Review of The Familiar, Volume 1: One Rainy Day in May

Mark Z. Danielewski is arguably the most ambitious American writer alive. Every project stretches the seams of storytelling, demanding new methods of visualizing his narrative, perfect execution of his sophisticated formal structures, and innovative book design to incorporate his visual, um, vision. If Volume One is any indication (clocking in north of 800 pages in galley form), there is a chance his newest project, a serial novel called The Familiar, will be, by far, his most ambitious project yet.

I think a reader's relationship to ambition says a lot about who they are and what their core readerly values are. This isn't the place (or rather, I don't have the brain space at the moment) to really hash out all the implications of all the different ways one can approach ambitious works of literature, but I always give the ambitious the benefit of the doubt, a few extra points early on for trying something that hasn't been done, for biting off more than can usually be chewed, for being willing to fail at something (and sometimes fail horribly) so that even if I don't end up believing a project is a success (Naked Singularity and Witz for a couple of a examples) I still respect the artists who dared and look forward to their next projects. And Danielewski is pretty much all dare.

The Familiar utilizes the visual pyrotechnics that have come to define Danielewski's style, a narrativity based on turning reading into a complete artistic experience. Words and letters as components for pictures. Shaped-text like concrete poetry. A variety of fonts and colors (I assume as the galley is black and white.) Collages. Images. Computer code. What makes Danielewski's style so relevant and important is the fact that this is how we interact with media now. Gone are the days of columns of text. Nearly everything we read now is associated with an image. The different social media are distinguished, in no small part, by the visual organization of their information. Even our person to person conversations are now often filled with abbreviations, acronyms, and images.

To put this another way, Mark Z. Danielewski is the first true writer of our current information age and The Familiar, even more so than House of Leaves, writes directly about and with the hybrid image and text and text/image language that is beginning to define our particular information age. Danielewski sets the stage for exploring this theme in two specific ways: a virtual reality game is being developed and there is a mysterious bit of techno-magic that wasn't fully developed in this volume. All indications are that The Familiar will have a long story arc, and that there's a chance the images introduced in Volume One won't be paid off until much later, but there is a good chance the success or failure of the novel, will hinge on how Danielewski handles and ultimately concludes these threads in the future volumes.

If The Familiar has a “hook,” something that, for me at least, motivated me to keep reading and to be exited to see what he does and where he goes with the story, it is the character Xanther. She might not technically be the protagonist of the book, but, for me, she is the hero of The Familiar. Xanther is a collection of conditions; she has epilepsy, learning disabilities, something most likely on the autism spectrum, and is physically unattractive. She has trouble making and keeping friends. There's probably something close to obsessive-compulsive disorder in there too. Her parents move around a lot. Her biological father was a soldier killed in the Middle East. She is in therapy. In short, she is America. But she has irrepressible curiosity. She is driven to figure out how to live in the world despite the myriad of problems she faces. She is compassionate. She is empathetic. She is honest. She is everything you want from a daughter, from a friend, and from a hero. Xanther was just one current in The Familiar, but her current was by far the most powerful, and, I have to suspect, ultimately, Xanther will be the keystone to the Escher-Arch The Familiar promises to be.

Ultimately, how you feel about The Familiar Volume 1: One Rainy Day in May comes down to that troubling phrase in the title; “Volume 1.” It is clear this is an introduction, an 800+ page setting the stage for events to follow. I've read Proust, I'm reading Knausgaard, and Danielewski is one of my favorite writers, so I'm willing to give The Familiar the benefit of several volumes. Knowing how sophisticated Danielewski is with his structure (and all parts of narrative structure) and how he is able to push narrative to express and explore what it often does not, I have faith that he is going to pull off whatever project The Familiar is. But, as with all faith, that comes from a previous relationship. I can have that faith in The Familiar and can enjoy Volume 1 as part of that project and as a work in its own right, because of my existing relationship with Danielewski. But there are a lot of readers who don't that relationship with Danielewski. Can I (or Danielewski) expect them to enjoy/be satisfied with/understand/be patient in regards to a book without a conclusion that doesn't bring the threads of characters it presents together, has untranslated text and a little over halfway through presents storytelling as a computer program?

I've always believed that experimental works of literature, present an opportunity for self-discovery. Are you willing to roll the reading dice on a book with “Volume 1” in the title? How do you handle untranslated text? What kind of “conclusion” do you need in order to feel satisfied with a reading experience and how do you react when a book lacks that kind of “conclusion?” In that sense alone, The Familiar Volume 1, is a cascade of opportunities for self-discovery, but is it a good book? I enjoyed reading it and I have faith in Danielewski. With Volume 1, that's as close to a conclusion as I can get.

Three Awesome Small Presses with Bonus Industry Preamble

The book industry is in a really weird place right now. Amazon is still the most powerful force in the industry despite treating its workers like garbage, indulging in technological flights of fancy, and being pathologically unable to turn a profit; at the same time there is a resurgence of independent bookstores driven by a whole host of cultural and economic factors (not least of which is the Buy Local movement said independent bookstore have been a driving force in). The bookish internet is often (probably always) as misogynist, racist, bigoted, ignorant, and hateful as the rest of the internet (as publishing itself is just as white male dominated as pretty much everything is); the internet is also an exciting and vibrant community, where actions like #WeNeedDiverseBooks and the VIDA count are beginning to drill out the aforementioned cultural cavities, with the emotional and intellectual support provided by social media and financial support provided by crowdfunding. (I suppose I could have just said “The Internet is a tool,” but that wouldn't have fit the structure of this preamble.) Many people are still tolling the death bell for printed books arguing, either joyously or morosely, that soon all reading will be on screens, whilst (and at the same time) growth in ebooks sales has plateaued and younger generations say they prefer reading printed books bought in bookstores. Finally, (this is the transition) the publishing industry continues to consolidate, most notably with the “Big Six” becoming the “Big Five,” or more accurately, “The Big Four with the Super Gigantic One,” whilst (and at the same time. You all get that reference, right? Peter Sellers is a genius.) small, independent presses seem to be flourishing.

I mean, the state of independent publishing is so strong, I don't really need to write about Coffee House, Melville House, Graywolf, Two Dollar Radio and New Directions. Or even Archipelago, what with all their Knausgaard and such. To borrow a March Madness image, we now, essentially have mid-major publishing. We have Gonzagas and Butlers of publishing. These smaller presses are not just garnering critical praise, they're pulling down major awards and selling a ton of books. Essays, man. On the New York Times bestsellers list. And with each loss in publishing, it seems like three more presses start up. So, here are three new-to-me small presses in the confusing and paradoxical hydra of awesome and awful that is contemporary American publishing that I am particularly excited about.

And Other Stories 
Founded in the UK in 2009, And Other Stories is beginning to make connections across the pond. Publisher Stefan Tobler paid a visit to Porter Square Books last year, with a raft of galleys. They publish edgy literary fiction (they were British publisher for Helen DeWitt's Lightning Rods), works in translation from around the world (they were the British publisher for Juan Pablo Villalobos) with a couple of well known authors, like Deborah Levy, as an anchor.

But, honestly, even if they only published one book in 2015, I would still be excited about them, as long as that one book is Signs Preceding the End of the World. Stefan brought a galley with him when he visited last year and I have been dying to sell the book since then. In fact, if I may quote myself here from the staff pick I wrote:

If you start highlighting what stuns you about Yuri Herrara’s debut novel in English, Signs Preceding the End of the World, every page will be mottled with fluorescent lines. Herrera writes in prose that feels like you are standing on both sides of the uncanny valley while something beautiful happens below and above you, creating a delectable unease, cut through with the simple joy of precise and surprising images. Herrara will draw the obvious comparisons to Roberto Bolano, but Signs Preceding the End of World should also find a should also find a home next to Jesse Ball and Italo Calvino. 

Other books to read from And Other Stories: An Amorous Discourse in the Suburbs of Hell, Sworn Virgin, Nowhere People.

Deep Vellum 

You ever notice how there are some awful facts that just seem to hang around without changing. (Times Literary Supplement, I'm looking at your Vida Count.) They go around the internet for a few days and then they disappear and then a year or so later someone else notices the fact again and we get another brief wave of outrage or disgust or embarrassment. Well, one of those facts to me is that Americans don't read much in translation. Part of that is the economics of publishing; there are relatively few books in translation in America because they have an even smaller profit margin, because there is another person involved, than books in English; part of it is cultural; and part of it, I believe, is geographical in that most Americans, unlike most Europeans or Africans or Asians, or really, anyone else, don't live anywhere near another country. Enter the small, independent, often non-profit presses to fill the gap.

Specifically, Deep Vellum Publishing. I met publisher Will Evans at BEA last year, we exchanged cards, and since then I've gotten a number of books from them. As they say in their mission statement:

Deep Vellum Publishing is a not-for-profit literary publisher that seeks to enhance the open exchange of ideas among cultures and to connect the world’s greatest untranslated contemporary writers of literature and creative nonfiction with English-language readers for the first time through original translations, while facilitating educational opportunities for students of translation in the Dallas community, and promoting a more vibrant literary community in north Texas and beyond.

More importantly their list is fascinating and their books are absolutely beautifully designed. I've started reading and loving The Art of Flight (just look at that cover!), a sort of memoir by a major Mexican author no one in the States cares about yet. History, literature, beautiful imagery, lucid prose. So far, if you need a Knausgaard fix between volumes of My Struggle, though Pilot's is a very different project, I think it'll be a good match for your taste.

Other titles to try: Sphinx (which looks amazing, but I lent to someone else more likely to get to it before I will) and The Indian 

Nightboat Books 
Hi, Dustin!

Starting a small poetry publisher with a book by Fanny Howe is a pretty solid move, and since then, they've plugged along publishing a range of challenging and convention-defying books. As their mission statement explains: “Nightboat Books, a nonprofit organization, seeks to develop audiences for writers whose work resists convention and transcends boundaries, by publishing books rich with poignancy, intelligence and risk.” Since we're talking “intelligence and risk,” here are the two books that have me excited about this press.

Ban En Banlieu: If I ever get tasked to teach some kind of writing course, this brilliant, challenging book, would be on the syllabus. Even the acknowledgments section is a work of art. This dense and beautiful book touches a wide range of topics including, gender, race, violence, and art taking the first few moments of a riot and meditating and expanding on them until the moment touches so much more. The act of creation, of poetry, of storytelling is the centerpiece of Kapil’s brilliant book, so I highly recommend this for writers and other artists. Let's say "brilliant" again. Brilliant.

The Force of What's Possible: Hey, I know what will be a smash bestseller, a book of short essays about the idea of the avant-garde! But the thing is, American literature has been wallowing in a strange “So, post-modernism was kinda cool or really awful, but what do we do now?” phase for a very long time without some kind of anything really coalescing. We've continued stretching some of the freedoms of post-modernism (though, I'm not sure where else poetry can go from uncreative writing) and there is plenty of post-modernism, modernism, and, hell, Victorianism, in our society that writers can still respond to those forces, but I want to know what's next. More importantly, I want the processes that leads to what's next, whether called “the avant-garde” or not, to participate in the wider literary conversation and that can't happen without books like this. Which is another way of saying I am super excited for the event at Porter Square Books in April.

Other titles to try: Mature Themes, Music for Porn, and Obscene Madame D (Hilda Hilst!) (Huh, did not mean to theme this selection that way.)

Epilogue: It's Still People
The astute reader will notice a thread running through my selections here, a reader who might wonder why I haven't included Black Balloon or Octopus or New York Tyrant (which just pulled down a PEN/Faulkner) or any of the many other killer small independent publishers. There was a personal connection. Somehow when we talk about the books industry (probably every other industry as well, but this is where I live) despite being people ourselves, we somehow forget that it is made of people. People with opinions, with flaws, with relationships, with all of the things that makes life worth living and books worth reading. There are so many reasons why it is bad for Amazon to be so dominant, but perhaps the worst might be that, from drones, to charging employees for waiting in line to be searched, to push button ordering, to their SOP of kicking affiliates to the curb to prevent remitting sales tax, Amazon does everything in its fucking power to remove people from every single aspect of its economy. Yes, that lowers the price for you in the moment, but it also means someone doesn't have a job. In a perfect world the automation of industry would mean a paradise of leisure, but in our world it means Jeff Bezos makes a gagillion dollars running an unprofitable company, while making his TEMP workers sign non-competition contracts. And if there is a single reason why bookstores and small presses still survive and even thrive in our contemporary world, it's that both emphasize people, both cultivate and develop relationships, both treat their customers as more than just credit cards. Because, despite all the categorically awful things about us, people still like other people.

No Strong Enough Microscope: Sport, Data, and Delusion

Keeping the ball about a foot off the ground and aiming for a spot about a foot inside the post, kick the ball, after a relatively short run-up, as hard as you can ,to your natural side. You will score on pretty much every penalty shot in soccer you take. Practice the technique at the end of training sessions. If you are in the position to take a lot of penalty kicks, thus, allowing opponents to discover your strategy, randomly select a kick on which to aim for your non-natural side. If you kicking technique is good (as most professional soccer player's kicking techniques are) you'll score 90% of the time and be the world's greatest from the spot.

Sports are rich in statistics because, unlike, say, the weather or the economy, they are, essentially, closed systems. You have stable units of data to work with. And within sports, the penalty kick in soccer might be the cleanest, most closed, most noise-free data set available. A single shooter. A single goal keeper. A spot twelve yards from the goal line. One shot with three possibilities; goal, save, or miss. And with modern video technology pretty much every aspect of the process can be recorded and analyzed.

So what does “Twelve Yards: The Art and Psychology of the Perfect Penalty Kick,” conclude about “the perfect penalty kick?” Given all the data, all the interviews, all the experts, all the history, not much. At best, a few guidelines about the psychology, the need to actually practice penalty shots, and some suggestions for how players and coaches should manage themselves during the time between when the whistle is blown and when the shot is actually taken. The introductory statement is the practical that I gleaned from Lyttleton's more psychological examination.

But what happens when we begin to examine my perfect technique? How long should the run up be? How long should you take to set the ball and arrange yourself for the shot? Where on the twelve-yard mark do you actually place the ball? Where do you look and when do you look there? Can you give your target away with your eyes? What about the state of the turf? And this is before we get into the actual physical technique. Where do you place your plant foot and how do you angle it? Where should the point of contact on the ball be? What are the mechanics of that “kick it as hard as you can?” And, of course, with all the craziness going on around you, all the pressure, all the expectations, how do you ensure that you replicate the simple technique in important moments?

Sports are fractals. The closer you look, even within the closed systems of sports, the more you see. And no microscope is strong enough to distinguish (in the moment of course) the different lengths of grass, the different textures of ice, the millimeters distinguishing a successful point of contact, a successful angle of stick, a successful catch. It's not that data is unable to remove “bad bounces” from sport and more that it's impossible to ever be sure what is and what is not a “bad bounce.” Even with our super slow-motion, our high definition television, our ability to gather hard statistics, the base of sport, just like everything else, is mystery.

But, let's look at that opening statement again. Is there really that much mystery to it? I mean, people know how to kick a soccer ball. Especially professional soccer players. In terms of psychology, most of the psychology-based errors come from the decision making process, so the above technique would remove pretty much the entire source of psychology-based errors. Technique fails for professionals when they execute with doubt, and the above technique removes doubt. And the importance of routine is pretty much sports orthodoxy anyway. I'm not bringing this up because I think I'm some soccer genius, but to note, that despite having all the data, despite having the above conclusion so obviously before him, Lyttleton doesn't make it. In fact, he doesn't make any practical conclusion at all. It's almost as though he wants the penalty kick to be an “art” despite all the data pointing to the fact that, at least at the professional level, it's a “craft.”

As with fractals, once you see the pattern in sport, you see the pattern in sport, and, there's a point at which, that pattern becomes boring and powerless. I've touched on this before (here, in fact), but a big part of how we enjoy sports (all sports) is what we choose not to see. We ignore luck. We ignore statistics. We imagine phenomena like “momentum” and “wanting it more.” We build huge structures of rational information and then use those structures to be utterly and completely irrational. To put this another way, somehow our relationship with sports manages to be equal parts data and delusion.

Lyttleton's book is a fascinating micro-history, filled with interesting characters, anecdotes, and enough data to feel scientific, but, ultimately, I think Lyttleton is less interested in discovering an actual “perfect penalty kick” and more interested in the general phenomenon of the penalty kick. Which is just fine by me. Lyttleton succeeds at his project even if he doesn't necessarily succeed at his sub-title. (And there's a chance the subtitle was not even Lyttleton's idea.) However, if you're a player for England's national team looking to break your shoot-out curse, keep Twelve Yards for the off-season, and just read this post's opening paragraph.

Pre-order Twelve Yards.
 (Wondering why you pre-order a book coming out in June? Well, here's some publishing industry wonkiness.)

Ordering An Exaggerated Murder

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Punishments for Passivity and the Fundamental of Style: On hausfrau

There are as many ways to come to an identity as there are people with identities, but the panoply of self-identification can be arranged on a spectrum between active and passive. You can carve out for yourself a wholly idiosyncratic identity, actively embrace identities specific to your heritage (or the aspect of the heritage you find most significance in) passively select from the range of identities present in your society, or not really decide on an identify at all and just drift along responding to the most pressing need and following the path of least resistance, and everything in between. I don't think it's too terribly interesting to point out that systems of power and upholders of the status quo prefer and reward those who accept the pre-fabbed identities, nor do I think there's too much surprising in how those same systems of power and upholders of the status quo have a complicated and often contradictory relationship with those who dynamite down barriers and create entirely new ways of being a human. But just because systems of power prefer passivity over activity, it does not mean they treat all passive identifiers identically.

When a man just passively drifts along, choosing the path of least resistance, ultimately falling, without intention, into one of society's standard identities, he still ends up in a position of power, he still has a sense of agency, his identity is still his own even if, when examined with any kind of critical rigor, it could hardly be called an identity at all. Furthermore, there is very little societal punishment (at least for white cis men) for whatever the drifting of identity is composed of, whether it's “sowing wild oats” in a frat house, driving across country with buddies, or backpacking across Europe, men (especially white, cis) can expect a relative level of safety while they wander and expect a relative level of power when they return. Essentially, a cis white man will have to commit a major societal transgression in order to forfeit his privilege and power and given that we're already talking about people drifting through life, the assertion of agency needed to challenge basic social rules is also most likely lacking. But when a woman just drifts along and passively falls into a prefabbed identity, she is someone's wife. She is property. She is an heir vending machine.

Ann Benz, the protagonist of hausfrau is an American living in Zurich, married to a Swiss man, with three children, having multiple affairs, and barely present in her own life. With perhaps one or two exceptions, there is almost no agency in Anna's decisions. She finds herself in a particular situation with a particular set of emotions and ends up doing something. Sometimes that something gives her a level of (pretty much always temporary) satisfaction, sometimes that something troubles her, and often that something is, well, just another something, another inert domino in the line up of her life. Anna even seems to drift through the situations where she does make a decision and does take some action.

Perhaps the starkest example of this inaction in actions occurs when Anna finally decides to end one of her affairs. It could have been a quick phone call. She could have slipped the break up in over lunch at the German class she shares with her lover. There were many ways she could have ended this relationship, but, instead, she has him meet her at the zoo (the zoo?) where they wander around for, like an hour, both knowing what's coming, before she finally, fucking finally, breaks it off. And then he asks for a kiss. And then she receives a long (oh so grossly long) kiss she doesn't want. And then her child, who is at the zoo on a school trip, catches her kissing another man. At any point in this whole stupid long process, Anna could have just fucking done something (anything!) and the turning point in her life from farce to tragedy would have been avoided. (Though, there probably would have been another one.)

It can be infuriating watching Anna not act. Dozens of times I was practically shouting at her to just fucking do something, anything. Even in therapy she would hold back. Even in the exact situation in which she was trying to solve the exact problems that left her so emotionally hollow, she couldn't just fucking say “I feel hollow. I have affairs to fill a need. I like to fuck.” I mean, her therapist was being paid, specifically, so Anna could say those things to her. And by the end of the book, after the tragedies run their full course, Anna recedes into believing in pre-destination, perhaps the ultimate passive resignation of one's life.

Essbaum, brilliantly, leaves an obvious political statement unsaid. If Anna's husband Bruno had engaged in the exact same behavior, indulged in the exact same passivity, drifted along with no sense of ownership of his own life, even if he also was caught having an affair, he would have been totally fine. He would have found support in his friends and family and in his job as a banker. He would have had the resources to make a change. Even if his family fell apart, he had a bank account, a job, and a native's fluency in the two (German and Swiss-German) languages spoken in Switzerland, and so could completely reorganize his life. In short, society was there for Bruno. One could argue that Anna's level of isolation (a family-less, near friend-less, ex-pat) is not an accurate representation of how most women experience society, but even if Essbaum presents something of a hyperbole (and I'm not sure she does), one of literature's roles is to turn up the volume on life, revealing existing problems that can sometimes be too quiet to hear. (Especially, when hearing them would challenge your own role/identity/place of power, sense of well-being, etc.)

hausfrau is not the kind of book I would normally pick up. (I mean, look at that cover.) “Bored housewife has affairs” really doesn't interest me as a plot. But Jill Alexander Essbaum is a poet and I'm always interested in how poets work in prose and hausfrau came highly recommended from other readers I trust, so when I had a chance to grab a galley I did.

In some ways, nothing happens in the plot to distinguish hausfrau from the other domestic dramas that failed to hold my attention. (There's a chance this is actually a retelling of a classic domestic drama.) If anything distinguishes hausfrau's plot, it is Essbaum's sense of emotional pace and timing, manipulating and structuring the events to induce (at least in me) the closest thing you'll get from Josh to “an anguished gasp.” (That fucking surprise party! The fucking zoo!) What makes hausfrau a special book, what motivated me beyond my usual prejudices, what inspired me to explore the book with a critical eye and thus be open for its ideas (see above), was the style. Essbaum's sharpness, originality, and vitality of imagery exploded the quiet (even quietly desperate) and mundane moments of Anna's perpetual wallow, scattering the shrapnel of all-too-familiar images to distant corners of intellectual and emotional exploration. Every time I started to get a little bored with Anna's relentless, maudlin passivity, I read a line or sentence or image of crackling originality. Poets, am I right?

Which, of course, brings me back to something of a hobby-horse for me. What distinguishes one book from another is style. Some authors are overt, idiosyncratic, and experimental with their style, turning up the volume on that distinguishing feature (and almost certainly being punished in the marketplace for their overtness, even when they are not saddled with cripplingly-bizarre-when-you-think-about-it label “writer's writer.”), while some strive for quality execution of an accepted style (too often forgetting (or letting it be forgotten) that the accepted style was once overt, idiosyncratic, and experimental), and others don't really control their style at all and just kind of write how they write with their creative efforts much more focused on plot and character (thinking of commercial fiction here.). But even with those writers who don't actively engage with their style, even those writers who's style include poorly executed prose, there is a reason why authors like Stephen King, Nora Roberts, and Patricia Cornwell sell gillions of books, and thousands of others who write, at least on the surface, the exact same kinds of books, do not.

Even after considering the vagaries of publishing itself, there is something that distinguishes Stephen King from Peter Straub, even if that something is unintentional, inadvertent, and/or (and we have deconstruction to thank for this) in opposition to whatever King and Straub intended to achieve. Part of that is, of course, the big units of storytelling , but all of those big units (heheheh) are still composed of and communicated through prose style. It certainly could all be a matter of chapter length and where in the book the big cliff hanger or the plot twist occurs or even just how the characters and places are named (I seriously suspect 90% of what distinguishes fun trashy fantasy novels from terrible trashy fantasy novels is the quality of character and place names) but those are all still expressions of an author's style. Ultimately, fundamentally, as I've argued before, it all comes down to style.

People tend to like the media/art/entertainment that stimulates them just enough that they can still ignore the shit they don't feel like dealing with and they tend to come up with a lot of excuses (sometimes reasons) for disliking works that refuse to let the primacy of language and style and/or some uncomfortable of fact of existence be ignored. hausfrau is an uncomfortable book. Essbaum's style can be challenging and her story thrusts our society's misogyny in your face without giving us the emotional salve of a plucky heroine struggling against injustice to root for as we read. Essbaum will not let you ignore things you probably want to ignore. And that's exactly why hausfrau should go on your TBR pile.