Read: Falling Man, Richard Yates, and Player One

Over the last couple of years I've not read as much as I used to. Mostly, I think it's due to work and the internet. Obvious, really. And the third culprit is being ridiculously emo a lot. So, it goes. I'm so glad that the last couple of months have sort of included a few novels and comics re-reads. These are the last three books I loved very much.

Don DeLillo's FALLING MAN is the story of Keith, a man who survived the September 11th destruction of the World Trade Center, and how it affected him, and his estranged-wife, and life in general. What made this particularly startling for me was, as the story unfolds, it tells the story of a man who isn't necessarily the best man - arguably, someone who might've not deserved to survive - and at the same time, you can't help but place yourself in his shoes, not during this period of time, but all the time: I didn't think about what I would've done if I was Keith, but more what I would be doing now and tomorrow. It sort of contextualizes me along with Keith in a place after this particular disaster. It isn't that Keith remains unchanged, but how through this unenviable experience, his wife Lianne, seems to think there's more changed than not, while her mother points out that Lianne isn't seeing that it's the world that's different and it's the world that's making her believe Keith is different. As much of UNDERWORLD, DeLillo uses events as a driving force in the lives of individuals, his characters and me, and in showing us this, for a brief moment we can see it but forget it once the moment is over. Which is the main reason why for me, it isn't Keith who is the Falling Man, but we all are in that we attempt in separating ourselves from history when the world changes. Sure, I wondered many times if I were Keith would I be doing the same things I was doing while reading the novel, but that is all. I had no context save the book in the same way Keith September 11, 2011. It is why Keith, eventually, would remain in hotels gambling, further distancing himself from history (a futile exercise) and me still believing I was him even though so much time had passed. The story does have a few threads I didn't care for: Justin, Keith and Lianne's son and his friends vigilance over the New York sky seemed too predictable, and didn't add much for me nor did I think it served any real purpose in the story save in a "think about the children" sort of way. Another was the performance artist known as Falling Man, who would re-enact suicide leaps from building and bridges all over New York while wearing a suit, which, after the attacks, took on a more sinister meaning beside the fact he was doing nothing new. While initially too obvious, I became tired of his final appearance before Lianne: again, for me, it served as nothing more than a cartoon and an expectation in the context of the story (I don't know if this was a real person DeLillo used, or if Falling Man was made up). And the last thread I'm not sure I liked but did find a little interesting was the few sections featuring the planning of the attacks and a young man named Hammad being trained for the very purpose. While still connecting the thread of the downward man from the title, I think not so much that these few scenes add much to the whole. I find them interesting as a literary exercise, but I think had they been left out, the book would not have suffered.

I came across Tao Lin via COMING & CRYING, my favorite book of 2010. It featured an excerpt from SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL and when I saw that his new novel, RICHARD YATES, was out via the internet, I figured, why not? A young writer from New York - Haley Joel Osment - is internet friends with a teenage girl from New Jersey named Dakota Fanning, and this is the story of their relationship, how it was built and how it eroded and how it suffered...but not quite sure how it would end. Osment likes Fanning and vice versa, but her being a teenager and suffering from that makes her erratic, potentially mentally unstable, curious, but ultimately normal. The older Osment, by some six years or so (he's twenty-two), however, ought to know better in a lot of ways but he likes the young Fanning, I think, because he's simply lonely. Connecting on the internet, both see themselves in each others odd observations and declarations (both at various points tell the other they're going to kill themselves) because, as anyone who's met anyone on the internet, you play off each other really well when there's an electronic wall between you. When Osment and Fanning are finally together, neither is fully at ease with each other, and at one point in the beginning of their face to face relationship, it is Osment who first contemplates abandoning Fanning in a school bus yard. But he doesn't, and they muddle through a rather dull relationship but I think that's the very point, and very in contrast with how we learn of them, of how they learned about each other via the internet. For various reasons, I found this story and the character's dynamics rather familiar and how it plays out until the end is dull, yes, but very realistic in a way that not a lost of stories can be. Osment's force of nature way in commanding aspect's of Fanning's life resonates because there is that dynamic in a relationship between two people, romantic or otherwise. Fanning's near submission to this is very indicative of, not just her age and maturity, but of how lonely she is as well. How a relationship works in the confines of the novel escapes both of them and muddle through it in spectacularly disastrous fashion. At various times, Lin is hilarious and rather sad and wistful. And what Lin did for me was show me that sometimes, perhaps, loneliness's cure isn't another person. Whatever the intent, Lin's novel gives me a good impression of what younger folk (my generation and all proceeding it) go through individually, hoping another person will "cure" them of their angst (this might be the wrong word) and frankly maneuvering through their lives. RICHARD YATES is hugely entertaining if you love people, I think. If you love someone, it's hilarious to a point. And if you're lonely, it certainly crystallizes a few things for you (it did for me). It reminds me that 1 + 1 does not always equal 2. And that it's perfectly fine that way too.

PLAYER ONE is Douglas Coupland's most recent novel and tells the story through five points of view: Karen, off to meet a man off the internet; Rick, the bartender where Karen is waiting; Luke, a pastor whose lost his faith but stole his congregation's money; Rachel, a stunningly attractive fluke of nature; Player One, a seemingly omniscient force that knows what's about to happen and wonders why humans are this way and that. All five are trapped in Rick's bar when suddenly, the world explodes into violence, oil prices skyrocketing to the stratosphere, chemical attacks, and a sniper. Through forces they do not understand or even know existed, these five are forced to fend for themselves in the hope that something will be waiting for them on the outside once the fires are out...but do they want to? When the world ends and you get another shot at life, would you still be the same or would you change? When given a new world, do you even want to change? Coupland revisits all of the themes he's known for nearly in every page: modernism, the meanings of time and space for us, post-millenial tension, technology, the individual and her/his place in the world, commercialism, stories as a salve, religion, faith, death, love, and the ever-present question of what makes us US. What he does in PLAYER ONE is give his characters flaws necessary to come to certain conclusions (is the fact Rachel might begin to believe in God part of her brain dysfunction? Or also that the sniper's religion what ties him to her and to his violent acts?), but it doesn't feel fabricated. None of these people seem one-dimensional in the way people on television are, and you always want to root for them. Coupland uses himself as inspiration as various bits of dialogue and narrative are featured here, verbatim, which illustrates, I think, the huge thematic web he's created with all his work: that we are all more alike than not, and it fucking works. The question arises that while none of these people generally believe in fate (Luke: "Fate is for losers."), is there are reason why it is them that are holed up in an airport lounge as the world ends? The answer is no, but only I know this because I am not in the story...or aren't I? You're in there as well, having this discussion about what's going to be waiting outside your door every morning because whether you see it or not, the world is ending, and as soon as you step outside into it, you're deciding who you want to be in a particularly base and fundamental way. Or not. PLAYER ONE presents us with characters that are excitingly human because they're as boring as us, but their questions about life and death and beyond and the future are our questions, only we're not trapped together by the apocalypse to fully express them to each other. Coupland does an excellent job in tying his entire work together with PLAYER ONE for me. It has placed not just his characters - all of them - in a certain place of history (and not just literary history) but in a certain place of time: the future, and they're just as scared and unknowing as we are. In PLAYER ONE, one of the ideas that is presented is that humans unlike animals have a concept of time. However, we don't really have a concept of Eternity.

All three books about very different things have a few things in common: the relationships we have with people in general and the world, what makes us US, and what we're willing and not willing to do in the world like change ourselves from time to time. Like Keith in FALLING MAN, do you pretend that you're damaged when you're not really and use it as an escape? Like Rachel in PLAYER ONE, even if you're damaged by birth, how badly do you want to be like everyone else? Like Fanning, would -be love, is that sufficient to change everything about yourself even if you don't really want to? How do the people around us make us US, and how much of ourselves are we willing to share? In the even of catastrophe, why do we use this time to do more change than we normally would? What are the forces in the world keeping you in the place made for you, and is there even one? In my reading of these three novels, I internalize and personalize a lot, which is something we all do, I think, and left me with a sense of wonder in way. What's going on in the world currently is evidence that the world is nothing but change, yet I am relatively the only constant in my life.

I think I've gone on too long already.

2010: Read

I used to do a top comics bit as well, but I somehow stopped buying comics over a year ago. Still, here are the books I liked the most this year. It's very difficult for me to compile the books list because, for the most part, I love most everything I read. I read everything from popular books (THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO was kinds of awesome, UNDER THE DOME was no), nerd books (I really wanted to put NEUROMANCER here but I bumped it for NEVER LET ME GO), and plain old literary books (THE GRAVEYARD BOOK and POINT OMEGA were astounding!). So, here it is. Honest: I think after watching the film, NEVER LET ME GO earned a rather unfair advantage, and YOU'RE A BAD MAN, AREN'T YOU? is here not just because of its content but also because of Ms. Breslin's spate of writing over at her various blog posts and her THE WAR PROJECT and THEY SHOOT PORNSTARS, DON'T THEY? Anyway:

COMING & CRYING, edited by Meaghan O'Donnell and Melissa Gira - When these ladies do a second edition of this book, I encourage you to purchase it. Keep an eye here.


SCOTT PILGRIM'S FINEST HOUR by Bryan Lee O'Malley - Can a comic book series be more perfect that SCOTT PILGRIM...? (well. actually, Y THE LAST MAN was pretty perfect too!) Not going to lie, by the time the book ended, I was teary! O'Malley does in a few pages what others at all comics companies can't do in thousands of decades-worth of pages: give us the most romantic, exciting, hilarious, heartbreaking, and relevant (to a certain generation) story. Steeped in musical and pop culture, SCOTT PILGRIM's characters meander through their lives in the same way you did in your early twenties, but in SCOTT PILGRIM'S FINEST HOUR, the titular hero learns a few things about himself, what he needs to do in order to not just rescue the woman he loves from her ex but also from herself. And along the way, basically, Scott Pilgrim discovers how flawed a man he is, he steps up his game, not only for his love, but for himself. By the end he isn't perfect, no. But him and his girl, have a chance to continue growing, together.

YOU'RE A BAD MAN, AREN'T YOU? by Susannah Breslin - I first discovered writer Susannah Breslin through a post Warren Ellis made years ago, when she ran her THE REVERSE COWGIRL blog, and I've been a fan since. This year I sound this small collection of her short fiction and it cemented why I became a fan of hers: her language. YOU'RE A BAD MAN, AREN'T YOU? is the various ways in which men are, well, bad. Whether it is the mand who ushers a midget into porn superstardom, the man who really just hates everyone and everything (the title story), the man who wonders about eating a woman, or the man prone to fornophilia. Breslin's words cut right to it, no time for niceties, and it is evident not just in her journalism nor blog writing, it's more than clear here. And that's what draws me the most to her writing, to her bits of fiction in YOU'RE A BAD MAN, AREN'T YOU? she doesn't fuck around, plain and simple. Reminds me of my initial reads of Chuck Palahniuk. And, all through this, because of her stories, I don't get the idea that Breslin doesn't like men, quite the opposite: I think she loves them, but is not naive to the social failures most of us are. If you're a man, or know a man, read this book and it'll show you maybe ought to know less men.

NEVER LET ME GO by Kazuo Ishiguro - Ishiguro writes about becoming an adult with pretty sharp ear for the things adults do not tell children. Everything is ambiguous or flat-out false. Adults leave out a lot of the terrible things we all have to live through, the honestly brutal bits. NEVER LET ME GO, for me, explores these ideas but expands upon them by giving us Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth to view the world through. A sci-fi story that does more than linger on what possible future may lie ahead of us. Thematically dense, Ishiguro reminds me of Cormac McCarthy's most recent novel THE ROAD: where McCarthy dealt with a father and his son in a post-apocalyptic world, Ishiguro shows us archetypes of boys and girls, and eventually men and women, who're raised mainly via their pop-culture (which could seem prescient always), which, at first may seem a bit of a reach, but if you remember finding things out your father, your teachers, your first girlfriend, your mother said were true but really were not, these stories will speak to you. NEVER LET ME GO seems to go far deeper than McCarthy, however, by exploring what the meaning of the soul is, and how it may be proven or not, along with showing the sheer naivetee with which we tend to approach the honest world, even when it's staring us dead in the heart. I want to point out plot bits but feel I would be ruining how much the story builds upon itself. Mark Romanek's film was also great.

GENERATION A by Douglas Coupland.

Read: American Gods

what neil gaiman does in AMERICAN GODS is point out what traditions mean in the new world, and what happens when we try and establish new ones - or ideas of traditions without understanding the power they hold, the meaning they carry over the centuries. shadow, ever us, not understanding the reasons why he must do the things he does, comes to the conclusion that in the same way american cares not for the old gods, the old gods don't care very much for us. but it's not necessarily a toxic relationship, not so much that pure belief in them is a bad thing, but there ought to always be a questioning of their word.

AMERICAN GODS is also about the old world relinquishing its grasp on our daily existence. it's not about forsaking your history - a mighty sacrilege - but rather recognizing that time moves and so we must adapt to it. it's about the stubbornness of the old guard to realize that the old ways, simply, undeniably have no more the value they used to other than decoration, and it is also about how the young willingly make sin and call it 'new'. they revere the perverse ostentatious and maligned and cancerous like an odd badge of rebellion while not seeing that it isn't rebellion but conformity.

lastly, AMERICAN GODS is about a man who made several mistakes in his life, and who has to live with them. it is about the woman who loved him and whom he loved, and about being unable to make things right. neither one of them can. so what else is there to do? live or be dead. the latter thinks she wants to be alive again, and the former chooses death to live.

thematically, AMERICAN GODS could be the much older brother of cormac mccarthy's NO COUNTRY FOR OLD ME.

[cross-posted on facebook.]

Read: Generation A

It begins with a tsunami and ends on an island.

When bees have been extinct for years and five people from all over the world are stung, forces mobilize and trips into pharmaceuticals and celebrity and religion and World of Warcraft and Abercrombie & Fitch and tourette's syndrome and maybe even a little brain stem cloning happen.

These five people--Harj, Zack, Samantha, Diane, Julien--must surely have something in common that long-extinct bees suddenly have stung them. But they don't. Not really. Not at first. But what happens is as they begin to unravel the reason (not mystery) of what's happening to them, I find myself seeing the world through their eyes. Not because they're their eyes. Their eyes are mine. (In a previous novel (ALL FAMILIES ARE PSYCHOTIC), Coupland introduced an HIV-infected mother and her dysfunctional family. And it seems so prescient that when I was dealing with my initial HIV diagnosis, I read this novel, and I was and am Janet Drummond.) One of the strangest things and most powerful things that Douglas Coupland manages to do with his stories for me is place them in the NOW. His stories and his characters could never have existed at any other point in time. And as I read about Harj while in the middle of the 2004 tsunami, or Samantha attempting to make an "earth sandwich," I know when all of this is taking place. But the ridiculousness of this feeling of NOW for me is that I am Harj and I am Samantha, and I couldn't be anyone else. Like them, I am built for this time on earth and I couldn't have even been conceived of in any other point in history.

Coupland takes a certain amount of story time telling stories. His characters tell each other stories and reveals something that even they didn't know: that once you access your creative imagination and sit around a fire and tell each other stories, we're creating a better world for us all. But as it's asked, why is it so difficult for people to tell stories? Answer:

"Stories come from a part of you that only gets visited rarely - sometimes never at all. I think most people spend so much time trying to convince themselves that their lives are stories that the actual story-creating part of their brains hardens and dies. People forget that there are other ways to ordering the world."

And it makes me believe that Coupland feels the need to tell stories even in the age of digital everything and satellites and sms messaging is even more important than all of this tech. Maybe I'm naive in believing so, but Coupland makes me feel I am right and belong in this world. Stories. Not anecdotes, not jokes, but actual stories. Stories about us--ourselves! Humans as stories! Humans telling stories! And while not necessarily talking about telling stories as entertainment nor as a means to passing down history: when Coupland places the five in a circle, telling stories, this is what will eventually lead to their conclusion: they can save the world.

But ultimately, what GENERATION A does for me is that it makes me believe that we are not doomed in this hyperconnected world. Really, it's not that I believe this will lead us down the path of ruin, me, using this light and machinery to write this, but just because the world is changing, even if by our designs and desire and greed, the world remains a remarkable place that finds its way to let you know hoe much it's worth to stop and admire everything that you've forgotten you have. That I've forgotten I have. And I will always tell you a story.

Written by Douglas Coupland.