Jennifer Egan's Look at Me: Dire, egregious, subtle.

o mi god

and

Janice I know I'm a reading slut -- two glasses of sherry and my legs are open WAY too early, like page sixty, singing raptures too easily for anyone but me to take the relationship serious. But. This one -- in the time-worn phrase of us romantic types -- this one is different.

Fuck Underworld and The Corrections, those big-dicked love affairs of the brain (which I liked) -- Look at Me is the best reflection of the 90s I've read so far. Better than Infinite Jest, Correktall, Bobby Thompson metaphors, and even the underappreciated Big Lebowski.

And by this I don't mean the social-commentary hype generated by Egan's accurate forecast on terrorism, webcams, and fashion models. I mean that the academic thesis which observes the inextricable link between our surface orientation and our loss of substantiality is mutated from a scholarly conviction into the lung scratching scream of recognition which attends the self-discovery of the truly heinous within.

Furthermore (and hopefully in a shorter sentence), the writing is diligent. Meaning, Egan finishes each idea entirely. Not a justification of over-think, a commendation for subtle pacing and full development of admittedly complicated and large materials. Egan's book was what I was thinking when I wrote the last entry...

Here's a stupid review but with a plot summary.

and
Here's an interview with Egan and
another.

What you get from the two interviews is first that terrorism and the concept of Real-World via the web, was initially conceived as satire. That the world caught up and surpassed Egan's intentions, one assumes, horrified her as she watched in real time as her science fiction turn into current events commentary.

Secondly, you see her acknowledge that the way the book was advertised, i.e. a plot revolving around a fashion model, was probably a tactic that misfired. That is, that the readers of Glamorama or whatever life and times of this week's brand-name face, would be disappointed in Look at Me. In other words, if the idea of reading about fashion models turns you off, don't worry, as the book's central focus has nothing to do with unmitigated gloss. Nor, really, about terrorism. These plot tools are really only that, devices so that Egan can tell the biography of the "Image" -- a tale both fraught with woe and familiar to all western twentieth century denizens, regardless of glam-addiction. Luckily, the book was made finalist for this year's National Book Award so readers should pick it up, despite the marketing misstep.

So, as they say in Library Journal: Recommended for all collections.

NOTES ON THE PRODUCTION INSTINCT OF WRITERS

Generally speaking, there are two instincts vis a vis production for writers and these declensions I will denote as, ahem, "male" and "female".

Male: Not necessarily prolific, but this is the trend. The idea is to keep writing, and the simple relief from guilt that comes from the producing obviates the guilt (in various degress, for various types of moral beings) of writing undeveloped ideas and/or "padding". Beyond this exchange of guilts, there is also the idea of the Will, i.e. the famous ego of the writer who believes also that his lesser words are still magnificent and worthwhile, even as he buries this obviously narcisistic absurdity in a coat of self-deception. Nonetheless, he may write a stunner somewhere in the midst of five or six dross-drenched mistakes. As Carol Maso once quipped, these writers generally feel no shame in unleashing, a la Updike, their bloated "Vollmans" of encyclopedic humdrum upon the world. And yet, from Phillip K. Dick to Don Delillo to William Faulkner, and yes William T... and include Melville and Dostoevsky -- these writers can produce, in a burst of desperate luck, some of the more tortured and beautiful winning gambles in literature.

Female: Not paralyzingly so, but much more toward the perfectionist end of the spectrum. They produce but not in staggering quantities. The admirable thing here is that each idea has been thoroughly developed, and with this there is the danger -- which these writers are aware of -- of over-thinking an idea. However, this rarely happens because there is also an awareness, implicit in their dedication, of how the magic works. It is the respect for this magic that propels these writers to work as hard as they can, to fulfil their end of the bargain, but not so much as to remove their (necessary) sense of awe. These writers are not trying to will themselves to power by some egomaniacal, brutal thrust, but instead handle and move their material as if it was (and indeed for them, it is) sacred. Like all secular saints, they really have no faith save for the belief in those rare acts of magic that only work, effort, provide.

Not typically a dualist, but that was a mental exercise I thought might "model" well...

THREE JAPANESE: Endo's The Sea and Poison, Nakagami's The Cape and other stories from the Japanese Ghetto, and Shono's Still Life and Other Stories

I would hardly have read any Japanese Fiction if it wasn't for my friend Jasmine. She's a corn-fed demoness of an octogenarian who I've been friends with for going on thirty years. She now spends most of her time in a rocking chair smooching with her husband Larry, who often credits their long life and matrimony to drinking three Jack-and-Ginger's before bed each night. Anyway Jasmine's real up to date on Japanese fiction and had recently sent me these three books. Two of them are from Stone Bridge Press, a bunch that -- by evidence of nice packaging, selection, and critical additions -- seems to be doing an excellent job.

Endo's The Sea and Poison, translated by Michael Gallagher from New Directions is the story of a doctor who's haunted by his helping to murder american soldiers (under the auspices of medical advancement) during WWII. Jasmine argues that the novel is interesting because of the epic quality that such a short novel creates, mostly from its structure (or lack of structure) which is comprised of the separate stories of the participants in the murder (and one initial foreshadowing frame chapter). I think it's a moral story (Endo was a very Catholic writer) that dates somewhat in our amoral world, or at least in a world where such moral debasings as happen in wartime seem somewhat simple compared to the infinitely shaded arguments of corporate imperialism. It was, Jasmine says in its defense, one of his earlier books.

Much more interesting to me are the two Stone Bridge Press books. The Cape and other stories from the Japanese Ghetto by Kenji Nakagami is a book by the winner of the prestigious Akutagawa Award who was the first award winner to be born after the second world war. Furthermore Nakagami is a member of the burakumin, an outcaste class in Japan. His work has been praised for its muscularity and as antidote to the traditional view of Japanese aesthetic, one of flower arranging and effete gestures. Nakagami is, it's been argued, a brute of a writer, working in a fever, spewing stories about arson and sex and the spilling of masculine bloods. Well, that was one reading, well argued against by the stories' translator Eve Zimmerman, as diminishing the consciousness that Nakagami maintained while constructing his outsider tales. The language is simultaneously brutal, refined, and hauntingly dislocated. Written as if the brain were a muscle. The stories of Hemmingway could arguably seem uninspired in comparison. As they say in Library Journal: Recommended for all collections.

Finally, Junzo Shono's Still Life and Other Stories is somewhat recognizable due to dim resemblences to its more popular cousin: Kawabata's Palm-of-the-hand stories. But while Kawabata achieves mystic imagined poises, Shono restores the juice and grit in the last word of the cliched hyphenation, slice-of-life. Told by a series of "still-lifes" -- brief passages describing the mundane world of his domestic life. An especially good read to watch how prose-poems or shorter prose can, under a guided hand, accumulate nice weight.

Franzen's The Corrections

"Eustace!" my aunt Imelda once said, "Come here at once! You will sit at this table until you've eaten this rhubarb or I'll, bigod, lash you senseless." Such was the way of my dear aunt Imelda and such is the way, repeated each generation, that we manage to fuck our children up. But that ain't no revelation...

I didn't really want to read this book. I might have given slight smile to the oprah shenanigans but -- it wasn't that funny. More painful to watch the obviously self-conscious and media-UNsavvy Franzen whine his way to fame than any joy it would be to see him go down in flames. But he didn't. Everyone loved the book.

Here's the skinny: It ain't nothin super-duper, nothin that's gonna change your life, make you stop eating beef or defrost your freezer (mine's got an inch and a half that needed to be dealt with two seasons ago...). And the hype, especially any review that used the cliche "Great American Novel", is misleading. It really is oprah fare, but solid and interesting "literary fiction" as yawning a victory as that might be...

All that being beside the point, a winter of lightless mornings and a partnerless bed made such a book a blessing. Not merely escape into a world, but a world filled with familiar yet expectation-defying characters. The first hundred pages or so have to be weathered; the last two chapters are worthless, but the story of Denise is glorious. The worst I can say about Franzen is the character of Chip -- the one Franzen is arguably the most "like" -- is the one he has least insight into.

Did I have a point here?... no, but here's one: Don't bother with The Twenty-Seventh City and
what's up with that GQ author photo?! Who's he trying to fool?

READERS ADVISORY for ADULTS, part I

In the reader's advisory seminar, any attempt to argue the assumptions inherent in the philosophy of genre is, more or less, snubbed as being "impractical". This is, obviously, the only way RA could ever be done.

Anyway, arguing against the basic premise of a class might have been interesting to do in lib school, but herein we're bureaucrats looking for policy. For procedure. All else is digression and distraction... May there be a nice deep circle in hell for middle managers.

Someone yesterday came in and said, "Can you show me the section on 'packaging'?

"Well, it could be in a few places. Maybe you could tell me some more about what you're looking for."

He says, "Could you maybe then just show me the largest section you have on packaging."

This last comment was accompanied by a two handed animated gesture, signifying large width.

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Taking a seminar on Adult Reader Advisory. Frankly, diary, yours truly considers herself a fairly well-read and well-rounded reader, and not particularly snobbish, but nonetheless had not read one thing on the syllabus. Which included things like: Lawrence Block, Sue Grafton, Jonathan Kellerman, Orson Scott Card, Louis L'Amour...

The names are familiar but haven't voluntarily put one of those things down ever. Well, the purpose of such a seminar, assume, is to learn to get readers in touch with the work that will best suit them. "Every reader, his [/her] book" so goes the law. And somehow, empty plot-driven escapist cookie-cutter pulp is what suits many people? Well that's probably wrong, and I'm sure there're something to these books. (What an admission! you are a snob...)

Anyway, there will be, already has been, a great deal of discussion of "mood", linking the mood of a reader with the mood of a book. So too, it's a great psychological game. One that has to be played with a complete absence of patronizing; more delicate, one imagines, than even the delicate maneuverings of the reference interview. So: we'll see. I remember someone quoting Confucius (Kung Fu-tse) as saying, roughly, that the two places to go to discover things, are first, the place where no one goes and secondly, the place where everyone goes.

The cough is really something. I think I've contracted bronchitis from another librarian at the branch. Should leave the cigarettes home this morning. Those things will kill me... This seminar will be the first time I've ever been in a class where the trash novel is glorified and high literature is villified. The thing is, frankly, honestly, I've never believed in those categories, though all practical experience says they must exist. Isn't there the punk novel? A book which loses both the formulaic gimmicky stuff of trash and the middle-class boring angst of high lit? dream on pollyanna.

Yet still, there seems some kind of basic assumption in philosophy of genre which is explicit in this conception of Reader's Advisory, which takes whole hog these categories. Allows very little room for the weird and eccentric. I think most people, contradiction aside, are weird and eccentric. They just haven't had the chance to experience the 'other'. Or maybe within these genres are worlds enough for most people's satisfaction. Interesting seminar anyway.

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I really would like, this week, to post something about comics and Scott McCloud as well as The Cape and Other Stories... This line is my soul's contract. I may delete its embarrassing self-involvement and lying promise when such act is complete. love, eustace

"Technical matters on which Dogen criticized deteriorations of the Zen commonly associated with Rinzai Zen in general, and Dahui's school in particular, are generally three: naturalism, nihilism, and static goal-orientation. In this context, naturalism refers to the idea that since enlightenment is inherent in the mind and reality is all-inclusive in any case, there is no need for cultivation and realization of enlightenment. Nihilism refers to denial of causality because of a subjective sense of aloofness. Static goal-orientation means conscious anticipation of enlightenment in meditation, thus blocking objective realization by the bias inherent in this subjective anticipation."

-From Thomas Cleary's intro to RATIONAL ZEN: The Mind of Dogen Zenji