Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Week after week, month after month, Bascombe works the hard streets of New York chasing down the buzz on worthwhile books for you guys, and his new column is, as usual, good stuff. Check it out:
It's Not A Secret Until I Tell Someone...
I've got a few books for your consideration this month. All of them are worth your time. Far be it from me to point you in the wrong direction.
My Friend Leonard by James Frey
Riverhead
A few years ago Mr. Frey and his painfully searing self-portrait of a man hitting rock bottom, ‘A Million Little Pieces’, set the literary world afire. There wasn’t anything wrong with the book, from the packaging to the words on the pages this was something to behold, admire, envy, and devour. Mr. Frey was shepherded along by the brilliant and incredibly savvy Sean McDonald, and overseen by the legendary Nan Talese, two people who do wonderful work and bring incredibly vital literary material to the public.
Mr. Frey followed Mr. McDonald to Riverhead where he was set up once again for a grand slam. This new book is, (I don’t know how to put it exactly), something incredible, painful, funny, engaging, riveting, thoughtful, and heartfelt with an underlying white hot blistering honesty about what it’s like to be alive today.
You read his first book because you wanted to see how bad it got for Mr. Frey. You’ll read this book wondering how he’s going to live his life now. But this book has so much about the author and his “fury”, (anyone out there who has quit drinking and drugs knows all about this; those who haven’t can still relate) and so little solution as to what to do. The “fury” isn’t mentioned, but I felt it when he went to work cleaning nightclubs. When his neighbor threatened him with a gun. When his dog died.
Oh my God. This book will kick your ass and rip your heart out.
Why?
Because Frey uncovers the trick to it all: that there is no trick. I loved his reasoning behind not following the “Big Book” in ‘A Million Little Pieces’, understanding right away that it’s just another crutch, and promptly throwing it out the nearest window. This book will help you understand what it’s like to live life on life’s terms.
‘My Friend Leonard’ is also about his best friend Leonard. If you read AMLP, then you know what happens to Leonard. So there’s no need for me to spoil it for you. Leonard adopts Frey at the beginning of this book as his son, (they met in AMLP at the rehab center, and became fast friends), it’s a scene that will haunt you for years to come. A grown man, single, savvy, mobster, (maybe) and brilliant at staying clean, becomes James Frey’s father. Every time Frey enters the room or visits Leonard for one of their many incredible dinners, he greats Frey with, “My Son.” “My Son!” If you’ve read this book then you’ll know the power of these words.
Frey magnetizes to Leonard, as if this were the missing link in his life. The final brick of DNA to make Frey feel better about himself. James Frey is a man who’s gone to the very edge and looked over with temptation heavy in his heart. I’ll forever remember smelling the liquor that he smelled at the end of AMLP when he held his nose just over the shot glass. You’ll never forget Leonard, Frey, Cassius and the life Frey now leads. We met him just as he’s rotating out of prison, and picking up where he left off with Lily. Nothing turns out as it should, but that’s life. Frey magically rolls with it while wondering if he can’t just escape through the hatch guarded by booze. He doesn’t pick up and I’m impressed. You see, James Frey doesn’t make any of this stuff up. It all happened. And happened to him, because he did it to himself. Leonard watches over Frey carefully and even gets him involved in some nefarious doings, which Frey wisely sidesteps.
James Frey writes “scared” better than anyone alive.
Frey winds up in LA and the edge to this book backs off a touch, but is filled with dramatic romantic integrity. I never thought the girl in Chicago would work out, but your gal in LA, she’s a keeper. Leonard shows Frey the best things in life and offers him fatherly advice that is pure and simple. This story will blow your hair back and finally make you recognize that James Frey is an incredible writer with a natural gift for the truth.
Winslow in Love by Kevin Canty
Nan Talese/Doubleday
You’ll discover Kevin Canty quickly, and your appetite for his writing will grow until you’ve devoured everything he’s written. I was fortunate to discover him years ago while in Florida on business, right before ‘Nine Below Zero’ hit stores. Before that I toyed with his first short story collection ‘A Stranger in this World’, and didn’t know that I was really all that attached to him until ‘Into the Great Wide Open’ hit my desk, and I knew that this writer was coming together like a fine bottle of port. You might remember seeing his name tossed around the book ‘Rounders’, yeah the same one they made the half-baked Ed Norton, Matt Damon vehicle out of. Not Canty’s fault; it just didn’t click, the movie or Gretchen Mol’s asinine performance. She seems to be the poster child for a Vanity Fair cover that ruined a career.
Kevin Canty however has touched a cord. He’s pushed a button in these parts that rarely gets any play.
Poetry. I hate poetry. Lord do I hate it, and I think Canty knows that much, at least I hope he does.
Maybe because he hates it too. The Winslow of this story is a lost soul of literary hype, a mature loser, think Grady Tripp plus 30 pounds and no life to speak of, none. Think of that guy who you see at the Quickie Mart: sweat pants, comb-over, pale white flaky skin buying peanut butter, Wonder Bread, and Penthouse Letters. Think of his jacket, the leather three quarter type, shoes worn out at the heels from fallen arches. Oh, and he’s a poet. Bloody Hell.
It’s not hard is it?
Why do I hate poetry? Let me count the ways. It never makes sense. The sentences are too short. It never really tells you anything. Most of it is flowered with silly metaphors sprinkled in to lighten the mood, which is nothing short of suicidal. What infuriates me even more is that poetry is high-falooting, arrogant and exclusive. But Canty develops a man in Winslow that is at the dead end of poetry, the place where poets go off to die. And that’s as an adjunct professor in Montana. Winslow drifts his way there, slowly, like the remains of hotdogs floating to the top of the pan you boiled them in. Winslow reminds me of the feeling I get on my hands after I eat an orange. Really. Winslow is so dead it’s not even believable to think otherwise. Once in Montana we meet the book that Canty was meant to write. This book reminds me a lot of Craig Nova’s writing, especially about men in the wilderness, and this story in parts is very close to ‘Cruisers’, Nova’s latest, (especially the part about fly fishing, compared to Nova’s story about the cop being the fox in the fox hunt). I adore the fishing line piled up in the water, the failure to catch a white fish. Winslow can’t catch a fish! Get it? This is Winslow’s life. Never being able to succeed at what you’ve set out to be good at. A comment on Americans for sure. Winslow wallows in the success of being a failure. Adores it, in fact.
Canty gives me the chills with his esoteric detachment, his Freudian fatherly figure bedding the students, although I don’t see why anyone would sleep with this man. Poetry consumes Winslow, and while giving up life, via the bottle and nicotine he has a continued epiphany through his most talented students. They discover Middle America together, fumble their way into each other’s pants, (why?) and then well, we come to the very unsatisfying end, suddenly. I turned the page wondering why this book had ended? Where was the pay off? I read the first 250 pages with excitement and glee. Watching carefully as Winslow discovered he was a lost cause, whether it is through his trips to the forest or the river to fish. Suddenly Winslow is tragically taken from me. I’ll never understand how or why this book ended. Kevin Canty has written a much better ‘Wonder Boys’ with this novel, and its only competition is Francine Prose’s ‘Blue Angel’, which this book has more in common with than I’d like to admit. Sadly, I don’t see this book on the shelves anymore. Which is no surprise, not much of what I like is out there on the shelves. But here’s to hoping that true gems like Kevin Canty keep up the good work.
Stop That Girl: A Novel In Stories by Elizabeth McKenzie
Random House
Writing short stories is difficult and writing them in a form that would suggest they are a novel is even more challenging. Recently, Stephen Raleigh Byler with ‘Searching for Intruders’ and a few years before that ‘Kissing in Manhattan’ by the ridiculously talented David Schickler, have both successfully negotiated this sleight of hand. It would seem that publishers who take a risk on this format are planning to publish other books by the same author and a long-term relationship is forged. Publisher supports an author by publishing a risky collection for the sake of art and then down the line take the lion share of the risk on a novel. A good example would be Dan Chaon. I don’t know what kind of promotion was done for Elizabeth McKenzie’s book, but it should be stated here that I don’t think it’s gotten enough attention.
When a writer pulls this trick off, a novel in stories, you know - stories that can stand alone and work as a novel, it’s the greatest trick I’ve ever seen pulled off. Surpassed only by getting published in the first place. In the same league as Nell Freudenberger, but with a higher percentage of success, McKenzie seems to be quite comfortable with her main character Ann Ransom, a wild little kid who never really outgrows her childhood foibles. Freudenberger’s collection ‘Lucky Girls’ and her story in the O’Henry Prize Stories 2005 are slight and wobbly splinters that seemed to have cracked the door open for other writers like McKenzie, but show no future talent for the level of success that Freudenberger is currently enjoying. Her women or girls seem to whimper along stereotypical fault lines, where McKenzie has a narrative flux and flow that is highly enjoyable. The comparison ends with ‘Stop That Girl’, a very likeable if not annoying set of childhood antics that will impress even the most jaded cynic.
Through this slight collection, her grandmother, who becomes a tormenter and family curse, engages Ann Ransom and becomes a comic spine for the book. McKenzie really knows how to push the right buttons, moving her heroine through the mine fields of suburban neighborhood politics all the way to college and finally to a dead end in the South. This story is about a girl’s coming of age due to no fault of her own and it leaves you slightly breathless for what will happen next. When Allen Ginsberg shows up towards the end of the collection, so does Ann’s grandmother to spoil things. Children often think that there is an adult who always mucks things up for them, and is there at every turn, at least that’s what the child thinks at the time. When McKenzie finally gets Ann to college she discovers what true freedom is really all about and I suppose the author enjoyed describing these aspects since it’s possible that these stories hit closer to home than Elizabeth McKenzie will admit. What’s even more exciting to watch is Ann Ransom observing her parents’ social inequities, loss of status, and cultural shyness. By seeing this through a child’s eyes it seems more potent, and less typical. You’ll admire Ann Ransom and her abilities to sustain herself through a rather unthreatened life, but a life that was worth leading. You should look for the novel that is sure to follow this collection by Elizabeth McKenzie who is certain to go places.
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Thanks, Frank. See you next month.
"Moriarty" out.
