What I’ve Been Reading – The Red Pony

August 31, 2010


What I’ve Read:
The Red Pony by John Steinbeck

The Red PonyI haven’t finished a work of fiction since March. I haven’t finished a work of fiction longer than a short story since last September.

That’s almost a year.

Now, before you take away my library card, hear me out. I HAVE been reading books. But I’ve also been starting a new job and learning to live with TWO kids and fixing a basement and discovering streaming Netflix and playing with new technology and doing all sort of other distracting things.

I’ve read books about basketball and about information architecture and about HTML5. I’ve read two collections of short stories from my McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern subscription. I’ve read about music and I’ve read about content strategy and I’ve read about writing itself.

But no real fiction. Nothing longer than a couple dozen pages.

The excuses, the excuses.

The truth is, I was exhausted with fiction. Though I missed it, I couldn’t get back into it. I forced the matter, I took it up with our library, and I wandered home wondering how I’d just checked out a John Steinbeck novella; primarily, wondering if I’d ever even open it, if I’d ever care again.

Of course I’d care. Because reading and literature are as much a part of my personality as try-too-hard sarcasm; my upbringing was framed by bookshelves, my preferences dictated by others’ words. And everything I loved about books peaked over two year’s worth of Steinbeck – I read The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and Tortilla Flat and Travels With Charley and fell in love with Salinas and Steinbeck and everything he stood for: great literature, themes and message that struck at the heart of human emotion.

The Red Pony, a novella from the early days of Steinbeck’s canon, fits under all three categories – great literature, great themes and a great message; a quick overview of the life cycle as viewed through the eyes of a young farm boy.

But, let’s be honest – I could gush about Steinbeck for hours, using as many fancy words as I could think of, filling my sentences with adjectives until they buckled under the strain. I won’t – you’re welcome – except to say The Red Pony, unlike Tortilla Flat and The Pearl (which are admittedly superior works) captures Steinbeck’s tendency toward realism and human suffering better than any of his other short works.

There is nothing complex about it. There’s a boy, a horse, and a family. There are two father figures who occupy the spectrum of understanding and tolerance. There’s the discovery of human fallacy, the reality of growing old, and the sacrifices of birth, all contributing to the slow coming of age of young Jody, a boy who really just wants a horse of his own.

Children do not come of age at once. Sure, Holden Caulfield immersed himself into the city and learned how to live as quickly as possible, but most children are exposed to life’s realities incrementally, coming to terms with death and life and the very existence of mortality not in one fell swoop, but through a series of occurrences. Sometimes they take a decade to unfold. Often, it’s even longer.

You could argue that, in this case, many of us are still struggling to come of age. We never really know if Jody reaches a solid point of understanding – like a short story, The Red Pony drops in and pulls out somewhere in the middle of the complete narrative – but we do know that he’s made progress, simply by the hints and symbols he leaves behind as we read.

That’s Steinbeck’s ultimate charm, I believe – this ability to tell a story through clues. Not through mystery, but through human nature; holding his cards to his chest, revealing only enough to win, throwing the rest away.

The Red Pony is fantastic. Coming from a Steinbeck fanatic, you probably shouldn’t expect anything less from me.

I guess that means I’m ready to start reading again.

Tags: Books, Literature, What I've Been Reading, Writers |

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Radio Shack sucks. But sometimes, so do the commenters.

December 18, 2009


Listen. I get it. There are a lot of people who work for Radio Shack that don’t enjoy working for Radio Shack.

But why me?

It’s not like I set out to be a sounding board for the teeming, unsatisfied masses that Radio Shack seems to hire. It’s not like I opened up WordPress and began piling on in hopes I’d become the center of disgruntled employees, my site the sun to their swirling planets of retail woe.

But, that’s what happened. All because I said, “Radio Shack Sucks.”

I’m not sure many commenters have even read the posts. My situation was solved. It was remedied. I figured everything out and, despite my anger at the time and my fist shaking and yelling and threats of boycott, I still buy my cheap wire and television antennas at Radio Shack. I never called for an army of employees to rise up and slay the monster.

Which makes a bigger point. This was never about the employees. This was customer versus a system. Individual versus corporation. David, Goliath, etc.

Not anymore. Now, it’s a symposium of part-time commissioned hell.

Let’s be honest. It brings a lot of traffic. It’s my most popular post (which goes a long way in proving a search engine’s ability to separate good from bad). But that doesn’t mean I’m thrilled every time Keith from Store 543 in Pasadena or Jules from some suburb of Boston stops by to drop another paragraph of poorly worded angst, like Black Marks on Wood Pulp was the Domesday Book of shitty jobs.

In fact, when Keith or Jules stop by and leave yet another un-punctuated mess in the comments of a post, I realize that to a small subset of people, that post defines what my site is – and, therefore, what my writing style and personality are. All I can do is shake my head. Saddened that this is what I’ve brought upon the Web. After so long, I’m simply too tired to respond.

What’s more, I’m unwilling to delete the comments, because sometimes it’s one of the few real things that people leave behind.

Tags: Meta, Technology, Vilhauer, Writers |

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What I’ve Been Reading: The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy

November 17, 2009


What I’ve read:
The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy – Bill Simmons

The Book of Basketball It might be a little hypocritical to slag on someone for being self-referential. As a blogger who writes primarily about his life and thoughts, most of my Internet persona is defined by self-reference.

Then again, I don’t purport to any other notion. You don’t come to Black Marks on Wood Pulp and expect non-personal writing.

However, when you read a book called The Book of Basketball, you expect it to be, for the most part, about basketball.

Let’s get this out of the way. I loved this book. As a basketball fan with a fleeting knowledge of history pre-1980s, it was a wonderful way to fill in the blanks. Was Wilt better than Russell? Was David Thompson as good as people say? Should I hate Karl Malone more than I already do? (The answers, respectively: no, yes, probably.)

I grew up watching Michael Jordan and Reggie Miller, so it’s good to have a reference point from which to compare. And if you’re looking for a more objective tome, there are probably better choices. However, if you’re looking for a down-to-earth synopsis of the NBA’s past 60 years, you can’t do much better.

The concept: Bill Simmons, who is sort of a pioneer when it comes to crafting Internet sports columns (in that he helped usher in the more relaxed, more opinionated and, ultimately, more enjoyable sports writing that we all take for granted today) uses his extreme fanhood to explain his take on the NBA, past and present.

A 96-player, pyramid based Hall of Fame that separates different classes of player based on accomplishments? Done. A listing of the top 10 teams of all time? Done. An incredibly insightful look at why Oscar Robertson’s numbers might be skewed, or a entire section devoted to what could have happened had certain moves not been made? Done. It’s like sitting down with a good friend – who also happens to be a huge NBA fan – and hashing out every great basketball argument ever made.

Yeah. It’s awesome. So let’s start picking it apart.

Seriously, Bill – your name is on the book – there’s no reason to keep reminding us that this is your opinion we’re taking on. I don’t care about who you know. I don’t need every argument to be unceremoniously finished with a reference to Teen Wolf, or a backhanded Shawshank Redemption quote.

He tackles race in an awkward way – he’s understanding, though at the same time strangely defensive and apologetic. He drops names whenever he can. He peppers his footnotes with the same kind of lame humor you’d expect to see in lesser blog comments on Deadspin. He makes no mistake that this is his book, and that we should expect more and more lame pop culture references and stories about his buddy House.

That being said, the self-referential nature only begins to grate around page 500. Did I mention the book is nearly 700 pages long? Surprisingly, it’s a fast read, though I can’t help but think it would be about 200 pages shorter if he took himself out of the story (an unfunny point he makes several times as you get closer to the end.)

See, there’s my problem. It’s easier to complain than it is to praise. Though the last three paragraphs sound like criticism, this shouldn’t frame my opinion of the book. They are minor blips on an ambitious project, one that doesn’t just present basketball history, but puts in context and in a way you can easily understand. This isn’t a book for stat hounds or nitpickers – this is a book for true fans, for those who long to have hour-long discussions about who was better: Bird of Magic.

(My answer: Bird. Bill’s surprising answer: Magic. Even as a Boston homer, Bill still couldn’t bring himself to be biased.)

Tags: Basketball, Books, Boston Celtics, Sports, What I've Been Reading, Writers, Writing |

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What I’ve Been Reading – McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Issue 31

October 22, 2009


What I’ve read:
McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Issue 31 – Dave Eggers (editor)

McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Issue 31 “Vikings, Monks, Philosophers, Whores: Old forms, unearthed.”

The title page of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Issue 31, promises a lot. Don’t worry. It delivers. Offering a peek into the past, and serving as both a historical overview and a retelling through parody and mimicry, Issue 31 takes long lost literary styles – the Socratic Dialogue, the Whore Dialogue, the Pantoum, the Biji, etc. – and compiles both a classic example and a modern retelling.

It’s this pairing of old and new – and, in turn, the differences and similarities therein – that makes Issue 31 so wonderful. I wouldn’t know a Socratic dialogue from a Shakespeare play if it wasn’t for the example (in this case, THE example: Plato’s Republic). The red text in the margins shows historical references while being unobtrusive enough to ignore in cases of rapt attention.

That so many authors (the list includes McSweeney’s regulars like Douglas Coupland, Dan Liebert and Joel Brouwer, and newcomers like Okkervil River’s Will Sheff) can tackle so many lost texts – and do it in a way that’s both true to the form while still holding strong to the McSweeney’s style – is a testament to the writers the series brings in.

But let’s face it: that anyone could spend time mastering the art of these lost texts (Douglas Coupland’s biji of a videographer’s disastrous work trip shooting for Survivor is fantastic, as is David Thomson’s Socratic dialogue on the #1 movie of all time between Charlie Chaplin, Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, Susan Sontag and Ernest Hemingway) while I struggle to master the more banal acts of language is both inspiring and a little dispiriting.

Maybe that’s just it. Maybe I’m supposed to be writing in haiku, and I never realized it.

Tags: Books, Literature, What I've Been Reading, Writers, Writing |

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The frustratingly meager state of local publishing

October 1, 2009


There’s a vicious circle that plagues a handful of local publications.

The circle: You start a new publication with little money and few supporters. First, you ask for free or donated content. The free or donated content is placed under the publication’s name. The publication uses this free or donated content to sell advertising space.

(Full disclosure. I was once one of these free/donated content providers; I wrote a book column for a new defunct men’s magazine.)

The problem: the advertising space is hard to sell because the free or donated content isn’t the same quality you’d find in a publication that pays for its content. You get a lot of first-time columnists. You get a lot of basement designers. You get a laxness of deadlines, and editors who aren’t paying attention to details.

It looks rough. And more advertisers hold back.

Simply put, the better writers will hold out for the paycheck. And until a magazine can pay for quality content, they won’t get the better writers. But they can’t afford the better writers without – you guessed it! – the advertising dollars.

Maybe you can find people who are willing to help out – who are willing to offer services at a reduced rate, or a rate based on publication numbers. Maybe you can find a collective who are more focused on putting out great content, regardless of the advertising costs involved. Maybe you have to take out a loan in the beginning and pay quality writers in the beginning, hoping you’ll break even eventually.

Until then, though, you have a handful of publications, sitting on racks across the city, that pale when looked at critically. They’re frustratingly meager, living down to their promise.

How do you get good content without breaking the bank? Good question. I’ve got no idea, which is why I’m not a publisher.

But someone’s got to have the answer. I mean, content’s still king, people.

Or did I miss the memo that said otherwise?

Tags: Journalism, Sioux Falls, Writers, Writing |

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The not-so-imminent death of the novel

September 10, 2009


A lot of people in the humanities and publishing industries spend a lot of time wringing their hands and furrowing their brows over the predicted downfall of scholarship and the decimation of reading.

So it’s nice to read something positive about the digital revolution in humanities, as Kathleen Fitzpatrick (member of the digitally-inclined, NEH-funded MediaCommons for intellectual exchange between scholars, students and the public) offers in the most recent issue of Humanities. She answers questions on blogging as the next step in novelization, the conversation brewing in scholarly circle, and the supposed death of the novel.

From the September/October 2009 issue of Humanities, a publication of the NEH:

The first video MTV aired was the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.” Has the television killed the novel?
The death of the novel has been greatly exaggerated. If not, how could we possibly have a project like Infinite Summer, in which hundreds of people are reading Infinite Jest together?

Or will the Internet kill it?
It might change it, but it won’t kill it. In fact, the Internet gives the lie to many of our anxieties about the state of reading right now; so many people are reading and writing so much online that it becomes crystal clear that ‘no one reads anymore’ really means ‘no one reads anything I think is good anymore.’

With all of the emphasis on digital will anyone read an actual book made of paper in twenty years?
Absolutely! The actual book form isn’t dying, any more than radio died when television came along. It’s just that radio developed a particular niche that wasn’t replicated by television. Similarly, books will survive, but the kinds of things we want to read in print versus the kinds of things we want to read digitally will gradually differentiate.

Read more here: “Impertinent Questions with Kathleen Fitzpatrick”.

A dissident voice telling us that the future of the book isn’t all binary code and Kindles. Weird – a breath of fresh (and optimistic) air seems to have just wafted through here.

Tags: Blogging, Books, Literature, Writers, Writing |

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What I’ve Been Reading – The Cheese Monkeys

September 9, 2009


What I’ve read:
The Cheese Monkeys – Chip Kidd

Chip Kidd - The Cheese Monkeys

Until finishing The Cheese Monkeys, I hadn’t finished a book since before Isaac was born.

I mean, whoa. Right?

To be honest, I didn’t think I’d finish this one either. I wanted to hate The Cheese Monkeys from the moment I picked it up. Without even reaching the actual writing, I could see that the book was packed with design-for-the-sake-of-design.

Blurbs were chopped from one page to the next, quips about blank pages and challenges to the reader’s assumptions, and an overall feeling of “look at how clever I am!” threatened to bog down the entire crusade.

But I got over all of that. Despite the fact that the writing was a little too Special Topics in Calamity Physics for my taste – by which I mean it was a little too cute; a little too unrealistic in that real people have never spoken like this in the history of language – I found myself forgetting all of the design cleverness that plagued the preface.

My reasons for enjoying the book:

1. I find the philosophy of design really interesting. At times, I find it long-winded and falsely anti-authoritarian, but it’s still really interesting. And this book, written by a graphic designer who is posing as a writer, deals with that philosophy in spades.

2. It reminded me of college. Not of the person I was, but of the traditions that reside therein. It reminded me of registration day, and the musty smell of lecture halls, and of studying late in the night, and of neighborhood bars.

3. There’s mystery. Despite the cuteness, there’s a mystery behind Winter Sorbeck, the Commercial Art/Graphic Design professor who attempts to make his students’ lives hell. It’s gripping.

Okay. Stop. Let’s amend that last one. While the mystery is gripping, the conclusion is maddening. I’ll add this:

3a. However, the answer to said mystery is a bunch of deus ex machina bullshit.

Yeah. I just went there.

The mystery behind W. Sorbeck is that he’s mysterious. You don’t really know his deal, despite attempts to crack the facade.

But then – boom! – a random outburst (our protagonist throws a wrapper on the ground; W. Sorbeck challenges our protagonist to discover the person who designed it; lo and behold! It’s W. Sorbeck! See? Deus Ex Machina Bullshit) and a drunken conversation at the bar lead to everything spilling out into the open.

So the Big Bad Professor suddenly has a soft spot because his work wasn’t appreciated? Unlikely he would care, given what we had learned about him previously. But it worked to move the plot along, I guess, and it was quickly forgotten. Mystery solved. And now what?

Well, from there, things get weird. Not plot advancing weird, but weird for its own sake, as if Kidd was eschewing plot for the sake of art.

The same art that he seems to both ridicule and embrace throughout The Cheese Monkeys, depending on the form.

The same art that he uses to muddy the final chapter into an impossible to understand mess.

In literature, if you want your final point to be interpreted freely, using the powers of deductive reasoning or scientific method or art theory or any of those other open-ended concepts, you need to at least first give some guidelines. You need to steer your reader in the right direction, then set him or her free to discover what he or she wants to discover WITHIN THE REALM OF YOUR STORY.

Chip Kidd doesn’t do that. Instead, he introduces some kind of confusing high art that he’s attempting to pass off as introspective literature. And he has the protagonist’s not-so-secret-crush do the deed, despite the reader knowing that she’s off kilter and nothing she does makes any sense within the solid structure of graphic design.

In this way, the book ends in the same way that the preface begins – each half separated from the other, impossible to understand as a whole, unconnected to previous events, unwilling to lead the reader in the right direction.

And in this way, 200 pages of fun design talk and college memories were smashed by an incomprehensible series of events that never manage to fit together and don’t even make sense in the end. Simply put, the book tried to be lofty, but simply couldn’t find the right propulsion to get it there.

Other than that, though, I totally liked it.

Tags: Advertising and Marketing, Books, Literature, What I've Been Reading, Writers |

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