My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Karl Ove Knausgaard delivers a long, meticulous, and surprisingly enthralling read in his autobiographical series My Struggle. Part 1 opens with some fun reveries on death and dying before launching into tales of Kanusgaard’s childhood. These are a series of somehow (assuming you’re a white male) relatable stories that range from elementary school to early college. There are a lot of things in these passages for people to enjoy; the painful attempts at starting a band in middle school, the pathetic attempts at fitting in and the misguided importance placed on doing so, the looming presence of a stern father and the growing resentment that follows. Many of us have gone through at least some of these things and, for reasons I cannot really explain, there is a tremendous amount of pleasure to be found in reading them recounted in extreme detail.

This is where My Struggle begins to dwell in the realm of fiction. It isn’t just an autobiography, what makes it a fictional account lies in the story’s minutia. Knausgaard doesn’t rely on charged drama or even all that much human interaction to carry the action of his fiction. What he decides to embellish are the details. This doesn’t require a killer memory and surreal perception skills like one might think. The real skill employed here is imagination. There is no real way of telling whether Knausgaard can really tell what embarrassment felt like, the color of things, the texture, whether he sneezed and at what moment in the conversation. I know I can’t recall many of these things in my own life, but nor could I necessarily imagine myself doing so. That could be because I don’t have the range of imagination Knausgaard allows himself to employ in the retelling. Dwelling with him in these past moments though, is cathartic and rewarding. As a reader I don’t know if I’ve ever really been anywhere like this in a book, even the most detailed fiction leaves out what Knausgaard so essentially and effortlessly captures.

The second half of part one takes a darker turn as Knausgaard comes face to face with a tragedy. I won’t spoil anything, but the detail in emotion intensifies, not in clarity but in scope. We can’t see why Knausgaard feels the way he does or does the things he does, but he is more interested in transporting his reader to the scene rather than the trappings of his psyche. When the book is finished and Knausgaard’s riff on death from the beginning of the novel comes to a close, the reader is greeted with a deep sense of satisfaction reserved for the most beloved of literary classics. I’ll be picking up Book 2.

The Sellout by Paul Beatty

“It’s illegal to yell ‘FIRE’ in a crowded theater, right?”
“It is”
“Well, I’ve whispered racism in a post-racial world”

It is very possible that there will never be a better time to read Paul Beatty’s The Sellout. Since America elected a crypto-fascist clown for president you might have asked yourself, more than a few times, how it was possible democracy could do this to us. A professional entertainer whose ascendancy to fame and fortune includes everything from reality TV and professional wrestling to conspiracy theory propagation and, now, rust belt populism is the most powerful man in the world. Everyone, even people who voted for the guy, probably even he himself, is trying to reconcile the sheer possibility that this could even happen. Well, enter Paul Beatty.

Beatty breaks out his war chest - irony, irreverence, allusion, and satire - to tell the unlikely tale of Bonbon; an inner-city African American farmer who proves that there is no transcending race or racial history in America. But Bonbon is no activist, he’s the sellout, the way he proves America is still a nation of white supremacy despite a black president is by segregating the local buses and schools, literally redlining the city in, and owning a slave. If you’re thinking to yourself that this seems too ridiculous or cartoonish, you’re not wrong, but Beatty isn’t banking on you being wrong. With every ridiculous undertaking Bonbon embarks on the idea that America can simply sweep centuries of oppression under the rug becomes the more ridiculous premise.

Bonbon’s motive for rubbing America’s nose in its egregious acts is not even a righteous one, it’s more simple; get Dickens back on the map. Dickens was his ‘hood’ in California and it was so gentrified and resettled by surrounding fancy neighborhoods that it eventually lost its name and standing as a city. The idea here is that America isn’t post-racial, it just hides its ghettos (I’ll likely never hear the words “Detroit is coming back”quite the same way). The racism comes naturally; people respect the segregation on the buss and in the schools (graduation rates are up/violent crime is down), the literal red line in the city give them a sense of spacial identity, and even slavery is amicable. The ease with which America can slip back into these institutions is proof that it hasn’t moved past race, was indeed designed to function on the very idea of racial supremacy. The resulting read is somehow both hilarious and eye opening.

Beatty employs satire at an important time. It is important to lampoon the idea that because we have a black president we are living in a post racial society. It is especially so, given that his predecessor has the full endorsement of the KKK and refused to rent property to black people. This ridiculous time calls for over the top examples and Beatty has the chops to do it. All the usual praise of the great satirists apply: he is biting, deep, funny, and rhythmic. Yet Beatty also rights with an essence that has been absent since Twain himself. America has potentially never needed a racial satirist more than in our coming age of Trump. Ditch your copy of Puddin’ Head Wilson or Huck Finn, pick up The Sellout now.

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Steinbeck considers East of Eden his “other big book” in an obvious reference to his other masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath. He could be referring to the physical size of the books themselves, or their popularity, or even the concepts conveyed inside them and he would be speaking accurately. But what does it mean to be a big Steinbeck book? There are bigger, more popular, and books that are far more deep than East of Eden; what makes it still worth reading? Well, the answer is simple; size does matter.

We contemporary Americans are now vastly interested in the rise and fall of American families. Look at what we watch on TV, our favorite shows went from the portrayal of the day to day goings on of an amicable family in a sitcom to a thriller/drama epic about how one family’s quest for power and the subsequent drama could tear it to pieces. If the general public were more interested in literary pursuits not a library in town could keep East of Eden on the shelves. This could explain why the book was so popular, it’s a very entertaining read. Steinbeck documents the rise and fall of the Trask family; Cyrus and Alice, their kids Adam and Charles, and Adam’s kids Aaron and Caleb. The ensuing drama is that of biblical proportions, a rehash of some of our most juicy original sins. What’s not to love?

Well, frankly, the book is long. It is 300 pages of a story, two pages of intense philosophical/theological discussion, and then 300 pages of another story - which, in a way, is the continuation of the first - to determine whether the theoretical musings of the two page discussion would play out in real time. So yeah, there is about 300 pages of backstory before your conflict is even set up. Albeit, it is very entertaining, conflict filled, backstory and Steinbeck is a famously great writer. His meticulous documentation of landscape and his ability write about key and emotionally harrowing events with such restraint is masterful, artistic, and downright awe inspiring. It also makes you wonder if he couldn’t have done more with less. I’m not one to hark on a book for being too long, but there comes a point where the phrase “unnecessarily long” becomes accurate. I think that point is when an otherwise immensely talented writer begins filling white space with sentimentality.

Steinbeck shouldn’t have had room for sentiment given the size of the ideas he was fleshing out in East of Eden. The question here is whether we are doomed to repeat the sins of our fathers (and mothers, but this book was published in 1952 so women were either unimportantly pure or evil). Adam and Eve as well as Cain and Able take the place of the bolder and the hill in the myth of Sisyphus. Is the bolder going to roll down the hill because of gravity and/or the will of the gods? Or do our descendants have a choice, can they willingly decide to shirk the rules of science or the will of God and end the cycle of sin they have been given. Well, about halfway through East of Eden, Steinbeck is going to point blank lay this argument out to you masked as dialogue and then at the end he’s going to tell you the answer. Why? I don’t know and I wish he hadn’t.

Even still, despite Steinbeck’s best efforts, East of Eden is essential reading. The characters of Lee and Samuel Hamilton are rare crafted gems, the Salinas Valley comes alive, and Steinbeck can be ranked with Shakespeare as a master of merging form and content. In addition to wild entertainment this book offers a study in narrative composition you won’t realize you’re internalizing until you have tears in your eyes at the end.

ReWriting the Rules of the American Economy by Joseph Stiglitz

When the 2008 financial crisis struck, Noam Chomsky, influential leftist intellectual extraordinaire (and arguably a dying breed), recommend the United States government enlist Joseph Stiglitz to help drive the recovery as, at the very least, an ideological consultant. Even though the government uncharacteristically ignored the recommendation, the American public should most certainly not. Especially the American left. We should be paying very close attention to what Stiglitz is saying, what he’s doing, and probably what he’ll eventually be screaming.

ReWriting the Rules of the American Economy is by no means the best thing I’ve read by Stiglitz. It lacks the depth found in The Price of Inequality and doesn’t have the bite of any of his Great Divide essays, but it does something far more important than deep exploration or evisceration, something crucial; it better frames the debate.

Essentially, ReWriting the Rules could be seen as a smarter, more concise, but less accessible version of Robert Reich’s Saving Capitalism. Like Reich, it is easy to picture Stiglitz getting exhausted in the endless debate over the free market vs the size of government and, also like Reich, thinking it doesn’t matter. The idea is we need to rewrite the rules so the government works for all Americans, not just some. Once you see the debate this way it is difficult to see it any other way.

Which is good! Stiglitz offers up some great ideas here and it is particularly important for the left now because he’s puts to rest some debates you can currently see raging between the left and the far left, mostly in the wake of Sanders V Clinton. Trade deals for instance; Stiglitz doesn’t like the TPP because it undercuts labor and the idea of transparency in trade. At the same time, he wants America to engage in trade because you can’t have the sort of wealth distribution policies he wants if America’s wealth accumulation is stymied by aggressive protectionism. His compromise? Get a regulatory body (the FTC?), or make one, to regulate business participation in trade deals; making sure they are following a series of rules on the environment, human rights, and labor rights - both at home and abroad - in order to take advantage of free and protected capital flow between nations. Who on the left would not agree with this? Exactly.

The only very real and very frustrating part of this book is the layout. Broken into two parts (three if you count the introduction) titled “The Current Rules” and “ReWriting the Rules”, Stiglitz fractures his problems and proposed solutions in a such a way that makes ReWriting the Rules a less coherent and engaging read.

Nevertheless, there is a lot of potential in ReWriting the Rules of the American Economy to be an ideological unifier of the left, as though Stiglitz is offering his consultancy and all we need to do is pick up his book and start taking his advice.

Free Will by Sam Harris

The Oxford English Dictionary of Philosophy seems to allude to the fact that the world of philosophy, for the most part, doesn’t really believe in free will. The school of thought that chocks free will up to an illusion is Determinism and apparently it is seen as a given. The only two schools that are  allegedly held to challenge determinism are compatibilism and libertarianism (not to be confused with the political party, thinking, etc). Not only are these two schools relatively unpopular, they don’t even appear to believe in free will; they seem more concerned with the implications of responsibility. This, at best, maintains that free will is a useful illusion, but an illusion all the same.

It is the general, I-don’t-give-a-rip-about-academic-philosophy-public that perpetuates the specious illusion of free will. It is Sam Harris’ job in his essay, aptly titled Free Will, to dispel the beloved illusion. By my incredibly ammature standard he can only do this by making an argument people can follow, allaying any fears about the implications of dropping the illusion, and by writing a book people will generally want to read.

Harris’ compelling argument consists of applying a very simple question to all things we perceive as free will; “where is the freedom in that?”. Basically if we can’t account for our desires, urges, fears, and reactions, we cannot attribute what follows from them as free will. It can be a hard leap to make; I want to believe that I chose to read this book, but I can’t differentiate between what prompted me to and what would have prompted me not to. So where was I free to make a choice? Breaking it down to the simple application of a question makes the argument relevant and useful when considering what you’re subjected to in day to day life. This allows you to maintain control despite not really being ‘in control’. As Harris puts it; “you do not control the storm, you are not lost in the storm, you are the storm”.

Many people might posit that without, at the very least, the illusion of free will we might become listless or immoral. Here Harris’ job gets easier. Free will is an illusion without which we can become more aware of what we are, products of the physical world - our surroundings, our physiology, our biology, our instincts etc etc (there are infinite possibilities which I don’t doubt is why the illusion of choice laid out before us persists). By manipulating the physical world or having it manipulated for us we can still lead fulfilling lives full of awareness, understanding, and action*.

For example, let’s say you have a problem with eating too many Zebra Cakes at one time. If you imagine this is your choice and simply a matter of resisting the wrong choice (eating Zebra Cakes) and making the right choice (not) then there is no doubt you will still have a problem with Zebra Cakes. This is because you cannot control your desire for Zebra Cakes, you cannot control the chemical effect they have on you, and you cannot control your desire to want one after the other (among, again, an infinite number of possibilities beyond your control that determine your actions). There are some days that you don’t eat too many Zebra Cakes and seemingly resist the need to eat many at one time. It is here the illusion gets dangerous; you are falsely attributing any number of things beyond your control to will power. It isn’t as though you made your urge go away, it just didn’t trump, say, your fear that your wife would leave you if you didn’t kick this Zebra Cake habit, or the way your lunch digested, or an infinite of number of possibilities that simply reduced your desire or trumped it.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter, if you keep subjecting yourself to that what you desire, you’re going to give in. Every. Time.

Let’s strip the illusion away. You know beyond a doubt, despite an unexplainable good day every so often, that you are going to gorge the shit out of Zebra Cakes if they are at home whether or not you like it. You cannot make your desire for Zebra Cakes simply go away, so after reading Sam Harris’ book Free Will you realize you have to make the Zebra Cakes go away. This requires both awareness - where is your urge for the ZCs the strongest? When does it seem to diminish? What are you doing when hunger strikes? -  and action; you realize you have no craving for Zebra Cakes at the store so you don’t buy them OR you do have a craving for Zebra Cakes at the store so you go to a store that doesn’t have them or you go to the store with someone who can stop you from buying them. This level of awareness and action, likely not present when you believe you can willfully make the right choice, seems to be exactly what people are afraid will disappear should the illusion of free will shatter.

(*Two side notes here: None of that was Harris’ example, he does a far better and more concise job of declawing the implications of abolishing the illusion of free will. By action I don’t mean you have free will, you’re spurred to action by your lack of belief in free will - or at least your capacity to stop eating Zebra Cakes - and/or fear and/or frustration and/or dumb luck. If you follow your action to where it came from there is no way it was free will, but hey, it’s better than just laboring under the idea things beyond your control are just going to magically disappear one day!)

Honestly the hardest thing Harris will have to contend with in his argument is writing a book people will want to read and be receptive to. Scratch that, there is really nothing he can do to make people respective to this idea, people love free will. What he can do is what he did;  Harris kept the book simple, kept it very short, and he left out (apart from an absolutely chilling intro to the essay) any controversial examples. The only problem is that Harris is a controversial figure. Conservatives tend to hate him because he is an atheist or because he doesn’t believe all people on food stamps are snakes, but liberals tend to hate him because he isn’t a cultural relativist and probably comes off as islamophobic when he uses data to point out that a lot of modern Muslims think it’s still OK to throw gay people off of roofs.

Well...he tried anyway. If nothing else, and there is a lot else, Free Will is a fun read and gets you thinking. Even if you can’t follow Harris’ logic or think he sounds like a douche at times, it is still immensely important to think about free will and what we subject our subconscious to, being that it often affects our conscious actions. It is impossible to read this and think it is devoid of any truth, plus it --

You know what? Forget it. You’ll either have the urge to read Free Will or you won’t, but it isn't like you really have choice in the matter...

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

In college I wrote my capstone course’s final paper on Angela Carter’s Night at the Circus because I was enthralled by the idea of Magical Realism. The class was a Contemporary British Lit course and my professor, a true diamond in the small Midwestern college rough, assigned a lot of contemporary magical realism. As good as the class was I noticed that Rushdie was nowhere in sight. When I finally did pick up Rushdie’s the Satanic Verses it was for two distinct reasons and I was disappointed on both fronts. The first was because I hadn’t read much (if any) magical realism since taking said college course four years ago and the second was because the book’s reputation for controversy makes it seem like a relevant read in light of current events.

The Satanic Verses seems to be a series of dreams, or reincarnations, mythic retelling psych, or visions, or any/all of the above. I am not informed enough a reader to catch what is allusion, what is allegory, what is satire, and what are just purely imaginative riffs on reality. I know enough to discern that all of this is present, entertaining, and thought provoking but I also know that I’m missing something crucial. The allure of magical realism is that it pulls the energy and vibrant connotations behind mythology or theology and amalgamates them with modern themes grounded in realism, things like race or socioeconomics. The problem is I know next to nothing about Islam and did not read actively enough - which is to say I wasn’t googling for relevance every time I had an inclining to - in order to catch the connotations or implications that come from evoking its culture and traditions. This both is and is not Rushdie’s fault. Obviously I could have learned more about the topic at hand, the issue is that I was not inspired to. I think this is partly because Rushdie also belongs in the Hysterical Realism category. Those in this category - coined by James Woods who included DF Wallace, Zadie Smith, Rudie, and a few of their contemporaries - I’ve found are guilty of, at times, introducing armies of characters that stand to serve on the author’s whim. Maybe there is a particular societal indictment they wish to make on, say, police brutality. In the case of Rushdie, he created a character, complete with a cartoonish backstory, that perfectly illustrated talking points on the subject. The resulting character was too ridiculous to be real and too convenient to really be all that magical. The end result was that I was bored of these characters and didn’t care enough about them to inspire a more active read.

 This translates directly into the second reason for my disappointment. It’s no secret that Rushdie received death threats emanating from the Ayatollah in Iran for this particular novel. In my experience it seems that some critical readers in the western world approach this book looking for an obvious and scathing criticism of Islam, or at least the beginnings of an argument. I, for one, am guilty of this. But Rushdie is a talented fiction writer, he exists in the world of representation and language as a craft, not telling one what to think. If it seems like a specious reason to be disappointed in a work of fiction that’s because it is. At the same time, Rushdie did receive death threats and had to go into hiding. While the Satanic Verses is irreverent, often lampooning the religion and the very idea that we can so conveniently make ancient ideas compatible with modern society, it is hardly groundbreaking as far as ideology is concerned. So what Rushdie was really threatened over was ability to write fiction, an ability you’d have to appreciate in order to find merit in the reputation preceding the death threat. This would have been the case had Rushdie’s merging of form and content really resonated with me, which it regrettably didn’t.

Of course, all of this is a huge injustice to Salman Rushdie and the Satanic Verses. Rushdie is a tremendously gifted fiction writer; his lyrical style can dance effortlessly from humor to tragedy and craft some of the most beautiful and fantastical passages I’ve ever read. All of which says nothing of his and his book’s obvious influence in some of my favorite authors, from Zadie Smith to Junot Diaz. The problem was the Satanic Verses did not scratch a particular itch. I think that if I had read Rushdie in the classroom with any number of resources at my disposal I would have written my college capstone course’s final paper on it instead of…well...this.

Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin

“People are trapped in History and History is trapped in them”

Baldwin’s series of essays in Notes of a Native Son are both bold and beautiful. Beautiful, obviously, because they are written beautifully, but true impression comes from being bold. Baldwin writes these essays in 1955, a time not so different than now in that it assumes a certain amount of progress has been made, that the horrors of history have been erased by American ideals and heroism. In Notes of a Native Son Baldwin explores the limitation of progress and its harbingers, taking on whatever one assumes as progress and, without wholly defacing it, demonstrates its uselessness in the face of white supremacy as a system. This book is brilliantly split into three different themed sections.

Part One of Notes features Baldwin as a fierce critic of the new, seemingly progressive ways in which the African-American story is told. He contends that “it is only in his music that the negro in America has been able to tell his story” and from there he proceeds to tear apart 3 works of art: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Native Son, and Carmen Jones - the film reimagining of the opera Carmen but with a predominantly black cast. One gets the sense that Baldwin’s criticism of these 3 works spans further than the face; like he is criticizing the mode of telling and the larger trend in literature or film that the work represents. He makes the point on Uncle Tom’s Cabin I’ve been dying to hear; the sentimentality of the protest novel gives it an inability to fully grasp the horror of what it is protesting and therefore falls short of making a meaningful change in anything but people’s emotions. His love/hate relationship with Native Son takes on landmark portrayals of the kinds of conditions intense and manufactured poverty can cause by attacking their attempt at saving the main character with a transcendence of race (something Baldwin vehemently believes is not possible). In Carmen Jones, Baldwin breaks down how useless and doomed for failure the reimagining of old stories with Black Casts can be; African American Stories are unique and can’t be grafted onto old European operas. Each piece serves as a reminder to the world of art, representation, and storytelling that within a world designed by white supremacy a more radical form of expression is needed to break the mold and affect real change.

In part two, Baldwin focuses more on institutions of supposed progress through a more personal lens, something he does more as the essays progress. The Harlem Ghetto discusses how civil rights leaders, well meaning politicians, black owned press/media, and solidarity with Harlem Jews have all proved inadequate in raising the condition of those who live in the city. There is a deeper and historic oppression that runs deep in the Harlem Ghetto. Here, Baldwin seems uncharacteristically vague, but he seems to suggest that the people of Harlem need power over their own lives, which requires people who have it (white people) to cede it and, until they do, progressive institutions will never be able to accomplish discovering a true way forward. In Journey to Atlanta Baldwin illustrates the conditional progressivity of the progressive party with a story about his brother who was invited to sing for them at a campaign rally down south. The way in which brother and colleagues were treated shows the clear unwillingness or inability of the most progressive whites to really put their luxuries and privileges aside  in such a way that will truly help African Americans exercise power in their lives. Baldwin’s title essay, Notes of a Native Son, is a revelatory piece about his relation to his father and is about how white supremacy compounds generationally, all set to a Harlem riot the day of his father’s funeral. In a vulnerable moment this essay expresses the feeling of helplessness in the face of a society built on the idea that an entire people must always remain inferior to deliver its comforts. While this isn’t an institution per se,  it is evidence of what happens when progress is pretended but not made.

With the exception of his final essay, A Stranger in the Village, the third and final section blurs together. The first 3 pieces are all about Paris, the perception of it as a shining beacon of progress and the reality that it is just different than American in ways that are remarkably and almost imperceptibly worse. Both Encounter on the Seine and a Question of Identity share the idea that thinking Paris is progressive, America is regressive, or even vice versa, is operating under the same false pretense that either place was not built on white supremacy. Baldwin acknowledges that Paris may seem to take a different approach than America, but insists that it is just a difference in language. To really sell this slightly stretched point we’re given his 3rd essay Equal in Paris. In it, Baldiwn recounts his arrest by French authorities for being the recipient of a stolen bed sheet (Bed. Sheet.). While the situation did not come with the language of racism that it might in the states, it certainly came with the bureaucracy of racism that is prevalent in the Western World. He carries this theme into his final essay, in my opinion the most powerful, A Stranger in the Village. Baldwin provides his reader with assured proof of the ubiquity of white supremacy by providing a fairly extensive account of his time in a Swiss village that has never seen a black person before. He emphasises the difference in bewilderment at seeing a different race for the first time; that when black people saw white people for the first time it was as a subject sees a conqueror and when white people saw black people for the first time it was as a conqueror surveying subjects, now it is a the conqueror is seeing the conquered for the first time. Pointing out that white people are related to those that built society as we know it in at least one major way that he is not, that this is ingrained in any human in society, and that race cannot be truly transcended. So in the end, even the progress one would expect from a blank slate is a farce.
 
Reading Baldwin’s portrayals of the Harlem riots and thinking of modern Ferguson or Baltimore, reading Baldwin’s insistence that the black narrative must be radically unique and thinking of the modern almost all white Oscars, reading about Baldwin in Europe and thinking about the Brexit and the growing LePenn-esq movement I have to wonder; was Baldwin right? Surely all of these things are just affirmation of the themes he presents here, that we haven’t come much further is just proof of the limitations he so eloquently explores. Or it is as Baldwin suggests; “Even when the worst has been said, it must also be added that the perpetual challenge posed by this problem was always, somehow, perpetually met. It is precisely this black white experience which may prove of indispensable value to us in the world we face today. This world world is white no longer, and it will never be white again”.

Native Son - Richard Wright

Perhaps the essence of white guilt can be summed up by one’s reaction to this novel or one's inability to fully grasp what it means. Published in 1940 (!), Native Son is practically a catalogue of the many forms racism can take; outright bigotry, systematic discrimination, redlining, racist representation in the media, even left wing paternalism and patronizing sentimentality. Compound this list onto a race of people for long enough and you, apparently invariably, get Bigger Thomas, the novel’s...uh….protagonist? See, it’s hard because Bigger is violent, unpredictable, bitter, and angry at the conditions he is forced to live under. Of course living under such conditions grants him no opportunity to articulate these feelings so instead he expresses himself in some, quite frankly, egregious acts. He kills, he rapes, he shoots at police, he defaces property a la masturbation (don’t worry this spoils nothing; the power is in the telling not the plot points) all to rage against the very oppressive, white manufactured world he has been confined to.
   
All of this makes me - modern white dude reader - wholly uncomfortable. Bigger is a hard character to grasp because I’m not sure of the implications inherent in giving him the benefit of the doubt. I have no doubt, say, that concentrated poverty formed on racial lines to specifically exclude blacks from our nation’s prosperity, and to profit from it as a nation, could (emphasis on could, denoting the mere possibility) cause those same people to resort to crime in order to survive. But breaking the law and succumbing to evil are very different. Do I really believe that compounded racism can create monsters like Bigger? If I feel his poor conditions are, while not a justification, an explanation of his actions...am I just as patronizing as the almost comically patronizing and assumptive leftist characters? Am I to blame whether I like it or not? Those seem like two different lines of questioning because they are. I’m not sure I’m willing to allow gruesome, uncalled for murder, molestation, rape, and sadistic uncaring corpse disposal be grounded in sympathy for the perpetrator’s circumstances - no matter how perpetuated by racism they were. But on the other hand,is this lack of sympathy also to blame?

Taking a page out of Dostoyevsky’s the Brothers Karamosov (or I guess any Dostoyevsky novel but less obviously) Wright fleshes this argument out in Bigger’s trial. Taking place in the last section aptly named ‘Fate’; the focus is on Bigger’s lawyer Max, who gives an essay length plea to the court making the case that we - white people living comfortably off a system that perpetually denies the pursuit of happiness to people of color, who maintain the system or at least refuse to acknowledge it to sustain that comfort - are entirely responsible for the creation of Bigger and the inevitable future Biggers to follow. If nothing else, and there is a lot else, every American should read Native Son for this speech. It really is an exceptionally well written argument. But any counter must come from within the reader since the prosecutor (the opposing argument) is a weirdly religious bigot whose counter speech is about enforcing a letter of the law that enforces racism as policy. One gets the sense he’s just there to make Max look more right.

 Even if the cental theme is stretched to uncomfortable lengths, perhaps because it is, Native Son is still essential reading. Its grasp on the forms of racism that grow beyond slavery and outward bigotry has rarely (if ever) been replicated in fiction (and this was published in the 40s!!). Reading this book at a time when desperate and angry black men are shooting innocent police officers in retaliation for not so innocent police officers enforcing troubling policy tells me the argument being presented by Wright hasn’t had the book closed on it yet. So do yourself a favor and open this one.

Why Save the Bankers by Thomas Piketty

What a stupid name for this collection of essays by economist Thomas Piketty. One would think it is an entire book of intensely ideological essays dedicated to rumination of whether we should have bailed out a corrupt financial industry. Instead, the reader is greeted with a series of opinion pieces written for a leftist French Magazine from 2008 - 2015. Written with both brevity and the authority given to a man whose career revolves around the study of capital as it pertains to major world powers, each piece offers insight on questions of inequality, globalism, taxation, trade, and even topics like terrorism or reparations for slavery.

The best part about reading WSTB was the timing I had in picking it up. Reading Piketty make plea after plea for a government that steps in to bail out citizens who are inevitably left behind by global capitalism (that global capitalism leaves many people in the lower and middle classes behind is an indisputable fact at this point, thanks largely in part to Piketty's work in Capital in the Twenty First Century) AND watching those citizens rebel against global capitalism with phenomenons such as Trump or the Brexit, offers unique validation to everything he was saying in real time. It's almost like reading a countdown to dangerous nationalist protectionism. What's more interesting is that Piketty's tome Capital in the Twenty First Century was long thought to be an arm of the far left, but it seems that Piketty believes in bailing out the banks, free trade agreements, and rapid technological advancement with the caveat that there must be strong social governments that work to redistribute the subsequent gains from global economic growth. After realizing that our world governments, for the most part, have been doing the opposite of what Piketty suggests doing at the time, it is amazing to look around and see everything he warned would happen if they don't; booming economic inequality, nationalist protectionism, distrust of governments, xenophobia, anti-globalism, and terrorism (which is actually the weakest piece, but the point is compelling and worth looking into at length).

The worst part about this books is mostly likely the decisions made by the publisher. The title and the exception of depth. If you're looking to read snippets as to why we might be where we are as an international community while maybe restoring your faith in a capitalism that could work for everyone, then this is a great and gratifying read. But if you're looking for depth, data, and a longer, more detailed timeline you should do yourself a favor and actually read Capital in the Twenty First Century all the way through. Then, ideally, publishers won't feel the need to push a sparknotes version like Why Save the Bankers.

Purity by Jonathan Franzen

"He settled down to write the big book, the novel that would secure him his place in the modern American canon. Once upon a time, it had sufficed to write the Sound and the Fury or The Sun Also Rises. But now bigness was essential. Thickness, length." (186)

"So many Jonathan's. A plague of literary Jonathan's. If you read the New York Times Book Review you'd think it was the most common male name in America." (207)

Purity is the latest novel by Jonathan Franzen and the third book I've read of his. Like Freedom and The Corrections, Purity features a cast of characters set against a familiar cultural backdrop all striving to become the virtue the title of the novel extols; free, correct, pure. Naturally human nature gets in the way of this, but the resulting read is always fascinating. Frankly, I didn't think Purity was as good as the Corrections and certainly not better than Freedom. The volume of characters and the amount of bloat that Franzen dedicates to filler characters makes it harder to feel anything for the really important and interesting ones. Subsequently it took longer to really reel me into the larger story. Nevertheless, Purity is essentially Franzen and essentially good.

While there is never exactly a main character in Franzen's novel there is usually one that the theme and plot circle around. Pip, whose real name is Purity, is a young millennial riddled with millennial problems; saddled with 100k + in student debt, socially conscious working for corporate America, higher education promising high and a real world delivering low, the product of a single parent. We meet Pip as she is talking to her megalomanic mother about her need for money and imploring her to disclose who her real father is. The adventure that follows this opening scene sees Pip getting involved in a Wikileaks like organization called the Sunlight Project and an investigative journalist organization called DI, but not always through the perspective of Pip. We get backstory and context that ranges from life in East Berlin in the 1980s to New York to Bolivia. This is all coupled with Franzen's characteristic inclusion of current events; Julian Assange is there, the NSA, Google, Obama, feminism, the Californian drought, Snowden, Facebook, they are all there along side their predecessors in the 1980's. Whether Franzen, making a larger point about the world around us by putting a microscope on his characters, is looking to explain the modern political climate or document its effect is difficult to determine, but it's fun to think about and read into.

At the same time, this is where Franzen has always been the most tedious. I would never criticize a book for being long unless it is so unnecessarily. Franzen's Purity can be excessively self-referential; anything from his career as a writer (see the above quotes) to his political views is found far too often and far too obviously. A work of fiction that paints characters into a larger political tapestry has to avoid the pitfall of becoming a dumping ground of opinion. Franzen fails to resist this urge too many times. The clarity and moral turpitude with which Franzen's characters perfectly summarize any ideology such as feminism or socialism, capitalism or journalistic integrity, punctuates the narrative with protruding, unrealistic sound bites. He might stop short of turning his character's into Ayn Rand like mouth pieces for a deeper philosophy, but the inconsistency distracts from an otherwise great story. Watch as what was good dialogue devolves into Franzen opinion;
"I could tell your mother a thing or two about corporations" Anabel said darkly
"But the alternative doesn't work, either. You get the Soviet Union, you get the housing project, you get the teamsters union. The truth is somewhere in the tension between the two sides, and that's the sphere the journalist is supposed to live". (365)
This, and many other sections like it, are not complicated enough, too one sided. Not even 10 pages after this exchange we see the same characters battling it out over whether or not a man should have to sit down when going to the bathroom. The exchange is messy, but real. Manufactured messiness is a gift that Franzen uses well, we get flawed logic ("but I have to sit down") and manipulation; "she proceeded to cry torrentially. The only way I could get her to stop was to become, right then and there, a person who experienced as keenly as she did the unfairness of my being able to pee standing up". It seems that Franzen himself works best in the tension between two sides, it's when he explicitly takes one when you wonder what the hell he is doing.

I've always thought that Franzen should worry less about expressing himself and spend more time existing in the complicated. Part of the fun is extrapolating the themes from his novels and the flawed characters, fun that is spoiled when we're given the right answer. At its heart, Purity is about secrets, how the existence of secrets make up our identities and yet we have an obsession with appearing pure, of looking like we have none. It's a difficult subject to explore through fiction. When Franzen is on, and he is on through most of this novel, his exploration is fun, emotional, and thought provoking. He should be given more credit as a world builder, even though he works within the world we already know, few living fictional authors better capture what it means to live in it (assuming, of course, you're white...). It's no secret this book is a modern take on Great Expectations (Pip?), but whether this is Dickensian or not, there is no living author quite like Franzen. We should all look forward to his next attempt at the great American novel.

A Heartbreaking work of staggering genius by Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers is a Titan within the contemporary lit industry. Chances are you've come across one of his introductions, or a magazine or collection he's edited. Eggers has been on my radar for awhile, never as an author, more as a literary force for organization, I'm especially partial to the Best American Non-Required Reading series that he edits. As far as a Heart Breaking Work of Staggering Genius is concerned, I could not have picked it up at a better time. It is a great work of autobiographical fiction that requires a lot of its reader, I don't know if I would have been up to it had I read this book say 2 years ago, or even 2 years from now.

That's because this book can be a work of staggering genius, but it definitely appeals to a niche type of reader. Eggers is writing himself as a character in his early twenties within his own, true story. This means that Eggers in tone, style, and characterization is a quintessential 20 year old in all their annoying and insistent duality. He is both arrogant and self-eviscerating, young at heart and jaded, sentimental and cold, entitled, "owed", attention seeking, but cripplingly self-conscious and undeserving. Eggers explores this range of 20 something identity in a way that makes this essential reading for any 20 year old who constantly thinks about what it means to be 20+, how truly formative these years can be. Eggers' story is truly full of heartbreak too; losing both parents, assuming guardianship and having to raise his little brother with a sense of normalcy. The reader watches Eggers struggle on two fronts: as a character in his own story trying to raise his little brother (7) responsibly while also trying to be a normal 23 year old with a life and as the author of his own story constantly questioning his right and ability to tell it. The constant battle painted with Eggers' calculated brush strokes gets at the heart of being young, requiring both an interest in the topic and an understanding of what it means.

And at 22 I wouldn't have gotten why Eggers was so impossibly annoying, arrogant, and constantly terrified of his life ending, but now, at 26, I see that Eggers is annoying because of his desire for positive reinforcement never reaped from his parents (whether this is true or not is open to interpretation but 22 year old Eggers' perception of it is definitely not), his arrogance is a mask to hide something much deeper down, and his constant fear of mortality is actually a fear of being forgotten. And there is a lot more here. Eggers keeps his writing interesting, spanning the events of his early 20's poetically, humorously, and offering a clear look into the depths of his insecurities. But so what kind of reader is going to like this book? One could be of any age, but being closer to 22 helps because one could remember their inner thoughts better the closer they are to that age. Either way, to appreciate AHWOSG it is required to be aware of who you most likely were when you were 20 - 25. You would have to remember the masks you wore in front of your friends and family but recognize that underneath you had no idea who you were or wanted to be, maybe you still don't. You'd have to acknowledge your fear of attention falling away from you, of never being great, the ever present fear that eyes are both on you and at risk of being off you. Then you'd have to imagine yourself in Eggers' situation; orphaned, raising a sibling as a son. This requires cognizance and making difficult realizations about yourself, if the reader does not meet these requirements they will not 'get' this novel. 

One of the manifestations of not getting it, you will find if you peruse the Internet for people's opinions of this book, is a major criticism of tone. People will find it self-indulgent, far too referential, and irreverent to the reader. That's because it requires a closer look, it requires one to read the hilariously long acknowledgements section before the novel even starts. It features Eggers clear outline of the themes presented in this book (plus a drawing of a stapler), the irony here is, of course, that the close reader who would take the time to read the 15 page acknowledgements in the beginning is not the same reader who needs the themes spelled out to them. They likely already know that when Eggers calls his work "Staggering Genius" it is not real arrogance, but manufactured. In fact, everything in this book from the copyright page, to the table of contents, to the narrative style is manufactured to create a better sense of a nagging character telling the story as opposed to the author. The reader receives constant reminding that they are reading the thoughts of a manufactured narrator NOT the thoughts of Dave Eggers, author of a Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. 

The major reason I know, and you should know, that Eggers is not writing as Eggers aged 33 or whatever, is that he will often step into the narrative and take the place of a character to savagely cut down the way in which age 20 Eggers is telling the story. This is a truly great and wholly unique literary technique, somewhat meta but artfully worked in, not out of place. It usually starts with a casual conversation between Eggers and his little brother Toph (sometimes it's his ailing friend John, but mostly it's Toph) not unlike many other sections of the book, so it always comes as a hysterically funny surprise, making these moments some of the most memorable portions. Eggers will be telling Toph goodnight or about some idea he has for a magazine. Toph would start out responding as a 7 year old, but then, out of the blue, Toph will launch into a critical diatribe about a portion of the novel; "to be honest, what I see is less a problem with form, all that garbage, and more a problem of conscience...you struggle with guilt both Catholic and unique...your father being in AA was not to be spoken of, ever, while he was in and after he stopped attending. You never told even your closest friends about anything that happened inside that house. Now you alternately rebel against and embrace that kind of suppression". This is obviously not Toph, it is author Eggers entering the narrative to continue conversing with character Eggers, both winking at the reader to remind them of the distinction between author and narrator but also to close some gaps opened by the unreliable narration of character Eggers. It is Eggers breaking in to remind his reader that they are reading fiction, not biography. This happens maybe 4 or 5 times and it is ridiculously fun and smart. It is a shame it is often lost on his readership. 

Again, reading this book as an aware 20 something is important. Coming face to face with your insecurities, trying to put your finger on what it is deep down that brings out the worst in you is an opportunity often only available to you at that age - not always, but I'd imagine doing it with kids would be hard and unworthy of your time. So delve into this book knowing what you're getting into, that at the end of the page you're reading fiction. And cut Eggers some slack, his work is genius after all.

Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle

Songwriting is not easy. If anyone could write a good song then we wouldn’t have enough accountants and there would be a lot more music out there to listen to. Song lyrics have to be both poetic and musical, the best ones often tell a story. This is how John Darnielle, the singer songwriter for the Mountain Goats, writes his songs. They often tell stories that are rarely autobiographical, feature a discernible character, and almost always offer a clear and poignant narrative of immense pain. From what I’ve heard, he always focuses in on characters that are hyper aware of themselves, usually expounding on their weaknesses or their dark situations with a cheery and uplifting tune; there is always something profoundly positive in the delivery. This mismatch of light hearts and dark minds is exactly the way in which Wolf in White Van, Darnielle’s debut novel, is written.

That is to say that Wolf in White Van is very well written. The reader is invited into protagonist Sean Phillips head in what is presumably his present day life. We learn instantly that Sean is a likeable person; he is very human in the way he talks to us, very kind to the people around him, and his life seems peppered with very light hearted moments of intimate human contact. He’s a Conan fan, he’s very funny, he reads scifi religiously, and he has a cool job writing mail-in role playing games. We also know that Sean is horribly disfigured due to an accident in his adolescence*. He spends a lot of time in his head too, and he’d like you to believe it is because of this accident, but as we travel back to times before the incident it is obvious he was always this way. This is important because the reader is often exposed to some very dark things whether in Sean’s past or his present thoughts. We travel back with Sean to traumatic moments, he was a tortured teen that grew up to be a tortured individual, his mind can go to some very disturbing places. This play between the dark depths of Sean’s mind and the very beautiful, touching moments he has with people (often strangers) serves to strengthen the emotional drive in each moment. It also makes Sean a very real and relatable person, he isn’t just a tortured man and he isn’t the bastion of humanism. This is possibly everyone’s story, but - probably like everyone - Sean feels his disfigured face makes his trauma and anger his own and the beautiful connections he forges with others, including the reader, speak to an interconnectivity that perhaps is over Sean’s head. This makes for a very empathetic read, one that is at once ridiculously fun and funny and thought provoking. Not unlike a Mountain Goats song.

It’s hard to say much more because so much of this novel is discovering Sean and the terrifying places he has been both outside and inside his mind. What makes this book so devourable is a sense of mystery; what was the accident? Who is this person he is alluding to? What lawsuit? Darnielle is laying out breadcrumbs; crafting an openness and a willingness in Sean that make what’s behind the great big closed vault doors even more tantalizing. This is true talent that I doubt will disappear as Darnielle continues to write. I can’t wait to see what he does next; musically or otherwise.

*Do yourself a favor and don’t read any plot synopsis on like Wikipedia before you read this book. Part of the reason this narrative is so powerful is the gradual way you learn what happens to Sean. I would say not to even read the back of the book.

Book Review: The Big Short

There are plenty of movies I find better than the books they are based off of; the God Father, There Will Be Blood, a Clockwork Orange, the Shining. The Big Short by Michael Lewis was freshly added to that list. Which isn't to say the book was bad, in fact, it was fascinating. Reading about the collapse of the the entire market and its subsequent bailout from the perspective of a few insiders is the chance of a lifetime and Michael Lewis orchestrates this well enough to make the Big Short entirely worth it. That said, there were frequent enough causes for eye rolling that make me wonder if picking up another Michael Lewis book is entirely worth it.

Lewis is constantly on the lookout for tough guys in tough times and his characterization of these financial insiders - Michael Burry, Steve Eisman, Greg Lippmann, or Jamie and Charlie - is pretty flatly that. Their perspectives on the numbers they discovered or their reaction to the market is ridiculously fun and insightful, but these are not Lewis' invention so much as his organization, which he did very well. What are less well done are the characterizations that Lewis strives for; Burry and Eisman (and Eisman's team) are cast as dark, cynical, and so meticulous it is off putting, almost unbelievable. Tortured white guys steeped in tragedy who dared look into the void of the US financial market only to become more dark and cynical and tortured. OK, but this narrative style is not only getting old, but it either isn't a fit for this story or Lewis doesn't piece it together well, I can't tell which. I don't mean to quibble, I know it is a true story with real perspective from real people, but I find it difficult to believe Lewis couldn't have been a hair more diverse. In fact in the prologue he talks about Meredith Whitney, an analyst who turned him onto the entire story and introduced him to Eisman, but Whitney disappears completely from the novel. Why is this important? Because I can't help but think the Lewis' characters are bad ones. All the work of humanizing them by hearing their stories told directly in quotes is abolished by Lewis' own attempt to deepen them. Vinny is a member of Eisman's team and is consistently skeptical of the market, a quote from him is a real treat. But Lewis's insistence on inserting things like "Vinny was from Queens, so his view had to be a little bit darker" flat and confusing...what does being from queens even mean? Or Burry and Eisman's reaction to their anticipation of complete market failure boiling down to hot flashes and spiked blood pressure, this is an incredibly weak reaction considering how many people lost their homes, and it deafened their actual voices with actual poignant and humanizing emotion in favor of obvious literary tradition blindly applied. Not only is diversity humanizing, but the inclusion of more character's might have left less room for Lewis's fantasizing….poorly.

A possible exception to this is Jamie Mai and Charlie Ledley. Two younger guys who were not really in the big time trading, making them the most outside of the outsiders, but also giving them a fresh and more naive view to start. Eventually they delved into the sort of cynicism Eisman, or Lippmann, or Burry wear on their sleeves, but in the beginning they are ambitious and doubtful of their own abilities. Again, this is less of Lewis's doing, but that he included them proves the point; diversity is humanizing. Ledley and Mai add humor and empathy, their real life story adds to their development as characters in a book, which means Lewis doesn't add much to them. Their sections were fun and the best of what Lewis's other sections were; pure perspective from fascinating people. They were a breath of fresh air in a story that was surprisingly and frustratingly lacking empathy.

Which truly is the most disappointing thing about The Big Short. It loses itself very quickly and will most likely lose most readers. It isn’t a great non-fiction book, it doesn’t delve into the corruptibility of the entire financial system, it doesn’t link it with the formative Bush years or economic inequality, there are no harrowing stories of everyday citizens losing their homes. All of these things would have given The Big Short a humanizing thesis, or at the very least, a sense of direction. As a work of fiction these stories would have added depth. Not to mention, all of the material was there! Look at this gem that Leley gives Lewis towards the end of the novel; "At the top of [my] list of concerns, after Cornwall Capital had laid its bets against the subprime loans, was that the powers at be might step in at any moment and prevent individual American subprime mortgage borrowers from failing". That is a truly eye opening thought to be explored; was this entire catastrophe preventable? Why weren’t the people saved before the banks even went under? What did it mean that they weren’t? But does Lewis doesn’t go anywhere with this, he just advances what did happen (the bailout etc). I think Lewis might forget at times, even after the subjects have given him brilliant insights to work with, that his readers lived through the bail out. They come to The Big Short for an inside look, but they really only get to eavesdrop. What they hear has the potential to blow their mind, but only because of the stories they already lived.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

If Senator John Conyers ever gets H.R. 40 passed, a law he raises every senate session that allocates money to the study of the legacy of slavery and an assessment of reparations, Beloved by Toni Morrison should be at the top of the reading list.

Yes, Beloved is entirely fictional, though the story is loosely based off a bit of American slavery legend; a woman faced with returning to slavery because of the fugitive slave act, decides to kill her children rather than give them up. The legend is often alluded to as the stuff of rebellion, the ultimate rebellious act in the face of slavery; the destruction of one's own children in an effort to prove they belonged to no man. It's a story for martyrdom referenced in pop culture, from Nina Simone to Talib Kweli. Yet Morrison explores this idea, shattering the mythos of the martyr in favor of a far more haunting and vulnerable story. She delves into the narrative; humanizing both the mother, Sethe, and victimized child, Beloved, in a novel essentially about belonging.

While Sethe and Beloved are the center of the narrative, it is essentially about a community of former slaves escaped to Ohio, who are nothing but haunted by their former bondage. And Morrison knows how to haunt her characters. It's obvious slavery consumes all as the book drifts from present plot points and conversations into glimpses of perverse images - a man burning, a mentally broken slave, a hanging woman - all images of a former life at a Kentucky plantation called Sweet Home. If a character is walking or talking, deep in reverie or simply cooking a meal, the scene quickly devolves into vivid depictions of abuse, escape, and the pain reserved only for survivors of the very worst genocides history has to offer. The potency of these memories is proof enough that Morrison can write in a stunning and unrivaled way, she may be the only writer capable of truly humanizing the legacy of slavery. At any rate, she accomplishes something no non-fiction book on the topic could ever really do.

One of the demonstrations of Morrison's ability is the way she makes belonging a central theme. It is only later that we realize the burning man is a friend, the broken slave a husband, the hanging woman, a mother. The reason we, the reader, aren't greeted with these facts immediately is because Morrison is exploring what slavery teaches about belonging (it is no coincidence the villain in Beloved is named Teacher, the chief overseer at Sweet Home). If this book were non-fiction the thesis would essentially ask what happens to one's sense of belonging when they belong legally to another person. There is so much helplessness in Beloved, an eager desire to own oneself, the product of one's labor. Even the word beloved is used to refer to a cherished and treasured individual, someone who belongs to us. While this seems like it could quickly break down into common sense, to the obvious notion that slavery was bad for the individual slave psyche, it is Morrison's complete mastery of storytelling, of painfully interrupting the reader that keeps the reader entrapped.

And it isn't always violence the way many stories of slavery and racism must almost necessarily be. Morrison has proven it is possible to use imagery alone to jolt the reader, remind them that they are never in a safe space. One of my favorite examples of this is when Denver, one of Sethe's daughters, the only one born free, is at the home of a Dutch brother and sister who are considered "good whites", true champions of abolition. Denver is there asking for a job, but before the reader can feel too comfortable:

"Denver left, but not before she had seen, sitting on a shelf by the back door, a blackboy's mouth full of money. His head was thrown back farther than a head could go, his hands were shoved in his pockets. Bulging like moons, two eyes were all the face he had above the saying red mouth. His hair was a cluster of raised, widely spaced dots made of nail heads. And he was on his knees. His mouth, wide as a cup, held coins needed to pay for a delivery or other small service, but could just as well have held buttons, pins or crab apple jelly. Painted across the pedestal he knelt on were the words 'at yo service'"

This is all we see of the doll, but Morrison doesn't arbitrarily place it in the house of the only friendly whites in the novel. It is a simple yet vivid reminder that racism penetrates everywhere. This image isn't for Denver to see, but the reader. We are all familiar with the sambo, the helpless and stupid black boy that needs the white man to lead them. We know the depiction of sambo is the bulging white eyes and the red mouth. The isolated sentence describing him on his knees and the simplistic 'at yo service'. This was meant to haunt the reader even as something good starts developing for a truly lovable character.

Beloved is deeply disturbing, it's uncomfortable, it's unbelievability is unsettling and doesn't detract from the power with which Morrison writes. Many critics compare her to Faulkner in style, this is true and she compounds on it elegantly. But in content, Toni Morrison is truly one of a kind, writing humanity into a horrifying moment in history and shaming us deeply for forgetting it was ever there.

Brief Interview with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace

Picture David Lynch directing, not whole episodes, but single snatches of Seinfeld dialogue, and you've got the gist of David Foster Wallace's title story Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. It peppers this book of short stories, leaving off and picking up with different "subjects" (interviewees) as the other stories end. The reader, who it's presumed stands in for the interviewer, is represented by just the letter 'Q' in between large swaths of interviewee (these are allegedly the hideous men) monologue. There are intense layers of ironies amidst narratives ranging from graphic and disturbing to witty and downright hilarious. They sets the tone for all of the stories in the book, inviting the reader into an interrogation room and forcing them to ponder difficult questions about moments of growth or beauty or togetherness in the presence of intense trauma.

While the theme seems to be relatively consistent, these stories have extraordinary range in style. Even though each story is drastically different there is something so obviously David Foster Wallace persistent in each, that binds them together. Like DFW temprament is the One Ring or something. It also makes it difficult to point out any one story that stands out. Sure, there is truly intricate and beautiful prose like in Forever Overhead or Church Not Made with Hands, two stories that made me literally despair at how well they were written (the contemporary world of literature lost one of the true greats). Or there is the essential neurotic Wallace in The Depressed Person or Dantum Centurio, whose incessant repetition and over-technicality felt both hilarious and aggravating. In Octet you're met with Wallace's distinct brand of Meta-fiction, which at its worst could probably put any Woody Allen movie to shame; the way it teeters between begrudging self degradation and endearing honesty is refreshing for a style usually reserved for smugness or cynicism. And finally there is Wallace as just a really good story teller. For the reader who values plot over all else I'd give them Adult World, On His Deathbed, Holding Your Hand, and above all else; Signifying Nothing. Each with a radically disturbing element; fierce, hidden guilt about that disturbing element; and a coherent, linear plot the three stories are written the way short fiction should be written. Signifying Nothing is particularly artful at both pushing you way outside of your comfort zone and then comforting you there, possibly expanding something deep inside you, all in the course of a few pages.

Which is what makes this book of short stories so great. It is an introduction to Wallace's special kind of fiction, without delving into massive projects like Infinite Jest or the cripplingly sad (and long) Pale King. DFW believed vehemently that good fiction should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed, a line I believe he borrowed from another author. Regardless, nothing speaks more to his dedication to this idea than Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. If you're looking for Foster Wallace fiction, or you're looking for the standard with which all short fiction should strive, this should be at the top of your list.

Mislaid by Nell Zink

In Mislaid, Nell Zink isn't just arbitrarily zealous or unconventional and she doesn't make decisions on issues of race or gender without a deep consideration of literary tradition. Her many allusions to literature aren't for nothin'. She reads like a succinct Franzen, like you shrunk Freedom and forced it to address race. But Mark Twain is also present, so is Kafka, Beat Poets galore, and there is a palpable but nevertheless covert southern gothic tone reminiscent of, no kidding, William Faulkner.

On the other hand, Mislaid is all about not fitting in (no surprise there). While Zink effortlessly riffs of similarities she doesn't fit in with her predecessors or contemporaries. One could argue this is similar to her characters, but they'd be missing something subtle. Zink offers a widely diverse but intimately (and obscurely) connected cast of characters who, finding they don’t fit in with the traditional conservative settings they were born into, try to flee to progressive havens; a profoundly gay women's college, a hippy commune on a squirrel sanctuary, a university and small town obsessed with affirmative action, an abandoned house in a black community, and even the black community itself. But rather than finding where they were supposed to be as wildly different than where they were born, there is still a deep sense of being an outsider no matter where the characters find themselves. That's because to Zink, fitting in has nothing to do with finding the right people to reside with because even in "progressive" institutions (which are still institutions) fitting in is still a matter of permission. The politics of race and gender are everywhere; the main character Peggy escapes conservative middle class Midwestern family to a radical women's college where she still can't fit in and ends up being stymied into marriage because she gets pregnant and the old as dirt tradition of placing the familial liability of a child squarely on the shoulders of the mother is ubiquitous in America in the 60s regardless of what hippy college you go to. Every character faces privileges and disadvantages because of their perceived race or gender; characters white as the driven snow identify as black in what I think has Twain written all over it. And there really is no escaping these power structures, white males still get away with murder (figuratively speaking of course, no spoilers here), women are forced to be submissive, and black people are perversely discriminated against in ways that remind each character that it isn't about fitting in, but being let in.

This is all very complicated, but the reason why Zink can accomplish so much in such a short book is because she is a master at pacing. She will move through plot at break-neck but remarkably believable speeds and remain cogent. At the same time she is able to slow down moments to excruciatingly suspenseful detail by detail breakdown. I bring this up because I feel, to an extent, it saves this novel from being flimsy and almost whimsically insensitive to its own sentiments. As an example, Peggy and her daughter run away and pretend to be black to escape a potentially abusive marriage. Society unthinkingly accepts them as being black despite their white skin and blond hair because being black in America is a construct created for you by the powers at be, it isn't really about skin color. This idea, coupled with the comical fact that society wholly accepts them as such without a literal second thought, could be too irreverent, cartoonish, and at worst offensive, to a pretty serious theme. But in a dash readers can see how dependent this is on who holds power in a situation. Like they are painfully reminded that Peggy is not white when Temple, an African American friend, chases her down a street to give her a hug in an alley. A fretful and vivid scene of a police officer who feared for Peg's safety out of prejudice basically stops and frisks Temple, kicking the contents of his pockets into a puddle and treating him like a dog. The scene, and many like it, are wrenching. Pulling you out of the flowing plot and smacking you. They demonstrate a necessary fragility to Zink's narrative and message. It reminds everyone, the characters and readers, that no matter what choices you make, their ridiculousness, or believability, or merit are determined for you by the merciless powers of tradition. It's a sobering realization in the midst of a silly and unbelievable short narrative, hello Kafka 2016.

Letter to Senator Stabenow: Endorse Bernie Sanders

Senator Stabenow,

As a young working Michigander I took great pride in voting for you to represent our state in the senate. 2012 was the first election I voted in post graduation. I was happy to vote for a Senator with a strong track record in working for Michigan families. Particularly as the son of a single working mother, also a teacher. But I was 60k in dept and terrified, which is why I greatly appreciate your #InTheRed campaign. I couldn't rely on my parents or lucrative scholarships to pay for my education, I graduated 60 thousand dollars #InTheRed as a result. Since graduating in 2012 I was able to land a job and pay down my debt by almost 40k, but I'm still 20k in! Because of this I support your #InTheRed campaign, but I also have a problem with your endorsement of Hillary Clinton as President.

Hillary Clinton is proposing a debt free college, but Bernie Sanders is proposing making college free. I have major doubts over Hillary Clinton's affordable college plan, mostly because it seems like a No Child Left Behind solution. It plans on providing grants and funding to states based on individual school's willingness and ability to lower tuition. I've blogged extensively about the inequality that could arise out of this plan: https://canberniesandersdoit.wordpress.com/2015/09/01/can-bernie-sanders-make-college-free/ 

For one, Republican led states may not reverse their pattern of divestment in higher education, so under the Clinton campaign schools in those states would not be able to lower costs for their students. Two, my smaller school, Oakland University, provided great opportunities to students who couldn't move to larger schools for whatever reason, oftentimes economic ones. Oakland University though, received the least funding of any school from the state of MI. So under Clinton's plan there is no guarantee that OU would be able to lower tuition costs and would remain unaffordable for the students who need affordable college most.  Bernie Sanders plan to get students out of the red is to provide free college to all students. Providing education to all through sweeping federal action is a far better method because it doesn't cause state by state and school by school competition. This means every student has an equal right to free education whether they are going to U of M or SVSU or OU or Harvard. No student who has the educational prowess to get into college should ever feel money is an obstacle. Clinton's plan is about affordability to SOME and Sanders is about free education for ALL.

Whomever is elected in 2016 will have to do something about rising student debt and higher education costs before things come crashing down. I know you know this. The problem cannot be boiled down to state divestment; the federal government is subsidizing students to go to college and collections agencies down to loan holding companies are profiting wildly. Many declare Bernie Sanders plan unrealistic or that it can't be done, but I believe with powerful allies like yourself, combined with passionate movements like #InTheRed, we can make college free for all students with college aspirations. That's why I believe you should endorse Bernie Sanders for president in the 2016 democratic primary.