Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Getting a Tour of My Home Town in Middlesex

What a delight for me as a reader: A Pulitzer Prize winning book set in my hometown, Detroit. Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides is a fabulous tour of the place I knew as a child and young adult. This tour comes along for the ride as part of a grand tale about finding and accepting one's identity.

The narrator of the book, Cal, is feeling a rebirth coming one. It will be his third birth. The second one occurred at the age of 14 when he discovered that he was not really a girl. Cal is hoping that this third birth will help him come to terms with his unique hermaphroditic self and clear the way for him to have a successful relationship with a women. And good news, that woman just showed up.

This three-generation tale begins with protagonist Cal/Callie's grandparents surviving the burning of Smyrna on the shifting Greco-Turkish border. The grandparents are brother and sister but unaware of the genetics that cause strange mutations to occur in close-blood relationships, they marry and have children. Fast forward twenty years to Detroit, their daughter marries her second cousin and the recessive gene for a hermaphroditic condition comes alive in their second-born child, Callie. The doctor that delivers Callie has poor vision and poor instincts and so no one knows that Callie is not built like other girls.

Eugenides takes his time telling the tale starting in grandparents' village on Mt. Olympus to their escape from burning Smyrna and journey to US, landing as all immigrants do in Ellis Island. We learn about what an immigrant family must do to stay alive during the depression and how prohibition was the right ingredient for a certain small business to thrive. He takes us into the fifties and sixties as a family restaurant comes alive and then is burned to the ground in the Detroit riots. We watch young Callie grow up unaware of her condition, first in historic Indian Village in Detroit and then in upper class Gross Pointe where she watches her friends bloom into beautiful young girls. As Callie's voice gets lower and her body grows tall but remains free of curves, she begins to wonder about herself. She becomes especially worried when she feels the all-too-physical pangs of love for her best friend. An accident lands her in the emergency room, where a surprised doctor sees what no one else before him has seen - that Callie is actually a boy. The reader, who has known  this for 400 pages finally takes a breath.

The last 150 pages of the book describe the weeks and months after the fateful day in the emergency room. Callie takes it upon herself to make the necessary transitions to become Cal without the intervention of parents or doctors by running away to California. He first hooks up with teenage Dead-heads, then makes a living as a freak in a burlesque show. This second birthing lasts about 5 months. Cal is busted and sent home, where he assumes his role of second son in the family. Eugenides' tale ends here. We are spared scenes depicting the taunts of Cal's classmates which he tossed away with a line on page 1. We are also spared the anguish of his young adult years as he unsuccessfully tries to create relationships with women. But we do get glimmers of the third birthing at the beginning of each chapter and share his hope that this birth is a keeper.

Some are calling this a Great American novel ala Huckleberry Finn. One can make a good case for that with the novel's deep look at ethnicity, race relationships, incest and gender identity. Through Cal's family's eyes, we witness the depression, the race riots, the Vietnam War and the hippie era in California. The book's breadth is huge.

I read Middlesex as a breather book between heady Time 100 books. It has done its job and "wiped the palate" clean after my reading Never Let Me Go and watching the film Naked Lunch. I am now ready to pick up Beloved. But I don't mean to imply that Middlesex is a light book. It is a full, ripe novel that, like Ragtime, is a big treat to read.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Filming Burroughs

Years ago I saw a tantalizing scene from the movie, Naked Lunch, in which a typewriter turned into a giant cockroach spouted off a stream of paranoiac drivel. It was so bizarre as to be laugh-out-loud funny. Earlier that evening, I had turned down the chance to see the whole movie because I was "not going to suffer through more William S. Burroughs, thank you". But this movie was nothing like Burroughs' books. That scene stuck with me and after 20-some years I finally watched this incredible film in its entirety last night.

The film is only loosely based on the book; its true subject is Burroughs himself. Naked Lunch, the film, tells the story of a bug exterminator named William Lee who comes home one day to find his wife "shooting up" bug juice and having a party with his friends. He is a sharp-shooter and often plays William Tell by shooting a glass off his wife's head. He decides to do so this day, and this time, tragically, he misses. She dies from a shot to the head.

Lee flees with his typewriter to Interzone (his drug-induced experience of Algiers). While in his drugged haze, he writes "reports" about the people he meets in Interzone (mostly gay men) and of the paranoiac hallucinations he's experiencing. He stores these reports in his room and mails copies to his friends in the USA (reference Alan Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac), along with pleas for them to join him in Interzone.

Lee does not remember writing these letters and so is surprised when his friends show up. In fact, they have been "blown away" by the writing and have found a publisher for his work. The friends have come to help Lee arrange and edit the pieces (his reports) for publication as the book, Naked Lunch. Lee sobers up for the work. They leave him to complete the writing, and although he falls back into his drug habit (opium this time), he finishes the job and eventually leaves Interzone, but only after having made peace with himself about his wife and about his sexuality.

Screenwriter/director David Cronenberg is working on a lot of levels. One can think of the movie straight-up as a biography of William Burroughs. In fact, a more accurate description includes a number of paranoid hallucinatory scenes including anthropomorphic representations of opium (and people sucking juice from these creatures) and the aforementioned typewriter-turned-cockroach that gives secret-agent Lee assignments to visit certain individuals and write reports based on his findings. Lee does in fact go on these assignments and in this way manages to get out of his room and interact with people in Interzone. By the way, the "reports" are actually the vignettes that become Naked Lunch (the book). Lots of self-referencing here. This is a complex movie that, while not being in any way true to the book, provides a rich film experience.

William Burroughs wrote that it was Joan's death that freed his voice for writing. Look at what came out: searing satire about homosexuals in power who call the shots in the world they live in. Burroughs was a gay man during a time when it was not only frowned upon to be gay, but illegal. He married (as did his friend in Algiers, Paul Bowles - Sheltering Sky) as a way of living a normal life and perhaps providing a cover for his homosexuality.

Burroughs' genius - and it is true genius - is forced into a sometimes passive-aggressive stream of sexual-political consciousness. The prose in his books is raw. The rants are unforgiving. The content of his books is just too hot for film, and so the film of the same name instead tells the story of the blocked writer, Burroughs, who finds his writing voice after shooting his wife. The vignettes of the book are only occasionally reproduced in the film. One is a story recited by Burroughs to the powerful, evil industrialist, A. J.; another is a scene in the aviary at A.J.'s house. Both instances produce a shocking effet in the film but are, in fact, tame examples of the stories in the book.

While I found the book challenging to get through, the movie was accessible to me in its own bizarre way- and even enjoyable -- I laughed out loud a number of times. The movie's noir style works completely. Acting is fabulous, the sets even more so. The setting for the opium den at the end of the film is true genius.

A movie like this obviously has a very limited audience. It is an art movie and so begs to be forgiven for the crude material in the hallucinations. If you are a fan of beat literature, you will find this film fascinating. But a warning to the squeamish there is a typewriter who turns into a bug who talks through his anus. Oh my.

Friday, October 14, 2011

The Lite Read Between the Heavy Reads

Reading one heavy book after another takes its toll on the brain, so I look for books to "cleanse the palate" before I pick up the next Time 100 book.

I'm finding a lot of relief in books of my generation that I eschewed in the past. Tom Robbins's books, for example. I truly do love all of his word games and bad poetry. Meet me in Cognito, Honey. Oh, yes, let's do that. Such a riot!

This past week after three "thinkers" in a row: The Sound and the Fury, The Sun Also Rises and The Moviegoer, I took a "trip" back in time to the 1960s and The Electric Koolaid Acid Test. Tom Wolfe created an incredible history of the antics of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. He was there when Kesey was released from jail and interviewed Kesey and many of the Pranksters including beat-generation hero, Neal Cassidy. Great read! (Or should I say, Great skim!)

I am also finding relief in reading light, feminine books that balance the heavy, male-dominant Time 100 list. Chocalat and Julie & Julia fit the bill here, but I get bored with them quickly. I go for meatier books like The Book Thief and City of Thieves. I picked up Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides last night and am loving it so far. The mind glides across his prose like a skater on ice. Lovely.

So what's the next Time 100 book up? I'm still mulling it over. I sampled Delilo's White Noise last night and it looks very good. But I am expecting the 1st  book of the Powell series, A Dance to the Music of Time, in the mail any day and am anxious to get that started. So stay tuned ....

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

The Movie Goer

Walker Percy: The Moviegoer 1961

This is a second-read for me. I don't recall anything about the first reading except that I was enamored with the book. That was 25 years ago. Today I'm not quite sure what I saw in it. But since it is a kind-of coming-of-age book for a 30 year old, it makes sense that it would no longer appeal to me. There are definite parallels to Catcher in the Rye - but with somewhat older characters.

The story takes place during mardi gras in New Orleans.The main character, Binx Bolling, is good at making money but is often clueless about how to act with people. In fact, he hasn't figured himself out yet. He deplores leading a typical upper-middle class life because it feels dead and so decides to live apart from friends and family and go on a search to understand Meaning (with a capital M) and perhaps God -- but God without religion. Unfortunately, his hormones keep kicking in and he doesn't get very far with the search. Instead, he chases skirts (this is 1961), goes to the beach and plays the role of obedient nephew to his very successful, very wealthy, and very social aunt and uncle. We're talking Kings and Queens of important mardi gras krewes, here.

Binx's cousin, Kate, is having big, big psychological problems, and Binx tries to help her stay grounded. From our modern eyes she appears to have social phobia along with a poor sense of self. She is seeing a therapist, but is so fragile that one wishes that she had access to our modern pharmacopeia. Kate is complex: at times fragile, even psychotic; other times she seems strong and insightful. Binx has his work cut out keeping her from flipping out, but he doesn't seem to mind. The book moves along without much plot activity other than these things until Binx and Kate take a trip to Chicago where it all begins to both fall apart and come together.

Percy has a way of pacing events so that the story never bogs down. Binx's first person narrative - like that of Holden Caufield's in Catcher in the Rye - gives a delightfully cock-eyed view of his world and of the other characters. Binx has more skill with reading people than he or his family give him credit for and the reader benefits from this. The story's resolution is surprising, producing a situation for each Binx and Kate that, to me, seems shaky even though Percy seems content with it.

As I said, I wasn't crazy about the book this time around, but it brings up issues of meaning, religion, family and neuroticism that a younger reader will probably find illuminating.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

The Sun Also Rises

--- Spoilers included ---
Hemingway's, The Sun Also Rises is a simple book: The characters chat, drink, fish, drink, chat, watch bull fights, chat, fight, drink ... and have a lot of sex, too. This is the Lost Generation, the men and women who came back from WWI are unable to find their way through life in America and so instead become the ex-patriots who frequent the salons and cafes in Paris.

Although this is a sad story, Hemingway's choice of title indicates his belief that each day brings a fresh start. Portions of the story are autobiographical - Hemingway lived and loved this fast life as an ex-pat in Paris. His friend, Gertrude Stein coined the term "Lost Generation".

The book is an easy read. The writing is a mix of true-to-life descriptions of fish jumping and bulls running along with inane conversations that give witness to the characters' superficial lives.

The protagonist, is Jake, a young man now sexually impotent due to a  freak accident in the war. He works as a journalist and hangs out in the cafes of Paris with a few war buddies and a lively crowd of aristocrats, artists and writers. The characters live a false, fast-paced life, with drink and sex as covers for deep wounds, presumably left over from an ugly war. Even Jake, who is okay with his groin injury, has bouts of drinking to cover his heart wounds from an on-again, off-again relationship with Brett, a sexy, beautiful divorcee. Brett is a sex addict and so unable to settle with Jake in his injured state. Which is probably a good thing for him because Brett is bad news. She is not only engaged to an alcoholic named Mike, but has affairs with every man who grabs her attention.

Jake is a serious fan of the bull fights in Pamplona and has planned a fishing trip to Spain followed by a week at the bull fights with a friend visiting from New York. Jake's knowledge of the bull fighters and bulls has given him an "in" with the hotelier who puts up the bull fighters and the hotelier arranges for rooms for Jake and his friends. The expectation is that the friends will take up Jake's passion for the fights. However, a recent affair between Brett and a sensitive Jewish writer named Robert (who was a mid-weight boxer in college) colors the scene. When Bret and Mike arrive in Pamplona, Robert is with them, unable to let go of Brett.

Mike pointedly tells Robert to leave. But Robert is too much in love to see that he is unwelcome. The scenes get ugly as the characters turn to heavy drinking. But it gets uglier yet when Brett falls for the star bull fighter and with Jake's help succeeds in meeting him then seducing him. To Mike, this is just another day in the life of being Brett's finance', but Robert becomes unglued and begins messing up faces including the bull fighter's. Robert finally leaves town in shame and sorrow on the last day of the festival. The bull fighting community including the hotelier are outraged at all of this and further incensed when, after the bull fights, they learn that Brett has run off to Madrid with the bull fighter. Jake and his friends are no longer welcome in Pamploma. Mike returns to Scotland, the friend to New York and Jake tells everyone that he will finish his vacation fishing near the French/Spanish border. In truth, he stays in that area in order to be ready for the inevitable call for rescue from Brett once she has had her fill of the handsome bull fighter.

After being rescued, as Brett comes to terms with the drama she has created and decides to return to Mike, she says to Jake, "You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch. .. It's sort of what we have instead of God." To which Jake replies, "Some people have God. Quite a lot." Brett replies, "He never worked well with me." And Jake: "Should we have another martini?"

Yes! Lets have another martini. The last 5 bottles of wine were not quite enough to cover these wounds. The story ends with Jake and Brett in a cafe in Madrid imaging the "pretty" life they could have had together.