Humbled, Part 2

Cover of Freedom, if you have access to the dust cover! Ha ha!

Hello again, ladies and gents. Sorry about the severe length of time between parts 1 and 2, but, aside from my inane forced morning writing (most of which–unless its good–goes into completely private entries on this to be stored IN THE CLOUD), I’m really a sort of “when the mood strikes me” writer. Frustratingly enough for all of you readers waiting with baited breath for the next morsel of written word from Waffles Incorporated, my writing energy this last week has been funneled into staying afloat; I feel down, but I’m gonna write my way out!

Another development that falls into the good/bad dichotomy is that, due to circumstances that I foresee to be temporary, the ingenious and awesome book swapping program is currently on hold. This means a lot of things to me personally, but the way it effects you, readers, is that your long anticipated write-up of Bossypants is probably going to take quite some time. However, the “good” side has to do with the fact that I have to funnel my thoughts and feelings and whatnot into something, right? So I can only imagine more writing coming your way.

In the meantime, let’s talk about Freedom a bit! I said in part 1 that I felt “amazed, humbled, stunned and inspired all at once,” and that couldn’t be truer. I was looking forward to really kind of workshopping this book and talking a lot about it, but that opportunity has passed by until my brother-in-law reads it, so my thoughts are a bit scattered since I haven’t play-tested them.

First and foremost, what jumps out to me about Freedom is how completely mundane the plot is. If you’ve read it and found yourself having to describe the plot succinctly, you might be able to relate to the feeling of having a heck of a time summarizing it without sounding like you’re simplifying the plot. To me, that is the mark of a hell of a work of fiction. For instance, one of my other desert-island books is Richard Russo‘s amazing Empire Falls–the plot of which can be summarized as “a small town father deals with his life in a dwindling, recession-hit town in Maine.” Really, while it’s not a detail filled description, it’s not really reductive, either. Books like Empire Falls and Freedom are a great reflection of how our lives, while simple in description, are full of rich and complex detail.

Freedom is about a woman and her loved ones and how they go through, eventually realizing who they are.

I actually backspaced through several renditions of that, trying to parse out exactly what I was getting across. I don’t think that short summaries should editorialize, so perhaps I’m in danger of giving you just one man’s interpretation of the final layout, but I’m gonna go out on that limb.

So why did it inflict in my humility? For the exact reasons stated above: making simplicity into a book a reader can’t put down. By all rights, the only place one would find a bereaved and life-questioning housewife and an aging, hasn’t-changed-at-all rocker is in a soap opera (or maybe one’s own life–who am I to know?). But Jonathan Franzen is able to write these characters and give them real feelings and real thoughts; what they think and experience is so real that I challenge every reader of Freedom to not feel like Franzen was writing about you specifically at some point in the novel. In doing so–in making us relate almost 1 for 1–Franzen does a tremendous job showing us that we all have frailties, because you’re never “rooting” for the same character the whole time. Every character does things that are horrid things to do to a loved one or another person or an industry, but then they have amazingly redemptive moments; no one is a villain, just like in reality. It gives the reader a new perspective on the people in your life and makes you realize that no matter how well you know a person (or how much you love them), you can never read their mind. All we can ever do is trust: trust that our loved ones will let us in their heads.

As far as inspiring? How can any writer read Freedom and not want to write the next great American novel? There’s a trope in the “writing world” that the best writers are the best readers. I say “best” readers and not “most active” readers, because something that’s always stuck with me is the saying from a friend “Practice doesn’t make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect.” In that sense, writers “should” read a lot, but in this writer’s opinion, I get a lot more out of books like Freedom–books that challenge me with regards to my own life–than books like Twinkie, Deconstructed, which just taught me things in a boring way. (Allow me a quick sentence to defend my beloved non-fiction: I love non-fiction and the good stuff is exempt!)

I wanted to say a few words about the remake of Arthur starring Russel Brand, and his autobiography Booky Wook, however I think you’ll forgive me if I say that I’m not in the mood where I want to visit some subjects right now. Not because I’m trying to forget, but some things are getting put into a different filing system in my brain. However, I highly recommend seeing Arthur if you like fun and cute.

Also, a closing word on E-Readers. I was asked recently in an interview whether I was a, “Buzz person or a Woody person.” I actually had to think–I really thought about it a lot. I thought about the times in my life when I’ve felt most at peace–when I’ve felt most, I dunno, connected to something. I’m not purposefully trying to be abstruse, I’m just having difficulty describing the feeling. It’s that feeling that Whitman talks about in Leaves of Grass and what Thoreau talks about beautifully in Walden. When have I felt that sort of connectedness?

If I filter out the contentedness and calmness of a lot of interpersonal moments of the past, I settle on the times I’ve been out–away from everything. I recalled sitting on the hood of a car in the middle of nowhere, Iowa, after having driven through a one intersection town lit by the lights in the windows of a farmhouse on the corner. There was a gravel road that led to nothing, and stars for forever. If you were to ask me in those moments whether or not I would forsake technology, I would be tempted. I’m a Woody person, at my core. A romantic dreamer longing to be connected. But that doesn’t make me a luddite; I love gadgets a ton, and I love technology. But exchanging, swapping, talking and planning about acquiring physical books with an important someone opens ones eyes to the idea that there are a lot of things that are imbued with something more than their intrinsic value. When people swap books they’re not swapping objects or digital data, they’re swapping ideas, thoughts and feelings. If everyone had e-readers and only digital copies could be shared, a lot would be lost. Physical books are things that you allow you to literally breathe them in, to literally touch them, and to mentally absorb them. With e-readers, more than with MP3 players or digital movies, the soul of books are lost. It just took me a lot longer to realize that than it should have.

I’ve closed a lot of entries with quotes from the famous Nora Ephron films, mostly because I love them a lot, but also because the scripts are smart and full of feeling. As such, today’s closing is yet another.

“People are always saying that change is a good thing. But all they’re really saying is that something you didn’t want to happen at all… has happened.”

Egress, Part 2

Twinkies. Grotesquely, I crave one.

I have finally, at last, finished Twinkie, Deconstructed.

The tour-de-force rundown of the Hostess Twinkie ingredient list started out as a hell of a thing. For instance, I had no idea of how complex the production of corn syrup was, or that the reason you see various and seemingly nonsensical vitamin percentages in things like Wonder Bread is because the government enforces enrichment standards. That blew my mind. At its source, ingredients like wheat and corn are enriched with vitamins in a ridiculously complex (and apparently TOP LEVEL secret) process. The reason is, as non-toxic, non-taste effecting enrichment processes are found, government and industry officials see them as a quick and easy way to get obscure but important vitamins (like Vitamin B) into our bodies.

However, for all of the “oh, that was interesting” moments within Twinkie, Deconstructed, there are five times as many moments where my reaction was, “holy moly did I read that last paragraph? I swear I did, but damn I can’t recall anything I just read.” The problem isn’t the subject matter; the reason I bought the book in the first place was because I liked the idea of tracing the ingredients in a famously artificial snack food. However, author Steve Ettlinger didn’t seem to know his audience. Twinkie had a tendency to get bogged down in really specific details. I like knowing how the ingredients go from source to processing to production–those are the things that are interesting to me as a reader who is not a chemist or industry worker. Ettlinger decides to spend pages on $10 words and unexplained lingo, and it not only hurts the flow of Twinkie, but it hurts us, the reader.

Finishing Twinkie, Deoncstructed was an exercise in what readers have to struggle with on a regular basis: do you finish a book that you’re having a hard time getting through? My policy has as much to do with my mood at the time as it does with how much time I’ve already invested in the book. I started out with a huge interest in Twinkie, I would even go so far as to say that I couldn’t put it down for the first third. However, I realize now that I was running on external forces–my mind wanted to escape mourning and loss, and was devouring anything and everything it could grasp. Eventually, like a marathon runner, I hit a wall. After applying a complex algorithm, I determined that I had invested too much time in Twinkie to not see it through to its conclusion. Also, my determination may have had something to do with the outline of the book–its chapters follow the ingredient list, all the way down to the color dyes. Because of that, I almost felt a compulsion to see it through to the end; I wanted to understand the Twinkie in its entirety.

I’ve already taken a big bite of A Visit From The Goon Squad, so I’m about to be knee deep in good ol’ fiction. From what I’ve read so far, I think I’m going to be in for a hell of a ride. However, weirdly, I’m having trouble really getting a grip on fiction again; my mind wants essays. It’s as if I’m craving a certain type of food, but eating another–sure, it still tastes good, but it’s not satisfying.

A friend said something that stuck with me in typical me fashion: “Maybe we watch too many movies.” It was said because we were all goofing around spouting off movie quotes (a not-exactly-foreign activity to the people with whom I hang), but I’ve been doing a lot of overhaul of my mental state (I’m about a week away from choosing classes and being enrolled in college this fall), and I’ve been toying with “maybe we watch too many movies.” I love books, movies, television and all forms of media, but I wonder if this sort of fiction intolerance is a symptom of this overhaul. I’m getting myself back on the track to becoming real–back on the track to having my own life and seeing where people and things fit in around me. This is just temporary, I’m sure (I do love me some fiction), but in a way, I like it. I’ve spent a lot of my time this year not living my own life as deeply as I could have, and I’m getting a good handle on how to go about enriching myself. I’ve realized that I like where things are going, and I don’t want or need fiction to escape it right now.

To come down from lofty existentialism, I should mention quickly that, in the midst of what became one of the most fun and memorable day-long-hangout sessions I’ve had in a long time (and one in which I really did feel happy and alive and living), I acquired some new stuff from a library book sale. Also, I’ll have Franzen’s Freedom and Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs incoming.