Freaky Deaky by Elmore Leonard Sunday, Feb 25 2007

I have been sort of weepy recently, so I need to read macho books in order to get it together.  I just finished an Elmore Leonard book and if had any idea how to do this or whether I would get mean ceast-and-desist e-mails from Leonard’s people, I would insert the awesome photograph of craggy, squinty, stubbly, sunglass-wearing Leonard from the back of my copy from the library.  I mean, this is a man who has probably never burst into tears because he smashed his head on the kitchen counter while crutching around his house looking for something to wear.

As far as I can tell (this is the second Leonard book I’ve read; he’s written like 5 million and 3 million of them are hit movies) it actually takes longer to watch one of the moves made out of his books than to read one of them.   The dialogue is snappy and funny and he doesn’t have to waste much time on character development since they are all characters who can be easily summed up in one sentence.  In this book, the villains are two ex-radical hippies who served time for blowing up a federal building, and now are trying to extort money from the two rich ex-hippies who they think turned them in.  There is a hard-boiled, morally ambiguous detective and an ex-black panther who is now a Driving Miss Daisy houseman waiting for his rich simpleminded employer to die so he can inherit lots of money.  There is a sweet little Southern actress who gets mixed up in the whole affair.

It made my train ride go pretty fast, and it was sort of soothing feeling like I already knew all of the characters from their stereotypes in my culture.  Another funny thing about Elmore Leonard: his stories feel like the kind where everything is going to go to hell at the end, or at least be sort of mournful and ambiguous.  But in both books I’ve read (and also in Jackie Brown and Get Shorty, now that I think of it), there is a happy ending.  It’s fun.  It sort of makes you feel like you are getting away with something.

OK, now I am reading two books at once: an extremely trashy Jackie Collins book (appropriate for weepy girls on pain pills, but more boring than it has any right to be) and a semi-scholarly biography of Jesse James (mas macho!).  Clearly, I should focus on the Jesse James in order to keep a stiff upper lip and hopefully it will not turn me into a racist criminal.

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March Lucky magazine Sunday, Feb 18 2007

As with the Elle magazine and as always in spring fashion, this issue featured lots of nautical, safari, bright colors, and 1960s daywear: all of my sartorial loves, in other words.  It was a lovely day today and I was having such a nice time reading by the pool that I actually used Lucky flags to highlight items I liked.  You know, in case I am ever in the market for a pair of $400 shoes, but I cannot remember which pair I want.  Here are the highlights:

1.  Lots of “knee-skimming” pencil or A-line, kind of high-waisted skirts with chunky heels and little 40s jackets.  Yay!  This is a workday staple for me, so glad to have lots of options.

2. On related note, lovely bright yellow a-line skirt, kind of like a peacoat for the lower body.

4.  A freaking Lacoste belted (polo) shirtdress.  The only thing better for me would be a trench coat dress.

This whole experience gave me  the uncomfortable feeling that instead of expanding my fashion horizons, what I really do is just look for affirmation of what I am just going to buy or wear no matter what and what I have been wearing since I was born.

So here is my question:  I wonder if I am turning into a parody or a cartoon version of myself, like some funny old lady I would see on the bus?  I mean, we all have seen people who are sort of frozen in whatever year they came of age or when they last cared about what they looked like.   And you can look and them and think, “Hmmm, Bettie Page bangs, capri pants, I bet she moved to the suburbs in 1999.”  I wonder if I have fossilized too; if so, my only consolation is that I am probably not chic enough to have the year of my fossilization be immediately obvious like that.

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All Aunt Hagar’s Children by Edward P. Jones Saturday, Feb 17 2007

I sort of hate short stories. I feel like usually they are just a way for authors to try out some gimmick or cliche, like “And then he woke up,” without leaving enough room for me to get very invested in what’s going on. I like to get cozy with my novels and read them for hundreds and hundreds of pages, perhaps because I am a girl and maybe I have some kind of very repressed nesting instinct. But I picked up All Aunt Hagar’s Children at the library last time because The Known World was so good and Jones has not written any other novels.

This is a collection of short stories, mostly about black families who move to Washington, D.C from the rural South. One thing about The Known World: I would always have to put it down after 20 pages or so because it made the day-to-day lives of slaves and slave owners, and the attendant numbness and moral decay that would have to result, so vivid that I would get too sad or freaked out to keep reading. This new book is not about slavery, thank God, but some of the stories (especially the first and last one in the book) made me sad. And I found that the short story format works well here because just when I would get to my sadness breaking point, the story would end.

I liked the stories. His characters are really good. You can tell that Jones is one of these people who spends a lot of time thinking about and planning every story, and then he can write it very quickly. Everything is structured perfectly. I bet he uses outlines. Fancypants.

Jones drops you into a story in media res, always, and it takes you about two seconds to understand both how the character looks at things and how the character looks to the outside world. Also, there is this sort of magical realism-ish thing that happens in the middle of one of the stories, and another one actually involves a murder mystery. Still, I don’t think it taught me any lessons I can apply to The Serialist, except that maybe 1) it would be good to have a plan before I start writing and 2) it would be better if I were a %*&^@ brilliant writer. I think it is too late for me to put either of these tips into action.

One complaint: The copy from the library is hardcover and weighs a ton! I blame this book for my one humilating falling-in-crutches-in-public incident. After that, I restricted my train reading to thin Elmore Leonard paperback, The Economist, and various legal newspapers.  If I do not get off crutches soon, I am going to have to see if there are any more Sweet Valley High books.

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March issue of Elle magazine Sunday, Feb 11 2007

Six years ago I lost a writing contest whose first prize was an internship at British Elle; if I’d won, my whole life would have been different and maybe by now I would be apprenticing with E. Jean, the awesome advice columnist of American Elle.  I will try to overcome my bitterness about this and give them an honest review.

But first a gripe with all the lady magazines I have read recently.  They all start with glowing letters to the editors to the effect of: Dear Elle, Smart, classy, successful women of my generation love reading about politics along with their hemlines.  Please include lots of breathy interviews with Barack Obama and cooing about world peace and the environment with your important journalism about lipstick and new diet pills.  I would like to go on the record now as totally disagreeing with that sentiment.  I like fashion magazines to talk about fashion and maybe also makeup.  I like to read newspapers and news magazines for information about the world, and I do not care who the fashion people think I should vote for; I care what bag they think I should carry.

OK, back to clothes.  It looks like there are still lots of trapeze dresses and tennis skirts and trouser-cut pants, which I think would look so smashing with a big green ankle cast.  They have been endorsing the trouser-cut jeans for long enough that I might buy some and give The Chief’s jeans a break because it looks like trouser-cut jeans would fit over my cast.

There was an inspirational article where a woman in her 30s who had never worn makeup before learned to put on makeup.  Should I learn to wear makeup?  I think I probably should, although there is a limit to how much time I feel like primping while standing on one leg.  In six to eight weeks, I plan on giving those makeup tips a try.

As usual, we are all going to be wearing sailor clothes, trench coats, safari clothes, and retro preppie clothes this spring.  Do I ever wear anything else, though?  So maybe I will be fashionable.  Also, we are going to have big wavy hair (this is good for me) and we are still having the big thick eyebrows (good for me and all other lazy people).  Also, red lipstick which I adore and must learn how to apply when I get my makeup tutorial in six to eight weeks.

Other highlights: gold lame stella mcartney trapeze dress on p. 226 (brilliant), interview with marc jacobs, a really pretty new guess model (rip, anna nicole smith), ads for pretty chloe party dresses, and really cute two-tone tod’s ballet flats with driving loafer soles.  Also, millions of dresses that look like tennis dresses.  (Must learn to play tennis, along with wearing makeup, when I get my legs back.)

In short: clothes good, dumb articles and about politics bad.  Perhaps I am just less intellectual than Elle’s target audience, esp. the ones who read the numerology column.

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Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent Saturday, Feb 10 2007

So few guests acquit themselves well on the Colbert Report, but I was laughing with not at Norah Vincent when I saw her interviewed on the show. (This was totally inappropriate because I was at the gym on the treadmill and it was five in the morning and the other people at the gym thought I was crazy. It was fun going to the gym back when I had both of my legs, but I digress.)

The conceit of this book is just like Black Like Me or that James Bond book where James Bond self-tans himself into a Japanese guy, except that in this case a woman goes under cover as a man for a year. The chapters are divided up by a set of male experiences she designs for herself: joining a bowling league, going to strip clubs, dating (men and women it says on the back but I only remember her dating women), living in a monastary, going on a men’s movement retreat — you know, the usual stuff that every man does all the time.

My favorite part of the book was the beginning where she talks about the logistical and practical aspects of passing as a man — gluing one’s beard on and so forth. She learned that women lean forward when speaking and men lean back; women tend to talk so fast that they run out of breath and men use fewer words. It was interesting how her innate feminine mannerisms would always betray her as effeminate or gay-seeming as a man even though she said she was always considered kind of a butch woman. It made me think about how I phrase everything like a question and apologize for everything and maybe I should be more macho.

The parts of the book I didn’t like were the sociological expositions at the end of every chapter. I felt like responding to these platitudes with the one they always beat you over the head with in journalism school: show, don’t tell. I feel certain, however, that it was some cheeseball editor or marketing person who was to blame for this aspect of the book, not Norah Vincent.

In sum, the book was good, sometimes tawdry, fun. It made me appreciate the power of a good suit and not talking too much or apologizing for everything. I don’t think it taught me any good lessons to apply to the serialist, though, except that I shouldn’t have a male narrator because the male mind is such a big brawny mystery to me.

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Shakey’s Loose by Renay Jackson Saturday, Feb 10 2007

I am in love with the back story of these books, at least as I have heard it. Renay Jackson, according to his bio, has been a custodian for the Oakland police department for over 25 years; he is also a former rapper and a “street lit author,” whatever that is. I read somewhere that he started writing these books with his kids while they were doing their homework and still sits down and writes for 30 minutes a night after dinner, just like a kid doing his homework. Before he had a publisher, he and his friends would sell the books on the bus in Oakland.

The books are compulsively-readable, pulpy murder mysteries set among drug dealers in East and West Oakland. They sort of remind me of Elmore Leonard; it is that same sort of thing where there are eight million characters and you are following the stories of the murderers and the victims and the police all at the same time. I love all of the local detail of course. I lived in Oakland for years and I am always reading it like, “Yeah, I know that highway exit! I get stuck in traffic there all the time!” Perhaps this would be boring if I did not have so much love for Oakland.

I have a few beefs with the book, like there are so many characters with similar sounding names that I have trouble keeping track of everybody. Maybe if there were a table of characters at the front of the book like in some of the Great Books I remember reading in elementary school. Also, and maybe I am just a prude, but I could do without the long, weird sex scenes including sentences like “He slammed his battering ram into her all night long.” Again, I suppose that is just a personal preference.

But the books are like I say compulsively readable. What have I learned that I should apply to my own meager efforts? I like his fast-paced action combined with lots of little detail about the characters’ lives so you feel like you really know them. Also, I should go easy on long extremely detailed romantic interludes with lots of analogies to power tools in case any of my many readers have delicate sensibilities like mine. Also, maybe readers love lots of references to Oakland geography. Or maybe that’s just me.

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Further Tales of the City Saturday, Feb 3 2007

What’s so hot right now is local, serialized novels set in the Bay Area. I went to the library and checked out some books to see how it is done.

I love Armistead Maupin and I totally agree with the reviewer on the back who says that people will be reading the Tales of the City Books centuries from now to see what everyday life in the late 20th century was like, the same way you get a really good sense of a certain kind of aristocratic, philandering everyday household life in the 19th century from reading people like Tolstoy.

Tales of the City had me at a line that went something like: “You can do anything you want in 1970s San Francisco as long as you do it in a place that looks like a rustic old country barn.” Further Tales of the City has them all in the 1980s, epitomized by a Wilkes Bashford sweater worn by one of the A-Gays that is black with a gold jaguar splayed across the shoulders. In short, Maupin is still a genius. Someday, I hope to be drinking too much champagne and talking trash with him at a gathering for important San Francisco people.

Anyway, here is what I learned from his book that I hope will help my own meager effort at joining his storied serial novel tradition. (Tales of the City, as you may know, started out as a serial in the Examiner back in the day – at least that is what I think I read somewhere.)

1. You need a large cast of characters and they should all alternate as narrators. Now I may have backed myself into a corner by starting The Serialist in a first-person, freaking present-tense narrative, but I am trying to figure out how or if I should deal with this. Maybe in a long, Paul Auster-ish story-within-a-story way? That is what I am leaning towards.

2. Local detail and a sense of place is really important. But is it only important to me because I love reading about where I live and hearing that the Marina Safeway has been called Dateway since I was born? I notice they toned the local stuff down a little on the Showtime series. Anyway, ANY detail, insight about characters, etc. etc. would probably be welcome in the serialist. More about this when I finish Renay Jackson’s Shakey’s Loose, in a similarly local vein, and discuss it.

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