Writing Life

I had a quick thought about this last night before bed. Which writers made me want to write, both back when I was young and now that I’m actually a writer? Through their books, they’ve energized my passion for writing. They’ve shown me that books can have such an impact on a person, and I want to be in that fellowship. This list is, by definition, incomplete, but they represent some of the works that most touched me.

• Isaac Asimov (The Foundation Trilogy)
• Albert Camus (The Fall)
• Paul Bowles (The Sheltering Sky)
• Natsuo Kirino (Out)
• Kenzo Kitikata (Winter Sleep)
• John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath)
• Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita)
• Max Barry (Company)
• Marie Phillips (Gods Behaving Badly)

I picked up Paul Neilan’s Apathy and Other Small Victories a few months back. The title sounded great and a cover snippet tried to compare it to Camus, Bukowski and Office Space. Who wouldn’t love that? The book wasn’t all that, and I cared enough to warn others.

The cooler-than-thou main character never developed much rapport with reader, be it negative or positive. The scattershot style of telling the story that included consecutive sentences contradicting each other was cute at first but grew tiresome after the first twenty pages. It did, to be honest, remind me of conversations I’ve led, but I’ve never carried on such a spiel for the chronological duration of 230+ pages. I also felt the author went a little too far with his jokes about deaf folks. It crossed the line, in my opinion. If apathy is a “lack of interest, enthusiasm, or concern” then why even bother to read his words and why did he spend time writing it?

This is the third book by Kenzo Kitakata that I’ve read, the first two being Ashes and Winter Sleep. Translated by Paul Warham, this book is a fitting addition to Kitakata’s works in English. The hardboiled styling of this book is more in line with 1990s Hong Kong action films rather than Japanese novels, but it makes the book a fast and enjoyable roller coaster ride.

The Cage continues in the style set up in these previous books, with the focus on two main characters, Kazuya Takino and Detective Takagi. Takino, a former Yakuza who’s gone straight, struggles with the life he’s created and the world he thought he’d left behind. By rendering this gangster as a complex human being, Kitakata can deftly explore the various levels, neighborhoods, and relationships of contemporary Japanese society. The cage is a metaphor for the world that Takino has made for himself, and that he is aware of, but the novel also explores the cages that the other main characters have built around themselves, for better or for worse and knowingly or unknowingly.

Finished reading this book Friday morning on my metro ride in to work. This was a great book for the metro since you could pick it up and put it down without losing any train of thought or end during a critical piece of analysis. Not a great book at all. It was cool, since the perspective was intriguing: French-born Moroccan adolescent girl growing up in poor suburbs around Paris with her Moroccan mother and absent father.

The timing of this book was good, given the riots last year in the suburbs of a nation that bases its national identity on liberté, egalitie, and fraternitiem, but seems to turn a blind eye on its large immigrant communities surrounding its largest cities, e.g. Paris and Marseilles. The book is also interesting due to its young author, herself a child of Algerian immigrants who grew up in the projects outside Paris.

Overall, not a great book, maybe not even a good book, but perhaps a necessary book. And, as noted above, it’s a quick read.

I just had to post this. I’m reading Faïza Guène’s Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow right now and just loved this snippet from page 38:

Nabil’s a nobody, a loser. He’s got acne and when he was in elementary school, almost every day at recess he got bullied into handing over his snack. A big fat victim. Me, I prefer heroes, like in the movies, the kind of guy girls dream about…Al Pacino, I’ll bet you nobody could take his snacks. Straight up, he’d pull out his semiautomatic and blow your thumb off, so you couldn’t suck it at night before you fell asleep. All done.

Having read Of Mice and Men in high school and The Grapes of Wrath recently, I turned with delight to one of Steinbeck’s later novels, The Winter of our Discontent. It was a slow book to start, the pace was a bit uneven and stumbled a bit, but I did finish it last night before bed. The last one hundred pages flew by.

The story is told in first person, from the perspective of a man in New Baytown in the New England region. He is a proud man, an honest man, and one who’s current situation belies his long and proud family history as whalers and important men about town. Working as a clerk in a store, he takes life as it comes, remaining honest and faithful to his principles. But with pressure inside and from his family and peers, he decideds to embark on a short detour to his integrity. The ensuing story unwinds differently than expected, but still with a great deal of introspection.

The ending has a definite Hollywood feel about it, perhaps reflecting on Steinbeck’s time in the film industry. The book also contains lots of stereotypes and cardboard characters that was certainly not his style in the first two books I mentioned at the beginning of this entry. One could say it was a sign of the times, but this book was written in 1962 (and situated in 1960) and Steinbeck’s prior works from 20-30 years earlier didn’t have such limitations. The only fully drawn character is Ethan Allen Hawley, the narrator. Perhaps as a study in male psychology this novel excels, but as a piece of literature, it falls far short of his earlier works.

It’s customary to find the second novel of an acclaimed writer to be wanting. The highs of the first are seldom reached in the second work. In Melissa P’s case, this axiom rings true. While her first book, 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed, was an emotional burst and breath of reality, her second attempt is hardly worth the nice paper it’s printed on. It’s as though she went to a writing school after her first book and learned all the tricks of the trade and reproduced them without feeling, emotion, or talent. She vainly centers the book on herself and her own perception of fame that grew out of her first book. Sadly, the acknowledgments at the end of the story were the only part of the book that felt real, that conveyed any sort of emotion.

I just finished reading Washingtonienne, a fictionalized account of Jessica’s experiences working in Senator Mike DeWine’s (R-OH) office. I was just at CGS when this story broke in the DC, then national, press. It chronicles the life of a young woman who blogs about her sexcapades while working on the Hill. I picked up the book since I’m a political junkie; however, I was left wanting, just as a high wears off and you’re looking for your next fix. The book was enjoyable just for the “I’ve been there” moments, especially as she drinks caffeinated beverages at Murky Coffee off of 7th Street in SE. I’ve spent plenty of time and money in this exact coffee shop. But, the location dropping, like name dropping in many books, seems more an afterthought than an attempt to build atmosphere. The book is like a blog, but one that doesn’t have much content. I wouldn’t recommend buying this book, but I would say browse through it at the bookstore or library to take in the wonk-sites of DC.