Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
His name is Frank Bascombe, he's a sportswriter.
Or at least, he was. Bascombe's a good guy. I'll vouch for him. Treat him right. I've been in touch with him over the last few years, and during a recent conversation, the two of us hatched an idea, the culmination of which is this new monthly column we're introducing on Ain't It Cool News today.
See, Frank left sports and relocated to the heart of the publishing world. He had to. He's led a lifelong love affair with the printed word, and now he's in a unique position to bring us a look at what's coming up in print. It's something we've never tried here at AICN before, but something I've been dying to do. When you've got a guy like Frank at your disposal, you don't just leave him twisting in the wind, reading everything that's coming out and never commenting. No... you invite him in. You offer him a platform. You let him talk.
So enjoy this, the first installment of a column we're calling...
IT’S NOT A SECRET IF I DON’T TELL ANYONE
KISSING IN MANHATTAN By David Schickler
THE COLD SIX THOUSAND By James Ellroy
CHOKE By Chuck Palahniuk
Have you ever wondered how someone gets a start in the book-publishing world? You can take a low paying editorial, publicity, sales or book selling position and just get plain old exploited by the big corporate machine. They’ll lather you in finesse and corporate double talk, and allow you to fulfill someone else’s dreams. Another way up the ladder of the book world is to write your novel while getting the brown end of the stick from nine to five. As we know, everyone has a novel in them, or as Martin Amis believes, everyone has a memoir in them. Finally, the one sure-fire way to get your book published is to sit down and write it. Don’t work, and if you do, do something that allows you to spend most of your time writing, since as Billy Crystal in Throw Momma from the Train said, “a writer writes.”
That’s just what David Schickler has done with his debut collection of short stories, KISSING IN MANHATTAN. Do you recall the feeling you used to get a kid, when you were playing out in the neighborhood on a sun drenched afternoon, everyone was feeling good, and there were five more hours of sunlight with no one to call you back into the house? That feeling deep in the pit of your stomach, when everything felt perfect, good, tingling and right? That’s how this reviewer felt after finishing this exuberantly well thought out, thinking man’s literary masterpiece. Strong words? You bet.
Short stories stand on their own and can stay with you for years, even if you don’t want them to. With Raymond Carver’s “A Small Good Thing” or Richard Fords “Rock Springs”, there’s something about these short shots to the solar plexus that really mean something when all is said and done.
New York City is the place, and the time is now. The characters are recognizable, real, but there is a slightly nerve racking sense that something else is going on, something that’s not quite right. First off, all of our participants are living in the Preemption Apartment complex on the upper west side of Manhattan. Our hero James Branch is living proof that big business is really big, and belittling. Everything is so real, so tangible, that you just want to reach out and take a bite out of it. But as we slide through the opening stories and get introduced to different members of Schickler’s New York, we begin to realize that all is not good and right. Patrick Rigg reminds me of my image of the Wall Street banker and broker who chomps on tennis racket handle sized cigars and drinks Cutty Sark by the gallon, eats 24 raw clams for breakfast, and makes $5 million annually, take home. He also has a six-pack between his chin and belly button, dressing in the finest, of course. He’s the guy you’ll never be. In the large expanse of things, he’s mean, and very determined, focused, methodical about selecting his delicacies, which happen to be meek women who adore being treated like compost. There is a part of this man that is so nasty and predatory that it will frighten even the most seasoned reader. Then of course, we have the woman, or the girl. Everyone is interested in Rally McWilliams, including Patrick and James at the same time, appealing to both sides of her wants and needs, and in many ways this little threesome should keep Three’s Company aficionado’s busy for quite some time. As soon as we meet these people, we are thrown into their world, and it’s not a world that needs to be spoiled. This book is like a sweater you wore the night before to the beach to sit by the bonfire. You slip it on, then smell yourself at breakfast the next morning, and think longingly of last night. KISSING is a piece of work that makes all of your senses sit up and take notice. Everyone here has a weapon. Patrick carries a gun, Rally her beauty and James his charm and shy good nature. We travel to the depths of the Manhattan night world, and to the bowels of one man’s self-loathing, a hatred not only for himself, but also for every woman who steps into his bedroom.
Along the way, characters talk to their elevators, speaking only to this one inanimate object. We are there with them. We eat only at a restaurant named Flat Michaels, and tremble along the way at the sheer ice-cold unforgiving brutality of this cement city. There is an otherworldly quality to this book, and that is due to the skill of Mr. Schickler. Of course, he commits the cardinal sin in this, the “writing game”. That is, short stories are supposed to stand on there own, taken one at a time, and thought of that way. Here, they are blended together in a way that can’t be counted on, or better yet, that reminds you of something you’ve read before. It’s not a novel either; Kissing in Manhattan is the work of a writer who has full grasp of the storytelling art, telling his story in short bursts, not a novel, but in a book that can be devoured course after course.
So you always knew that Oswald acted in concert with a whole gang of shooters. Me too. And so does James Ellroy. He’s been on this kick for many years, and if you’re into this time period and characters like Castro, Hoover, JFK, RFK, and Howard Hughes, then you’re going to really, really, really like what Ellroy has done. Drop whatever you’re doing, reading, or staring at, and run to the store and buy a copy of AMERICAN TABLOID. Now. Having read that (and your ass should be sore by this point, having been kicked so hard by this epic portrait of what America was really like in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s), you’re ready to proceed into the second installment of what is to be a trilogy of books about THE most important event of the last fifty years, the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Are you confused as to where the truth lies? Because the truth does exist, no matter how much it’s been clouded. Take equal parts Oliver Stone, James Ellroy, and the fairy tale they force-feed you in ninth grade history class, mix them, and throw it at the wall, and whatever sticks should help you understand the complexities that surround the killing of JFK. TABLOID took us right up to the last seconds before the famous “turkey shoot” in Dallas.
THE COLD SIX THOUSAND picks up there and catapults us into the next generation of marginal politicos. Cuba and Castro figure in only peripherally, and Hoover is portrayed as such a sex starved weirdo that you’ll wonder what kind of research the author actually did. Within those same margins reside RFK and his gang of do-gooders. But the character who comes closet to a full scale epiphany, starting as a wide eyed but slightly jaded young Vegas police officer, is Wayne Tedrow Jr. He’s the son of one of the most successful “get even” guys around. RFK wants to avenge his brother’s death, Wayne Tedrow Jr. and senior want to get racial justice by any means necessary, Howard Hughes wants to buy Vegas, and James Ellroy wants only the most devoted readers to pick this book up. TABLOID changed me completely. After reading it, no longer could I trust what “history taught us,” especially with the accepted facts mixed up with Ellroy’s facts and what really might have happened. This book is a tough read with its staccato dialogue, its hipsterisms, and whip smart vernacular served up faster than Chuck Yeager on a bad day. Ellroy turns his eye on the years that reared him. The times were a-changing, and events were set in motion that changed all the rules. Ellroy is master of the noir. LA CONFIDENTIAL proved that, a book that’s still better than the very good film based on it. He shows us America with all its dingle berries and canker sores. Fiction is more believable than fact when delivered by “the dog of crime”.
Remember the first rule of Fight Club? Read the book. Chuck Palahniuk changed the rules with that masterpeice. He managed to embody the most exciting energy and creative spirit to come along to the novel format in a long, long time. Tyler Durden has become at the hands of David Fincher one of the most sought after cinematic heroes, ever. It took me weeks to understand that Tyler and the unnamed narrator were actually the same guy. He wrote that book in a place that he’ll have trouble getting back to. It’s that good. Chuck limped along with a second novel, SURVIVOR, which got voted out of the bookstores faster than Deb got tossed from Australia. A funny read, but a sagging follow up to FIGHT CLUB. We’ve been waiting for a book that would take us to even loftier heights than his debut, and CHOKE is supposed to be it, though it delivers only half of the time. Victor Mancini, our half of a hero, wants to get past his horrific childhood. He devises a plan to make it in the world without ever having to do any thing. Prey on the weaknesses of the souls of other people. Pretend to be choking in a restaurant and the person, who saves you, will feel a responsibility for you forever. They send you money and write you checks, which leaves him nothing but time to attack his other past time, attending “Sex Education for Addicts.”
Victor manages to go “around the world” in trying to understand why he is who he’s become. He also sheds new light on those handprints on the mirrors in the bathrooms on commercial airliners in a chapter that was excerpted in PLAYBOY recently. Chuck manages to get to the root of Victor’s fears about his mother, who may or may not be dead, who may have been a whore, and who has painted around her son an outline that he spends the rest of his life trying to step out of. His best friend is a collector of rocks, and they work in a Colonial Village that really was better described by George Saunders in his recent book of short stories, PASTORLIA. Sex is the national “unspoken” past time of America, along with profanity on primetime television. Religious figures the world over have made it a sin to think about sex, and in turn have made the entire populace obsessed with it. Don’t do it, or you’ll get sick. Don’t jerk off or you’ll go blind. Don’t show Ally McBeal getting it from Robert Downey in the bathroom stall, not because it’s bad, because it’s what everyone’s thinking anyway. Chuck Palahniuk delivered the goods once. It's sort of like being a hero, once you do it, you’ve got to do it over and over, or people will think less of you. If you don’t take that chance, reach out, take the risk, you’re just like everyone else. Isn’t that what we all want anyway?
