Take a Dip with “The Swim,” a Comic by Anne Emond
Voids and Fortunes: Book of Numbers by Joshua Cohen
by Zack Hatfield
We are all made of ones and zeroes; not atoms, viscera or memories, but assembled from differing yarns of binary code. Or so explains the narrator early on in Joshua Cohen’s latest novel, Book of Numbers (Random House), a sweeping opus concerning identity in the cyber era. “The ones our fortunes, the zeroes our voids, our blacker lacking places,” our narrator explains. It’s a poetic, if deeply nihilistic outlook that apotheosizes the book’s theme of how rooted modern technology has become in our lives.
The landscape of the Internet, like the mind, is complicated to map in fiction, its parameters immeasurable, its horizons always broadening. Its vast networks mirror the cerebral avenues Cohen sends us through in this story, which revolves around a novelist manqué ghostwriting a memoir for a “googlionaire” tech tycoon who shares his name (the book dubs him Principal, making confusion less likely). This doppelgänger — who may remind readers of Steve Jobs or other tech moguls — owns Tetration, a corporation comparable to Google and Apple. We follow the firm from its origins in programming counterculture as it moves from producing hardware to computers to phones, eventually creating surveillance technologies to monitor Americans. Fortunately, Book of Numbers refrains from full-blown Silicon Valley satire (too easy) or a type of Brave New Novel for our generation (too uninspired — see: The Circle), though the farcical gears gyrate throughout. Instead, Cohen evokes a panorama of everything leading up to the present with a constellation of topics that include the history of the search engine, the publishing industry, religion and art. It’s a work that, like much contemporary literary fiction, can be considered as much cultural criticism as a product of the imagination.
The extravagant altitude of Cohen’s authorial voice is one that requires acclimation. His language teems with digital argot, the sentences frequently run-ons, his paragraphs overflown and referential. At times the fictional data Cohen shoehorns into the novel threatens to freeze the bandwidth of the human cerebrum processing it. The salvo of neologisms, the jarring lyricism, the well-cadenced language steeped in self-indulgence all make comparisons to Pynchon and Wallace inescapable. Yet there’s also a humor in the vein of Phillip Roth or even Woody Allen. The distracted neurosis of the narrator reflects the paranoia and work ethic we’ve inherited in the digital age (“just completed an email, nonfiction,” he says when asked if he’s working on any writing). But just when one is beginning to become fluent in the rhythms of the ghostwriter’s thought pattern, his point of view is traded for hundreds of pages to the less interesting character Principal, who refers to himself in the first person plural and indulges in startup zen-speak while revealing his life story. Partly told in emails, code and transcripts between the two Cohens, the middle section lags. Following the liveliness of the first fifth of the novel, it feels like shifting down a few gears on Cohen’s information superhighway.
The thematic pursuit of Book of Numbers unravels when we consider its similarities to the Internet itself. Both testify to our vanishing attention spans, the paradoxes of communication made easier. They yield to the grammar of chaos. But throughout the weaker parts of the novel it can feel like there are too many tabs open. In the recent book Where I’m Reading From, critic and novelist Tim Parks writes that one flaw of the novel in the digital age “is not that it doesn’t participate in modern technology, can’t talk about it or isn’t involved with it,” but that there is a “slow weakening of the sense of being inside a society with related and competing visions of the world.” Culture is forsaken for accessibility. Parks’s diagnosis, that novels invest too much in universality, is reversed in Book of Numbers, whose broad cultural themes are made possible with prose that couldn’t care less about being accessible. A sacrifice is made as Cohen’s gratuitous language — simultaneously unreadable and virtuosic — is what imparts the disorder of the Digital Age so effectively. In a world where almost everything is at one’s fingertips, Cohen makes sure his writing isn’t.
Like many postmodernist and post-postmodernist endeavors, Book of Numbers struggles at times to find convincing pathos, both hamstrung and propelled by its tangle of pragmatisms and synaptic imagery. But as fictional Cohen’s cannabalistic ego is revealed (he blames the failure of his novel on 9/11, which occurred a day after his publication date) an emotional cavity in the book feels only necessary to reveal the vanishing humanity in an era avalanched with algorithms, of so many usernames and passwords, of endless pixels. As the reader wades through the narrator’s experiences across several timezones and mental states, it becomes painfully clear that in a technological world where it is impossible to be “plausibly alone,” as he claims, loneliness still abounds.
Book of Numbers alludes to the friction between the online world and the art of the novel; consider its opening line: “If you’re reading this on a screen, fuck off” (despite the sheer weight of the book’s nearly 600 pages, I felt guilty and got the physical copy). Although it could be understandably placed next to, say, Ben Lerner’s 10:04 on the shelf — both are bracingly of-their-time metanarratives that concern NYC novelists prone to self-conscious digressions — Cohen’s novel has much less poetic chemistry than Lerner’s, more complacent as a screed that helps unpack the post-9/11 world. Though it might prove a convincing time capsule, the book redeems because it’s ahead of its time. Cohen would probably scoff at those who call this an “Internet Novel,” and he’d be right to. With its acrobatic diction and ambition, it indicates that the Internet has infiltrated the matrix of our psychology, our culture and everyday lives. And what is the novel supposed to do if not provide insight into our minds and everyday existence? Despite its glitches, Book of Numbers earns its applause through a magisterial attempt to solve life’s grand equation, one that storytellers have been and will most likely be computing in every eon, with or without wifi.
by Joshua Cohen
PopSlate’s Nifty New Gadget: iPhone Case with E-Ink Screen
PopSlate has created the ultimate iPhone case: one that not only protects your precious phone, but also includes an E-ink screen on the back of the case.
E-Ink is known to have advantages over LCD displays when reading. It’s ideal for black and white text, and it also more closely resembles paper. Perhaps if we choose E-Ink over LCD when reading electronically, we can pretend we’re holding a real book made of real paper.
Plus, Gizmodo reports that E-Ink screens don’t need power to keep their images. Problem solved! We all know how terrifying it can be when our phones die — especially when we’re relying on it for one pertinent, timely piece of information. (Such as exact directions to a new neighborhood, or a short poem to impress a first date.)
You Should Never Go Home: Fiction and the Suburbs in Judy Blume and Karolina Waclawiak
Recently I found myself driving around the suburbs I grew up in between reading Judy Blume’s 1978 “stunning debut in the world of adult fiction,” Wifey, and Karolina Waclawiak’s new novel, The Invaders. Cruising past my old high school and other places I have had no reason to revisit in over a decade between reading those two books seemed appropriate since both novels focus on female protagonists who’ve placed their faith in shoddy husbands and the faulty cure-all of suburban living. Passing streets I’d tried to forget reminded me just how bleak the suburbs can be when you feel like you don’t belong in them, something both Waclawiak and Blume explore in their books.
“The less thinking you do the better off you’ll be,” Blume’s Sandy Pressman is told by her husband, Norman. 37 years later, the husband in Waclawiak’s book is sexually alienated from his wife, Cheryl; he doesn’t repeat what Norman says, but he and the rest of the people in the couple’s Connecticut neighborhood adhere to that train of thought. While Cheryl’s sex life is nonexistent, Sandy’s is regimented and boring. It happens on the same night every week (“unless I have my period”), it lacks passion, and Norman finds the idea of performing oral sex on his wife absolutely revolting.
Blume’s Emma Bovary-ish protagonist Sandy is a woman bored with her lackluster marriage — in need of an escape if only in the arms of other men; everything is falling apart around Waclawiak’s Cheryl, but she is paralyzed by it, and her lack of action could spell her downfall. Like the neighbors in Blume’s book, Cheryl’s neighbors in Little Neck Cove live with blinders on, in a way that sits perfectly between Shirley Jackson ominous and David Lynch askew — like you’re waiting for something bad to happen but don’t know exactly what.
Even though Blume’s book came out before Waclawiak was born, it feels just as contemporary. Reading both at the same time has me thinking it’s time for authors to get out of the city and start exploring the suburbs again. There’s real darkness out there just waiting to be mined for fictional gold.
The American suburbs as we know them, once considered the “borderlands” outside major cities, started to develop towards the middle of the 19th century before the beginning of the Civil War. They were suited to people who could find jobs outside of the metropolitan area, or who had money to make the commute back into places like Manhattan, Chicago, or Philadelphia. The places where Blume and Waclawiak’s characters live in the 20th and 21st century aren’t all that much different. They are filled with mostly white people who can afford to live somewhere picturesque and quiet. They don’t like outsiders: people of color aren’t welcome, are instead eyed suspiciously and called coded names when they come to clean the houses in Blume’s New Jersey neighborhood. They’re all trying to achieve that the American Dream, and a big part of attaining that it is by being as ignorant as possible. This is slyly skewered perfectly in The Invaders: When an old Mexican fisherman is caught urinating in the streets of Waclawiak’s town, it’s a sign of how supposedly unsafe things have become, and the neighbors decide to erect a physical wall to block out what they’ve already restricted in their minds.
I passed through one of the gated neighborhoods that I lived in as a child. The neighborhood association said gates kept non-members from using the pool, but everybody knew better. I had dinner with an old friend from high school and she told me that the place was like a ghost town following the 2008 financial crisis. People moved out, families broke apart, jobs were lost, and the housing market crumbled. Things have since picked up, but I wondered what happened to all the families I knew, the ones you smiled at and who smiled back at you, but who you always heard secrets whispered about when they weren’t around. Things are supposedly better now, a little more stable. But as I drove north to another neighborhood I also once lived in just outside of Chicago, one that was supposed to be the “next up-and-coming city” but had seen its best chances dry up when the businesses didn’t follow the housing developments, things felt darker. If I was a fiction writer, I thought to myself, this would make the perfect setting for a story or book with the closed chain stores, at-risk mom and pop businesses barely hanging on, and abandoned half-built townhouses that look like they’d been given up on a few years earlier. I passed my childhood movie theatre that was now shuttered, and empty storefronts where I had bought gym clothes. This emptiness is what will always be underneath the shiny façade of the suburbs.
This emptiness is what will always be underneath the shiny façade of the suburbs.
The suburbs were built to crumble. They’re places built on lies and kept up by blind eyes. Some fiction writers have explored this; maybe the most notable being John Cheever, who sometimes gets the tag “Chekhov of the suburbs.” But books like Wifey and The Invaders, although written and published with a few decades between them, don’t shy away from looking at what goes on behind closed doors. The suburbs are very dark, very real, and very indicative of contemporary American ennui. And although the big cities hold a million stories, authors who go to little towns where everything is supposed to be perfect but ultimately fall short return with unforgettable stories. Wifey is one of the truly underrated novels of the 1970s (although it sold well upon release, it has taken a backseat to Blume’s classics), and The Invaders is easily one of the best novels of 2015. Those two books alone prove that writers should make it out to the ‘burbs more often.
photo of Chicago suburbs via Flickr
Where The Story Starts: An Interview with Annie McGreevy
Annie McGreevy’s debut novella Ciao, Suerte is excerpted in the newest issue of Recommended Reading. In the interview below, McGreevy discusses her interest in the subjects broached by the novel, and the process by which the work came to fruition.
Emma Adler: According to Deena Drewis, who wrote the introduction to the excerpt, you started out writing your novella, thinking you were “doing it wrong” and that no one would ever see it. Is this an attitude that persisted until you finished the book, or did you reach a point, during the writing process, when you realized that you had something of potential value on your hands?
Annie McGreevy: The attitude that it was “just for me” and “just for fun” definitely persisted through the first real draft of it, until I showed it to anybody, yes. I’m part of a really supportive writing group where it’s easy to show up with a vulnerable draft, and once I workshopped it there and got some positive feedback, I realized it was workable.
I guess, on some level, I felt that it could get good at some point even in the early stages. I think this is a big part of what draws me to the writing process — feeling that something could go either way, get pretty good or fail really hard. I’ve got an embarrassing number of stories in drawers that have failed really hard.
Adler: Ciao, Suerte does not just span continents and decades, but also age groups, focusing on multiple generations of a family blown apart by war. How did your approach change, writing from the close-third perspective of an old woman, as compared to that of a young man in his twenties? As a young writer, what are the challenges of attempting to channel a character who is much older than yourself?
McGreevy: Beatriz, Giancarlo and Eduardo are the first elderly characters I’ve ever written seriously, and they did present real challenges. Beatriz has such clear goals, though, so I focused on those in order to manage her. Giancarlo was trickier, and I wrote tons of pages from his perspective that ended up getting cut.
The main difference in my approach to characters of different ages really had to do with time. Beatriz’s mission is on a timer; she wants to find her grandchild before she dies. Miguel and Inés are very young and carefree. I think this is reflected in the way the story is written and the things they do: hang out with no plans at all and blow off important things like final exams. Miguel is spending an entire year doing nothing at all.
Beatriz, Giancarlo, and Eduardo are all very in touch with their mortality and on missions to accomplish certain things during their lifetime, and I think that fact was ultimately driving their individual narratives: Beatriz wants to find the child, Giancarlo wants to get over the heartbreak of losing the child, and Eduardo wants to convince himself that he did the right thing. They’re all old enough that death creates an urgency for them. Miguel and Inés, because they’re in their early twenties, live their lives as though they’re immortal.
Adler: Ciao, Suerte is set against the historical background of the Dirty War in Argentina. How did you first become interested in this period of Argentinian history? Have you spent much time there?
McGreevy: I lived in Madrid from 2003–2007 and knew lots of Argentine people there. They have this really distinct way of speaking that’s lovely to listen to. Julio Cortazar was already one of my favorite authors and I quickly became a huge fan of Argentinean music, the yerba mate tea, and interested in the culture generally. In 2012, I read an article in The New Yorker that detailed the story of many of the illicitly adopted children of the Dirty War who were found through DNA tests and the efforts of Las Madres y Abuelas de La Plaza de Mayo, and reunited with their grandparents. The story was fascinating on a personal and political level.
I’ve never actually been to Argentina! I keep trying to go, and then life keeps getting in the way. Which is a problem I’d like to rectify ASAP.
Adler: The opening chapter of Ciao, Suerte (included in the Recommended Reading excerpt) describes the gradual breakdown of Beatriz and Giancarlo’s marriage following the death of their son. In a sense this is the tragedy after the tragedy, which includes the struggle to recover, move on, and achieve closure. How did you decide to begin the story at this point?
McGreevy: Well, there’s that old question about where to begin any story, using the example of the couple on the eve of their wedding: the guy has his bachelor party and orders a stripper, and both he and the stripper are extremely drunk. When they wake up in the morning, on the wedding day, he realizes that the stripper is the woman he’s about to marry. He, of course, had no idea that she was a stripper. This example is used to discuss the question of “When should this story start?” When they wake up, because that’s the most exciting part? Or the night before, so we can get to know the characters, and then be devastated when we realize they’re not who their partner thought they were?
I’m definitely of the opinion that we need to know the character before they lose something big. I wanted to start the story with Beatriz and her struggle, so that, when she finally meets Miguel later on, it would have more context and meaning.
During the editing process with Deena at Nouvella, Giancarlo worked his way into the story with more strength. I realized that couples are often not on the same page about the way to deal with a tragedy, and this was an opportunity to explore something more personal and less political.
TED WILSON REVIEWS THE WORLD: CLIFF HUXTABLE
★★★☆☆
Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of the world. Today I am reviewing Cliff Huxtable.
Cliff Huxtable was a fictional character in an old sitcom. He was a loving father, husband, and son, with a friendly disposition and thoughtful approach to life. The name ‘Huxtable’ sounds like ‘huggable’ and makes me feel warm and safe. He had no enemies. He would bring women into his basement to look at their vaginas.
One of his most notable traits was the amazingly large sweater collection he owned. Most people didn’t care much for the style of his sweaters, but he wasn’t swayed by popular opinion. He did whatever he wanted and no one could stop him. He had dozens and dozens of sweaters, dating back decades. In fact, he had so many sweaters that he could wear a different one each week for years on end without repeating any. That’s a guy who really loves sweaters.
Some might say his sweater collection bordered on obsession. Why did he need so many sweaters? Why couldn’t one sweater be enough? What drove him to buy sweater after sweater? In a way, it’s almost like he didn’t care about the sweaters, the way he would wear one and then discard it, immediately searching for his next sweater. What a complicated guy.
He probably needed a second closet devoted just to his sweaters. Most likely a secret closet or something hard to get to, to keep the sweaters safe. You can’t have that many sweaters without your wife finding out though, so she must have been okay with it. I don’t know if she ever tried to get him to quit it already with the sweaters, or if she was resigned to the whole thing.
If you want to watch videos of Cliff and his sweaters, you can find a lot online. When I watch the videos I can’t concentrate on the jokes. I get too distracted wondering where he is now. The show went off the air so does he still exist? He could be brought to life at any moment if they reboot the show. And because he’s just a character, anyone can play him. Like how different guys play Batman all the time. I’d like to see someone more comical in the role of Cliff Huxtable. Someone like Mike Tyson.
BEST FEATURE: Cliff is really funny from the neck up.
WORST FEATURE: At the heart of it all, something about him seems really passionless. As if he’s just going through the motions and is dead inside.
Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing a race car.
Illustration by Jon Adams.
INFOGRAPHIC: Unusual Jobs of Famous Writers
Unplag created an infographic reminding all the aspiring novelists out there that they might have to work some odd jobs (fun or terrible) before they hit on a six-figure publishing deal. Fingers crossed, right? Below, check out what Kurt Vonnegut, Charles Dickens, Stephen King, and more did before they were famous authors.
AUGUST MIXTAPE by Sarah Gerard
They Don’t Love You Like I Love You
My new chapbook “BFF” dissects my 17-year best friendship with someone who has since slipped into another life. Each of the songs in this playlist holds some significance in that context — these are not songs I was listening to while writing the book, but songs we listened to together or, importantly, didn’t. “BFF” is written as a direct-address to its subject, so this playlist is written in the same style. I hope you enjoy it.
1. No Doubt — Don’t Speak
“Tragic Kingdom” came out when we were in middle school and Gwen Stefani was the coolest woman in the world. She possessed all the confidence and style we wished we had. You came over to my house in the afternoons and we made music videos for every song on this album with my dad’s Sony camcorder.
2. Thee Oh Sees — Carrion Crawler
Time has passed. This is a song I’ve heard you like but we’ve never listened to it together. It’s a really good song — you’ve always had good taste in music. We used to share recommendations all the time. I spent entire nights making you mix CD’s with the cases and sleeves collaged. We drove around aimlessly for hours introducing each other to new bands. I miss it.
3. Johnny Cash — Ring of Fire
On the day I lied to you about being a fan of Johnny Cash when I had only just begun to familiarize myself with his work, you asked if I liked this song and I didn’t know which song you were talking about. You tried to sing it to me but you’re kind of a bad singer — sorry, it’s true. I didn’t recognize it.
4. Yeah Yeah Yeahs — Maps
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs were your favorite band for maybe too long. Maybe they still are. You would talk about Karen O like she was a personal friend of yours. I think you met her backstage at a show or two. You loved saying, “They don’t love you like I love you.” You started collecting maps.
5. Get Up Kids — Don’t Hate Me
We were the perfect age for emo when it was a thing. I bought the Get Up Kids’ “Something to Write Home About” and you got “Four Minute Mile” and we debated about which was better. I still think mine was better. But yours is grittier, and I think that’s appropriate.
6. Bob Marley — No Woman No Cry
You always loved Bob Marley, had a totally Jamaican-themed mind (you also loved Bad Brains), and not just because of the weed, but because Bob Marley sings about hardship, and you identified with hardship. In Bob Marley, you saw that despite your hardship, you could also live chill. Like “Your blues ain’t like my blues” — your tattoo, which you’ve since covered up — which contains the relaxation of the contraction in the midst of its strife. You told me you dated a Marley.
7. Car Bomb Driver — Brookwood Girls
Car Bomb Driver was our town’s punk band so you befriended Car Bomb Dave and talked about him whenever you saw the chance. This song was special to you, like he’d been thinking about you as a Brookwood girl, which you were. The chorus made you feel cool because you, too, were a rebellious teenage girl who couldn’t be controlled.
8. Gogol Bordello — Wonderlust King
This was the last show we went to together, at the Emerald. My hair was still short and I wore a cardigan and pants, and was so hot I was sweating. You took a picture of me from above, touching noses with our other friend, who didn’t speak to me for a year after you and I stopped speaking. You said, “I’d like to do a series of photos like these. I think it’d be swell.”
9. Joni Mitchell — A Case of You
I never knew Joni Mitchell meant anything to you. You liked this song somewhere on the Internet and I noticed and felt tricked. This was the song I played for my ex right before we broke up, and you and I stopped talking a few months later. It’s like you knew and were sending me a secret message, or a secret slap in the face.
10. MGMT — Kids
This was the era when you lived in the little gypsy boat apartment on the south side of downtown. You wore a long, grey, empire-cut cardigan with most everything, and you and your daughter shared a bed — you’d shared a bed for some time already. Once, you guilted me into coming to Ladies’ Craft Nite and I didn’t want to come. I was mad at you and pouted the whole time, and you said I’d disappointed you.
11. Blink 182 — Lemmings
When I bought “Enema of the State”, you’d already been listening to Blink 182 for two years. You told me “Dude Ranch” was better and it is, undeniably. It’s hard to choose which song on this album reminds me most of you, but I seem to remember this being the first song from it that you played for me, and I can imagine what it sounds like when you say the word lemming.
12. Goo Goo Dolls — Black Balloon
You fell in love with the Goo Goo Dolls the year we lost our virginity. I’m back in your bedroom listening to this song: the window overlooking the kitchen, your walk-in closet, your vanity mirror. You telling me you’d done whip-its with a group of kids whose names I’d never heard. By the end of that year, you were put in the girls’ home.
13. Beach House — Zebra
You’ve always been on the edge of cool. It’s scared me at times; I could never keep up with you, but never knew it until after the fact. Your taste was better than I gave you credit for. Better than mine. You knew hip, but I didn’t know you knew hip because you never made it work for you; you were always sabotaging yourself, always failing. To me it all sounded like bullshit. I should have listened better.
***
— Sarah Gerard is the author of the novel Binary Star (Two Dollar Radio), which NPR calls “a hard, harrowing look into inner space,” and two chapbooks, most recently BFF (Guillotine). Her short fiction, essays, interviews and criticism have appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine’s “The Cut”, Joyland, the Paris Review Daily, BOMB Magazine, and elsewhere. She teaches writing and writes a monthly column on artists’ notebooks for Hazlitt.
The Novel as Self: The Small Backs of Children by Lidia Yuknavitch
“Every self is a novel in progress. Every novel a lie that hides the self,” the unnamed writer central to Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Small Backs of Children tells us after cataloging a litany of personal traumas, disasters, and loves. The writer is conscious of the act of writing and aware of the reader, at times directly addressing us: “This, reader, is a mother-daughter story.”
But to simplify Yuknavitch’s novel to the writer’s prescription is to miss the wider picture. It’s important to remember how she speaks of the self: we are novels en media res, and this construction hides us, even as we create.
This is not what stood out initially when I read The Small Backs of Children earlier this month. My inability to fully understand what I had read weighed on me first. What seems like a straightforward, if not unusual, story based on the cover’s description is far more convoluted than any summary can explain. To start: there is a young girl — “no longer a child” — age six who walks into the snow a year “after the blast that has atomized her entire family in front of her eyes.” The girl observes a wolf chew off its own leg to free itself from a trap, and then “pisses” on the trap and the bloodied leg.
“This is how the sexuality of a girl is formed — an image at a time — against white; taboo, thoughtless, corporeal.”
And with this sentence, and the alarming image of an orphan creating and forming her perception of image, later art, at a site of violence, Yuknavitch lays out the thesis of her novel: life, sex, and violence collide to form something larger: art.
The nameless young girl isn’t the only practitioner. There is the photographer who takes the photo of the young girl escaping from her burning home: the photographer, an American, feels intrusive in a place where “none of this has made the news,” a stand-in for any number of recent conflicts in Eastern Europe. The photo will pass hands and gain the photographer recognition and awards, and fall into the hands of the unnamed writer — a former lover of the photographer. The photo resurfaces and unlocks the pain the writer keeps just below the surface — the birth of a stillborn child — dooming her to a hospital bed, lying depressed while she rests in the “vast whiteness” of memory and time.
The Small Backs of Children requires the reader to let go and give into the prose and story. Why do the writer’s friends so determinedly latch onto the idea of saving the young girl and bringing her to the writer? Once I had finished the book, I knew I had read something brilliant; I just could not quantify it, which is perhaps the wrong impulse. I read interviews with Yuknavitch, trying to read between the lines, and found something direct instead: Yuknavitch had had a stillborn daughter, which she addresses in her 2011 memoir The Chronology of Water. I read it, and the plot lines began to converge, so that I questioned who was the writer of The Small Backs of Children and who was the writer of The Chronology of Water?
While it’s an assumption to say that the writer is a stand-in for Yuknavitch, recall the writer’s lines: “Every self is a novel in progress. Every novel a lie that hides the self.” In that sense, Yuknavitch’s novel reads as the creative proof of her memoir: while she shies away from redemption narratives, she ends The Chronology of Water with this instruction: “Make up stories until you find one you can live with.” Yuknavitch’s personal journey towards that story — filled with “rituals of pain and pleasure” and art — is mirrored in her novel. The story of the writer’s friends uplifting her needs and caring for her in such a radical way is a brave act of family making. Yuknavitch notes at the end of her memoir that these families do not need to prescribe to any set heteronormative standards. It’s a serendipitous literary echo found in Maggie Nelson’s hybrid memoir The Argonauts, published this year by Graywolf press.
The Small Backs of Children is ultimately an examination of the spectrum of creation — whether of self or art — and how often creation can uneasily exist along with destruction.
by Lidia Yuknavitch
The Internal Adventures Of Urban Man As Murder Squad Detective: An Interview With John Burdett…
John Burdett is a British author whose vastly entertaining series of novels feature Sonchai Jitpleecheep, a half-Thai, half-American detective who bears the notable distinction of being the only honest cop in Bangkok. Featuring sardonic insight into both Thai and Western culture aplenty and plots which refuse to play by detective story rules, Burdett maneuvers us behind the eyes of Detective Jitpleecheep through Thailand’s City of Angels in all its durian-scented, haze-choked wonder.
The Jitpleecheep books are your antidote to the dumb Bangkok of Hangover II, the idealistic haze of backpacker legend, and the Orientalist exoticizing of a thousand forgettable pulps.
The latest Jitpleecheep book, The Bangkok Asset, was released this week by Knopf.
Court Merrigan: How accurate do you think your portrayal of the Thai milieu is? Is verisimilitude part of your aim? The language Jitpleecheep uses — I’m thinking of the numerous asides to “you, farang” — lend a certain authority to his view of Thai culture, cuisine, religion, etc. And then Jitpleecheep is himself half-farang. Would a Westerner debarking in Bangkok discover anything like Jitpleecheep’s world?
John Burdett: On the one hand I’ve been much encouraged by Westerners debarking in Bangkok and congratulating me on the accuracy of my descriptions. On the other hand, as a resident of the city with a Thai partner I am constantly reminded that my learning curve has not stopped climbing. Also, of course, Thai society is changing all the time. We tend to think of Western societies in a constant state of change, which is true to some extent but often exaggerated. On the other hand, the emergence from a Southeast Asian Buddhist Kingdom of the old kind into a modern state is dramatic and occasionally awesome. Then again there is the personality of Sonchai himself. He has one foot in both cultures and tends to describe one from the point of view of the other. This is deliberate. When asked I tend to describe him as Urban Man: he knows a great deal about the world from the Internet, is very smart, but has no political power himself and is at the mercy of forces — often criminal — beyond his control.
CM: So would you say you write “about” Thailand, the way Flannery O’Connor wrote “about” the American South, Ed Abbey the American West, Dickens London? Have many Thais read your work, and commented on your accuracy, as have Westerners?
I believe what I have done is adapt a stream of consciousness technique so that the city, the country and the man in the middle are all part of the same thing.
JB: I would not say I write ‘about’ Thailand — or anywhere else. To write ‘about’ somewhere is to use the very familiar subject/object approach. I believe what I have done is adapt a stream of consciousness technique so that the city, the country and the man in the middle are all part of the same thing. This is the inestimable advantage of first person narrative. Bangkok, in this context, is whatever is inside Sonchai’s head as he moves around. A literary type will immediately recognise a debt to James Joyce, which no doubt is true, but for myself I see this technique as a natural evolution from my interest in Buddhism, which, long before Joyce, pointed out that subject and object are an illusion created for the necessity of communication and survival. It is interesting, by the way, that this idea was first broached in the West by Ludwig Wittgenstein, a contemporary of Joyce, who was much influenced by Schopenhauer who was the first to bring Buddhist philosophy to the attention of the West.
Those Thais who read my books are of necessity fluent in English and therefore constitute a special class. They tend to fall into two categories: Thai women with long-term western partners, and Thai men who have been educated abroad. The first category tend to find my portrayals of Thai woman/Western man hilarious. The second are delighted by the extreme personalities of characters like Vikorn, whom they seem to recognise.
CM: Do you think Jitpleecheep’s ability to see into the past lives of others is a superpower? I mean, it makes sense in a Thai context where many are presumed to have the ability, but to the Western reader such a power seems quite otherworldly. If it’s not a superpower … what is it?
JB: In Buddhism there are no superpowers, there is simply an underlying reality to which we are largely blind. Because of his intensity and honesty Sonchai is able to lift the veil a little from time to time. He is certainly not fully enlightened but belongs to that category the Buddha called ‘enlightening beings.’ That is to say he is in the grip of an internal dynamic which reveals unexpected truths from time to time — at a cost, for he has still to survive in a humdrum and corrupt world ruled by the likes of Vikorn.
CM: I could pick out any one of dozens of Jitpleecheep’s asides, some of which have made me guffaw right into my coffee or bourbon (depending on the time of day), but this one has always stood out to me, from the first Jitpleecheep book, Bangkok 8:
There will be a massive shift of power from West to East in the middle of the twenty-first century, caused not by war or economics but by a subtle alteration in consciousness. The new age of biotechnology will require a highly developed intuition which operates outside of logic, anyway the internal destruction of Western society will have reached such a pass that most of your resources will be concentrated on managing loonies. There will TV news pictures of people fleeing from supermarkets and pressing their hands to their heads, unable to take the banality anymore. The peoples of Southeast Asia, who have never been poisoned by logical thought, will find themselves in the driver’s seat. It will be like old times, if your time line stretches back a few thousand years.
Anyone who’s ever stepped foot in a Whole Foods understands, I think! How literally are we take this aside? Clearly Jitpleecheep believes it, but should your reader?
In some ancient Buddhist traditions the fate of the small-minded was rebirth as insects.
JB: This is an amusing outburst by Urban Man as described above. Sonchai’s great resource is his humour and I think he keeps his tongue in his cheek during this harangue. But that does not mean he is not right in his analysis. With respect, I think you may have answered your own question here: Anyone who’s ever stepped foot in a Whole Foods understands. What will be the fate of a society committed to petty detail in the absence of any uplifting quest of the kind that drove our ancestors? What happens longer term when the great alluring horizons of yesterday have all shrunk to a shelf in a Wal-Mart? Surely nobody knows as yet. Like Sonchai, I would suggest the augurs are not good. In some ancient Buddhist traditions the fate of the small-minded was rebirth as insects. Or, one might support Sonchai’s reasoning by reference to history. Prior to modern times the best example of an empire governed exclusively by written law was the Roman. It was eventually superceded by the extremely fanciful, intuitive and organic medieval period best represented by St Francis of Assisi, who talked to birds and befriended wolves — and the troubadours of Aquitane.
CM: Thailand has certainly undergone massive changes since the Vietnam War; even since I first stepped foot in the Land of Smiles in 1998, the pace of change beggars belief. And yet, a core of “Thai-ness” seems to remain, from the ever-present scent of incense to the durian hawkers to the utter disregard for road safety. Is this because people who recall the old days just haven’t died out yet?
You still find Thai essence driving under the surface, even at the most sophisticated levels of society.
JB: Like any ancient society, including European ones, there is an essence at the center of the national character. A lot of the issues currently straining the European experiment can be understood as a conflict between national identity and the pressures of internationalism. Most Thais are not natives of Bangkok, even though they may work there, and come from a countryside where there has as yet been only minimal alterations in consciousness (despite that with social media and the Internet the pressure to change is high and despite the disruptions referred to in my first answer). You still find Thai essence driving under the surface, even at the most sophisticated levels of society. Also, Thais set great store by a feeling of well being (sabai) as opposed to the theoretical Western notion that: If I have a high enough standard of living I must be happy — right? Thais, still steeped in Buddhism, are likely to answer: Not necessarily, farang. My hope is that they will follow the Italian model by taking what they need from the new on an a la carte basis and keep the best of their traditions, especially the ones that make them feel good in the existential sense of the phrase, i.e. sabai.
CM: One of the best features of the Jitpleecheep books is the way concrete descriptions of Bangkok and environs stand side-by-side with Sonchai’s mystical experiences, such as his “superpower.” Seems to mirror the experience of being in Thailand to me. It also lifts your books out of strictly realist territory. How do you classify your Jitpleecheep books? Thrillers? Mysteries? Something else entirely? Or would you prefer to sidestep such classification?
JB: I don’t much like classifications simply because it seems to mislead people. From time to time a critic will complain that my plots do not follow the strict police procedural blueprint — there was one in the Washington Post years ago who seemed quite dogmatic about it and could not forgive my transgression. I need hardly say that to me this is incomprehensible nonsense and arises from the need to classify. If I had to put a label on the Sonchai series I would have to say something like “The Internal Adventures of Urban Man as Murder Squad Detective” — far too clumsy for a label I suppose but a tad more accurate that ‘police procedural’.
CM: I’ve often heard it said that books set in locales outside the United States stand little chance of gaining traction, yet each of the Jitpleecheep books have sold very well. To what do you attribute Jitpleecheep’s success?
JB: I have to return to my Urban Man theme. Sonchai reads the same news, follows the same stories, is interested in the same issues as so many other educated people today, all over the world. A struggling young person living alone or with a partner in a walkup in Brooklyn will have more in common with his counterparts in Bangkok or Buenos Aires than he does with a farmer in Arkansas or a millionaire in California. He also suffers from the same sense of ‘information without power’. I have received emails form readers in Latin America who say: Replace the Buddhism with Catholicism and you have my own home town, pollution and police corruption, overcrowding and heat included. I also believe there is a universalism in Buddhism that makes its central perceptions true and recognisable for everyone who takes the trouble to think about being alive.
CM: One of the critiques leveled at books featuring a recurring character is that the readers know that character will survive as long as the series does. What’s your method of building suspense and forward momentum in spite of this?
Maybe I transmit this schizoid tension.
JB: I think the critique is wrong. Readers demand that the central character live on to endure another trauma. Sherlock Holmes is a good example. Of course, he died in the end, but that was not the best episode. I think the whole point of this kind of series is the question in the Reader’s mind from the start of the book: How is he going to get out of this new jam? My technique is to make each jam very different, and probably more threatening. To be honest, as author I never know how I will extricate myself from the narrative headache I tend to give myself from the first chapter. I watch in disbelief as the subconscious comes up with the most amazing answers that, so to speak, I would never have thought of myself. Maybe I transmit this schizoid tension.
CM: At one point the movie rights for Bangkok 8 and other Jitpleecheep books were sold, but a world that could sorely use more Sonchai remains without a film version. Does the recent success of the radically unconventional MAD MAX movie give you any hope that Bangkok 8, very unconventional itself, will get made? Surely there’s room for more movies set in Bangkok besides the slapstick of HANGOVER II or the austere auteur’s vision of the city of ONLY GOD FORGIVES?
JB: The world of movies is a greater mystery to me than anything that happens to Sonchai. The options have been sold continuously for over ten years, presumably to people who intend to make a movie, but so far no one has managed it. I prefer to answer the question by confessing I keep my fingers crossed.
CM: How many more Jitpleecheep books can we look forward to?
JB: That would be telling.
