's a really good acoustic ballad that's right up there with "Plush," which is also on this album.
For the second iPod song of the day, I decided to pick a song from one of my favorite bands that don't exist any longer, Stone Temple Pilots. Now, members of the band are still active in the music world, most notably Scott Weiland with former members of Guns N' Roses in Velvet Revolver, but it's not really the same in terms of either band.
Stone Temple Pilots released five albums along with an obligatory greatest hits disc, and the first three are three of my favorite albums of all time. They started out as a typical grunge band, but the evolved to incorporate elements of many different styles of music, from the Rolling Stones to glam infected David Bowie and Roxy Music. Their last two proper albums, while okay, aren't anywhere near as good as the first three.
Today's track comes from their first album Core and is entitled "Creep." It's a really good acoustic ballad that's right up there with "Plush," which is also on this album.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
iPod Song of the Day
I have nearly 5,500 songs on my iPod, and while I try to limit listening to the pure random of all of those tracks in favor of playlists I have made, I do try to listen to a sampling of random shuffle before I make the switch. So I'm going to start a new feature on here today for the one song that stands out in the proper shuffle setting. The first song is Duran Duran's "Union of the Snake."
The video is typical from the '80s, weird, goofy, and all fun. The song, though not as good as some other Duran Duran tracks, is still pretty solid with a pretty cool sounding chorus and standard issue keyboards and horns. As for the lyrics, I haven't the faintest clue as to what they're about. When it comes down to it, most lyrics by bands like Duran Duran are about girls, breaking up with girls, longing for girls, etc. This one doesn't seem to fit, though, and seems more along the lines of those for "Wild Boys," another awesome track. Ah, well, the point here isn't to dissect a track, but to showcase a cool one.
I have nearly 5,500 songs on my iPod, and while I try to limit listening to the pure random of all of those tracks in favor of playlists I have made, I do try to listen to a sampling of random shuffle before I make the switch. So I'm going to start a new feature on here today for the one song that stands out in the proper shuffle setting. The first song is Duran Duran's "Union of the Snake."
The video is typical from the '80s, weird, goofy, and all fun. The song, though not as good as some other Duran Duran tracks, is still pretty solid with a pretty cool sounding chorus and standard issue keyboards and horns. As for the lyrics, I haven't the faintest clue as to what they're about. When it comes down to it, most lyrics by bands like Duran Duran are about girls, breaking up with girls, longing for girls, etc. This one doesn't seem to fit, though, and seems more along the lines of those for "Wild Boys," another awesome track. Ah, well, the point here isn't to dissect a track, but to showcase a cool one.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Self-Imposed News Blackout
I've been really behind in my reading for what seems like the last several years. Reading books that usually took no time to finish seems to stretch into ungodly lengths, and don't even mention keeping up with all the magazines I subscribe to. Add on top of that the New York Times that I receive every day, and, as you can imagine, it adds up to a lot of reading material to devour during a given day, week, month.
When I leave for any amount of time, naturally, I suspend my paper delivery. And while I can still buy the paper when I'm at home, I still feel less a sense of obligation to read it thoroughly or on time, and I feel much more relaxed with regard to my reading schedule, if you want to call it that.
I'm not sure why I had never thought of this before, but why can't I suspend it for a time even while I'm home? There's nothing that says I can't still be here and not have it delivered for a time, right? Right, so I figured I'd try it for a few days to try to finish a book that's been lingering on my nightstand, and just to give myself a break from it all. How would this turn out?
It turns out that, I didn't miss being out of the loop all that much. While I did feel a certain sense of unawareness, and even out of touch with the world for a bit (I really do not look at news sites on the web. I can't stand reading them, and would much rather have a newspaper in my hands than staring at at screen.) and somewhat ignorant of events, I soon felt a little sense of relief. It was nice not feeling the obligation to have to read the paper every day. I wouldn't want to do this all the time, but the break did serve its purpose and allowed me to catch up and finish my book and just live a little easier.
The other thing I noticed, though, was that I was out of the loop enough to have any sort of anger at the affairs of the world subside substantially. I think you have to be a truly devout critic of the president to hate him 24/7, but it's really hard to muster up any sort of animus towards him when I wasn't reading the paper on a daily basis and, primarily, the editorial page, that lambastes him daily.
I don't think I want to live without the news on a such a frequent basis, but I do believe I will be taking these respites even when I don't leave town more often in the future.
I've been really behind in my reading for what seems like the last several years. Reading books that usually took no time to finish seems to stretch into ungodly lengths, and don't even mention keeping up with all the magazines I subscribe to. Add on top of that the New York Times that I receive every day, and, as you can imagine, it adds up to a lot of reading material to devour during a given day, week, month.
When I leave for any amount of time, naturally, I suspend my paper delivery. And while I can still buy the paper when I'm at home, I still feel less a sense of obligation to read it thoroughly or on time, and I feel much more relaxed with regard to my reading schedule, if you want to call it that.
I'm not sure why I had never thought of this before, but why can't I suspend it for a time even while I'm home? There's nothing that says I can't still be here and not have it delivered for a time, right? Right, so I figured I'd try it for a few days to try to finish a book that's been lingering on my nightstand, and just to give myself a break from it all. How would this turn out?
It turns out that, I didn't miss being out of the loop all that much. While I did feel a certain sense of unawareness, and even out of touch with the world for a bit (I really do not look at news sites on the web. I can't stand reading them, and would much rather have a newspaper in my hands than staring at at screen.) and somewhat ignorant of events, I soon felt a little sense of relief. It was nice not feeling the obligation to have to read the paper every day. I wouldn't want to do this all the time, but the break did serve its purpose and allowed me to catch up and finish my book and just live a little easier.
The other thing I noticed, though, was that I was out of the loop enough to have any sort of anger at the affairs of the world subside substantially. I think you have to be a truly devout critic of the president to hate him 24/7, but it's really hard to muster up any sort of animus towards him when I wasn't reading the paper on a daily basis and, primarily, the editorial page, that lambastes him daily.
I don't think I want to live without the news on a such a frequent basis, but I do believe I will be taking these respites even when I don't leave town more often in the future.
Friday, June 29, 2007
RE: Death Celebration?
I wrote in a previous post about the outpouring of joy at the death of Jerry Falwell not to long ago. My point in that post, if I had one, was that I didn't personally see that as being a good thing to become comfortable with doing. V., whose excellent blog I have a link to on my sidebar, resent me an email discussion I had with her when President Reagan died, and the similarities between my post and that email are pretty striking, and it appears that I had much the same problem then as I did recently with Falwell's death.
However, what caused me to revisit this was not only rereading that email exchange, but also a conversation I had with a coworker regarding the same issue. It was pointed out to me that unless you had to live under the persecution that Falwell and his ilk advocated, then it's hard to really gauge what type of reaction one would have to such a person's death. I guess the adage about walking in one's shoes is truer in this regard than I had thought.
On the other hand, though, there's also the issue of whether or not you're sinking to the level of that which you feel persecuted by when you engage in a celebration of their death. Isn't that the point when someone tells you that if you do such and such, then that person has won? I'm not really advocating one side or another here, but I find it interesting to think about the fact that certain things that would seem to be questionable in one context aren't in another.
I wrote in a previous post about the outpouring of joy at the death of Jerry Falwell not to long ago. My point in that post, if I had one, was that I didn't personally see that as being a good thing to become comfortable with doing. V., whose excellent blog I have a link to on my sidebar, resent me an email discussion I had with her when President Reagan died, and the similarities between my post and that email are pretty striking, and it appears that I had much the same problem then as I did recently with Falwell's death.
However, what caused me to revisit this was not only rereading that email exchange, but also a conversation I had with a coworker regarding the same issue. It was pointed out to me that unless you had to live under the persecution that Falwell and his ilk advocated, then it's hard to really gauge what type of reaction one would have to such a person's death. I guess the adage about walking in one's shoes is truer in this regard than I had thought.
On the other hand, though, there's also the issue of whether or not you're sinking to the level of that which you feel persecuted by when you engage in a celebration of their death. Isn't that the point when someone tells you that if you do such and such, then that person has won? I'm not really advocating one side or another here, but I find it interesting to think about the fact that certain things that would seem to be questionable in one context aren't in another.
I had all but forgotten about the Verve's song "Bittersweet Symphony" until I recently watched a documentary on the British music scene in the late '90s called Live Forever. They briefly played it during a montage of images, and it just reminded of how great the track really is. I remember when it was released that it somehow got adopted, as certain songs do, into the sports world, and, I could be wrong, but I seem to recall it was played during a Nike commercial as well. Regardless, it's a great track that has an unmistakable sound to it. It's one of those songs that gives me goosebumps just hearing the opening.
Oh, and the video is pretty cool, too.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Something I find increasingly troubling is the ease in which people refer to the fact that someone has died as being a good thing or that they are glad that it has happened. Jerry Falwell, a lightning rod of controversy, died last week, and while I don't think I ever agreed with any of his vitriolic statements that were racist, homophobic, and just plain awful, I can't say that I'm "glad" that he's dead.
Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I feel that death is too sacred of an event, if that's the right terminology, to actually partake in any sort of frivolity from the fact that it has happened to someone who is actively disliked. I also find it hypocritical to say, if one subscribes to the notion that death is something that can be wished upon someone and celebrated after it occurs, that some deaths are off limits while others are more than fair game. For instance, in this country September 11, 2001 is so ingrained into the psyche that any criticism is off limits, and, yes, I'm referring to Ann Coulter's hideous remarks regarding the deceased spouses of the "widows" she slandered in her latest salvo against the left. These people were victims of a crime, and no one is arguing that, but to posit that it's unacceptable to make any sort of disparaging comments, not just about the victims but also of the day itself, while openly embracing the death of someone from the other side of the aisle is absurd. Were all of the victims of that day truly innocent people? Who knows, but what I do know is that Jerry Falwell wasn't a serial killer, mass-murderer, or brutal dictator known to have slaughtered millions of people. No, he wasn't any of those things at all. He was simply a man with a limited vision of the world that was misguided by religion and an open proponent of hatred and intolerance all in the name of God. Does that mean his death should be celebrated? Probably not.
Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I feel that death is too sacred of an event, if that's the right terminology, to actually partake in any sort of frivolity from the fact that it has happened to someone who is actively disliked. I also find it hypocritical to say, if one subscribes to the notion that death is something that can be wished upon someone and celebrated after it occurs, that some deaths are off limits while others are more than fair game. For instance, in this country September 11, 2001 is so ingrained into the psyche that any criticism is off limits, and, yes, I'm referring to Ann Coulter's hideous remarks regarding the deceased spouses of the "widows" she slandered in her latest salvo against the left. These people were victims of a crime, and no one is arguing that, but to posit that it's unacceptable to make any sort of disparaging comments, not just about the victims but also of the day itself, while openly embracing the death of someone from the other side of the aisle is absurd. Were all of the victims of that day truly innocent people? Who knows, but what I do know is that Jerry Falwell wasn't a serial killer, mass-murderer, or brutal dictator known to have slaughtered millions of people. No, he wasn't any of those things at all. He was simply a man with a limited vision of the world that was misguided by religion and an open proponent of hatred and intolerance all in the name of God. Does that mean his death should be celebrated? Probably not.
At the end of 2006, two artists, one notorious for being a recluse and the other just as notorious for his strangeness, returned with new offerings for the public’s consumption. Of course I’m talking about Thomas Pynchon and David Lynch respectively. The works, Pynchon’s new novel “Against the Day” and Lynch’s film “
However, what you don't seem to find is active criticism of the works themselves by the professed fans. Both met with critical acclaim from a majority of reviewers, but they also had their fair share of detractors as well, some pretty intense in their criticisms of the artists, especially Pynchon. One could chalk it up to the animosity resulting from having to speed read through a mammoth book like, "Against the Day," quickly enough to compose a coherent and thorough review, or the ass-numbing amount of time one had sit in a darkened movie theater trying mightily to digest what appears to be a personal compendium of Lynch's most inner weirdness. Either way, I have sympathy for someone under a deadline, and I can understand the rush to judgment that may result from a quicker than recommended reading or a long, long viewing of a film. What I don't agree with is the unblinking acceptance and total reluctance to be critical of the works by the fans. In what I'd like to term the necessity of "killing your idols" in an effort to truly dissect a work and place it within the pantheon of the works not only of the artist themselves but also of the greater artistic community at large. To me, that seems like the only truly honest way of assessing any work of art, and regardless of how painful it might be to be critical of someone whom you adore, it only seems right to be as unflinchingly honest as possible.
To illustrate my point, I'd go so far as to claim that neither Lynch nor Pynchon edited anything out of these works. If they did, I'd be incredibly surprised. Lynch seems to have just shot scenes and compiled them together into one massive film leaving little on the cutting room floor (Lynch apparently shot many, many hours of film, so the fact that he whittled it down to three hours and it still retains this quality is astonishing), and Pynchon appears to have just dropped his manuscript on the publisher's door with a note stating that any alterations would be unnecessary. Any film or book of the lengths these two produced is bound to have stretches that seem irrelevant or tedious. It's just that these two works seem to have more than average. However, if you read any of the numerous blogs or fan sites devoted to these artists, the criticism in this regard is rather muted or absent altogether. Like I said above, it might stem from the many factors, but I for one feel like the above are criticisms are necessary to contemplate. The idea of swallowing hook, line and sinker from a beloved artist just isn’t that appealing to me as a consumer and appreciator of art. Criticism, in my mind, is a good thing to engage in. Not only does it help you as to be critical as a consumer, but it also, in some roundabout way, may influence the artist. In this wireless age, it’s not unheard of for artists to lurk within the communities of those dedicated to them to glean some form of feedback. A recent example, albeit not the most perfect one, is that of Anne Rice and her feud on Amazon’s comment section.
My ultimate point is that even though I’m all for the freedom of an artist to present whatever work they’ve completed in the form they so desire, but at the same time I also feel that they should be responsible enough to recognize that when they produce works of such grandeur that they are asking for a time commitment by the consumer, and that you shouldn’t feel as if it always boils down to, “Well, I just don’t get it, so it must be me.” That type of thinking only floats for so long and it’s really not that productive, because how often does one feel compelled to actually follow up on what may be the root cause of the problem that prohibits understanding? Probably not all that often, which is especially true when one is dealing with Pynchon, who crams so many obscure references onto every page that, it’s possible, one could devote years to reading just one of his books. I commend those who do take this task seriously. What I don’t feel like is justified, though, is to put one’s self down for the purpose of consuming art, or feeling like it’s an act of betrayal to criticize a work by an artist you adore. That, I think, would go against the spirit of the entire enterprise of art itself.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Musings on Current Events
Over the past two weeks, two events have occurred concerning our government that have been and continue to be particularly troubling. I'm referring to the Supreme Court's recent decision regarding the ban on "partial birth abortion" and President Bush's reluctance to accept any sort of spending bill to fund the continuing saga in Iraq that includes language regarding a date to start withdrawing troops from what as been long evident to most people as a lost cause in the region.
First the spending bills. Bush promises to veto any bill that makes its way to his office. Both the House and the Senate have approved their respective bills and both majority leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid seem poised to enter a battle with the president, which is what I as a Democrat would hope they would do. One aspect of their strategy, which I agree with, is to make the war the president's and his alone. If he should veto the bill, and there's no reason to believe that he won't, then it serves notice to the American people that both he and Vice President Cheney are unwilling or incapable of recognizing the war for what it is, a lost cause that never should have been entered into in the first place.
I find this troubling for many reasons, but the primary of which is that the longer this goes on the more it seems like we're entering into an unreality of sorts. I don't deny that the president and his enablers actually believe that we're doing the right thing by staying in Iraq. In some twisted logic, the belief that by fighting the enemy (al Qaeda, Islamofascists, etc.) on their home turf we are avoiding the fight with them here at home, which makes perfect sense only if one doesn't consider the fact that we weren't actually attacked by anyone or group that resided in Iraq. Now, after what has occurred there, what the president is saying is without a doubt true. Iraq has become nothing more than a breeding ground for future terrorists who would attack the United States.
What's also troubling is that after four plus years with little or nothing to show in terms of progress, the president insists that 1. there's so many positive stories emerging from Iraq that go unreported because the media is fixated on the tragic death spiral that consumes Iraq on a daily basis 2. the surge will work if given adequate time. Neither of these scenarios seem likely or correct in terms with the actual reality on the ground. I'm sure some of our tax dollars are being used to build schools and other important projects that will, hopefully, go towards rebuilding the basic infrastructure of the country, most of which I'm sure is being handled by Haliburton. Yet, the fact of the matter is there are bombings daily throughout the country that continue to take massive amounts of human life and that, I'm sorry to say, takes precedent over any manner of uplifting human interest development that might be occurring concurrently. Finally, the troop surge is nothing compared to the amount of troops truly necessary to contain the country. It's not even worth it at this point to make an analogy about band-aids and mortal wounds.
"Partial birth abortion" is the crude terminology for what is medically known as intact dilation and extraction. The procedure is rather gruesome in detail, so regardless of whether you choose to refer to it in the technical terminology or the politically charged layman's term, it doesn't lessen the notion of its inherent brutal nature. Knowing what the procedure entails could sway any supporter of abortion rights to the other side, but I don't think it's necessarily an issue that's common enough to really warrant the debate. In fact, the procedure is so rarely done that it's almost an afterthought with regard to larger debate. The circumstances that surround the necessity of such a procedure occur so infrequently that the ban may not be something to become truly troubled about, especially when one considers that many states are promoting exceptions to the rule that would allow the procedure to occur under special circumstances.
So why am I troubled by this? I'm not so much opposed to banning a procedure that happens pretty infrequently. In fact, I'm sure it gives the pro-life camp a small victory to taut that may or may not serve as fodder for the greater debate over abortion. No, I don't really care about that. What I do care about is the fact that all of the decisions regarding abortion are made by predominantly male-centered courts. Unless I'm missing something regarding basic biology, I don't think males can reproduce without the female to bare the child, right? My thinking is that if it should reach the point where there is a national referendum on abortion, then the voting should be solely for women only. If the majority of women decide that abortion is a right they can live without, then so be it, it should be repealed. Why males have such a huge say in this issue is beyond me.
Over the past two weeks, two events have occurred concerning our government that have been and continue to be particularly troubling. I'm referring to the Supreme Court's recent decision regarding the ban on "partial birth abortion" and President Bush's reluctance to accept any sort of spending bill to fund the continuing saga in Iraq that includes language regarding a date to start withdrawing troops from what as been long evident to most people as a lost cause in the region.
First the spending bills. Bush promises to veto any bill that makes its way to his office. Both the House and the Senate have approved their respective bills and both majority leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid seem poised to enter a battle with the president, which is what I as a Democrat would hope they would do. One aspect of their strategy, which I agree with, is to make the war the president's and his alone. If he should veto the bill, and there's no reason to believe that he won't, then it serves notice to the American people that both he and Vice President Cheney are unwilling or incapable of recognizing the war for what it is, a lost cause that never should have been entered into in the first place.
I find this troubling for many reasons, but the primary of which is that the longer this goes on the more it seems like we're entering into an unreality of sorts. I don't deny that the president and his enablers actually believe that we're doing the right thing by staying in Iraq. In some twisted logic, the belief that by fighting the enemy (al Qaeda, Islamofascists, etc.) on their home turf we are avoiding the fight with them here at home, which makes perfect sense only if one doesn't consider the fact that we weren't actually attacked by anyone or group that resided in Iraq. Now, after what has occurred there, what the president is saying is without a doubt true. Iraq has become nothing more than a breeding ground for future terrorists who would attack the United States.
What's also troubling is that after four plus years with little or nothing to show in terms of progress, the president insists that 1. there's so many positive stories emerging from Iraq that go unreported because the media is fixated on the tragic death spiral that consumes Iraq on a daily basis 2. the surge will work if given adequate time. Neither of these scenarios seem likely or correct in terms with the actual reality on the ground. I'm sure some of our tax dollars are being used to build schools and other important projects that will, hopefully, go towards rebuilding the basic infrastructure of the country, most of which I'm sure is being handled by Haliburton. Yet, the fact of the matter is there are bombings daily throughout the country that continue to take massive amounts of human life and that, I'm sorry to say, takes precedent over any manner of uplifting human interest development that might be occurring concurrently. Finally, the troop surge is nothing compared to the amount of troops truly necessary to contain the country. It's not even worth it at this point to make an analogy about band-aids and mortal wounds.
"Partial birth abortion" is the crude terminology for what is medically known as intact dilation and extraction. The procedure is rather gruesome in detail, so regardless of whether you choose to refer to it in the technical terminology or the politically charged layman's term, it doesn't lessen the notion of its inherent brutal nature. Knowing what the procedure entails could sway any supporter of abortion rights to the other side, but I don't think it's necessarily an issue that's common enough to really warrant the debate. In fact, the procedure is so rarely done that it's almost an afterthought with regard to larger debate. The circumstances that surround the necessity of such a procedure occur so infrequently that the ban may not be something to become truly troubled about, especially when one considers that many states are promoting exceptions to the rule that would allow the procedure to occur under special circumstances.
So why am I troubled by this? I'm not so much opposed to banning a procedure that happens pretty infrequently. In fact, I'm sure it gives the pro-life camp a small victory to taut that may or may not serve as fodder for the greater debate over abortion. No, I don't really care about that. What I do care about is the fact that all of the decisions regarding abortion are made by predominantly male-centered courts. Unless I'm missing something regarding basic biology, I don't think males can reproduce without the female to bare the child, right? My thinking is that if it should reach the point where there is a national referendum on abortion, then the voting should be solely for women only. If the majority of women decide that abortion is a right they can live without, then so be it, it should be repealed. Why males have such a huge say in this issue is beyond me.
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