Books

Scorch Atlas Does Not Bode Well for Us

gkwak — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 00:32:20 -0400

Certain books cast light on our future selves: think 1984, Brave New World, Infinite Jest even, and usually in doing so, forewarn us of what dire circumstances we could be muddling our way into. Often times these tomes are moralistic in nature: stray too far this way and look at what could be in store. While Scorch Atlas does scrawl out a black ash of a future, it doesn't necessarily come off as a what could be, rather as a what will. And in times that dark, it reminds us of what last vestiges of humanity we need to retain to keep ourselves sacrosanct.

The stories contained within Scorch Atlas are about families. Homes. In a future riddled with doubt and unease. Where an unnamed cataclysmic event has rendered everything but survival moot. Diseases run rampant and houses barely stand on their foundations. The skies crack and blacken. Food is scarce and bodies distend and crust over. But even in this desolation, Blake Butler's characters still cling to things. To spaces. To family. "I'd make this world somewhere to rest in. He'd remember. We would not grow old alone," a mother says in reference to her bloated baby boy in "Want for Wish for Nowhere." Later, in describing her environs Butler writes of "the earth's plates snapping; the flies at the window cracking the glass; the stitch of rhythm in the incision of the earth sinking in itself."

The stories tend to coalesce around certain thematic strains. Even so, the pieces are rendered in such jagged glass craftsmanship that they retain their individuality like the whorls of separate fingerprints on the same hand. In "The Gown From Mother's Stomach," a mother devours anything and everything in sight to fashion a gown for her daughter through consumption and excretion. There is also mention of a talking bear. "The Ruined Child" is a diseased boy (a theme that threads through various of Butler's stories) that haunts the attic of his parents' house, a constant reminder to his father of his failings as a husband, father, human being. In "Television Milk" a mother is held hostage by her three, near feral boys who only allow her temporary release to feed them her breast milk. The boys range in age from just losing their baby teeth to being on the verge of pubescence. The pervading oddities and grotesqueries bring to mind the fiction of Brian Evenson or the filmic work of Harmony Korine or David Lynch. Still, nothing is done solely for the squeamish factor, rather, things are what they are in this twisted world and throughout, the people that inhabit Butler's stories still grope for their humanity. They fight for their homes. Their schools. Their blood lines.

Butler's writing has what the writer Gary Lutz refers to as "verbal topography." Words grind and froth against other words and while narrative momentum is still evident, reading the sentences for their acoustical qualities alone is worth re-reading pages the second you reach their end. The writing is visceral in a way that not only do the sounds of words playing off each other cause you to stir and gape, they have enough resonance to make you physically ill afterward. Try reading: "Her neck sat crumpled with the burden of her head. He moved to shake her shoulder. Gnats muddled in and around her mouth. The tongue, the meat, already rotting. She'd jabbed a kitchen knife into her stomach. Blood spread around her in an oval. Static seemed to gather at her face," without feeling your tongue swell in your throat.

Lastly, it'd be doing the book an injustice not to mention how beautiful the thing is as an objet d'art. Zach Dodson, designer and co-founder of Featherproof Books, truly outdid himself with Scorch Atlas. The edges of pages are dyed black, giving it a sinister, charred look from the outset. Short passages titled "Blood," "Light," "Gravel," etc. have appropriate splatters or blotches on the page, rendered deftly with Dodson's keen eye. The design truly stands up to the content and vice-versa.

In the same way that Infinite Jest, written thirteen years ago, presupposed communication being fragmented via technology, in particular, the internet, Scorch Atlas presupposes a bleak, dystopian future (although let's hope it's farther off than thirteen years from now) where people bloat and grime, the world is a cracked shell of its former self and families do what they must to eke out an existence.

In the future, when scrabbling through rubble for any sort of roughage to burn, I assume our progeny will come across Scorch Atlas and say, "Yes, yes, of course. This Butler, a seer." But let's hope for all our sakes, that future is far off.

[Book Punch] Nobody Move by Denis Johnson

Micah — Wed, 13 May 2009 23:11:06 -0400

This novel is short, concise and packs a serious punch. It’s like a nasty bar fight that ends before you realize you were the one right in the thick of it. Written in four parts (originally printed in Playboy as a series), not a sentence is wasted. It’s full of guns, frauds, sex and liquor. Jimmy Luntz is an obsessive gambler, and a quartet singer. Anita Desilvera embezzled a huge chunk of change and drinks beer to get sober. Jimmy gets picked up by a guy named Gambol, but that’s not the biggest irony of the book. Jimmy shoots Gambol and steals his wallet, and his Cadillac. In the most broken down situations, right when his characters are at their absolute end, Johnson gives a line like, “She stepped under the shower and would have stayed there forever but the bulb in the ceiling blew and in the dimness under the falling water she thought she saw fireflies clambering from the drain and coming at her face.” By the end, you don’t want this story to go on, but it’s perfect in its tight package—a fine example of what magazine writing used to be, and should be again.

[Book Punch] Brooklyn: A Novel by Colm Toibin

petercole — Mon, 11 May 2009 19:56:23 -0400

Read this book on a nice day, in hammock. The story is subtle. It begins in small-town Ireland, circa 1950, and moves to the bustling streets of Brooklyn. Eilis Lacey lives a quaint life, working in the grocery, thinking about boys and dancing; but when a priest proposes that—with his help—she travel to America, it’s like her life starts anew. Her violent motion sickness on the trip from Ireland to America suggests what she might be in for, and her physical illness soon turns into homesickness: sharp and endless. As Eilis finds her routine in Brooklyn, she grows more aware of details: tiny events from her past that re-play in her mind. Eilis works in a nice shop and lives in a nice boarding house and even takes evening classes to learn bookkeeping. Soon she meets a nice Italian boy, Tony, and begins to enjoy her accounting classes; her new life is interesting and distant, like a hazy dream. By the time she gets the chance to return to Ireland, she realizes that now “home” seems foreign. A familiar set of circumstances: attachment to a new place, a new way of defining oneself. This is a nice story; it earns its end.

Endpoint and Other Poems by John Updike

petercole — Thu, 07 May 2009 14:24:08 -0400

Think what you will about John Updike (that he was sexist, a chauvinist even), but it remains that he was a writer with quite a bit of living in his bag. Sure he makes old-man notes about the changing world, he mockingly blames Monica for her stint with Bill, but he also reflects gently on the cycle of age. He remembers being lost as a child, and suggests that it is inevitable to return to that feeling, though it becomes more familiar. He ponders culture and nature—his 75-year-old skin and how people look at it. He mourns the loss of the milkman, the iceman, candy stores, doo-wop stars, and neighborly waves. In these conversational poems, Updike “scratches his inconclusive odes to death,” he marks moments, days, and wonders about ends. When you’re old, and looking forward only means seeing an end, small things stand out: the early-morning sounds of the Boston train, Virginia creeper, naked Connecticut trees, needles, glands, stiff hands. At the end, Updike wonders about his characters, their ends, and what he’s learned about his own life through writing their deaths. Birthday, Death-day…what day is not both?

[Book Punch] The Wettest County in the World, by Matt Bondurant

Micah — Mon, 04 May 2009 19:59:35 -0400

There’s something about the sound of truth: that small whisper-mantra that this really happened. Billed as a “novel based on a true story,” Bondurant traces the passed-down stories of his grandfather, Jack, and two granduncles, Forrest and Howard. Bondurant also uses Sherwood Anderson, to shift back and forth from 1928 and 1929 to 1935, when Anderson makes a trip
to Franklin County, Virginia to write a magazine article about the brothers. Anderson’s role emphasizes telling and re-telling: the process of changing stories and history, and also the incestuous town—how much an outsider sticks out. Bondurant not only shows the ins and outs of running corn-whiskey—the violent lengths to which people went for the burning relief of the drink—but also how these brothers, and their town of cohorts grew from boys to men in a few short years. Bondurant’s language brings this dirt-poor town to life: a never ending battle of making do with what you had. A gut-rusted 1928 Ford truck, hoe-cakes, crispy chicken, birch beer and fire water—white lightning. Bondurant’s characters are creepy and sad; they bring a dizzy shutter when you return to your mantra: they’re real—they control the fear.

[Book Punch] Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout

petercole — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:21:51 -0400

Olive Kitteridge is fleshy. She eats doughnuts everyday. She offends and is offended easily, and yet she is fragile and sympathetic. This novel, composed of 13 connected stories, presents Crosby, Maine: the accumulation of scars that come with small-town life. Despite the size of the town, these characters deal with big issues: physical awkwardness at any age, the pitfalls of fractured family relationships, and the realization of loneliness and fear. This book is subtle but strikes with the force of a bread truck. These characters are utterly human and will make you feel, in some way, that the book was written for you, if not about you. Olive—the retired 7th-grade math teacher, and her husband Henry—the town pharmacist, embody the joys and pains of aging. Strout's writing forces you to sit right down with Olive as she notices fingernail clippings and soggy Cheerios on the kitchen table at her son's house. Strout puts you there, again and again. These characters not only seem so real that you'll be tempted to drive up to Maine and find them yourself, they also force you to confront your place in your town—big or small—and your understanding of community.

What Men Want, by Laura McCullough

petercole — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:12:43 -0400

Laura McCullough titled her book of poetry, What Men Want, as if she were heading a list that answered a question. What do men want? Success? Sex? Alcohol? Faster and bigger vehicles? Since Henrik Ibsen, the feminist movements of the 20th century, and even in recently released movies, the question has been quite the opposite—what do women want? After all, sociologically speaking from the Western world, men are supposed know what they want and go out and get it or they are not men.

In McCullough’s poem, "In the Zeus Shop", the narrator chaperones her 17-year-old son inside a hunting store named after the most powerful god in early Western literature. The son wants to buy, along with a hunting gun, a brown shirt "matching the woods." The narrator, being a mother, buys him enough emergency-orange gear to prevent him from being shot by other hunters; but even as she does so, she knows she is releasing him into the world, or as she puts it, “to get into the woods.” While some people might consider hunting as a method to obtain sustenance, the narrator of this poem obviously does not. She hints as if it were a rite of passage into manhood. The boy in the poem behaves as if he thinks the same. The narrator compares herself to both Diana and the dead bear mounted on the wall of the shop. Diana is the goddess of the woods, a hunter, but she is also the goddess of childbirth, a protector. She wants to stop her son from blending into the schema of manhood, but feels immobilized like the bear. Pathos, ethos, and empathy are achieved through the narrator when she feels inert in contemporary society where it is still a man’s world and a woman’s duty to help men become successful. She even permits her son to enviously eye her car keys: “he want everything,” she thinks, “and God help him, he is sure to succeed.”

In two of her poems, "Latitude of Fellatio" and "What Men Really Want," McCullough covers the topic of sex (and she handles this topic tastefully and inexplicitly). While McCullough is saying that this is what men want, she is also making a statement that this is a manner in which women subjugate themselves. Moreover, in these two poems, she is talking about language, and she alludes that sex may be the only way for men and women to successfully communicate.

In "Summit," McCullough exhibits how a strong silent type of man diverges his personality after a copious imbibition of alcohol—“It took eleven drinks, several of wine/and then of vodka for my father to tell/his son in law, I love you.” Yes, men do want to show their feeling, but they are taught that this is not manly. Men are also taught that heavy drinking is manly. Alcohol and stoicism are often a dichotomy. The woman in the poem is confused, but accepts her father’s show of affection.

In order to be masculine, as depicted in several McCullough poems, a boy must ride a bike as fast as it will go, or build ramps and leap long distances. The boy on the block that can ride the fastest and leap the farthest is the most male. This is the Western-world male image superimposed upon his vehicle. When boys grow up, successful bachelors drive sports cars and successful married men own utility vehicles. Macho working-class men drive pickups—the bigger and more powerful the pickup the better. In "The Man with one Tattoo," the male protagonist attempts to save his wife’s life with his truck. This refers to another fixed male role in Western society—the savior, the type of man women believe they need.

McCullough inserts a proem in her book, a versification of a quote by Freud: “I have yet been able to answer...the great question / that has never been answered: / what do women want?" This poem is not arbitrarily chosen. McCullough is mocking Freud's sexist worldview.

McCullough has written an engrossing book that goes deeper than a simple rebuttal to Freud, and her book fathoms more than a list of things men want. Her finely crafted poems are profound in their exploration of men and women in contemporary society. If I may redraw some parallels, Ibsen, in his plays, portrays strong-willed, intelligent, well-read women who feel hampered as stereotypical subjects and nurturers to men. Ibsen was ahead of his time in that he was aware that these should not be roles of women who want to get out of the house and make a career for themselves. McCullough is showing that even with the advancements of last century's women-liberation movements and the related passing of laws to equate women with men, women still find themselves in the roles portrayed by Ibsen. Furthermore, in contemporary movies and several popular TV series, women are saying what they want. In What Men Want, McCullough is also saying what women want—but she goes about it in an original and intriguing way; that is, by showing examples of how men are trapped in societal mores, she advertently demonstrates how women are also trapped in societal mores.

[Book Punch] Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories, by Annie Proulx

Micah — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:19:34 -0400

Meet Chay Sump, Lightning Willy, Dixon Forkenbrocks, Hi Alcorn, Shaina Lister and the Devil. Annie Proulx’s characters are wild and creepy, poor and isolated. These are hard lives: they “saddle up, ride, rope, cut, herd, unsaddle, eat sleep and do it again.” Proulx’s humor is morbid and relentless. Laugh and cringe within a sentence. Many of these stories are timeless, fable-like tales that etch a skewed lesson deep into your skin. Proulx’s language is heavily clothed in description: you’ll taste the fried eggs and boiled potatoes; you’ll smell the sage and the trout and the whiskey. Pack your bags and prepare for this sometimes fantastical, sometimes nightmarish trip to the west. Meet these sad people and let them haunt you with their everyday lives. Proulx will reach up and grab you with each of these stories: then she’ll slap and shake you and force you to scream “uncle.”

[Book Punch] How It Ended: New and Collected Stories, by Jay McInerney

Micah — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:43:41 -0400

These stories span from anonymous sex games in the after-hours clubs of Paris, to Kennedy wannabe politicians trying to avoid scandal, to hostage negotiation in war-torn Kabul, but these characters seem connected. Connected the way you pull up a barstool in an out of the way bar about a million miles from the small town you grew up in, only to start up a conversation with the next guy over and discover that you were practically next door neighbors. Jay McInerney prefaces the collection by saying that he studied the art of the short story with Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolff: he knows his pedigree. These stories are familiar, but not because you’ve heard them before. They’re full of cigarettes and cocktails: urges and addiction, danger and relief. They’re full of sad realities: a widow with Alzheimer’s at the Belle Meade country club, a clam bake for restaurant waiters who want desperately to be writers or artists, but will never make it. McInerney will change the way you think about the short story: he might also change the way you think about loneliness, and love.

[Book Punch] Lowboy, by John Wray

Micah — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 19:29:08 -0400

In a sick and wonderful way, Lowboy notices the details in everything: temperature, sound, light, weight. In just 24 hours, 16-year-old, schizophrenic William Heller (Lowboy) escapes from his asylum, has a near-sexual encounter with a street-woman, sneaks his ex-girlfriend out of school, eludes detectives and tramps all over Manhattan, mostly underground. Lowboy is obsessed with global-warming and convinced that the world will end because of it, in a matter of hours. He constantly wrestles with the voices in his mind, Skull and Bone. He writes letters—in code—to his mother, whom he calls Violet. She came from Austria and raised William to be a peer because she was lonely. Detective Lateef’s conversations with Violet and their pursuit to find her son are offset by the very real experience of Lowboy, who finds comfort in the A and C-sharp tones of the subway bell. When Lowboy meets Heather Covington on a bench, you can see her and smell her: like butter, clove cigarettes and beer. Wray’s writing is packed with spot-on metaphors: “the bikers all look the same: like old avocados.” His story is weird and horribly sad, but balanced and completely believable. Lowboy will leave a gnawing pain in your stomach, like hunger or fear or the feeling that he’s got it all right.