BAD GRAMMAR CONFUSES ME

I hate to complain about the writing in big books, as I do often, but here we go again. (By big, I mean very popular.)  

Recently, I wanted to read "Lord of Misrule," by Jaimy Gordon, because it won the 2010 National Book Award for fiction.

That is a pretty big deal for us writers.

So I got the book from the library--thank Buddha for libraries--and opened it with great anticipation.

I thought, this is going to be great.

But I was brought up short by the first two sentences:

"Inside the gate of Indian Mound Downs, a hot-walking machine creaked round and round. In the judgment of Medicine Ed, walking a horse himself on the shedrow of Barn Z, the going-nowhere contraption must be the lost soul of this cheap racetrack where he been ended up at."

What? "Indian Mound Downs"? An Indian mound is a burial ground. A horse track on a burial ground? Is this supposed to be funny? There is no other obvious humor in the first page or two, so I couldn't tell. Maybe it was the writer's own private joke.

I found it confusing.

And then the second sentence: "...where he been ended up at"? What the hell is that? At first, I thought it must be my mistake. I must be reading it wrong, all wrong.

But I read it over and over, and yes, that is a sentence with profoundly mixed grammar. It starts off OK, and then it turns bad, very bad.

Whose bad grammar is that? It couldn't belong to the writer, and if it did, why did the book win such a big award? If it's the character's, why is not the whole sentence, or indeed the whole passage in the character's grammar?

I read the first two or three pages of "Lord of Misrule" and felt lost and annoyed, not well oriented and entranced.

Suffice it to say, that was enough for me. I couldn't get into it. To me, the first few pages should be the best written and most engaging part of any book.

Anyway, another one bites the dust. Another big book not read. Oh, well, back to The New Yorker and other writers, including Aimee Bender and John Gregory Dunne.

-- Roger
 
PS: You can read more of "Lord of Misrule" at:
https://www.mcphersonco.com/share/pdfs%20for%20website/LOMCH1.pdf

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

IS OSAMA WINNING?

I would not say that dead Osama bin Laden is winning, but his strategy is having a huge impact on the good old USA. Osama, you remember, set out to bring down America, like he thought he had the Soviet Union.

Now we have the fallout from our own greedy financiers in the banks and on Wall Street, who knowingly sold millions of high-risk mortgage loans to people who couldn't pay them back, and then bundled those lousy mortgages into securities and sold them to suckers around the world. Then they sat back and laughed as they got rich and the world's financial systems crumbled.

We, the good old USA, bailed out Wall Street and the banks, so our financial system wouldn't collapse. And at the same time, we created a huge infrastructure in which thousands of people have security clearances and we are spending billions of dollars we don't have on "defense" we don't need.

This is from AlterNet:

"...We have spent $7.6 trillion on the military and homeland security since 9/11. The Pentagon's base budget – which doesn't include the costs of fighting our wars – has increased by 81 percent during that time (43 percent when adjusted for inflation). The costs of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have now reached $1.26 trillion. But that only scratches the surface; it doesn't include the long-term costs of caring for badly wounded soldiers, for example."

These are mind-boggling amounts of money. We are "defending" ourselves to death, from an enemy that uses box cutters and packs explosives into computer printers and people's underwear. They spend dimes while we spend millions.

We are Goliath and our enemy is David. Do you remember who won that fight? Who do you think will win this time, if we don't wise up?

How stupid can we get? We are lumbering around like a massive idiot, bankrupting ourselves out of fear.

I wouldn't say Osama is winning, but his strategy is sure getting ahead. We seem to be helping him, inadvertently, but helping him nonetheless.

Even in death, he is smarter than we are.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

WE DISAGREE ON 'THE ROAD'

My buddy Kem thinks "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy is a "nearly perfect novel" and that it is Cormac's "most hopeful novel," he told me on the phone the other day. I invited him to post something here, but he didn't want to.

I had written him the following e-mail: 

In "The Road," nature is gone, virtually destroyed.

There are no birds in the sky, no fish in the streams and no fruit on the trees.

The world is reduced to ashes and ruins.

Most people are dead.

Of the few that are left, some are killing children to eat them.

How is that hopeful?

On the phone, Kem said that he loved the language of the novel, the sheer brilliance of the writing, and the fact that the father does everything he can to protect his son.

I guess Kem focused on that one ray of hope. I suppose he found that one thing even more hopeful in contrast to other characters in the novel who turn to violence and become like animals to survive.

Also, Kem read it as a parable, not as a realistic story. I guess that means he didn't believe the horrific imagery. I guess that is why he didn't get depressed by the devastation.

OK, so what does this prove? That Kem and I are both nuts? Maybe. But more likely that reasonable people can disagree. That one man's meat is another man's poisson, as my friend Andy used to say in Europe. (Poisson is French for fish.)

As Kem said, some critics think "Moby Dick" is a great novel, and others don't. (I do, BTW.)

I suppose there are always people who disagree about works of art, who have wildly different sensibilities and tastes.

I never understand why everyone doesn't agree with me. Anyway, I think you should check it out for yourself. Get it from the library, so it doesn't cost anything. That's what I usually do.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

AFGHANS GETTING RICH OFF WAR

This morning, I listened to "Le Show" by Harry Shearer on KCRW and NPR. It's one of the best shows on radio, I think, entertaining and informative at the same time.

It always hands me a few good laughs and I learn a bunch of new things. Today, I learned that developers in Afghanistan are building new high-rise luxury homes for the people who have gotten rich from NATO and USA involvement there.

Hmmm. Makes you think, doesn't it? Here we are laying off teachers and sweating over the future of Medicare, and some Afghans are getting rich off our war. Hmmm. I think something is wrong here.

Anyway, I recommend Harry Shearer. He's smart and funny and full of good, new info. His show is available any time at:
http://harryshearer.com/

Right on, Harry. Give 'em hell, Harry.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

PICKING WINNERS

I don't know about you, but I am bad at picking winners -- in life, in business, and in sports.

Years ago, when Novak Djokovic was losing and then losing again at tennis, I thought he was  always going to be a loser. Shows what I know, and I played tennis from age 16 to about 60, so I thought I knew jack.

Now Djokovic has a 42-match winning streak, one of the longest in tennis. My hat is off to him. Then I will eat it.

Also, years ago, when I heard Amazon was going to expand from books to every damn thing in the world, I thought they should stay focused on books. Easy to pack, easy to ship, easy to track. Boy, was I wrong. Colossally wrong.

I don't know how much Jeff Bezos and his company are worth today, but it must be up in the billions. Congrats to him. My hat is off, and I am sprinkling it with hot sauce as we speak.

In high school, I thought all the most popular kids were going to be the most successful. Not so. When my son was in high school, I thought his friends who were the smartest and presented themselves the best and were the most respectful to me were the winners. No so. Some of them went to prison, and some are dead.

So it's hard to pick winners. It's hard to predict the future. My advice: Leave your expectations open. Realize that no one has a crystal ball.

Let them surprise you. Most of the time, they will.

(PS: Picking winners is different from picking friends. I'm good at that.)

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

BORGES vs. HEMINGWAY

I've been reading early Hemingway stories, and I am struck by how different he is from Borges. 

At first glance, Hemingway seems like the lesser writer, and yet the more I think about it, the more I see similarities and strengths in both writers.

When I was in Spain, in 1969, I saw young American men living the Hemingway life: drinking beer in the afternoon, with that Hemingway look, of exploring life in that way; going to the bullfights every Sunday; living in Spain to find something they would not have known was there except for Hemingway. Chasing Hemingway's memories and his ghosts.

There was a beauty and strength and dignity in the Spaniards that I didn't see in the often sleazy Italians or the stoic Greeks.

While I was in Spain, I read "Death In The Afternoon," about bullfighting. Hemingway thought he could tell what the bull was thinking as he charged the matador. That struck me as complete baloney at the time, but now I remember a scene in Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" from the point of view of the dog.

While Ernest Hemingway inspired macho behavior, I doubt if any young American adventurers went to Buenos Aires to live like Jorge Luis Borges, who spent his life in libraries and books. He was the more intellectual of the two, with a more subtle intelligence.

Yet the stories I remember best from Borges were about knife fights among thugs in cities and about hatred and jealousy among gauchos.

So both men were interested in macho behavior. Oddly, they were born the same year, 1899.

To tell the truth, I like Borges better, although Hemingway has a muscular strength in his language that I admire and enjoy. Borges has a more modern sensibility, playing with story and language and meaning in a way I've never seen in Hemingway.

Obviously, I find both worthwhile, for different reasons. Reading Hemingway is like eating steak and baked potatoes. Borges is like French cuisine, with delicate sauces and subtle flavors.

Depends on whether you'd rather shoot lions or see them in a zoo. At different times, I like to do both.

(BTW, I shot a lion in my pajamas last night. It was strange. I don't know how he got into my pajamas... Har-har-har.)
-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

GIL SCOTT-HERON: RIP

One of the giants of modern music died yesterday (27-May-2011): Gil Scott-Heron, made famous by "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised":  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGaRtqrlGy8

He was an enormously talented man, a genius, in my opinion. I never saw him in person, but The New Yorker did a profile on him not long ago.

Some of his music is the most intense, rich, amazing stuff you'll ever hear. I don't think it is easy to categorize. It is part jazz, part spoken-word, part soul, part almost rap, part poetry.

I recommend exploring his work on YouTube and anywhere else you can find it. Especially, I recommend "New York Is Killing Me":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiuorrXsngM

May he rest in peace. RIP, brother.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle