No. 99

I had never been on a plane before I left for Australia the first time way back in 1995. I had talked my parents into the study abroad program, assuring them the cost would not be different from regular tuition (they took out another mortgage, but that's a different story). Since my first journey there I've been back to Australia twice. The place, especially its history, fascinates me—I can't say why exactly. Maybe it was the first foreign environment I ever experienced and so I was most curious about it.

I've read a good stack of history books about Australia, the best being The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes. Everyone knows about the country's birth as a convict nation. The debauchery and madness which marked the first fifty years of the country are truly remarkable—revolts and escapes and lawlessness make for interesting reading. One of my favorite stories about the Australian colony is by Mark Twain. It's entitled "Cecil Rhodes' Shark and his First Fortune" and you can read it here if you're interested (chapter 13 from his book entitled Following the Equator, which is, like most things Twain wrote, very funny and insightful and each chapter opens with one of his incredible axioms).

Logically my journey from enjoying history books led to my discovery of fictional works about Australia. I read Patrick White's novel Voss (he's an Australian novelist) and DH Lawrence's Kangaroo; I can't admit to enjoying the former, but the latter, which chronicles the two weeks Lawrence spent in Australia with his lover Frida Unibrow Kahlo, is actually quite entertaining. The short stories of Henry Lawson, which I only discovered recently, are realistic, straight-forward and give a glimpse into the Outback unlike any other piece of art I've ever read.

Lawson's work is the perfect segue to the 99th book on my list: The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey.

It is exhausting to think how many books and movies have been produced about Ned Kelly (I prefer Heath Ledger to Mick Jagger as Ned, but that's just my opinion). Certainly it is of no fault to historians, since bushrangers (equivalent to our wild west heroes in the US) are some of the most interesting characters in Australian history. With so many works written on Kelly— the story known, the ending known—it's easy to get lost among all of the titles.

What makes Carey's work, for me, the best among all of the pieces I've read, is the way he wrote it. Carey wrote in first person, making Ned his narrator in what is essentially the outlaw's autobiography. Carey used the only known piece of Kelly writing, the Jerilderie Letter, to influence his own style. There are no commas in the book and it is written in vernacular consistent with the times. Carey substituted curse words for the word "adjectival" or "effing," used because the novel is written in case it is ever to be read by Kelly's fictional daughter (the technique of substituting these words for curses was used by Lawson in many of his short stories). Such techniques, along with the use of Irish and Outback slang, prove how learned Carey is and the incredible research which obviously went into writing the novel.

It's easy to say that Carey shouldn't be lauded for his book; after all, Kelly's story, one of the greatest in Australian history—if not the world—was already written for him. How hard is it to write a story already written? But with each turn of the page, I remember thinking it had to have been written by Ned himself. The authenticity of the language and the passion of the narrator literally jump off the page.

Carey takes the liberty of giving Ned a daughter, the very reason he's "writing" his own history and takes the reader from his childhood—there are certainly Oedipal undertones, as many stories about Ned seem to employ—all the way to Glenrowan and the famous shootout, when Ned used his armour and slotted helmet (if you haven't seen the movie Kenny, a mockumentary about a port-a-potty manager based in Melbourne, do so as soon as possible—one of my favorite quotes is when Kenny says of a hotel room door key (paraphrased), "Stick your key right into Ned Kelly's helmet, there..." priceless and proves how widespread and well-known Ned's story really is).

Even if you know the story backwards and forwards, this book will surprise and enlighten you. This little ditty below is great, too. Nothing like a ballad to tie things together.

One Grand Eruption

"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted ... secretly, it was being dictated instead by the needs of technology ... by a conspiracy between human beings and techniques, by something that needed the energy-burst of war, crying, "Money be damned, the very life of [insert name of Nation] is at stake," but meaning, most likely, dawn is nearly here, I need my night's blood, my funding, funding, ahh more, more ... The real cries were cries of allocation and priority, not among firms—it was only staged to look that way—but among the different Technologies, Plastics, Electronics, Aircraft, and their needs which are understood only by the ruling elite...

Yes but Technology only responds (how often this argument has been iterated, dogged and humorless as a Gaussian reduction, among the younger Schwarzkommando especially), "All very well to talk about having a monster by the tail, but do you think we'd've had the Rocket if someone, some specific somebody with a name and a penis hadn't wanted to chuck a ton of Amatol 300 miles and blow up a block full of civilians? Go ahead, capitalize the T on technology, deify it if it'lll make you feel less responsible—but it puts you in with the neutered, brother, in with the eunuchs keeping the harem of our stolen Earth for the numb and joyless hardons of human sultans, human elite with no right at all to be where they are—"

We have to look for power sources here, and distribution networks we were never taught, routes of power our teachers never imagined, or were encouraged to avoid ... we have to find meters whose scales are unknown in the world, draw our own schematics, getting feedback, making connections, reducing the error, trying to learn the real function ... zeroing in on what incalculable plot? Up here, on the surface, coaltars, hydrogenation, synthesis, were always phony, dummy functions to hide the real, the planetary mission yes perhaps centuries in the unrolling ... this ruinous plant, waiting for its Kabbalits and new alchemists to discover the Key, teach the mysteries to others..."

Gravity's Rainbow—Thomas Pynchon

***

...make it all fit...

Can thoughts be considered paranoid if someone else has the exact same thoughts? Of course they can, don't be ridiculous. Paranoia causes paranoids to believe others are as paranoid as Them.

Proverbs for Paranoids:

1. You may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures.
2. The innocence of the creatures is in inverse proportion to the immorality of the Master.
3. If they can get you asking the wrong questions they don't to worry about the answers.
4. You hide. They seek.
5. Paranoids are not paranoids because they're paranoid but because they keep putting themselves, fucking idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations.

Understand? It's important that you do. Shake your head as you would if someone offered you ice cream. Yes. Good. Now we're all on the same page. In a world which seems to be rapidly going mad—war, famine, disease, chick-lit novels—We must stick together. Please don't get the Sensational Idea that there is somehow an Us v Them rationale which might apply here. Certainly we may be apt to believe—you Paranoid Paranoid, you—that there are mysteries beyond our grasp or mysteries being deliberately kept from Us. Be assured there is no Grand Conspiracy and if there were, wouldn't They want what is best for Us? Because aren't We all in this Together?

Oh, yes, of course, it's confusing. It's easy to believe there are ideas beyond our grasp and that human nature, being volatile, leads some people to Evil and this Evil is somehow propagated upon the masses (Us). And if We could only inform ourselves, only think outside the proverbial box, to scheme, to make the mysterious connections... But this is a Fool's Journey and will inevitably lead nowhere—beside the grave, which is where we all go.

To believe that we are somehow conditioned to think or act a certain way by a group, some mysterious They, why, that's paranoia gone Perfectly Berserk! It is not Us v Them. Quit living on the Darkside of the Moon.

I assure you everything is fine. Now go watch your cartoons.



***

I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone—Rainer Maria Rilke

***

"Springer, this ain't the fucking movies now, come on."
"Not yet. Maybe not quite yet..."

***

Remember in King Kong when the planes take his gorilla (guerilla?) ass down? Nothing is done by accident in a piece of art—unless we're talking about that book Naked Lunch, which was a complete accident... zinger! King Kong, see, he was from Nature, plucked straight from the trees of a natural habitat, a fleshy, primal being. And what took our hero from this life? Those infernal Machines!

As the Liberty lads o'er the sea
Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood,
So we, boys, we
Will die fighting, or live free,
And down with all kings but King Ludd!—Lord Byron

***

"There is a long folk history of this figure, the Badass. He is usually male, and while sometimes earning the quizzical tolerance of women, is almost universally admired by men for two basic virtues: he Is Bad, and he is Big. Bad meaning not morally evil, necessarily, more like able to work mischief on a large scale. What is important here is the amplifying of scale, the multiplication of effect."

***

"We have to talk in some kind of code, naturally ... We always have. But none of the codes is that hard to break. Opponents have accused us, for just that reason, of contempt for the people. But really we do it all in the spirit of fair play. We're not monsters. We know we have to give them some chance. We can't take hope away from them, can we?"

There is time... There is time... If We just open our eyes. Am I mad? My mind turned to Jell-O? Because I dare to talk of Michelangelo? There is hope. There is love. There are poems about Love by Suzanne Somers which make me believe I am still a writer... but, er, well ... There is love. and with it, We are armed to fight well into the spring, well into the TS Eliot Spring. Remember: "Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation."

Go forth with this knowledge.

***

"Look, peasant, you read the transcript in there. That man is one unhappy loner. He's got problems. He's more useful running around the Zone thinking he's free, but he'd be better off locked up somewhere. He doesn't even know what his freedom is, much less what it's worth. So I get to fix the price, which doesn't matter to begin with."

***


***

"Nothing I ever wore, before or since, aroused me quite as much as Imipolex."

I remember when I was in grade school we had those dirty-cream Apples with the bulky monitors and floppy disks—"Don't touch it there!" There wasn't Facebook yet or email. Instead we called on people. We stopped by their houses and chatted on porches. We called them on the phone and chatted about the dog running up to the gas station and did you hear about Aunt Louise, she's driving across country! Oh, those were the days! Jesus, I talk like I lived in the 50s...

But isn't it true? We live in what seems like a plastic world these days. I feel like I am on the cusp of it. Close enough to understand both sides. But where has the physical (Slothropian) contact gone? Are we moving away from physical contact, physical relationships and toward a connection with Plastic, Electronics, Technologies?

I kind of want to join a cuddle party now.

***



***

The Internet is not something to be afraid of—or is it? A Rocket, now that's something to be afraid of. Because that and things like disease and famine, those are points on the map which threaten our Survival. There is nothing more paramount than our survival—Heller told us this, but not with the same Gravity. We can search for meaning. And if, miraculously, you find the Light, the Ultimate Answer, just be aware that the most important lesson we can learn is to simply Survive.

Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water—after enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.

***

People have done a better job of explaining Gravity's Pull than I have in this esoteric rambling (though beware because they spoil the ending). The task of trying to explain this book, however, is like being given a gallon of white paint and being told to paint a replica of the Sistine Chapel... on a white wall. Or trying to hunt down a Leviathan White Whale. The journey to get to this task was well worth it, though. Aided, in part, by this site and this site, I am sure glad I bought the ticket for this ride.

Here are some of the questions the book forced me to answer (or to think about):

What does Good and Evil really mean? Is it black and white—speaking metaphorically and literally?

Do we deliberately make connections between things that aren't even there to feel better about what seems to be an ultimately pointless journey?

Just how much are we willing to sacrifice for Technology? Would you gamble your own Survival?

Are we free?

Shouldn't we cherish primal urges instead of trying to control them?

BTW, who the hell is in control?

Perhaps the best thing I've ever read—no hyperbole, I promise. Make the time. It's a journey you will not forget, one which will be accompanied with tangential thoughts, guffaws, endless internet searches, article reading and more curse words than pearls on a pearl necklace. And, just so you know, it is written by a man who is as mysterious and clever as the novels he writes. And I'm not apologizing for the length of this and I am resisting the overwhelming, bulging, raging, screaming urge to add to it...

"There is time, if you need the comfort, to touch the person next to you, or to reach between your own cold legs..."

No. 100

My senior year of college I landed an internship in Washington, D.C. (filling coffee and water pitchers, running menial errands, disappearing for two-hour long lunches to read at a cafe which looked out toward the Capitol Building, a ghostly building teeming with all those swine-rats...)

It was in the District Court of D.C. and I "worked" in the office of Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who would eventually preside over the appeal of the Microsoft trial. I have her autograph on a going away card—she treated me sort of like a farmer treats a dog: kind with a good morning and a smile, but, in reality, she didn't want to be bothered. I don't blame her. I was sort of worthless for those nine weeks and I spent most of the second half of the nine weeks hungover. Don't let it be said D.C. is a boring town.

Between not working and the lack of much to do (besides go out on weekends), I had plenty of time to read. I read all of J.D. Salinger's works, Nine Stories, Raise High the Roof Beam Mr. Carpenter and Seymour: An Introduction, all of which are probably his best efforts (at least one will be on this list) and I was still working through my Faulkner stage at the time, too.

I stayed in Southeast and whenever I tell people that they say I should be glad I survived. I never thought it was unsafe. Of course, we were a few blocks from the underground so I never walked the streets looking to turn tricks. The guy's house I stayed at (he was a Eureka College graduate) was conducive to reading. He had a large garden and porch and speakers on both to pump music from the house.

That Christmas I had receieved The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson. Still reeling from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail and Hell's Angels, all unbelievable works, the latter one of the most powerful pieces of journalism you'll ever read, I asked for The Rum Diary because it had just been published. Though it is considered Thompson's "first" novel, since he wrote it while living in San Juan in the 60s, he had not published it. He claimed the book had been rejected when he first wrote it and he then moved on to journalism and politics and left it on the shelf.

The novel is semi-autobiographical since it follows Paul Kemp working in Puerto Rico as a journalist which is exactly what HST did (he worked for William Kennedy while in San Juan; Kennedy's novel, Ironweed, I can't wait to read at some point, since he and HST were great friends).

The best part of the novel, for me, is seeing the rawness, the quick wit and Hemingwayesque prose of a man who would become such an amazing voice in American Letters (I hate this sentence, but, let's face it, there's no way to convey what I wanted to say without sounding like a douchebag). I could literally see the stairs which led to his greater works. It isn't worth reading, however, just to see the emergence of a larger-than-life talent (and human being); it is a great book with passages that literally hang in my head to this day. Luckily, I found two of my favorites (the internets strikes again).

“Happy,” I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is one of those words like Love, that I never quite understood. Most people who deal in words don’t have much faith in them and I am no exception—especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because they’re scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest of a fool to use them with any confidence.

He was just another noisy little punk in the great legion of punks who march between the banners of bigger and better men. Freedom, Truth, Honor – you could rattle off a hundred such words and behind every one of them would gather a thousand punks, pompous little farts, waving the banner with one hand and reaching under the table with the other.

Rumor has it that the movie, starring Depp (who else?), as HST, is coming out in 2010. Before I see it, I want to read the book again.

Of course, my copy of this book is long gone. I hate this part of the story: I moved to Los Angeles (West Hollywood) after graduation and loaned the book to a guy I met there. He was a cartoonist and we were actually pretty good friends. I sort of fled town in a hurry and never got over to the valley to get it back. I found him online about two years ago. It was certainly him, as I matched up information and confirmed it before I contacted him. Imagine receiving an email that reads, "Hey, you remember when I loaned you that book like eight years ago? Yeah, can you give that back? Sorry about being creepy and finding you online. Send the book soon!"

He never returned the email.

The Best Ever

On a daily basis, I use hyperbole when I'm talking about movies or books—pretty much the only two hobbies I care about these days, save fantasy football (since giving up politics, by the way, my life is 50 times happier (hyperbole)). For example, I am fifty pages away from finishing up Gravity's Rainbow and in an email to a friend I said, "It's probably the greatest book I've ever read." Often—it's said, anyway—I will say, "Oh, this (insert book or movie title) is top ten ever, at least."

This, of course, is how I seem to talk. I can't help it. I usually love something or I despise it. Isn't that better than see-sawing? which I always hated in grade school, unless I was jumping off and throwing the other kid into the gravel. Anyway, you get the idea.

I decided to do a little experiment. At the beginning of the week, I started ranking all the books (novels, short story anthologies, plays and poetry collections) that I've ever read. At first I thought I'd do the top 25, but then I couldn't squeeze in everything I wanted. Then I decided 75 was a better number. But then that didn't work either, so when my list was about 170 books long, I narrowed it to 100. Plus, it was a stretch at that long since some of them I didn't even enjoy.

After making the list, I realized I have a long way to go before I could ever consider myself well-read. There are literally hundreds of books I'm embarrassed to say I can't put on the list. I've never read anything by Gabriel Marquez, considered among many as one of the greatest writers in Latin American history. I've only read one Ayn Rand title, Anthem, too frightened (or lazy?) to pick up her denser titles. I can't attest to have read the entire collections of some of my supposedly favorite authors like Hemingway and Greene. I've never read Finnegan's Wake (what sort of recluse or maniac has time for that?). I've never read Eliot or Hugo and many authors, again, I've fallen short of reading their entire collections. Science-fiction and crime-fiction (and chick-lit—which isn't a real genre) and loads of contemporary writers are all sorely misrepresented.

In the end, as Jorge Luis Borges said, "There is no intellectual exercise which is not ultimately useless." And that's exactly what this exercise is. The fun of it, for me, was writing the list and I look forward to telling a little bit about each book, why I read it, when I read it and whether I'd read it again. Plus, in ten years, it will be cool, if this internet fad doesn't go away, to look back on the list.

While comprising it, I tried not to put books on there just to say "Hey, look at me, I know this book and you don't!" There are some obscure titles, but I think most of the titles are common and many people have most likely already read them. Mostly, I guess, it's about the journey, as always seems to be the case. So, beginning Monday, I figure I'll start this ultimately useless exercise. I figure I'll drag it out for a couple weeks. This way, if I've forgotten any books, I can add them as I go. Maybe there will be a 55a and a 55b. That's the exciting news. Man, I need a new hobby.

The Betrayal

Before traveling to Laos back in the day, I had a pretty good idea of the shady clandestine operations of the CIA there during the Vietnam War. The Betrayal is probably the best thing I've ever seen or read that gives an idea of how greatly it affected Laotians. Filmed over the course of 25 years—the narrator had film from the family's arrival in America—it covers a family's journey from war-torn Laos to the streets of Brooklyn and how they coped with the adversity. True to the movie's name, the family is first betrayed by the United States government in their homeland and then lured by idea of the Dream to find this, too, to be a betrayal. The fact we still fight wars astounds me when movies like this document the horror and destruction they cause. Is it more complicated than that? Maybe. Anyway, peace don't mean a thing and wars they just got that swing.

The Death of Books

I've never read a Philip Roth novel. I'm not an anti-Semite or anything; I've just never gotten around to it. I read about 100 pages of American Pastoral and I do believe the story still sounds interesting—a guy's daughter turns to domestic terrorism in the 60s—but I never finished it. To be honest, from what I recall, the writing felt clumpy and overly verbose to me. But I'm a know-nothing.

He recently said the novel will have nothing but a cultish following within the next 25-years. You can read about his bleak outlook for the future of novels by clicking this different colored lettering. In the article he also says if it takes you two or more weeks to read a novel you're not really reading it. Really? Well, I just doused my copy of Gravity's Rainbow in gasoline and threw a match on it. I guess I never read Infinite Jest either.

Anyway, I completely disagree with the guy. The folks making creative decisions are the problem, in my opinion. I truly believe many of the people making creative decisions aren't creative in the least. Look no further than Hollywood if you think I'm way off. You give people garbage and that's what they will expect. Feed them a steady diet of chick lit and those Scooby Doo episodes Dan Brown calls books and you're going to create a dumbed down and clueless reading public.

What would happen if, for argument's sake, instead of teaching students Hawthorne and Thoreau (which is not to say both don't have their place), we started teaching them Hunter S. Thompson and David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen and Thomas Pynchon? Introduce them to contemporary ideas first and when they realize how great it is, they'll naturally grow more curious and move on to other authors (like Hawthorne and Thoreau). It's just an idea. But don't give me this doomsday stuff. Everyone wants stories because everyone has one.

I suppose he has to say something to stay in the public eye. He also once said there are only about 100,000 readers and those are dwindling by the day (paraphrased—maybe he said a million). Yet I know of half a dozen folks right off the top of my head who have read Pynchon within the last six months. In other words, I think Philip Roth is full of shit. So, anyway, this was a Monday post because I was bored.

I have exciting news for the blog coming this week. I am sure my two readers are waiting with heated anticipation.

Big Sur, sir

I remember when I read Big Sur by Kerouac. I was on safari in Africa and had just unsuccessfully tried to read Ulysses for the second time and had just read Hesse's Steppenwolf. I left all three tattered copies—Joyce's masterpiece had no cover and Kerouac's had jaundice—on the truck we were traveling in. I often wonder whether anyone picked these up after me and read my name on the inside cover and then read my comments in the books' margins and thought, "wow, this guy is clueless." But that's a different story.

I remember I didn't really care for Big Sur or Steppenwolf. I was young at the time (oh, to have those times back) and I wonder whether I had trouble understanding what the two authors were trying to do. The books are similar, as I recall, because both narrators are struggling with middle-age and the questions it brought on for them. Kerouac criticized Steppenwolf in his work, but I remember thinking what a crock of shit, since I thought both of them were just a couple whinging cats who needed to get over it—or so I recall. Of course, I also remember thinking Joyce was crazy and unreadable, so this assessment could be complete lunacy.

Writing this entry now, I'm almost certain I would see both of those works in a completely different light if I read them now. In fact, at 33, I bet both of them would be brilliant to me, speak to me in ways I could never have comprehended almost 10 years ago. I might pick one of them up, if I ever work my way through Gravity's Rainbow (about half-way right now and enjoying every farcical and outrageous moment, I must say).

The reason I mention Big Sur is that I read about this new documentary. Anything about a man running away to find himself and includes Tom Waits has to be money. I look forward to checking it out.