Monthly Archives: May 2012

Thought of the Week: I’m Ack-Basswards, Apparently

In all my many moonless nights spent writing and posting and staring at the empty hit counter, I’ve always secretly desired to be as famous as every other blogger in the world, since they all get more hits than I do. My biggest spike in followers came the day WordPress thought my Facebook friends counted, completely misunderstanding their literary interests (though I doubt they were asked).

Little did I know that all it took was a little versatility. I had to look the word up just to be sure, when Jennifer Bresnick included me in her list of fifteen blogs she checks every once in a while (after a stiff double Jack to recover). Apparently, it seems I am thought to be versatile (though her own thoughts on the accolade seem somewhat dubious):

Versatile: 1 – Able to adapt or be adapted to many different functions or activities. 2 – Changeable; inconstant

The root of the word comes from the Latin vertere, to turn. Now let’s think about this for a moment, because my suitability for this commendation may largely depend on our interpretation. Regarding change – I don’t like it. At least, not when it involves other people’s changes. Personally, I change an awful lot, usually from grumpy to dour to cynical and back to grumpy again. Highly inconstant, and it rather bothers people.

I also turn. I turn left a lot; sometimes I also turn right. I turn in at night, and turn up for meetings. I turn taps, dials and knobs, and the volume control in my car. I won’t turn leaves, though, in case one of them is new. That’s why I only read second-hand books or digital books, which don’t have pages (iBooks does, but don’t tell anyone).

Adaptable, though…I’d never really considered it before. I don’t generally tend to think about adapting, mostly because the world adapts around me. It’s a funny thing, really; everywhere I go I fit in perfectly, even if no one likes me and they don’t have long hair. It’s an awkward word, really, and confuses me:

Adapt: 1 – make suitable for a new use or purpose; modify. 2 – become adjusted to new conditions. 3 – alter a text to make it suitable for filming, broadcast or the stage

I could probably be repurposed as a hammer, or maybe a player piano. If I could, I’d see if I could be Anthony Hopkins, but I don’t think he’s done being Anthony Hopkins yet. I don’t adjust to new conditions – see above. And I really don’t think I’d make a very good movie.

It’s starting to look like I’m possibly not all that versatile at all. I’ve written about a few different things, from my neighbor’s garbage to the fallacy of American Idol, but I think I kind of write them all in the same way, which is to say not all that well. I could certainly try to be more diverse; after all, with something like 100,000 nouns about which to write, I certainly can’t run out of topics. I might run out of patience, however (I could write about that last).

Could I try to write in a different style? According to I Write Like, I’m a Tolkien/Tolstoy mutt. Maybe I could throw some Dan Brown and Kafka into the mix as well, but I think it’d become a little depressing.

So having thought about it, thank you, but I just don’t know if I’m cut out for this Versatile Blogger Award. Perhaps I can give to other people instead. They can keep it, if they like. If not, they could pass it on as well. Actually, if you apply some vampire logic to this, if every person infected with the Versatile Blogger Award passed it on to fifteen other bloggers, all of WordPress would succumb within five days. I suppose that would be the ultimate versatility – one, giant blogger that writes on every subject imaginable. But then, how come it took so long to get to me?

Versatile Blogger Award: 1 – A green square that heralds great fame. 2 – The blogging equivalent of an ‘I’m Too Sexy’ t-shirt. 3 – A piece of harmless fluff that most people spurn, but kind of makes them feel all warm inside at the same time

alexandracorinth

Ashley Jillian

Caeruleus Aether

Catharsis of Creativity

ck’s days

Fabulous Realms

Looking for Pemberley

Looser or Not

My Body the City: The Secret Life of a Manhattan Call Girl

Nick Rolynd

Not Quite Dead Yet

Storytelling Nomad

The Writing Desk

(If anyone noticed, these are the same links at the bottom of every page on my website, ’cause these people are cool.)

Super-thanks!

And, if you really, really want to know seven things about me…

  1. I wear my wedding ring on my right hand, but not because I’m Russian.
  2. I got very angry at Teavana when they didn’t have Lapsang Souchang.
  3. I’ve lived in three different countries (but not at the same time).
  4. When I was eighteen I cracked my skull on a doorframe, and my dad stitched it up with a sewing needle because he didn’t want to drive to the emergency room. He used Listerine for antiseptic.
  5. Our son is named after a character from Star Trek.
  6. I continue to hit my head on things, but won’t let my dad near me with a sewing kit.
  7. I consider myself something of a Vodka connoisseur, which isn’t really something to be all that proud of.

Tales of Despair: Perversity

The grunts of his sister and her clients ring loud through the thin partition. Emile hates her as he hates all women; women have only ever spurned him.

Later, her lover beats him, and then invites him to eat with them. Irma will not stop him, though she tends to her brother when he is gone.

Bebert does not like him, and is satisfied when Emile squirms. In the end he will stab Emile in front of his sister. Again, she will not stop him.

Emile will buy a gun, and will desire Bebert’s death; it isn’t his that comes.

Such are just some of the scenes that bring to life Francis Carco‘s (1886-1958) frankly stomach-churning painting of 1920s Parisian slums, Perversity (French: Perversité). The story is bleak and desperate, centered around three loathsome characters and filled with little hope. Emile is a clerk, unable to function without the reassurance of strict routine. Irma is a prostitute, working from her bedroom in the tiny, two-room apartment she shares with her brother. Bebert is the bully of the tale, lording ownership over Irma and taking great delight in the torment and abuse of Emile.

What is particularly unsettling about Perversity is Carco’s unflinching dedication to the deeply disturbing faults he has built into his characters, and he allows them no redemption. Emile and Irma are pushed to edge of human decency, and repeatedly make decisions that seem against the very grain of morality, yet each time we are left with the knowing that there was, of course, no other way it could have been. One of the most discomfiting scenes occurs half-way through the story, when Bebert walks in to find Emile and Irma talking together. As Emile shrinks away from him, his sister points out that he is afraid of Bebert. Rather than allowing his characters to escape  with a mere argument, Carco builds a tension so great that it is only finally released when Bebert brings out a pocket knife and stabs Emile repeatedly, smiling all the while and insisting that such ‘pricks’ don’t hurt at all, and he shouldn’t act as such a baby. When he is finally finished and allows Irma to bathe him in salt, she comes to him and tells him that Emile is bleeding profusely. His callous response is that such a thing is “quite natural, I assure you. It’s rather the contrary that would astonish me.”

I have read no other book that so encapsulates the despair and hurt of inescapable depression, and forces it on the reader without sympathy. This is a terribly uncomfortable read, and I found myself unable to continue at certain points, often for weeks at a time. Ultimately, it was a rewarding experience, for it is a tale that draws you in and does not let go. The uniqueness of this story is that it is not tension, fear or suspense that hooks its teeth into you, but rather the grim, hopeless lives of these three people who have no reason to live, yet push on regardless in spite of the filth and the pain.

Perversity is available in print and for Kindle on Amazon. Read it at your peril.

Thought of the Week: Free Books

No – sorry about that. I don’t have any free books. Or rather, I have free books, but they’re not for you. They could be, perhaps, when I’m done with them; or they might be yours if you read them after I tell you about them. But for right now, they’re not for you.

I was on a long weekend to Montauk a little while ago, which was nice enough in its own right; there was a lighthouse that we didn’t go to, a giant golden statue and an office building that had been abandoned since 1930, which we also didn’t go to. We did see a World War II bunker that fell into the ocean, and had a milkshake.

On the way back, we also stopped in a town called Bridgehampton, which unsurprisingly is in the Hamptons. When we were there, we discovered that the Bridgehampton library, which is perplexingly called the Hampton Library (in Bridgehampton, which serves Sagaponack as well, as it happens), had some books, which was nice because we didn’t have to pay for them.

Of course, few libraries are in the habit of charging you for their books, which is fortunate, but most of them ask for them back, which is slightly deceitful of them. In this case, the Hampton Library in Bridgehampton that also serves Sagaponack didn’t seem too bothered about it, and had rather trustingly left them unattended on their front lawn. I actually began to wonder why the books (or at least the donation jar) hadn’t been pinched already, until I remembered we were in the Hamptons, at which point of course I felt a little guilty about pinching them myself. Still, it couldn’t hurt to have a look.

It turned out these books were books the library didn’t have room for anymore, and hadn’t been checked out in at least a year and a half or so. I suppose I should have been worried at that point but we hung around anyway, faithful that the library-goers of the Hamptons probably wouldn’t know a good book if it hit them in the eye, and that a gem (or at the very least some zirconia) might be buried in the pile.

I don’t know if I found any gems. I do know I found four books that at the very least had pleasing titles and covers. This reminded me of choosing an album at a second-hand record store (in this case a second-second-hand book not-store), where I had to pick it based on the cover artwork alone. This used to be a lot of fun, until I’d bought all their good music and was left picking up some really weird stuff like Carter Tutti. These books are:

The Pact – Walter J. Roers

Something about two brothers growing up in the 1940s with abusive and alcoholic parents. Sounds pretty grim.

Trinity Fields – Bradford Morrow

Another book about growing up in the 1940s. Funny, that. This time in New Mexico with atomic bombs.

www:wake – Robert J. Sawyer

This one sounded interesting, if the author can bring a novel take on the subject: self-propagating intelligence via the internet. All through the eyes of a blind girl, so to speak. Creepy.

The Charnel Prince – Greg Keyes

This one seemed fun. I actually have to say it sounded vaguely familiar, and it’s supposed to be a sequel to something called The Briar King, in a series called The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone. Sounds pretty straight-up fantasy, and I’m hoping, after the first three, it’ll prove some light reading.

I haven’t actually started reading any of them yet. Actually, I don’t have much time for reading at all, which is sad because I really don’t mind it. I am working through a book called The Last Death of Tev Chrisini by Jennifer Bresnick, which I hope to review when I’m done, something I’ve never done before so it probably will be a complete train wreck.

What about all of you? Have you read any of these books? Are there any I should start with first? What about ones I shouldn’t bother with? Actually, that would be the most helpful, since I always seem so short on time. Please let me know which of these four books is a complete waste of time.

Thank-you so much!