Two Car Books

by Weston Cutter

What follow is a pair of reviews I should’ve done long, long ago, but I’m a terrible person, so there’s that to daily contend with. Elsewhere: a poem of mine in the latest issue of Witness, and plenty of other stuff over at the Kenyon Review Blog (which is where lots of what’d otherwise be here at Corduroy are—for instance, reviews of the absolutely incredible HHhH by Laurent Binet, a review of the latest Jorie Graham [short version: it's very very good], and reviews of  Kevin Young’s incredible Gray Album, the recent/posthumous John Leonard, and the collected Gilbert [which I should've made a bigger deal about and mentioned here as well, because holy shit, right? Gilbert's collected? That's like magic; you should buy the thing automatically, even if you hate Gilbert (though if you do, wtf?), just because you can finally have your own copy of the first two books), and also a review over at Rain Taxi as well.

 

American Icon by Bruce G Hoffman

Until recently I'd owned only one car in my entire life, the vehicle I've been driving for the past 12 years now, which vehicle is a '91 Ford Ranger, and which vehicle will soon die and I'll be just bereft, inconsolable (215k miles, fyi). Growing up, my family seemed more GM people, or at least my mother was, and so getting the keys from my grandpa to the truck was strange—the keys were different than any I'd handled. This stuff isn't necessarily crucial, other than to say: I became, because of my grandpa, a very very big Ford supporter, and it was fucking heartbreaking to watch them suck so terribly for so long, and it's been pretty thrilling to watch them turn around (you may have read, for instance, that this past week they got the blue oval back; yes, they actually had to leverage their own icon to continue).

            American Icon is the story of Ford's turnaround, which means it's also the story of Alan Mulally, a former Boeing exec who stepped to Ford's helm after Ford'd spent years with shit leadership (and not just shit leadership, but actively bad leadership, leadership which seemed to guarantee the company's fracturing and dismality...but of course in the late 90's and early 2000's, when the American Dream had to arrive with an SUV for every family, Ford was the biggest benefactor of our automotive idiocy, though despite that, they made mostly terrible cars [if you're really interested in this stuff, check the phenomenal CNBC documentary on Ford as well]). It’s a brisk read, written incredibly well by Bryce Hoffman, a writer who’s been covering the Ford Motor Company since ’05 for the Detroit News, and you will, if you’re like me, find that your reasons for liking Ford are totally validated. Yes: it’s sucky that their best stuff still doesn’t quite match the best stuff from other companies (but then again, it’s batshit that Mazda’s a losing-money enterprise when they’ve got arguably the best cars on the road, so), but I’m at least excited to be able to think about buying a Ford again. The book’s a great, great read.

Hack by Dmitry Samarov

I found this book very strange. On the one hand, it was instantly, pleasantly readable, and quick—one finishes it in maybe two hours. On the other hand, the book was, is, little more than Samarov’s gathered thoughts on being a cabbie in Chicago. That’s not a bad thing, obviously, but Samarov is one bleak and dour man—no one in this book is purely good. The kind way to say what Samarov is doing is: he’s casting a wry eye on the human comedy and condition. The mean way: he’s a prick who so doubts humanity that he can’t believe anyone would every ask him about himself out of authentic regard; everyone who gets in his cab, everyone everywhere, has a 100% selfish agenda, and that’s that. Maybe not: maybe Samarov’s a nice enough guy and he’s chosen to slice off this caustic view of Chicago because it’s what people like seeing in the Chicago Reader, where some of this stuff appeared before (also at Hack, his website, at which you’re invited to go take a look and revel in the everything’s-shit tone), but regardless: this is a bleak little book. Along with the text, the book features art from Samarov as well (that’s his work on the cover, too).

Anyway: it’s a book, and I’m mentioning it here because it’s about Chicago, which is the city where love comes from, and it’s certainly interesting to know about what transpires in cab garages, but this book is, but the reader has to listen to a hell of a lot of acid to get any notes of grace. And as an ending and preempt: I’m not advocating some Pollyana-ish anything, and everyone’s welcome to be as shitty and bitter as they choose, but when Samarov speaks of a woman getting in his cab with excitement—she got a part as a supernumerary in the opera and is thrilled—he pathetically finishes the scene as follows: “The sun is setting and my goals are more modest than hers. The cabdriver’s role is to play a bit part in others’ lives and be compensated accordingly.” (p.43) Ignoring entirely the fact that such an abstract statement could fucking apply to anyone in any public service job [teacher, waiter, bartender, banker, etc.], one wants, on reading the line, to just smack Samarov: grow up. Is he pissed that she didn’t ask him about his life? If so, he’s lying to either himself or the reader: elsewhere in the book he’s frustrated with people asking him questions about his life, totally confident they’re not really interested in him. So what’s the dour little piss sentence for? Again: I’m not looking for endless sunshine, but all Samarov seems capable of seeing or reporting on is bleakness, the worst of everything. Knock yourself out if that’s your bag.

Anthologies for Crying and Laughing

by Weston Cutter

The Art of Losing, edited by Kevin Young

Let me first say this: I’d read anything by Kevin Young, edited or written. I had my copy of Jelly Roll the second it hit, and, though it was my first Kevin Young book, I (of course) traced backward from there, discovering he’d covered Basquiat (in To Repel Ghosts, which he a decade later remixed from the “double album” of the book he’d originally presented), and then watched and read, rapt, as he burned whole layers of bright, as he, like some one-man magician, kept building tendons, kept spinning things close. Make no mistake: among whatever other skills KYoung’s got (he’s got tons, not least the best ear and the ability to make some of the most musical lines in contemporary American poetry), his greatest talent might be his ability to join disparate things, to infuse poetry into, say, a film noir structure, or into a biographical look at Basquiat, or the blues, or whatever. Think I’m kidding? His For the Confederate Dead‘s working on so many levels (rebuttal/antithesis to R. Lowell’s For the Union Dead, reclamation of conflicted/troubling past) it’s a treasure before you even find your way into the poem.

Of course, while making his own poetry, he’s also editing like a madman, and the latest book he’s had a hand in is The Art of Losing, subtitled Poems of Grief and Healing. The book, just as an object, is gorgeous (well done as usual, Bloomsbury), but the poems within are staggering for all sorts of reasons, though here’s the biggest, for me. Say you’re interested in poetry, and someone asks what poetry is finally for (the someone can be yourself). What’s the answer? What’s poetry do or for? I’ve trotted answers out to students—to say the unsayable, to put a structure around an otherwise structure-less feeling/thought/idea—but of course the simplest answer, and the one Young’s maximizing in this book, is best: poetry makes you feel better.

I haven’t felt grief or needed much healing in the past year, but the real magic of the poetry contained in this book is that it will still make you feel better, make you feel fuller, larger. It’s a magic book. I feel like I’ve seen a few poetry anthologies recently that’d endeavored to make people feel better (like Poetry for Down Times or whatever—it was a Keillor thing, I think), but nothing will come close to this. Even if you’re for some reason anti-anthology, The Art of Losing is worth having shelved somewhere nearbye (if only for the E.Bishop poem whose lines supply the book’s title, though if you don’t already have that poem somewhere in your life you need way, way more than just this book).

You’re a Horrible Person, but I Like You: The Believer Book of Advice

Hm. I don’t quite know how to even approach reviewing this book: it’s great, and huge fun, and out-loud laugh-inducing in several parts, and I’m (mostly) all for anything remotely Believer-related. It’s a book in which absurd questions are asked to howlingly funny people, and those funny people give hilariously demented responses (and the dementia ranges, stylistically, from intense irony to mumbling deadpan to single-word brush-offs). It’s a book most of the people I know and like would want around. So what’s the hitch? What’s the hold-up?

That website Stuff White People Like? This book is like a perfectly calibrated text for the sorts of people he’s talking about on his website. It’s a hilarious book in lots of ways, and it does a (mostly) decent job of balancing clever/cutsey-ness. It’s actually a fascinating book if one’s looking for a good cross-section view of 80% of current humor in America: the contributors are people like Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter, David Cross, Amy Sedaris, Michael Cera, Judd Apatow, Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms, Patton Oswalt, Jim Gaffigan…and the book will likely be entertaining in direct proportion to how much you like, say, Flight of the Conchords or Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis (which, if you haven’t seen, I’ll put video below: you will not believe how great it is).

I’m hemming and hawing all over the place on this one. I like the book, I do, and I’m glad to have it, glad to read it. It’s also, at times, a little uncomfortably targeting, or at least that what it feels like to this reader. Like Conan? You’ll like this book. Like Sarah Silverman? Ditto. Like Wonder Showzen, or Mr. Show, or The State/Stella, or Tim and Eric? You’ll love this book. In fact, this book was made for those of us who like such things, which means that, in fact, the book could be acting as a good litmus for how you view yourself. Who knows. Buy the thing. It’s funny, and god knows there’s nowhere near enough funny shit published.

An Old Review

by Weston Cutter

(the following’s from when Young’s For the Confederate Dead came out, but this review never got published anyway, so why not here.)

The two easiest things to do with books by Kevin Young, one of the most accessible, consistently exciting American poets working today, is to read and fall in love with them.

Each but the first of Young’s previous books have revolved around a theme or idea: To Repel Ghosts (2002) addressed the life and work of painter Jean-Michel Basquiat; Jelly Roll (a 2003 National Book Award finalist) offered poems of love and loss in the form of old blues songs; Black Maria (2005) rendered a classic film noir detective story into verse.

Kevin Young’s latest, For the Confederate Dead, is, in the simplest description, animated by themes of mourning, recollection, and grief. There are elegies for specific people— Gwendolyn Brooks, Lionel Hampton, or Phillis Wheatley—though there are also elegies for Jim Crow, for the old, all-black settlements of the south, and for a sense of lost innocence.

“Precious South,/ must I save you/ or myself?” Young writes near the closing lines of “Guernica,” a devastating poem of the speaker’s Spanish journey interrupted by news of a lynching. In this poem and others, he reaches beyond mere divulgence and emotionality, working out something more than his own psychological knots. This is the work of a mature soul, looking squarely at the world and realizing that, as ever, the center cannot hold. The question remains, what must we save?

Though the book is divided into ten sections, there are three sections which, together, constitute the strongest work in the book. The first such section, “Nicodemus,” is a narrative of black southerners moving to a town of the same name. While Young writes from and toward the African American experience, in this section and all others, these poems transcend color lines to connect with readers through the shared, common experience of grief.

“The Ballad of Jim Crow” is the most audacious and narratively satisfying section of the book. In it, Young treats Jim Crow as an actual character, as a person, and tracks the character’s birth, accumulation of wealth, and misdeeds. With phenomenal imaginative dexterity, Young gives Jim Crow the middle name of None, a cousin named Rust, a mother named America, and a father who “was born / a slave / but died free— / which is better / than the other / way round, if you ask me.”

In “African Elegy,” Young has written a series of poems for his friend Phillipe Wamba, who died in Kenya on September 11, 2002. Wamba was 31, had grown up in Africa with his father and his father’s family, moved to the United States of which his mother was a part, and was in Africa to research his second book. The section is harrowing, as stripped bare a song of sorrow as you’re likely to find in any poetry collection.

“I have kept / this record for Evie so she won’t // forget—” Young writes at the end of “Firmament,” the last poem of the “Nicodemus” section. The lines almost act as a sneaky declaration of part of the book’s true goal: simply a record of what has happened.

Yet the book does more than simply record. Despite the horrors that Young addresses—Guernica, the attacks of September 11th, his friend’s death—there’s a slyness at this poet’s heart. In “Americana” Young writes “America, you won’t do / anything I want you to. / (To tell the truth, / I like that about you.)” Young’s book is peppered with such winks, little glimmers of joy and daring, and, because of them, the book’s darkness is transformed into something redemptive.

While each poem has its own kick, their collective force is breathtaking. Young is doing something as large-hearted and hopeful as anything I can imagine: pushing and pulling poetry into new shapes for a new century. It’s up to readers, of course, to decide if poetry still matters. But with works as exciting and honest as For the Confederate Dead, its likely to matter for a long, long time.