Giving Away Chapbooks, Skating + Reading DC

by Weston Cutter

Yes: still blogging at Kenyon Review—another month—and recent stuff’s here and here (that second post is one I’m actually finally thrilled about–it’s about the massive problems with how narrative is used in contemporary writing on the food industry) to go check out. Also: recent work just went live at Scythe, which is a place I didn’t know enough about before but hot damn do they do great stuff.

Along that line: I was finalisted yet again in a chapbook contest. This is, of course, cool, and I’m excited, and sure would’ve loved to have been the picked winner. Still: great. Burnside’s amazing. I did get to thinking, though, that it seems silly that I’ve got all these poems and books and etc., and they’re all sitting on my own hard drive, doing no one any good. So: you can now download a pdf of a chapbook of mine right here. It’s called Scarcity Models vs the Heart’s Brick Factory. I’m literally just putting it here because it’s not in any contests right now and I’m tired of having stuff almost but not quite out for whatever. To the right you’ll see the first image result if you enter the chap’s title on Google. Download it if you’d like. Pass it around. Enjoy. Now, some reviews.

 

On a Day With No Waves by Raphael Zarka

Because I’ve got a good + strident friend who’s deeply and life-long into skateboarding, I’ve ended up with skateboarding in the margins of my life for a long while now. I’m drawn by/to skateboarding in the same way I was by/to the city bikers and messengers on fixies from maybe 8 years ago: there’s a relationship between skater/biker and city that I admire and wish I had. Nobody driving can possibly have a relationship to movement or streets or the basic geography of urbanity that a skateboarder can. Which is of course obvious, but you still need to read Raphael Zarka’s incredible On a Day With No Waves. Why?

First, most boringly and obviously: the subtitle, A Chronicle of Skateboarding 1779-2009 is not at all a typo or intending to be clever or cute: Zarka brings a smattering of historical examples into play to allow the development of the skateboard—starting for real in the 50′s in the States—to feel grounded historically, but also to try to tease out the Zarka’s broader thesis. Which is, ultimately, abstract and hugely cool: that skateboarding is what it is not just because it’s pleasurable or whatever but because the machine facilitates and allows that unique relationship between human and city that’s unavailable elsewhere (unless you’re a die-hard city biker and believe that, which I think is arguable). This all sounds hoity-toity and French and metaphysical, and it sort of is, but I’m telling you, the book is riveting: Zarka’s focus stays tightly on skateboarding as an experience which allows flex and flow within it—a static thing made of motion. Skateboarding, in Zarka’s able work, is a unique opportunity for all of us to play with and in and against the gray heavy-dutiness of a city. It’s phenomenally cool reading: I can think of no recent book which’ll so light so many disparate parts of your brain.

The Cut by George Pelecanos

I interviewed Pelecanos a bit back for the Kenyon Review blog, which I feel makes this pretty obvious and foregone: hell yes I like his books (and his TV writing). His new one, The Cut, qualifies for consideration as his best yet: Spero Lucas, the book’s hero, is fascinating and great in more complex and whole ways than even the heroes in Long Way Home, his last one. You want more than a great, conflicted, out-for-redemption character? Fine: the plot here’s tight enough to induce sensations of g-force just by reading (my spouse and I each read it on a beach in a day, hardly getting up from our chairs). There’s this whole other thing, too, that makes Pelecanos so great: dude’s local. He writes Washington, DC. I asked him about it in the interview, and you can go read his answer, but you sort of can’t grasp how cool it is to read mystery/thriller-type stuff set in a real contemporary place until you come across it. I’ll here note that Hammett and the old legendary greats of pulp stuff did the same: Pelecanos is upholding a great tradition (along with, of course, Price and Lehane and the handful of other absolute genuises).

The Tao of Roots Rock

by Jeremy Griffin

I Recall Standing as Though Nothing Could Fall

by Matthew Ryan

Usually when I write a music review, I like to spend a week or so ahead of time listening to the album while I go about my daily routines–driving to work, washing dishes, etc. I’ve that found leaving it on in the background like this is the easiest way for me to absorb the content before penning the actual review.

However, this proved extremely difficult with Matthew Ryan’s I Recall Standing As Though Nothing Could Fall. Not because the album is bad–far from it. Like most of Ryan’s previous albums, I Recall Standing isn’t the kind of thing you can leave on in the background and forget about. It commands your attention with an unmistakable sense of purpose.

I Recall Standing, Ryan’s thirteenth album, finds the songwriter continuing to explore ways to merge his Nashville alt country sound with new wave electronica. The album is full of crystaline piano melodies, brooding fuzzed-out guitars, and twinkling synth beats, all of it brought together by Ryan’s distinctive voice, which teeters between a ghostly whisper and an all-out Tom Waits’ growl. There are moments of elegant fragility, like the violin-laden ”Song for a Friend,” and there are moments of cool, gritty bravado, like “All Hail the Kings of Trash.” In between, you’ve got a stellar collection of tunes from an artist that No Depression magazine once hailed as “the best singer-songwriter rock kinda thing to come around since Freedy Johnston’s Can You Fly?”

To call Ryan an activist songwriter might be a stretch, though the anti-war sentiment on I Recall Standing is as forceful as it has been on any of his albums. The most obvious instance of this is in “I Don’t Want a Third World War”:

Our darkness is catching up with us

We’re turning to cannibals

Darkness is catching up with us

We’re acting like animals

Look a child in the eye and say

What were you hoping for?

You shouldn’t expect too much

Look a child in the eye and say

What are you crying for? 

You should never expect too much from us

This is as close as one of Ryan’s songs comes to Not Working, mostly because of how strikingly direct it is; those familiar with his other albums know that the thrust of his songwriting talent lies in the poeticism of his lyrics, the way in which the seemingly disparate images in his lyrics speak to the complexity of human suffering. Of course, those folks probably also know that this isn’t saying much: in the big scheme of things, even Ryan’s near misses ring truer and more heartfelt than the top selections from some of his Nashville contemporaries’ catalogues.

I once asked Ryan in an interview to describe his songwriting process. He responded by explaining that there really wasn’t one; the songs crafted themselves. “It can get dangerously mystical talking about songwriting,” he said, ”but for me it’s a form of meditation.” Dangerously mystical. That seems like an oddly apt way to describe I Recall Standing, the way it grips your focus all the way through. A kind of hypnosis. You want a challenge? Put the album on and try not to listen. Just try.

Harbach’s Masterful Fielding

by Weston Cutter

            Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding has as of today been released for just shy of two weeks but this book’s been a large spot on the radar for awhile, as anyone who tried to finagle an ARC after the initial fifteen hundred ARCs were distributed. One’s got to assume few debuts get an initial ARC run in four digits. Plus of course there was the news of the book’s sale itself, the high six figures Little, Brown shelled out (all of this stuff is well covered in Keith Gessen’s article in the latest Vanity Fair, which to this reader seems like the absolute easiest article to ever have been written in the history of ever: I like Gessen quite a bit, and I’m as into VF as the next guy, but seriously? You write a huge article [which'll be turned into an e-book for $1.99] on your friend, the co-editor of the magazine you work? For what it’s worth: it’s moves like those that get folks up in arms about MFAs and networking vs. artistic merit—I’m glad Gessen wrote the article, and I’m happy Harbach’s getting the attention, but it’s just…the whole thing’s about as nepotistic as it comes). anyway: all the background info you need about Harbach’s book’s out there: The Art of Fielding has been the publishing of the story of the year so far.

Regardless of whether the story of the book’s birth and existence Matter or Last in any significant way is up to others to debate. What’s for sure is that The Art of Fielding is one of the most satisfying, fantastic long novels to have been released in a long, long while. Harbach’s clearly trying to take his place at the table alongside Franzen and the rest (worth asking: who exactly is the rest? I can’t think of any who are working that Dickensian seam quite like Franzen: Eugenides, maybe, and Powers to a degree, but Wallace isn’t quite part of that group, I’d argue, and ditto some of the other guys that used to be clumped in there [Moody, Antrim]). If you’re looking for a book that will suck a solid weekend of yr life and offer all the essential and mesmerizing joys of fiction, this is your book.

Yes, to get the obvious and perhaps necessary stuff out of the way: Harbach’s an n+1 guy, which, if you’re into inside baseball, puts him in the post-Eggers, more serious milleu (someone should make flow-charts of how Wallace led to Eggers/McSwys let to n+1). Harbach’s also the guy who wrote the awesome old article about how Franzen’s The Corrections was the follow-up to Infinite Jest, an article which is necessary reading according to this reviewier. Also, through homage or whatever, Harbach’s made a cast of characters which shares similarities with lots of Wallace—anyone who comes to Fielding with Jest in mind will notice all sorts of overlap (big and little things: chewing tobacco, surnames built around variations of the word light in various languages, a parallel between lead characters [Hal in Jest, Henry in Fielding]). Anyway, enough of the other shit: that’s what a keen, score-keeping reader may wish to have acknowledged before entering the book.

But oh lord, what a book. Seriously, just such a book. I unfortunately recently read the latest Eugenides (who has his own Wallace-based issues), which I was expecting to be a big, satisfying novel with an immersive narrative world and etc (how could I not expect that, given Eugenides’s past works?). I was massively let down by Eugenides, as I imagine most people will be, but I left the book just bereft, hurt that the book absolutely did not deliver on that rarest magic, the believable and sustained fictional world (there’s really just a ton wrong with the new Eugenides).

So it was with that hellhound of disappointment on my ass that I dug into Harbach’s door-stop last Friday, and I spent the day gladly on my back, getting up at 7pm feeling that wonderful, strange way one does on finishing a great book: thrilled that I’d been in the world, disappointed that I was now finished with the world. The story centers around Henry Skrimshander, a college short stop playing for Westish College, a fictional school on the coasts of Lake Michigan. Henry’s an almost magically gifted short stop, a mistake-less monster on defense, and, at the book’s start, we trace him moving quickly from high school through the first two years of college as he plays and works out, bulking up and becoming a hitter as well and, of course, playing the whole time without committing an error.

Henry’s Fielding‘s bright sun, and it’s strange: the characters which orbit him are, arguably, more fascinating and riveting than he is. There’s Guert Affenlight (see what I mean about surnames and light?), Westish’s president, a Melville scholar who gave up a faculty position at Harvard to return to Westish; there’s Pella, Guert’s drop-out, young-married daughter, who arrives at Westish and tries to start a new life (or pick up where her old one went off the rails); there’s Schwartzy—Mike Schwartz—who is absolutely the heart and soul of this book, a year Henry’s senior, the team catcher, habitual tobacco chewer…Schwartz is the reason, I’m guessing, most folks’ll love this book; there is, finally, Owen Dunne, Henry’s roommate, and Owen happens to be gay and who becomes involved in the relationship for which most readers’ll feel most powerfully. There are other love relationships, one of which is fantastic, one of which will give you a stomach ache. There is, of course, Henry’s fall from perfection: 164 pages into a 517 page book, Henry’s errorless streak ends.

Henry’s streak ending actually provides perfect insight into how badass Harbach is, for two reasons. First, Harbach lets the story just go: real early on in the book two full years of college pass in a matter of pages. This was, to this reader, jarring on coming upon them: it’s too early in the book to fully understand the author’s sense of pacing, sure, but two years in a matter of pages seems much. Turns out, however, that Harbach’s doing exactly the right thing. Here’s a sideways route to Harbach’s badassery: the latest Colson Whitehead and Jeffrey Eugenides both move like stuck muck, so slow you’ll find yrself flipping pages just because otherwise you’ll pass the F out, and both make for terrible reading because of such speed—whole pages devoted to microdetails one finishes reading about only to be pissed, borderline hurt that one’s been made to focus on something that feels trivial. Harbach’s speed through such moments builds massive trust rapidly: not once, after that first two-years-in-a-blink blip, did I question his moves.

The second big reason to love Harbach and Fielding: the plot’s just a fantastic zigging thing. You already know the big plot pivot point—that Henry eventually earns an error, and that that imperfection dogs him. But, again: that happens 164 pages in. You’ll spend the rest of the book—350+ massively satisfying pages—wondering how things’ll shake out, only very occasionally being able to see clearly the upcoming moves (and those moves you can see coming are fairly well telegraphed, meaning you’ll actually get satisfaction from being able to see it coming and then seeing it actually transpire as imagined).

There’s plenty else to love about this book—the writing’s clean and open, feels in the best ways like the midwestern school and people the book’s set in and with and around: the writing feels true, mostly without guile, mostly attempting to do both good and well. I can’t think of a book that’s gonna come close to this in terms of satisfaction, story, character, plot…it’s gonna be awhile. You’ll see.

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by Weston Cutter

1) I’m still writing for the Kenyon Review blog (and have poems in their upcoming fall issue), so the bulk of my online work’s been directed that-a-way. Recent things: an interview with George Pelecanos and a long conversation with the fantastic Lily Brown about Wallace Stevens, an awesome interview with Alex Lemon which focuses much of its time and energy on baseball, a review of the stellar Just My Type by Simon Garfield. There was also a long, 2-part conversation with John Gallaher awhile back—can’t remember if I noted it here or not, but there it is. Keep tracking the site—I’m there through October and will have, among other things, a review of one of the best infographic books in who knows how long, The Real State of America Atlas, plus hopefully a long interview with Richard Buckner about books and music.

2) New work: I’ve got something in the latest issue of Muzzle magazine, though the issue’s chock full of far better shit than the absolute best I could possibly write. Also had a thing in the latest issue of MAYDAY, which is pretty okay too.

3) There’ve been a ton of books this summer that I haven’t taken the time to review fully (plus music!) and now it’s coming autumn again so I feel terrible and compelled to get bunches done. Expect short reviews for the next while, at least from me: there’s a ton to wade through. A couple books demand long-form reviews—chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding is crazy good—but otherwise I want to just get things covered. Apologies to the books/authors for not being more thorough—and let’s start now:

Crimes in Southern Indiana by Frank Bill. Did you hear about this book? You probably should have—the similarities to Donald Ray Pollock are striking (rust belt state author with blue collar life by himself cracks his own code and writes incredibly, plus for each man the writing’s full of violence and brutishness), but that’s not reason to hear about it—you should’ve heard about it because the book’s fucking breathless, will knock you on your ass. I read the opening story, “Hill Clan Cross,” while I ate lunch one day and had to stop reading—it wasn’t ruining the meal, but I didn’t want to divide my attention between sandwich and book. You want sentences that just haul ass? “Bonfire bent his knees to standing. Turned to Willie, whose taffy-pink palm reached for Bonfire’s hand that held the .38, pressed his forehead into the heated barrel. His clouded eyes dug through Bonfire.” I don’t know what to call it—it’s not straight noir nor pulp nor gothic, this writing and these stories, it’s just good, and thick, and impossibly dark and moral and worth reading.

The Gin Closet by Leslie Jamison. Jesus, just read this. I don’t know what to say—lots of the blurby stuff in the book features commentary on how the book’s brutal and gorgeous, and I’d agree fully. I’d also say it’s sadder by miles—real sad, in true ways—than anything I’ve read in awhile. I didn’t see this one coming, and maybe you missed it too, but it’s been out in paperback for awhile: get on this.

Evil!

by Jeremy Griffin

The Science of Evil by Simon Baron-Cohen

Some folks may recognize Simon Baron-Cohen (uncle of Sasha Baron-Cohen, better known as Borat) from his research into autism. Speaking very broadly, Baron-Cohen believes that the causes of autism are rooted in gender differences, namely  the disparity between the degrees of empathy that either gender is capable of experiencing. Empthy is the key word here, because while the title of this book might suggest something of a more philosophical nature–think Sam Harris’ The Moral Landscape–what you really have is a very cut-and-dry investigation into what empathy actually is, its neurological underpinnings, and what could happen when those underpinnings fail.

Interestingly, the author’s theories regarding psychopathy–largely the focus here–stem from his research into autism. Baron-Cohen maintains that folks at the severe end of the autism spectrum and folks who fit the clinical definition of “psychopaths” are often joined by a lack of empathy. That is, they are unable to grasp the concept of others’ feelings and wants. In some cases, this is “balanced out” by a greater-than-average propensity for systematization, as well as an ability to spot patterns that most folks overlook–what Baron-Cohen calls Zero Positive empathy, otherwise known as the autism spectrum–while other times this lack of empathy leads to a view of other people as “things” whose sole existence is to facilitate the wants and needs of the individual–what Baron-Cohen calls Zero Negative empathy, and which he says is a major cause of severe cruelty.

This is fascintating stuff for the armchair psychologist in most of us, though the writing itself could use some work. Not that most of us expect general-audience nonfiction to be necessarily Shakespearian, but we do usually expect some degree of style and fluidity that, in this case, just isn’t here. And this in itself might not be a problem, were it not for the fact that it contributes to an oversimplification of many important concepts–for example, the very concept of “evil.”  Baron-Cohen addresses it at the beginning of the book and makes it clear that he believes the typical religious conception to be inadequate, but to attribute such a complex concept to little more than “a lack of empathy,” as he does, doesn’t seem much better. And yes, I realize that he’s not writing some treatise on moral philosophy but rather a succint overview of a very complex psycho-biological matter. But it does seem that even this kind of work demands a more thorough investigation into what “evil” actually means, perhaps because of how easily a statement like this opens itself to so many fickle philosophical objections (Aren’t people objects? Couldn’t we say that we do, in fact, treat everyone like an object in some form? How are humans supposed to be treated?). Another part of it just that this seems to let “evil” off the hook a bit too easily; Baron-Cohen illustrates his conception of evil by referencing the Nazis, but there’s something just a bit heartless and obtuse about implying that all the Nazis really did was treat people like objects.

Still, this doesn’t diminish the book’s overall impact. At the end of the day, you still have a thoroughly scientific perspective on an issue that most folks are content to chalk up to a Michael Bayish notion of “good vs. evil.” To look at concepts like cruelty with a scientific eye requires us to set aside some of our most long-standing beliefs. This is no easy feat, but at the very least, Simon Baron-Cohen provides us with a good entry point.