My Tattoo: The Annotated Edition

At some point in my life, I said that I would get a tattoo when I published my first book. At the time, I didn't have anything particular in mind, it was just something that seemed like a good way to commemorate, you know, a dream come true. And then, well, I published a book and the whole tattoo thing kinda slipped my mind. In my defense, there was a lot of shit going on around the publication of my book; copy edits, publicity essays, final proofs, setting up the tour, preparing for the tour, bookseller letters, and then the book came out and there was the actual tour, some interviews and other pieces, and you know, still working full time at the bookstore. (There was a fair amount in Ye Olde Personal Life as well.) The whole tattoo thing just kind of slipped my mind.

And then a couple of months ago, a few things came together. In no particular order. I am now totally in the world of what I hope will be my next novel, and the publication of An Exaggerated Murder has become more of event in my life. One of my best friends reminded me that I said I would get a tattoo when I published my first book. One of my other best friends, who happens to be a kickass tattoo artist, opened up her own shop. I read this absolutely beautiful picture book at the store, Tell Me a Tattoo Story. And, probably most importantly, I figured out how to visually cram a ton of what is most important in my prose writing life into a single image. The result, as will come as no surprise to readers of this blog or people who know me in general, is literary as fuck.

So, here is my tattoo story, or as I like to think of it (see above about the whole literary as fuck thing) the annotated edition of my tattoo.

In chronological order of their appearance in culture:

1. Illumination of the Oxford Scholar or Clerk from The Canterbury Tales

Here is how Chaucer introduces this fine fellow.

A CLERK from Oxford was there also,
Who'd studied philosophy, long ago
As lean was his horse as is a rake,
And he too was not fat, that I take,
But he looked emaciated, moreover, abstemiously.
Very worn off was his overcoat; for he
Had got him yet no churchly benefice,
Nor he was worldly to accept secular office.
For he would rather have at his bed's head
Some twenty books, all bound in black or red,
Of Aristotle and his philosophy
Than rich robes, fiddle, or gay psaltery.
Yet, and for all he was philosopher in base,
He had but little gold within his suitcase;
But all that he might borrow from a friend
On books and learning he would swiftly spend,

Seems pretty spot on to me. Furthermore, my partner focused on medieval studies in college so not only is this an image of my love for books and one of the roots of English language literature, it also honors my first reader. The character of the Clerk or the Scholar also has a little bit of ambiguity which I like as well. You see, to actually be an “Oxford Clerk” or “Oxford Cleric” you have to graduate from Oxford. Until then, you are an Oxford Scholar. You could argue then, that given his love of literature and studying, that this particular Oxfordian had no interest in graduating and hoped to remain a scholar forever. Furthermore, there is some possibility that this is a reference to John Scogin (there's a reason why the name Scogin might look familiar to you) who was very learned and scholarly and also a legendary iconoclast.


2. The Narrative Arcs in Tristram Shandy

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne somehow packed about four hundred years of literary development into this 1759-1767 novel. The prosaic, narrative, visual, and stylistic experimentation in the novel are still, in many ways, ahead of its time, and that it was able to do nearly everything the great postmodern novels do, while also being kindhearted and generous is even more staggering. If you ever wondered what postmodernism would look like if irony had not become a central technique, read this book. One could argue that no other work of English-language literature came close to the challenges posed and ground broken by Tristram Shandy until Joyce and Ulysses.

One of the defining characteristics of Tristram Shandy is its use of visuals. Punctuation dances amongst the prose. When the narrator tries to describe a beautiful woman he presents the reader with a blank page on which she can illustrate her own personal version of perfection. When a beloved character dies the narrator includes a black page of mourning. When one character, Uncle Toby, makes a gesture with his cane, the narrator is so smitten with it that, rather than leaving it to the imagination or relying on the inherent ambiguity of language he includes a line tracing the gesture. These squiggles come from a passage in which the narrator is considering the narrative arc of his story. He understands that the usual narrative arc is, well, an arc, but, in the interest of accuracy, presents these various squiggly lines as the various narrative arcs of the sections of the book thus far. The scene ends up somehow being playfully pedantic (which is no small feat), while exploring the boundaries of storytelling and critique. I mean, how the fuck are we supposed to confirm whether or not these lines are accurate representations of the story? It might be Platonic meta-fiction. (Of course, that scene when Don Quixote meets a fraudulent version of himself is pretty close, too.)

The question marks do three things; first, I believe all great works of literature are more question than answer, something posed that the reader must complete; second, a culture's literature is one long dialog, and third, they turn this collection of references into a cohesive (at least in my mind) image.

3. The Last Line of Ulysses
I believe there is no more beautiful arrangement of words in the English language than, “yes I will Yes.” Joyce has stretched the novel as far as it could go at the time, taking us on a journey through just about every aspect of human life, played with language, played with style, showed the hero taking a shit, constructed new words from the roots of old ideas, and, in general, did more than anyone (except for maybe our old friend Sterne) to expand the possibility of the English-language novel and the last word is “Yes.” Not a passive “yes” not a begrudging “yes,” not a thoughtless “yes,” not even a well-I'm-stuck-with-this-shlub-so-I-might-as-well-say-yes “yes,” (though Molly does touch on that angle) not some socially enforced optimism, not some legally recommended affirmative, nor any of the other ways we use the word; but a thoughtful, intentional, even passionate “Yes.” A why-we-get-out-of-bed-in-the-morning “yes.” A making-the-best-of-it-can-still-be-pretty-fucking-good “yes.” A perfection-is-boring “yes.”

As stylistically ambitious and complicated as Ulysses is, it's theme is actually very simple: Literature is one way to say “yes” to life.

So, to commemorate my first novel, on my right arm now is a story about the books and one of the people who have been vital to my life as a person and a writer. Now I just have to get that poetry manuscript accepted so I can get some balance with a tattoo on my left arm.

A Nader & Sanders Voter for Clinton

I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 and (after a funny scream disqualified the progressive Democrat running in the primary) 2004. I also voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary. As a left-wing, independent progressive, I believe Hilary Clinton is the best choice for President.

First, though I am talking primarily to voters who are planning to vote for Jill Stein (and maybe even a few planning to vote for Gary Johnson) or cast some other protest vote, I want to make clear that this isn't going to be one of those condescending “Woe betide those who repeat my mistake,” posts I've seen pop up lately as the potential impact of third-party candidates on the upcoming election is examined. I believe the assertion that Nader made Bush president is, at best, an over-emphasis  one factor out of many that lead to the Bush presidency and at worst, a calculated attempt by Democrat leadership to stifle progressive dissent in American politics and dodge blame for a disastrous campaign. But, that is the past and we are looking towards the future. (If you want me to explain that belief, leave a comment.) 2016 is a very different election from 2000 and so my decision is different. Though I am proud of my votes for Nader, this November, I am voting for Hilary Clinton. Here's why.


Jill Stein is Not Your Savior
In a lot of ways, Ralph Nader was ultimately not a great candidate, but Jill Stein has her problems too. Yes, I agree with her on many issues (more on policy agreements later) and yes I do think the two party-system is inherently destructive, but Stein has pandered to the anti-vaccination movement and is suspicious that WiFi might cause cancer. What seems to be at play here, more than anything, is Stein's attempt to woo voters who have become suspicious of government regulations through protesting corporate influence, but, to me, that is no different than Republicans and conservatives “asking questions” about human-driven climate change. The science is as certain as science can be on these issues and it is dangerous to suggest otherwise.

Secondly, a few months ago Stein herself tweeted out this graphic from one of those quizzes that shows you how much you agree with the various candidates. Obviously, Sanders was closest, but, according to her own graphic, she agrees with Clinton 91% of the time. If you're thinking of voting for Jill Stein, you really need to ask yourself about the value of that 9%. Maybe some of that 9% (like the anti-vaccination stuff) is stuff you actually agree with Clinton on. Maybe some of that 9% is meaningful difference on issues that aren't particularly important. And maybe, some of that 9% is simply Clinton putting forward what she thinks is a possible policy version of a progressive idea.

Regardless, if you are thinking of voting for Stein in this election, you have to ask yourself whether that 9% really is definitive, because there is a good chance you've fallen into the cult of personality that Republicans and Conservatives have spent the last 25 years constructing around Clinton.

Clinton is Not the Devil
I don't know if there is anyone in the history of American politics who has been subject to more scrutiny than Hilary Clinton. And what has this endless procession of investigations turned up? A person using as much power as is legally allowed to do what she thinks is right and, worse yet, a woman doing the exact same things a man in her position would. That's it. Nothing from the House. Nothing from the FBI. Nothing from the IRS. Nothing going back to Arkansas. Nothing when she was in the Senate. Nothing when she was Secretary of State. The most anyone has ever seems to find is incidents, situations, and set ups that “raise questions.” Those in power will always, always, always have opportunities to abuse it for personal gain and those who, with the best of intentions, seek to create change through that power will always, always, always, approach the line of legality, and those who get caught at that line will always, always, always, try to get prove they didn't do anything wrong. That is what political power is. Ask yourself this, if any of these many, many investigations had ever found any truly meaningful wrongdoing, would Republicans let you forget about it for even a second? Perhaps the loudest proclamation of innocence came when the final House investigation on Benghazi did not release a summary of their findings. Don't you think if they or the FBI or really anybody ever founding anything meaningful, they would be crowing about it 24/7?

The other source of distrust I've heard and held about Clinton is the idea that she will “say whatever it takes to get elected,” and that her positions are constantly changing. In terms of the first objection, trying to get elected is what politicians do. Though one could identify degrees along a spectrum, Nader said what he said to get elected, Dean said what he said to get elected, Obama said what he said to get elected, and Sanders said what he said to get elected. Jill Stein is doing it right now, having the gall to argue that Congressional Republicans would restrain a Trump presidency. You could argue that Clinton is more overtly calculated than the others, that her statements have a precision that feels dishonest, and that she always seems to speak with an eye towards plausible-deniability, and though that all could be true, I don't see how, given that 91% agreement above, that disqualifies her from the presidency. (I mean, Bill Clinton, as sitting president, used a technical definition of “sexual relations” and then deconstructed the word “to be” on national television and yet, he isn't considered fundamentally dishonest. And then there's Trump who has done almost nothing but lie his entire campaign.) Yes, she talks as if every word she says is under a malicious microscope, but that's because every word she says is under a malicious microscope. If you think that makes her corrupt and dishonest, then, as above, you have fallen into a cult of personality constructed by Republicans and conservatives. Do you really want to hang out with that crowd?

Next, though it is true that Clinton's policies and beliefs have “evolved” over the course of her political life it is important to note how they have evolved. For the most part, as the country and the Democratic party have gotten more progressive since Bill Clinton moved it to the right during his “triangulation” phase, Clinton has followed suit. Yes, her policies have changed over the decades, but they have almost always changed to agree more with you. Yes, the policies Clinton espouses now and those on the Democratic platform are more progressive than when they started due, almost entirely, to the pressure created by the Sanders's campaign, but shouldn't we count that a victory? Why, exactly, would Clinton or any Democrat listen to progressives if she gets no support even after incorporating some progressive ideas into her platform?

Ultimately, if a bill to raise the minimum wage landed on Clinton's desk, she would sign it. The same goes for steps towards universal health care, paid parental leave, solutions for climate change, affordable higher education, and regulations for Wall Street. Is the fact that Hilary Clinton once opposed gay marriage really so damning, so unforgivable, so untrustworthy, that you will vote to prevent nearly every policy that you would like to see adopted? Does the fact that she voted for the Iraq War when the Bush administration was lying to us about weapons of mass destruction especially disqualify her from holding office? Does that one vote completely invalidate all of the potential good that could come from her presidency? (And seriously, if hawkishness is an issue for you, why the fuck aren't you talking about the Obama administration's drone war?) If the answer is “yes,” than you are acting exactly like someone who plans to vote for Trump while not actually believing what he says about walls and Muslims.

Finally, it is important to elect a woman to the presidency, just like it was important to elect an African-American man. Waiting for the perfect “first woman president,” will mean never getting a first woman president. Besides, being less than perfect hasn't stopped us from electing white men, so I don't know why it should stop us from electing Hilary Clinton.

Trump, However, is Probably The Devil
For as bad as George W Bush was, at least he did not fundamentally threaten our political process. Trump does. He does not care about the truth or politics or democracy or policy or really anything besides his own ego. He will absolutely abuse his powers as president and I don't think there is any evidence that the Republican party, should they retain control of the House, has a fraction of the basic political courage and moral decency to impeach him when he does. (If they did, they would not be supporting him now.) He will do nothing about climate change, nothing about poverty, nothing about equality, and he will undo what little we've accomplished over the last eight years. He will sow discord in our military leadership, he will demolish decades old alliances, his impulses will threaten the world economy, he will empower tyrants, and he will empower white supremacists. People of color will die from a Trump presidency. They will be killed by police, by the National Guard, and by their neighbors. Even now, while the election is still going on, he is sowing chaos and I am truly afraid that there will be violence if he loses as well. This isn't about lesser-of-two-evilism; this is about survival.

There are serious questions about Jill Stein's ability to be President, Donald Trump is a life-threatening phenomenon, and Hilary Clinton, perhaps history's most scrutinized politician, is probably going to do a bunch of what you want anyway. What else do you need?

But How Do I Work for a More Just Political System?
It is clear that the two-party system isn't good for democracy, but it is also clear that, at least in this election, presidential politics is not the place to fight against it. So, if that is politically important to you, you should vote for Hilary Clinton in this election and run as a third-party candidate for local office at the next opportunity. As Republicans and conservatives have known and exploited for decades, local politics provides opportunities for change not available at the national level. Run for city council. Run for school board. Run for sheriff. Run for district attorney. By changing the political landscape in your city, country, or district, you can be begin changing the political landscape of the country.

Second, support progressive candidates in Democrat primaries, but still vote Democrat in the general. As I mentioned above, the Sanders campaign had a huge impact on the state of Democratic party, but that impact is only meaningful if Clinton wins the presidency. Once again, why should Democrats pay attention to independent progressives if there's nothing to show for it when they do? If we show Democrats they can with with progressive ideas they will support progressive ideas.

Third, work to reform election law. The landscape of American politics looks a lot of different with instant-run-off voting and though this really should be a national issue, most election law is handled at the state level. So work to put a referendum or something on your state's next election ballot.

Concluding on a Tactical Level
Finally, on a tactical level, I don't think we should underestimate the impact of progressives voting straight-ticket Democratic in 2016, 2018, and 2020 in national and state level elections. Meaningful victories in the next three elections for Democrats could turn the Republican party into a minor party, especially if Clinton wins by a landslide. The only reason why they have any power at all today is because Democrats and Progressives went to sleep in 2010, letting Republicans take control of state legislatures in a census year and thus gerrymander a congressional map that lets Republicans maintain a substantial majority of House seats despite the American people voting overwhelmingly for Democrat candidates. What could fill the vacuum of power left behind by the collapse of the Republican Party?

In short, the fall of Republican Party is an opportunity for progressives and independents to remake the American electoral landscape to better reflect the will of the American people and a vote for Jill Stein will do nothing to advance that cause.

Does Publishing Have a 1% Problem?

I read somewhere, in some article, someone complaining about the internet in general and blogs in particular for being a “first draft world.” I could see the point, but, to me, that's one of the things I like about the internet in general and blogs in particular. Though there is value to the perfect essay, story, poem, whatever, there is a different kind of value in that first draft, that first take, those early ideas, and the internet in general, and this blog in particular, give us a chance to have a longer conversation starting from those first ideas. So, with that, here is a first idea, the beginning of a potential conversation, something that has been rattling around in my head that I'd like to get out into the world to see if goes anywhere.

With the release of the new Harry Potter story and the trepidation of so many fans and readers about the play overcome by curiosity, nostalgia, or the enthusiasm of the moment, bookstores around the country saw their sales for the month, the quarter, and, potentially, the year change dramatically. In many ways, this is a bit of a shock; given that Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a play and not actually written by J.K. Rowling, many of us believed that, though it would sell better than just about any other title in our stores, it wouldn't be the smash hit it seems like it's going to be. But even though it won't hit the same heights as The Deathly Hollows, it will still likely be the number one bestseller at most bookstores (or pretty close to it) and will still likely have a huge impact on the overall sales and profits of bookstores.

Books that sell like Harry Potter, are unusual, but just because they are unusual doesn't mean they don't have persistent, long-term impacts on the book industry. In fact, I think there is ample evidence to, at the very least, suggest that the book industry (both publishing and retail) is driven by and depends in an alarming degree, on these atypical phenomena, on these 1% books. Because it isn't just Harry Potter.

As has been pointed out,  (here and here for example) the much reported increase in sales and profits at independent bookstores over the last couple of years can be almost entirely attributed to the rise of adult coloring books, a totally new genre with no digital equivalent. Though some who have pointed this out have done so in a way that tries to temper the enthusiasm around the indies resurgence, to me, that speaks to a newly nimble industry far more able to capitalize on new trends (or fads, we'll see) than they were a decade or so ago.

And then there's merchandising; books and other bookish material based on movies, video games, other franchises, and such. Though I don't think this impacts independent bookstores as much as it impacts the wider retail world, sales of merchandised books are (as of BEA last year at least) almost entirely composed of Frozen and Minecraft books. (It is one seriously intense pie chart, I'll tell you.)

And then there's Lincoln Michael's extensive piece on book sales (which you should read anyway). It was framed around finding a definitive answer to what “good sales” might be for a book, but his data say other things as well. Imagine, what the industry would look like if, as is often the case in some statistical calculations, the outliers were removed. How many copies of works of literary fiction were sold in the last few years if we do not include sales of All the Light We Cannot See? (Actually, maybe don't do that.)

What does this amount to? Publishing is a 1% industry. A vast majority of book sales and profits within the book industry, at the publisher and the retail level, come from 1% of titles. (Actually, probably far less than 1%, but I'm not a statistician and 1% is quick to type and easy to get your mind around as a metaphor.) What is interesting about this to me, as a bookseller, is that publishing is a 1% industry in spite of itself. At nearly every level of the industry there are efforts to get people to read more than just the bestsellers. Even with dwindling publicity budgets that force difficult decisions, publishers put promotional and marketing money into more than just 1% of their list and they do or lead the essentially free promotion on social media for even more titles than they spend money on. The authors themselves add to that diversity of effort as well, doing their own paid or essentially free promotion. Even with the dwindling book coverage in media, reviews are still written about more than just the top selling, sure hits, and that diversity of coverage is even greater online. I would argue that the entire point of independent bookstores is to support diverse purchasing, to lead readers to mid-list, back-list, small press, unheralded, and uncovered books, to find a way to get that person carrying Gone Girl around to pick up the new Meaghan Abbott or go back a bit and start reading Patricia Highsmith. Hell, even Amazon is doing it's best to get you to buy something else with your James Patterson.

And yet, the numbers don't lie. For all the effort everyone in books puts in to diversifying the market, it's still the smash-hit and the current trend, plus Frozen and Minecraft merchandising, plus James Patterson and his cohort of sure bestsellers, that account for nearly all the money in publishing.

What does this all mean for books? I don't know if this is true for any other industry, but in books, weirdly, the most powerful customers are actually non-readers, the people who maybe buy ten books for themselves over the course of their adult lives. They are the ones who turn books into smash bestsellers, global phenomena, and cultural touchstones. And, unfortunately for publishers, by definition, they are the potential customers the book industry knows the least about. They don't interact with the bookternet, they don't leave reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, and (again by definition) they don't generate enough data to do any meaningful prediction of their future behavior. Perhaps there is something that unites a professor of religious symbology, a boy wizard, Mormon teenage vampires, and fanfiction erotica based on Mormon teenage vampires, but, with so little hard data on what non-readers read, there isn't a way to spot that pattern.

And it's not like publishers are ignoring these potential customers. Whenever one of those hits happens, it is instantly followed by a raft of trendsurfers all trying as hard as possible to give the people what they want. And publishers are always trying new things to reach non-readers. James Patterson's latest novella serie—excuse me, “BookShots,” are targeted directly at commuters who might otherwise be reading the Metro or on their phones. The Lian Hearn novels were pitched in media coverage as “binge-reading,” to capitalize on the trend of binge-watching. (Which if you ask me, is utterly preposterous, because A. Serial storytelling has been around forever, see, there's Charles Dickens waving at you all like, “Remember me, I took over the fucking world with serial storytelling!” and B. I would argue the success of binge-watchable shows comes from the fact that they borrow the techniques and tropes of serial storytelling. In essence, TV is better today because so many producers, writers, and networks are making their shows more like novels.) It's why they put movie covers on books even though no reader likes movie covers. Publishers novelize movies, they novelize TV shows that were made from comic books, they license their works for websites and video games, they even have fictional characters from somewhat successful TV shows, “write” books. A lot of the criticism aimed at publishing and bookselling tends to focus on the idea that publishers and booksellers are snobs shocked “real people” aren't excited about the intellectual broccoli they're selling, but publishers and booksellers would like nothing more than to figure out what non-readers want and give them as much of that as possible.

But there are some other troubling and challenging implications. The thought (or hope) from Harry Potter's wild success was that it created a generation of readers, that its historic success would translate into those diversified sales as all of its fans grew into adult readers. But if sales of The Cursed Child tell us anything about Harry Potter's wider effect, I think they, at the very least, imply that rather creating a generation of readers, J.K. Rowling created a generation of Harry Potter fans. Of course, many people who later became voracious readers started with Harry Potter and you can see the impact of those readers all over the book industry, but, I think the numbers suggest that they would likely have been voracious readers anyway, it's just that Harry Potter got to them first. I think you can say the same for any of the worldwide bestsellers. I don't think there's any evidence that 50 Shades of Grey readers bought a lot of other books--even other books like 50 Shades of Grey. Some did, of course, but not nearly enough to have any meaningful impact on sales of any other books.


This is not a knock against Rowling or James or any of the other 1% authors, some of whom (Rowling, James Patterson, Stephen King) do a lot of good work to support readers, kids, bookstores, and other authors. In fact, the 1%-ness of books seems like something of a constant, even when those who represent the 1%, who, you would think, wield influence beyond the customer base, try to diversify sales. It says to me that the difference between a reader and a non-reader is more fundamental, most likely established in school or at home and is thus, beyond the reach of the book industry's influence.

To make things perhaps even worse for the book-industry, the next most powerful customers are probably the one-or-two-books-a-year customers. These are the people who maybe read a little on vacation, maybe get stuff out of the library, maybe get books as presents from their reader friends and family, but, in general, only buy one or two books a year. These are the readers that keep All the Light We Cannot See and Gone Girl on the bestseller list for weeks and weeks (Years and years, sometimes). These are the readers who make every James Patterson and Stephen King a bestseller. These are the readers that drive blurbs and comparisons and set publicity strategies.

This is the part of the blog post where I usually try and find some kind of strategy, some kind of something for bookstores and publishers and authors to do besides hope Ingram has enough copies of whatever happens to catch the non-reader's imagination, but, for this challenge, I got nothing. The roots of this problem, I think, reach into literacy and reading education and into wage stagnation for the American middle class. To put this another way; most people get to the end of their formal education without a love of reading and even those who do, in America at least, don't have enough disposable income to buy a lot of books.

But is the 1% nature of publishing really a problem? Does it matter what forms the economic base of publishing? Especially if publishers still try to diversify their lists? Especially if, as it stands now, the only way to pursue 1% books is to release a whole bunch of books you like or think will be popular and hope one of them hits? Especially if the biggest publishers can still afford a handful of six-figure advances every few years? Does it matter that the diversity in literature is sustained by such a narrow field? Given all the other ways publishing can improve and all of the other economic conditions that impact publishing, is this even worth thinking about? Should I just be glad that, every now and then, some book injects a ton of non-reader money into the industry?

And that brings us to the conclusion, the end of my first draft idea, my first attempt as hashing out something I've noticed. But now that this is out there, something might happen with it. The internet in general and blogs in particular might have a lot of first drafts, but those first drafts can start conversations, conversations that help us towards the ideas and insights we write for.

Three Books in the Postmodernism's New Playground: Luiselli, Velazquez, Boucher, and the New Postmodernism of Play

Literary movements have fuzzy edges. For all the time-lines, significant events, and multiple choice tests, it is almost always impossible to say when a movement begins and ends. You can find traces of it (modernism for example) decades before it arrives as a coherent movement (in say, Emily Dickinson's poetry) and it's primary characteristics can continue long after the movement itself is formally over. (There are plenty of writers still writing Romanticism.) The fuzzy-edge-ness of literature is even more pronounced in postmodernism because, in a way, its entire purpose was to fuzzy the fuck out of those edges until all borders, definitions, forms, and assumptions were destroyed. So it's natural that, even after its reported demise and even after artists, writers, critics, and scholars have begun building the literature that will replace it, postmodernism is still being written.

Perhaps my favorite idea that came from postmodernism, and deconstruction specifically, is “freeplay;” Derrida's idea of the motion and tension among the various elements of existence once the assumed centrality of humanity is removed. To Derrida this wasn't exactly “everything's fucked so now we can do whatever we fucking want,” but it was close. To me, the important part of the term isn't the “free” part, but the “play” part. The way I've come to think of the term (apologies to the critical theorists who have studied this way more than I have) is that we are now allowed to interact with the substances of creation in much the same way children do; by trying different things, assigning opposed uses to objects, shuffling identities, sticking weird shit in our mouths and, in general, joyfully fucking around with whatever comes to hand.

Now that we're firmly on the other side of the Cold War and its paranoia, have shifted irony from a fundamental building block to a tool in the writer's arsenal, and started listening to new voices and new experiences besides those of white men, we can finally start playing in the space postmodernism opened up in literature. There are three books in particular that I've read recently, that I think exemplify the new postmodern playground; The Cowboy Bible, Golden Delicious, and The Story of My Teeth.

It's hard to say what The Cowboy Bible is. There are good reasons to call it a short-story collection, though I think there are better reasons to call it a novel. It is a chaotic assortment of events and characters of places and foods. I imagine Velazquez standing in the middle of a tornado naming everything that whirls by his vision and calling the resulting list a book. But, of course, sometimes he doesn't feel like giving the real name to a person, place, or entity, and so he assigns the phrase “The Cowboy Bible,” to various disparate narrative entities.

I'm writing as if I understood The Cowboy Bible, but I really didn't. It's one of those books that you just let wash over you, almost an ambient reading experience where you don't enjoy the specifics so much as you enjoy the sense of being washed in words. I'm sure there are ways to sort through the burritos and the luchadores, to assign systems to the bars and eating contests, to develop a symbolism structure for the boots and the bibles, but Velazquez creates an experience where understanding, reading, and critique can be distinct from sense and logic.

You could describe Golden Delicious by Chris Boucher as the book Jasper Fforde (author of the Thursday Next series) might have written if he got super into Borges and Calvino, but desperately wanted to write the next Revolutionary Road. In another way, Golden Delicious is a fairly straight-forward story of coming of age in suburbia; the narrator is born into a nuclear family with a mother, father, and older sister, and, as he grows up, the family changes, erodes, and breaks down while economic forces produce a similar decay in the town itself.

Except this town is made of pages, is tended by The Memory of Johnny Appleseed, the houses have personalities and so do the cars, the figures of authority are traffic cones, sentences run wild, Reader ends up being the hero, and the narrator's name is “_____” pronounced “Underline.” The result is a dire whimsy. Or perhaps a whimsical malaise. Boucher is able to describe the kind of urban decay you see in a work like Matt Bell's Scrapper, but give it a sense of playfulness. To the characters, the described events are just as dire and depressing as any gritty urban crime story, but, because of the lexicon Boucher applies, to the reader (and “Reader”) it is something quite different. Which is exactly the point of freeplay. An artist can now bring together entirely opposed ideas; she can put her GI Joes in dresses and pretend they're professional ballroom dancers.

I've written about Luiselli's work before and if all goes well, I'll write about her work for a long time. Even though we all know about self-plagiarism now, I need to include The Story of My Teeth in this post as well, because its sense of utter joy in the act of arranging language for readers inspired my sense of freeplay in this new postmodernism and it's through my attempts to describe Luiselli's freeplay that I began to think about the new postmodernism as a playground.

I often wonder how useful the idea of literary movements actually is to reading. The more you study or explore a literary movement, the harder it is to create stable definitions. The closer you look, the more fractures you see. As your circle of reading widens over the course of your life, you find books that should belong that don't, books that don't fit neatly into any one category, and books that predate the movement they most resemble (sometimes by centuries, hi, Tristram Shandy!). You can have multiple movements running into each other, overlapping, in direct conversation, sometimes in the same writer or even in the same book. Though movements can be handy when trying to reduce the scope and diversity of human literary experience to multiple choice questions with stable answers, I think we have to wonder whether they actually help readers experience the actual books they are reading.

When thinking about this before, I wondered if it makes more sense to understand literary movements as cities; spaces in which writers and readers can mix and move with a level of freedom, but the more I think about it, the more it seems that the term “literary movements” actually means two very distinct ideas: the experience of the writers themselves and the critics and readers actively engaging in the avant garde and the experience of readers looking for a foothold into understanding a particular work or author.

For the first use of the term, the image of the city works well enough, but for the second, I think of the wooden scaffolding used to support arches and other buildings during the construction. The wooden arch is not the real arch, just like saying a book or an author is “Romantic” or “Modernist” is not a real understanding of the book or author, but it can be a support that lets the reader move on to a deeper understanding. Just because the wooden arch was removed, doesn't mean it was pointless.

When I think about what it means to be a reader and a writer, “freeplay,” is all about how I build my understanding of the world, how I gather the resources of my belief, and how I try to make words do and say things that words really aren't capable of doing or saying. In a way, you could say that all writing is a struggle to express those ideas, emotions, and experiences that are, inherently, beyond our outside of language. From that perspective all books are failures, but they can be productive failures. In this new and chaotic world of literature, these three books are the best kind of productive failures; you have so much fun, you don't really care about reaching the goal at all.

How I Would Introduce Frank Turner

One of the fringe benefits of working in a bookstore is sometimes one of your non-book heroes writes a book, goes on tour, and you get to meet them. (I met Bobby Orr!) So when I saw Frank Turner wrote a book, I did what any rational person would do and immediately started begging the store's events coordinator to beg for him to read at the store. The appropriate number of emails were sent and we were assured that someone would let him know he had an invite to read at Porter Square Books whenever he was in Boston next. Unfortunately, his tour schedule wasn't going anywhere near Boston for the foreseeable future and even when it eventually does, given his relentless touring schedule, I can't blame him if decides to spend his precious little free time doing something besides performing.

But, of course, it isn't just about meeting your heroes. If you're comfortable speaking in public (I am) and have a level of cultural capital at the store (I do) you can also introduce them at said events. We almost never get the chance to thank the strangers who are important in our lives, those big distant figures who occupy swathes and monuments in our emotional and intellectual lives and when I can introduce someone special to me, I think of it as both an introduction for an audience and a thank you for that person. I want them to know that all the effort that goes into making music and writing books means something, at least to me.

So given that I don't expect Frank Turner will read at the store any time in the near future, here is how I would introduce him.

It was about 1:40 in the morning on a Tuesday or so, and, as is part of my routine, I was up reading. My roommate at the time burst out of his room and said, “Dude, you've got to listen to this.” He queued up the song on his iPad again and hit play. “A teacher of mine once told me, that life was just a list of disappointments and defeats and you can only do your best.” For the first time in my life, I heard someone articulate my politics, express all the anger with both the authority that seeks to restrict and the strategies and techniques of those who seek to free, and describe the frustration of trying to figure out how to make a difference and the strange elation that comes from knowing you are fighting even when you're pretty sure you're going to lose.

As I listened to more of his music, it felt like he crawled into my head and wrote songs about what he found there, turning my hopes for what a new humanism in art and society might look like and the lower stakes quirks of loving books that will never be bestsellers into catchy choruses and sing along anthems. The goal of any writer, any musician, any artist really, is to give the rest of us something on which to hang our thoughts and emotions. To create words that capture the otherwise unapproachable thoughts in our heads. To tell us all that we are not alone. Whether I won't sit stand down and won't shut up or I've been having dreams or those bastards that kicked away the ladder and told the rest of us that life's a bitch or no one gets remembered for the things they didn't do, Frank Turner has been giving me my thoughts and telling me I'm not alone since that early Tuesday morning. Who knew my Bruce Springsteen would be a half-assed English country singer?

I don't know if this is a good introduction for Frank Turner, especially since I haven't even mentioned his book yet, The Road Beneath My Feet, a tour diary that lets you into the life of a musician trying to make something that resembles a living doing what he loves. I also haven't told you any of the information about Frank Turner that's usually included in these introductions and I haven't quoted from any reviews or recited any blurbs. And I'm sure I haven't captured the reason why you're here and why Frank Turner is special to you. But on the day I die they'll say at least I fucking tried.

Thank you all again for joining us and please welcome Frank Turner.