Real Quick

by Weston Cutter

I’m blogging for the next while at the Kenyon Review Blog, and I’ve had a couple things over there recently, hence Corduroy being a bit quieter than it should otherwise be. Like everyone, as ever: I keep hoping more time just magically presents itself.

Here’s a review I’ve been waiting for for awhile–my book’s been reviewed in the Star Tribune. A note, too: authors actually don’t mind reviews that point out the bad crap in the book, especially when it’s bad copy editing. I’ve been waiting for a review to point out the mistakes for awhile–nice to just see it out there.

Also, just because it’s fascinating (I think): Blake Butler posted, on HTMLGiant, the list of everywhere he submitted to in 2006-08. For unclear reasons I’m hugely hit by seeing it.

Whoaaaaaa, man!

by Jeremy Griffin

I’ve been trying to read more books by women authors lately. It’s not that I’ve ever intentionally gone out of my way to avoid them, but when I look at all the books in my apartment, I’m a little disturbed by how overwhelmingly male the authors are. Lucky for me there’s a shitload of new books out by some amazing women authors. Here are some of the latest I’ve checked out:

In Zanesville by Jo Anne Beard

I’ll shoot straight with you: I wanted to like this more than I did. It’s not that the prose is bad; it’s actually quite good–pointed, concise, and well within keeping of the idea of a fourteen-year-old narrator. And it wasn’t that the characters were bad, either; again, quite the opposite: they were painfully real, as was the friendship between our narrator–who goes unnamed, for some reason–and her best friend Felicia (Flea). What troubled me was that this relationship was pretty much the entire story. And while I have no doubt that it’s possible to pull this off, there wasn’t much to unify the girls’ many misadventures. Rather, Beard s jumps from scene to scene without any larger objective in mind, making it difficult for the reader to settle into the story.

We begin the story with a babysitting gig gone terribly wrong, and then immediately abandon that in favor of something else entirely, and then something else, on and on with very little narrative thread to keep us anchored. As for conflict, it’s there, but it doesn’t really rear its head until halfway through the book (though when it does, it’s good reading).

Still, there are some very colorful characters here and some very compelling scenes, particularly when the element of boys is introduced into the girls’ insular little world. And at the end of the day, that’s sort of all we really want from a story. Most of us, at least. Still, if only Beard could have gone a step further in demonstrating to us how we as readers fit into that little world.

The Adults by Allison Espach

For most men, our simultaneous bafflement of and amazement with women starts around adolescence (I guess this would be the case for most women too, though I find it best not to speak on behalf of the fairer sex because that usually gets me into trouble): all of sudden these people you’ve been around your entire life take on a peculiar air of mystery, and then of course as we all know, we spend pretty much all of high school trying desperately just to be simultaneously noticed and overlooked.

The fact is, men never really outgrow this sense of high school confusion. We like to think we do, and some of us do a good job of pretending like we have (e.g. political pundits, the cast of Jersey Shore), but we’re always lugging around some inkling of self-consciousness from that period in our lives, some vestigal sense of wonder/fear over women.

And so, strange as it may sound, maybe this is why I’m drawn to books with teenage female protagonists, because I’ve never really gotten over my belief that they are the most bizarre creatures on earth. They are about the exact opposite of me–and guys like me–in almost every way. Which makes them interesting in a literary sense. Allison Espach seems to understand this. Or at least Emily Vidal, the narrator in The Adults, does. Like our unnamed main character in In Zanesville, Emily is mired in that viscious state of teenage awkwardness; she is both fascinated and repulsed by her very existence. And like our Zanesville narrator, Emily is desperately seeking out people to love her–her catty girlfriends, her depressive mother and filandering father, and most notably her freshman English teacher Mr. Basketball, with whom she carries on a tumultuous relationship for years to come.

But The Adults differs in the degree of introspection that our characters are permitted. Emily looks at even the most inocuous events in her life as potentially revelatory, a trait that is manifest largely in the keen musicality of the prose.

Admittedly, the story does come close to being longwinded; this has a lot to do with the years’ long back-and-forth between Emily and Mr. Basketball which, by the time she has entered grad school, begins to lose its risque’ charm. Still, even with this, what you’ve got here is one of the most eloquent coming-of-age tales to be released over the past few years. Espach demonstrates, with striking accuracy, that while our problems may change as we get older, the feelings they engender in us never really do. At least, not in the way you would hope when you’re fifteen.

Quick, Go Here

by Weston Cutter

The new Sixth Finch is up and stuns over and over (and sure, I’ve got some stuff in it, but I’m much more interested in/impressed by the other work therein–M Lippman, E Skoog, someone named Leora Fridman I hadn’t known before but now do and please, please: don’t take as long to get to know her as I have). Go read.

Teenagers from Mars! A Review of Peter Bognanni’s “The House of Tomorrow.”

by Jeremy Griffin

I’ve been on this kick lately about books with teenage protagonists. I’m not sure why. Maybe I’m just getting old and I’m trying to salvage some shred of my adolescence. Maybe I’m just a few steps away from getting my ear pierced and buying a Corvette.

Or maybe it’s because it dawned on me recently that the best books I’ve ever read have featured teenage protagonists and I’ve been trying to recapture the magic of those reads. I mean, look: say what you want, but Holden Caulfield is one of the best damn narrators in the history of the written language.

This was what led me to Peter Bognanni’s The House of Tomorrow; it appealled to the pissy sixteen-year-old in me. That’s probably also because it is about pissy sixteen-year-olds.

At first, the premise sounds like the stuff of hokey Disney movies: our 16-year-old protagonist Sebastian Pendergast is cast out of the lonely geodesic dome in which he was raised in near-seclusion by his eccentric grandmother and is taken in by the comically dysfunctional Whitcombs–Janice, Meredith, and Jared. Jared, also 16, is the recent recipient of a heart transplant and is determined to find out just how much his weakened body can handle. He and Sebastian develop a peculiar friendship and end up forming a punk band in hopes of playing at the family’s church’s talent show.

To be sure, this is fairly well-tread territory. Sebastian’s relationship with Jared is reminiscient of Chief Broom’s relationship with Randall McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: both of the latter are guileless, shy, quiet, drawn to the opposing characters for their recklessness, their never-ending quest(s) to buck the system. In Jared’s case, the system is his mother Janice, who smothers him with her concern for his health, and his sister Meredith and her not-so-secret nightlife.

And yet, well-tread or no, the story still feels fresh and honest. Bognanni sketches his characters almost exclusively through action and dialogue. The most successful of them is Jared, who is portrayed in large part through his interactions with Sebastian:

“Jared,” I said. “Why do you have to talk to me like this?”

“I think we should start a band,” he said.

“What?”

As usual, he had slipped the most important words into a tiny space.

“Okay,” he said, “okay. I know I’m taking a giant fucking risk here. I’m going to have to teach you everything, and you’re obviously going to do it all wrong. But I’m not looking for a Sid Vicious, you know. I just need somebody to do what I say. Not somebody with a real personality. I get to have the ideas. Don’t argue.”

I tried to wade through his babble, but it was that first question that lingered.

“I don’t know how to be in a band,” I said.

“You don’t know anything. You probably can’t pee by yourself. But I’m going to mold you. That’s the whole idea. I’m the front man. You’ll play bass.”

Tying all of the narrative threads together is Jared’s love of and Sebastian’s discovery of the Misfits. A lot of authors have difficulty invoking real-life elements like bands or movies into their work without descending into some masturbatory celebration of their own hipness (I know this because I do it). But what makes it work in the case of this book is the characters’ complete musical naivety. Jared isn’t so much an afficionado of the genre as he is an angsty teen who’s gotten his hands on a couple noteworthy albums and, as a consequence, has determined that it is his destiny to front a punk band. Nevermind the fact that neither boy knows how to play an instrument (Bognanni’s depictions of their songwriting sessions are superb in this regard), or that they don’t have a drummer, or that neither of them has ever performed in his life. All Jared wants is to stand on a stage with his guitar and howl into a microphone and be loved for it. And if you’ve ever been a sixteen-year-old dude from a white suburb, chances are you’ve had this exact dream.

The House of Tomorrow is compelling because those elements that, theoretically at least, should be the most enticing–Sebastian’s geodesic dome house, his grandmother’s fixation with a long-dead scientist/philosopher–actually take a backseat to the characters. And to me, this has always been the sign of a good story. We’re oddly fascinated by the Whitcombs, by what lies beneath their wholesome, god-fearing veneer, and by how it contributes to Sebastian’s transformation from an introverted egghead to a booze-swilling punk rocker.