Horseshoes, Hand Grenades, and …Hardbacks.

I like a near miss.

It’s always a joy, of course, to read a book and simply not be able to imagine its being any better. As I’ve indicated in previous posts, I felt that way about Erickson’s Zeroville, as well as about Padgett Powell’s Edisto.

But once in a while I’m somewhat cheered by reading a book that comes close to pulling off what its author seemed to intend but that ultimately falls short. It feels like a sign that the author is reaching to articulate something just beyond his or her capacity. It’s like getting to watch someone learn how to write.

I remember reading a relatively early book by Denis Johnson, Resuscitation of a Hanged Man. This was back in the early 90’s, and Johnson’s star was just starting to rise. Later in the 90’s he would publish the knockout book of stories, Jesus’ Son, and just last year he won the National Book Award for his breakout novel, Tree of Smoke. At the time, though, he’d published but three novels, of which Resuscitation was the most recent. I’d been pulling for Johnson over the course of his first couple of books, and I had high hopes for the new one. But when I finished it, what I thought was: Wow, almost.

Rather than disappointed, though, I felt kind of elated, because he’d almost done it. He’d gotten closer to writing a masterpiece than he had before, and I could feel the momentum of his progression towards …something. Maturity, maybe? A stronger command of his obvious talent? Anyway, he was getting there, and I was getting to watch.

Writing is a peculiar art form. I’ve always considered all of the arts –painting, music, sculpture, dance—to be attempts to express what is ineffable about the human condition. Literature, counterintuitively, is an attempt to express the ineffable using words, which means that a near miss is something impressive in itself.

Sometimes, when a writer acknowledges the impossibility of what he or she is trying to accomplish, but proceeds anyway, something amazing happens. I’m thinking here of Joan Wickersham’s powerful, painful book The Suicide Index. Wickersham’s father committed suicide after a long but largely hidden struggle with depression. As anyone who has survived such an incident will tell you, trying to put the aftermath of such an event into words is nearly impossible. For a writer, coming face to face with the possibility that there simply might not be language available to describe her experience could have rendered her mute. I’m surprised she didn’t just publish a blank book.

Instead, she made a study of the uselessness of trying to use language to impose order on the chaotic effects of her father’s suicide. Structuring her book as an index –that most ordered of documents—she articulated not merely the experience itself but the failure of trying to do so.

Wickersham’s book caught the notice of a lot of critics. It garnered a surprise nomination for the National Book Award, and landed on the best books of the year lists of Salon.com, The Boston Globe, the L.A. Times, and the Washington Post. It’s a brilliant book on a tough subject, certainly, but I think that the attention the book earned had to do with something more, something left unsaid in the reviews. I think that Wickersham produced a book that, whether deliberately or not, goes to the very heart of what all writers try to do. She nakedly exposed the struggle to bend language to the purpose of saying what can't be said.

She wrote a near miss, and did so brilliantly.

Chiropterology

Lie down and make yourself comfortable on the couch.


I’ve been reading a lot of Batman recently, to be specific the Long Halloween and Dark Victory. Reading these books back to back was a wonderful experience that got me thinking about who Batman is and why we identify with him. I will preface the below blog with the foreknowledge that I am one of the 7 individuals below the age of 40 that has not seen the Dark Knight movie that is all the rage. I’ve heard it was good though.

Growing up I took to comics like a duck takes to water, actually more like a fish takes to water. Comics always seemed natural and homey to me. I loved just about all comics but my favorite by a long shot was Spider-Man. Spidey appealed to me because he was a normal guy thrust into abnormal circumstances (in this case getting bitten by a radioactive spider). I must admit my knowledge of the mythos of Batman is not as extensive as Spideys’ but I am not unfamiliar with the back-story. So I offer the two as a compare and contrast. Let’s dissect them and see what makes these “heroes” tick.

A hero is only as good as his back-story and the case of these two there are striking similarities. Bruce Wayne’s (Batman) mother and father were gunned down in a back alley of Gotham city when he was a young boy. He was terrified and felt totally helpless to prevent the killings. He ended up being raised by his family’s butler, Alfred. Peter Parker’s (Spidey) parents are never really mentioned, we just know they are not there. He ended up being raised by his Aunt May and his Uncle Ben. He like Wayne had a pleasant childhood. Parker’s lasted longer as he was in his teens before the startling events that led to Spider-man occurred. Also, unlike Wayne, Parker had an opportunity to avoid the death of his Uncle Ben at the hands of a gunman. The future gunman actually ran by Parker on his way out of a building. Parker could have easily stopped the gunman as by that time he had his spider powers but he neglected to by indicating it was “not his problem”. The subsequent killing of his uncle left Parker with a desire to use his powers responsibly.

Therein lies our first difference between our heroes. Spidey is a hero born from a responsibility to use his powers to protect others. Batman is a hero born out of a sense of helplessness. He was helpless the night his parents died and he will never be helpless again. Not only will he never be helpless again, he will help those who are helpless.

Secondly, both characters lack a true father in their stories. Parker was raised by his Uncle Ben and Wayne by Alfred. Parker as Spider-man continues to show an almost immature thought process, cracking jokes while fighting the evildoers. Wayne as Batman doesn’t do jokes. His whole persona is dour and he fights evil with a dark countenance. Their actions in the way they fight crime to me is an indication of where they stand as men whose fathers left them early. Parker seems to have stagnated in his adolescence; it was the best time of his life when his uncle was still alive and he was a typical teen. Wayne has shut himself down, becoming unfeeling like the world that took his parents away. His logic being if he chose to love and feel again he might have to experience the pain of loss again.

Thirdly, if we look at their superhero personas we can learn a lot about what makes them heroes. Spider-man’s suit is bright red and blue. It proclaims to the evildoers and citizens alike that someone different is here to save them. Parker created his suit by hand and even invented the web shooters that spray his webs. His suit is functional and somewhat fun. Batmans' suit is gray and black. It proclaims to evildoers that someone is here that they need to fear. Wayne even says he adopted the bat as a symbol to strike fear into the hearts of those who would do harm to innocents. Batman is seen often with a utility belt. It seems at times the belt has everything: grenades, gas masks, anti poison pills, etc. I believe this stems from a desire of Wayne to never again be caught unprepared, as he was the night of his parent’s attacks.

Finally, the last differences between the two heroes are their friends and villains. Spider-man’s friends are many - MJ, Flash Thompson, The Human Torch, etc. His villains are all similar in that they pick a theme and build a costume to fit it. Their motivations are usually profit and or self-improvement. Batman has only a few friends, mainly the men who have donned the mantle of Robin over the years; his villains are all treacherous and deadly. They are insane men and women who are out to destroy Gotham City or the world. One of the prominent buildings in Gotham is Arkham Asylum. It houses all the lunatics that make up Batmans’ pantheon of foes.

In conclusion, I think we are drawn to Batman as a character because first he is a regular guy like us. He has no superpowers. He has risen above the regular through sheer will of mind and cleverly created gadgets. Secondly, unlike Spider-man we cannot always be sure Batman’s intentions are purely good. When reading the comics you begin to wonder if this will not be the time Batman crosses the line and kills one of his villains. Finally, I think we are drawn to him because he is flawed as a human being. He is a young boy who has never recovered from a tragic event that occurred when he was a child. We have all faced a trauma of some sort and are ready and willing to identify with our fellow sufferers.

In closing, I urge you to read the comics I mentioned above. They are extraordinarily well written and can be used to formulate your own opinions about Batman. I for one now look on Batman and Spider-man with different eyes. I am not sure either can be seen as a “hero”. After reading the Batman comics I think the only true hero in them is Jim Gordon, Gotham’s police chief. He is a steadfast honorable man, maybe the last one Gotham has and certainly one our real world can use more of.

In a rut....

I’m in a rut and I can’t get out. You know how sometimes you’re hungry but nothing appeals to you? Well, I’m horrified to say that has been happening to me about books lately (and we know it’s not because I don’t have plenty), but I think I may have just found the answer. We just got in a new book by Ali Smith called The Book Lover. Everything in this anthology is something that she has loved reading over the course of her life. There are famous authors and not so famous ones. There are pieces she loved as a child as well as pieces she’s loved as an adult. There are poems as well as prose. And there are people I’ve never heard of in it – which to me is the most appealing aspect of the book. I’ll keep you posted!

Readership Up

I can remember when I first realized I liked reading.


I was one of those people who read because I was forced to for English class. I remember reading Moby Dick, Anna Karenina, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and of course the Odyssey. Some I liked and some I didn’t care for. I wish I could tell you reading all that classic literature prompted me to become an avid reader but regrettably it did not.

So what then prompted by lush desire for reading? I was sitting in my high school library working on an awful project about Albert Camus and the rise of existentialism in The Stranger when I suddenly realized I didn’t really like the book or Camus very much. I randomly started wandering the library. I arrived in the fiction section where I went to the first part of the alphabet my eyes resting on Richard Adams’ Watership Down. I read the back cover of the book, bunnies huh? Still it did seem slightly interesting and certainly better than The Stranger. So I checked it out.

I went home later that evening on the bus where I fished the book out of my bag. I started reading and was 3 chapters in before I got off the bus. I can scarcely remember eating dinner such was the pull of these rabbits plight. Before I knew it, it was time to hit the sheets for the evening. I had worked my way through just over half the book and my desire was to stay up and finish it but I knew the practicality of that was not good, so I let it go for the evening.

I’m pretty sure I dreamed of the black river. (A highway to the poor rabbits, a river some didn’t make it across) I don’t know if I actually was a rabbit or not but I knew what it felt like I guess.

When I awoke the next morning I really didn’t want to go to school. I just wanted to read the book. I knew the trouble that awaited me for skipping so I trudged off. The bus ride again allowed me to reacquaint myself with my rabbit friends. I don’t recall much of school that day until lunchtime where I again started reading. Looking back I must have seemed quite the nerd, sitting on the wall reading a book with a fluffy white bunny on the cover but then I honestly didn’t care.

It was at this ill-fated lunch that things took a turn for the worse. One of my bunny friends died. I was crestfallen. I loved the character of that bunny so much that it was like Richard Adams reached through the book and slapped me in the face. The lunch ending bell was ringing and my eyes were watering from the loss. I had to lumber off to English class. It was there I received more bad news my report about Camus was due by the end of the week. It was loss heaped on loss. How could I go back to the morbid depression of The Stranger when I had the morbid depression of Watership Down to finish?

Well I’d love to tell you I returned to Camus and aced that paper but that would be a lie. I finished Watership Down; it was an amazing book (and still is) and left me hungry to read more. In the subsequent weeks, I finished Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Lord of the Rings, and the Chronicles of Narnia. Notice anything missing from that list?

I got a 75(D) on my Stranger report but I was okay with that.

What Makes It All Worthwhile

The thing is: bookselling is something of an uphill battle. You have to have a sense of mission to keep at this quixotic endeavor, and many of us do. But the stronger the sense of mission one has, greater is his potential for getting discouraged.

Now, folks have been proclaiming the death of reading for as long as I’ve been in the business. Video games, cable television, IPods, texting: each of these in its ascendancy –according to pundits, educators, and codgers alike—has spelled the demise of biblio-centric culture. I don’t really buy into all that hysteria. When you read that more kids lined up for the release of the last Harry Potter book than lined up for the last installment in the Star Wars series, it’s hard to argue that books are fading into obscurity.

Still, I can’t deny that it’s getting harder to put good books into people’s hands. It’s increasingly rare for someone to walk into the Gothic and ask for a recommendation, and it’s rarer still for the mainstream publishing industry to release a book that makes a missionary of you.

It can wear you down.

But there are days when it’s all worthwhile. A newly invigorated Lost Roads Publishers has reissued three books by the great American poet Frank Stanford, and I’ve ordered them for our store. Stanford was a major poet, the best I’ve ever read, and he’s been all but ignored in the canon of American literature. Once in a while I’ll run into a fellow fanatic (Duke’s own Tony Tost is one), but for the most part, his work remains unknown to most readers.

Stanford’s books have been out of print for so long that it’s criminal. I’ve had to talk to customers about him as though he were some sort of imaginary friend. There are books of his that I’ve never even seen. Soon, though, I’ll be able to force our unsuspecting customers to read The Singing Knives, You, and, most importantly, The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You, Stanford’s 400-page poem that, until this edition, had never been published in a corrected, annotated edition.

Do these reissues constitute a major, significant moment in the world of publishing and bookselling? Maybe not, but, given the chance, I can put these books into people’s hands and be excited about doing so.

That’s enough, for now.