Monday

It’s Monday! We’re not there! Where are we?

Out and about.

So let’s continue to digest:

Writing: Almost no point in that category these days. I believe I wrote last week or the week before that I’ve admitted that one of the sources of my writing paralysis is the fact that I can’t stay away from the news these days – and that would be fixed if I would just stay away from it, not permanently, not forever, not even daily, but just…the first part of my day. I am fairly sure that seeing what’s going on and what people are saying about it immediately fills up my head with both information and responses – none of which I am really in the business of publicly offering these days – and drives everything else out.

Yes, I have a book I’m working on, but yes, a contract has been signed, but it’s still in the thinking phase, and casually at that. I probably won’t hit it hard until mid-fall. But even so, I really do want to be working on other things – my fiction, possibly another spiritual-type book, but the brain is just in that octopus grip of current events, and it’s nuts.

Stahp.

Maybe being in the woods will help. Who knows.

I mean – I do write in this space, and I don’t regret it, and it prompts conversation, but…my energies need to be directed towards something more substantive, always.

Well, I do think this post on St. Rose of Lima is good. Yes, it’s a repeat, but readers come and go so frequently here, with a rash of new readers over the past month, in particular, I thought I’d reprint it. Because, as I said – I do think it’s pretty, pretty, good.

Reading: Two novels last week.

Amsterdam by Ian McEwan and The Nickel Boys by Colsin Whitehead.

Both had, not surprisingly, great writing, but ultimately both also got a meh from me. Let’s take a quick look:

I’m hampered in writing about them because I left both at home, and I’m not there. I had some good passages marked, but, well, it’s probably all for the good. This post will be shorter.

As per usual, I take my summaries from the publisher:

On a chilly February day, two old friends meet in the throng outside a London crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly’s lovers in the days before they reached their current eminence: Clive is Britain’s most successful modern composer, and Vernon is a newspaper editor. Gorgeous, feisty Molly had other lovers, too, notably Julian Garmony, Foreign Secretary, a notorious right-winger tipped to be the next prime minister. In the days that follow Molly’s funeral, Clive and Vernon will make a pact with consequences that neither could have foreseen

I’ve read McEwan. Atonement, like everyone else. Black Dogs, which I remember liking. Enduring Love, same. I’ve not been interested in his more recent works – I mean, I don’t care about a fictionalized Hitchens or something about an unborn baby and Hamlet. Maybe you liked them? I wasn’t interested. But this one did, so I took the plunge. McEwan’s great advantage is that he’s short. I mean his books are. It’s not a huge investment of time, and despite any of the books flaws, their strengths mean that you don’t feel as if that two or three hours was wasted.

Here’s what I liked about Amsterdam: I really liked the exploration of the inner lives of a creative type and a management type. McEwan’s depiction of what it feels like to be creatively stymied, then to have a glimpse of something good and real, finding it out of your grasp and finding space to just nab it and wrestle it is masterful, probably because even though the creative character is a musician, the dynamic is similar. The other character is a newspaper editor, and his issue is middle-aged funk, followed by ethical questions, followed by a driving sense of righteousness and power. Again, McEwan nails these inner lives.

And at the center of these intertwining lives are ethical dilemmas, which gives great interest to the book. Curtis, the composer, is on the brink of finding, as it were, perfect resolution, when he encounters a situation that calls for his help. He’d have to interrupt the flow in order to address it. What he almost had would be lost.

Great, perfect expression of this particular tension in the creative life. Heightened here, of course, as it’s part of a novel, but extended, the issue all creatives face. I have this idea, this notion, this call, this talent….but life calls, as well. Sometimes co-existence can happen, and all aspects of life can flourish. But sometimes, something is going to have to be sacrificed. What will it be and what are the consequences?

The editor’s dilemma is although ethical, but of a different nature. Should he run the scandalous photos of a despised (by him) politician – photos that indicate a proclivity that while scandalous, really have no impact on the performance of his job, or evidently, his family life?

Dilemmas, dilemmas, everywhere. That part of the novel I enjoyed. The resolution? Not so much? Rushed, forced and not satisfying. But a bit predictable, too.

But – thematically …true. For ultimately, what this is about is the relationship between self-destruction and mutual-destruction, so as you wonder why the novel is called Amsterdam, the city in a country where euthanasia is a part of…life. Well, the answer becomes clear.

The Nickel Boys – I sought this out because I so enjoyed Whitehead’s story “The Teresa Job” in a recent New Yorker issue, and I’d never read any of his novels before. Again, lazy blogger’s plot summary:

When Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, he finds himself trapped in a grotesque chamber of horrors. Elwood’s only salvation is his friendship with fellow “delinquent” Turner, which deepens despite Turner’s conviction that Elwood is hopelessly naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. As life at the Academy becomes ever more perilous, the tension between Elwood’s ideals and Turner’s skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades.
 

This was a readable book, and the first section, in particular, was evocative and heartbreaking – because you know something bad’s going to happen. You just know it, even if you don’t “know” what’s coming. There’s just a deepening sense of dread as you read about a young man working hard to make his way, inspired by the fight for Civil Rights and a well-worn recording of the speeches of Reverend King.

But once we move to the reform school, the writing loses life and I got more of a fill-in-the-blanks feeling. Which makes sense, in a way, since this part of the book is, indeed, based on historical records of a real Florida reform school.

It’s hard for me to put my finger on what exactly made this book leave me unsatisfied. I think it may be because there’s some sort of disconnect. Forgive me ahead of time, because I’m terrible at writing about literature at a deeper level, and I’m sitting here outside at the Jordan Motel with nature singing above me in the trees, but also morning traffic coursing by on the state highway in front of me.

I wouldn’t want Whitehead to get heavy-handed about drawing connections. Then we don’t have literature anymore. But I just felt that something was missing here. We have Ellwood, his promise stripped of him for the moment by racism and criminal injustice. We have this abusive reform school, with the abuse much worse for the Black boys. And then we have glimpses of some of these characters in the future, here and there. Some of them are not doing great, but others are doing fine, and one even very well.

It’s clear there are consequences and scars, burdens still carried. But all in all, the situations in this book seemed…isolated from the course of American history. As I was reading this book about Black life in the early 60’s, I’m listening to Thelonius Monk and we just watched a movie of the period with Sydney Poitier. I can’t sort it out, although regionalism is certainly key. I found myself wanting to read something about how. How is it in a single country in a single period, horrors can be meted out on Black young people in one place, but in another, Black musicians, movie stars and politicians are making their way, slowly, yes, but walking. I know. It’s not different today. Which is perhaps my point.

So that’s not a fault of Whitehead. Perhaps it’s a strength – perhaps it’s an indication of the book’s quality. It led me to ask how could that happen….which might lead me to then ask…how can this happen?

Watching:

We went and saw Pig starring Nicholas Cage at the local independent film theatre – it’s the only place it’s played in the area. We’ve been wanting to see it ever since the trailers were released, hinting that what we have here is John Wick except with Nicholas Cage and a truffle pig. When they first showed me the trailer they were amazed and laughing at it, but as I pointed out to them, “Well, it worked, right? I mean – how can you not see this movie at this point?”

Unfortunately, the local release came too late for College Guy, who had departed the previous week, and I felt a little badly about seeing it without him, but he granted me permission, so off we went.

So, no, it’s not like John Wick – except Kid #5 said, vehemently, “Yes it is! Have you even seen John Wick! Thematically…it’s the same….” Now, I thought I had seen John Wick, but maybe I haven’t. I’ve seen 2 and 3, but…maybe not 1? Shrugs.

Anyway, Pig is not like John Wick in that it does not involve endlessly violent revenge. It does seek answers and justice, and perhaps some of that is reached in the end.

The film was far more meditative than I anticipated. In fact, I might even characterize it as a meditation. It’s mesmerizing – including the soul-deadened Cage, who gives a great performance – and intriguing.

If you’re interested at all, you probably already know the plot. Cage plays Rob, who lives in the woods well outside Portland with his truffle-seeking pig. He and the pig go search out truffles, which he then sells to a young, striving restaurant supplier. One detail I love is that the supplier’s striving is indicated, not only by his clothes and his car, but also by the fact that he constantly listens to instructional classical music recordings.

Well, of course, the pig is stolen – because she’s very good at what she does, and there’s great demand for her skills among the other scruffy truffle-seekers out there in the woods. Now we follow Rob into Portland as he looks for his pig. Along the way, we get a few answers as to why Rob has isolated himself, who he was before his isolation and what drives Amir, the young supplier.

One of the strengths of this film is its obliqueness. It’s an interesting choice in an era of formulaic plot points and on-the-nose character motivations. We know there’s tragedy on all sides, but we’re never really told exactly what happened. We’re very much living in the present with these characters. It’s a fascinating narrative point of view, and reflective, I think, of how we actually live – I see you, and I know part of your story, I know a bit about what brought you to this point. But I don’t know everything – and you might not even understand it yourself. There’s a level at which, in a film, this is a little frustrating, but then you just have to settle in and accept the bigger picture. Again. Life.

It’s a film, I think, in the end, about compassion. About having compassion for human beings, who are on the paths they’re on…because they’re on those paths, and we don’t know how they got there, but it really doesn’t matter, when it comes to how we treat each other in the present.

I do think this is a film I’ll watch again when it comes out on video – my expectations going in, I think, impacted my experience.

Also.

Is there really and underground, afterhours restaurant employees Fight Club in Portland?

Is that a thing?

Okay, time to go pack a hiking pack and figure out the crazy time zones in this part of Tennessee. We are right on the cusp of the line and our travels today are going to take us back and forth between them a few times. Got to keep it straight.