Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Once again, Frank Bascombe’s on the job. I’ll say this... I liked the new Ellis book a lot more than he did, and I think it’s a really strange mix of fact and fiction that becomes affecting in the most unexpected way. But this is about Frank and what he thinks, so let’s get to it...
So I promised Bret Easton Ellis a while ago. I've had the great fortune of coming across a landslide of great books this summer. Coming next is a brilliant book called 'Trance' from Christopher Sorrentino and a gem from Ellroy. As always, I remind you that this column is a place to find good books. Oh yeah, and many thanks to the nice people at Random House for the Ellis. Check out the website, it's very cool.
Until next time, It's Not A Secret Until I Tell Someone.
Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis
Knopf
I wanted to hate this book. Really, I did. I think that’s why the folks at Random House kept this from me for so long. Reading the first few pages I thought, “Yes. Now the time has come to give a swift kick to this latest literary endeavor.” Violent imagery. Seriously, I mean no ill will towards Mr. Ellis, but his books, umm…how shall I say this, make me angry.
I’ll admit, I’m jealous. Not out of college yet and B.E.E. (I like the acronym) is already a literary household name. ‘Less Than Zero’ is being heralded by almost everyone as an original new voice in the American literary landscape. Then it’s a hit movie with a bunch of pretty brat packers. He then lives a dual life in L.A. and New York City, and hangs with all the hottest of the hot. He’s got it all: fame, fortune, and… well, the time to hang out and write all day long while living in New York City and partying all night. That’s a good job if you can get it.
Plus he basically wrote about his life, so it wasn't that hard to write. Which when it is all said and done is what all writers are doing anyway. Then comes the book that bites me on the ass. I'm holed up in the South of France after taking a job that I thought would be a vacation, but as it turned out, it felt more like what I'd imagine hell to be: tiny, secluded, and filled with angry Frenchmen with halitosis and body odor. I find this little book, ‘American Psycho’. Now, I'd read ‘Less Than Zero’ at this point and found it to be a poorly written run-on sentence about being a rich kid. Drugs, booze, and more drugs, toss in some sex, mysterious violent tendencies, and there you have it.
Yawn.
‘Psycho’. Well now, here was a book that was not only disturbing, but it was also about an asshole doing really, really nasty fucking things to people. Though I did like the Tom Cruise bashing in the elevator. Plus B.E.E. spent a bunch of time on Huey Lewis, along with several other cultural references that made me curious as to how this whole monstrosity got published in the first place. This wasn't fiction. This was cobbled together fantasy or thinly veiled masturbation.
Whatever.
So from then on, I hated him. Then, ‘The Informers’ came out followed by ‘Glamorama’, both of which I ignored on principal alone. So I waited. I knew I'd see him eventually at a Manhattan bookstore, and I did. I walked past him once during a book signing. He was wearing this really sharp blue suit and hanging out in the shadows, but I just didn't have it in me to tell him how much I hated his books. Why? Back then I couldn't answer that question. Now I can.
Books, novels in particular, are really hard to write. Really hard to imagine, and getting finished is a brutal, savage journey into the darkness of your patience. ‘Lunar Park’ landed on my front doorstep and I actually liked it. Really. B.E.E. has written nothing new here, nothing more than a re-hashing of his own life. The first thirty pages cover what I've just said in this review, save for my involvement. But then we meet a character named B.E.E. who’s living outside of New York City with his estranged actress wife and a son whom he is only just acknowledging as his own. Sadly, the kid is in middle school by the time he finally meets him. His wife is shocked by his own inability to be a father, how he is almost pathologically secluded from his family. Problem is, B.E.E. is recovering from all his vices. Drugs, coke, heroin, crack, smack, pills, booze, glue, whatever, you name it, and B.E.E. has done it. But recovery doesn't last long, because almost immediately he relapses, over and over and over and over and over again. Then his past catches up to him.
Someone is re-enacting the crimes from ‘American Psycho’ in his quaint Connecticut-like hamlet, while several kids his son’s age are disappearing. Meanwhile, B.E.E. is losing his mind (while living in what can only be called a prison cell with golden bars). And you think he’s responsible for these crimes. How does this happen? He can't deal with his father’s death. He admits that ‘Psycho’ is a big ‘fuck you’ to his father. He directly blames his father for his own shortcomings. This stuff could be considered trite and stereotypical, but I liked the voice on the inside of B.E.E. How he can't relate to anyone because he’s always been treated as a star and treated to the best and allowed to be an asshole to everyone - because he’s such a star. B.E.E. hates everyone almost as much as he hates himself. He’s a failure as a writer, father, husband, neighbor and teacher. He’s got a small-time gig at a local college and he’s mucking that up too. This, of course, is not the real B.E.E. but a fictional B.E.E. that the real B.E.E. has made up to inhabit his new novel. Could the fictional B.E.E. exist with out the real B.E.E.? No, of course not, that’s the trick.
B.E.E.- the fictional one, is losing his mind, has his house haunted by some doll that he bought his daughter (from one of his junkie friends), thinks the ghost of his father is visiting him. Most of the time he’s high, drunk, or passed out after having vomited on himself. It’s such a sad portrait that it feels like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. B.E.E. finally loses everything: his family, his son, and his mind. In a way, I think this might be the end of the old B.E.E. and the start of something new. There are parts of this book that are inspired. I take a lot of my original hatred back. Also, some Random House employees make guest appearances, which you'll recognize only if you've worked there. AND Jay McInerney shows up; I won't get into that (if you've read this column you know how I feel about HIM). The part about (paraphrasing here) First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you,” is so right on, it’s scary. Later he’s approached by someone who tells him they're about to give him information that may upset him. He replies, (paraphrasing again) “That will be hard to do, since I'm upset all the time”.
B.E.E. may have gotten his past out of his system with this book. I'd love to read the next book, whenever that might be. A lot of people say this guy was the shit, way back when. Books are so subjective that one opinion is truly meaningless. If you want to see a career come full circle, then check this one out.
L4yer Cake by J.J. Connolly
Black Cat Press
I did it again. Left a book on my shelves that needed to be read six months ago. This book, this Goddamn book tore the ass out of me.
Really.
So you're all out there laughing and loving your way through ‘Layer Cake’ the movie, that’s cool. I could care less. Sure, I'll toss the flick in Netflix, but I'm on a Daniel Craig kick and I can't wait to see this when it hits the rental rack. It won't carry nearly as much punch as the source material.
Oh my.
Well. I'd give you a narrator, a hero, an anti-hero for Christ’s sake, but he’s nameless. And he’s a gangster. An English gangster, you know David Beckham, Posh Spice, Tony Blair and ‘28 Days Later’, that English, like my man Turkish. But we don't know his name, well, for reasons that aren't too clear to me, but it doesn't really matter because by the time you've wondered what the hell is going on this book it’s over. Classic case of so much good stuff in too short a page count. I really liked this book because it introduced me to a vernacular that I'd not had the privilege to read since ‘Trainspotting’, and even then, I didn't know it from Adam. Now? I'm hooked. Sure I read Jake Arnott, liked it, sort of, and didn't think much of the language, until now. This book is the nuts. We first get a draft of our story through the eyes of the all-knowing narrator, who’s basically setting everything up and rolling the ball down the proverbial lane. The guys are nasty, but they don't get any worse than Jimmy Price. A connected gangster, top of the food chain, the big fish in that little pond of life and he’s kept in check by a top notch geezer named Eddy who’s in the social fabric of London’s high society. Now Jimmy enlists our narrator to find Eddy’s daughter for him. Turns out she’s gone off the straight and narrow and got herself mixed up in a ‘bitta rough’. Trouble, bad company, insignificant other, as it were. Imagine spending an entire week with Don Cheadle’s character from ‘Ocean’s 11’ and ‘12’. Now imagine that character on speed. You’re getting the picture. So our narrator jumps off into the wilds of the drug world, you see he’s a dealer, top notch, to find this little minx. He winds up mixed up in an LSD deal, a really big deal that dominates the entire story. He’s got some friends who inflict some righteous violence along the way, and he even runs into a girl who’s got to be the best described woman ever to appear on the pages of a book. But let’s go back to Jimmy Price. Mr. Price, or ‘The Legend’ as he’s commonly called, tells this story about Eddy’s wife and daughter that is absolutely incredible. This girl, well, she’s not really missing. Eddy’s not really a fan of Jimmy Price, and Jimmy, he’s blowing smoke up a lot of colons.
Long story short? This book is a funny and witty little masterpiece that will keep you entertained for hours. It’s a page-turner, and a tough book to get a grip on. You can easily go pages without knowing what the hell is going on since the language is so damn hard to figure out. Connolly has so many nicknames for things that you need a glossary to follow along. Thankfully, there isn't one, which makes enjoying this book all the more rewarding.
We're In Trouble by Christopher Coake
Harcourt
So there’s a tradition in today’s literary world that it’s almost a must on your CV to have attended a writers’ colony and had your creative writing exercises in a workshop with other writers trying to become the next “lit-thing”. Whatever that may be. Generally the only thing to come out of these workshops are a lot of people trying too hard, and writers who should just go back to making the most of their MBA’s. Occasionally a writer will emerge (or in some cases never make it because the publishing business can't or won't market them) with a real talent, a knack for storytelling, like Stephen Raleigh Byler, or David Schickler or even the ridiculously talented Samuel Ligon, (read ‘Safe in Heaven Dead’). These guys may or may not have gone to a writer’s summer camp/retreat/workshop or spent time at Yaddo, but they may as well have. Because it seems important to editors and agents that you have this in your past, and Christopher Coake is no exception. These stories are all products of several writers’ programs. The funny part of this book is the acknowledgements page, rather, “pages”; flip to the back of the book and take a look. He’s thanked everyone.
Anyway.
The crux of this collection centers on men and women who are dead, dying, or about to die, or have found themselves in a very deep pile of shit. I didn't think this would work; themes like this never do because they usually turn into a parlor trick and run out of gas midway through. But Mr. Coake managed to maintain an incredible, even flow, a silky style that defies comparison. Well that’s not completely true. ‘In the Event’ is so blatantly Carver inspired that I saw an obvious bleak minimalism with dart-like sentences, a sort of tip of the hat. Characters flashing forward and back in the narrative structure just to reveal details that will propel the story forward, all of which makes for a very compelling collection. The story in question has to do with a set of parents who die, horribly, leaving their only son to their best friend. The friend spends the entire story evaluating his life the night they’ve left this mortal coil, seeing his entire life as changed, and how being this boy’s father, essentially, will change everything. The story works for several reasons, none of which are that apparent. A man trying to define himself has it done for him by his friends. We're tossed back into time to see relevant kernels of information that will play out on our hero. These stories, along with the last two in the collection, are by far the most exciting. Mr. Coake’s training has given him an insight into his own personal preferences when it comes to writing fiction, including, but not limited to, the non-linear structure. A personal favorite of mine, this trick works best in the last story about a sheriff whose life turned out just fine, but his friend and his friend’s wife, well, their lives end abruptly. We're taken through a mixture of settings in the small Midwestern town where we find out that one man has killed his entire family: wife, kid and elderly parents. He’s found out that his pal, the sheriff, has done him wrong by taking his wife between the sheets. We're treated to these facts slowly, like gas leaking from the tank of a car prior to explosion. Finally, the sheriff and his friend spend an afternoon in the woods together plotting their lives, but we know as they don't, that all things wouldn't end if they didn't end badly. Except for ‘Solos’, which is a struggle on many levels (a language thing I think - Coake tries his hand at vernacular, not his strong suit), this is a winning collection. You’ll adore ‘A Single Awe’ and ‘Abandon’, for the lack of sentimentality that Coake brilliantly holds in check. You may be reminded of Dan Chaon with this collection, but Coake is ready for the big stage of a first novel and if this collection is any indication, it will soar safely into the clouds.
Thanks, Frank. I know what you mean about it being a great summer for books. I’ve been barreling through a ton of stuff I’ve enjoyed so far. Great work, man.
"Moriarty" out.
