Book Review: Out Stealing Horses

Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson

I always pay close attention to the New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of the Year. Not every book on the last will appeal to me, but the description of Per Petterson's Out Stealing Horses, and the heaps of praise it received, put it on my list immediately.

The book is not about horses; don't be misled. It is about attempting to escape the past and how it will catch up with you. A theme I enjoy. Despite the narrator's relocation to remote northern Norway, with his dog and his out of place Nissan station wagon, circumstances and coincidence lead him to relive events in his past.

I appreciated this book for many reasons. Thematically, it is something I can appreciate. I love the romantic notion of packing up your essentials and moving far away to a one room cabin and wilderness outside the window. And there is enough violence and tragedy here to please me.

It wasn't until Hamsun's name appeared in the text that I realized that I'd read another Norwegian novel just a couple of books back. Though Hunger is a classic of sorts, this book fulfills in ways that it did not. The characters are rich and shaken. And there's plenty of story here to keep you reading.

I would certainly highly recommend this book. I would put this book on a shelf with others I was proud to have read.

Book Review: The Death of Sweet Mister

The Death of Sweet Mister by Daniel Woodrell

Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone was one of the best books I've ever read, so I naturally picked up several of his other novels. The Death of Sweet Mister is populated with the same sort of misfits. It feels wrong to call them hillbillies, but the events of the novel fulfill some of our worst ideas of the dwellers of the backwoods and hollows of the Ozarks. Like Winter's Bone, the central character of this novel is also a juvenile, but with none of the same spunk and determination.

There is much violence and general brutality here, a world bleak and desperate, but rendered with precision. Woodrell's writing talent is certainly on display here, though the book is hardly as haunting as Winter's Bone. And though I enjoyed it, the novel has elements that are disturbing and hard to get past.

Book Review: Hunger

Hunger by Knut Hamsun

I love confessional novels with narrators expressing their maladies, coming clean on their madness. I love novels of mad desperation, of wanderers, of those lost in a world that is too big and overwhelming. This book, though, is no Notes from Underground. This is no Season in Hell, no Maldoror.

Hamsun's narrator is poor and hungry, driven by some sort of will he cannot control to do idiotic things. And this might be okay. It could be a good place to start, but there is no advancement. There are small dilemmas that take some time to resolve, but the narrator does not change. He does not get worse. His madness and hunger do not accelerate to a point where you know something horrible is likely to happen. His undirected will doesn't even take him on any significant adventures or put him in too much danger.

This book sounded like something I would like and even coming in with that expectations, the book did not succeed. I was disappointed.

Book Review: The Easter Parade

The Easter Parade by Richard Yates

I read somewhere that The Easter Parade was Richard Yates's most depressing book. I doubt that it was really written like that, but I was already a fan of Revolutionary Road and his short stories, so I picked up the book and was eager to get to it. Sometimes, though, your impression of the book you're reading is impacted by the books you read immediately before that one. Coming off two good reads, I was disappointed by this one.

The Easter Parade is the story, the life story really, of two sisters. Things for them and between them never really improve. We watch the same disjointeness over decades. While we are sad to see people not live up to their potential, it diverges so little from the normal course of life that we are hardly surprised.

I enjoy Yates's more formal style. It is immediately confortable and unpretentious. It is writing like you learned in AP English. And that is a nice change from many more modern novles.

In no way did the book live up to Revolutionary Road. Here the misery was quiet, buried under complacency and compromise. So, it was depressing, yes. I just was looking for something that would strike me a little deeper.

Short Story Review: DeLillo in the New Yorker

"Midnight in Dostoevsky" by Don DeLillo, in the November 30, 2009, New Yorker

Maybe it's me. I've been pretty task-driven lately. That means no real pleasure reading. This makes reading short stories a little difficult. The brevity is helpful, but without a purpose, without resolution, I'm hard-pressed to come away with anything from them.

This is the case with Don DeLillo's short story "Midnight in Dostoevsky" that appeared in the New Yorker. A sentence from the final paragraph sums it up: "I wondered what it was that had caused this thing to happen."

I really enjoyed DeLillo's White Noise, and I think that makes me more inclined to like his work. This was certainly one of the reasons I took the time to read this story. As good as the writing was, I came away disappointed.

The story follows a pair of eccentric college students in cold Midwestern town. They think they know everything, even when they know that they don't. The imagine the the life of a distracted logic professor and they make up the life of an old man they pass on the street. The central character talks to a female student who, it turns out, talks just like him and then disappears from the story. And in the end there is a bit of pointless violence that comes out of nowhere, serves no purpose and leaves us hanging.

Surely DeLillo could place any story he wants in the New Yorker. And I doubt if the editors are going to criticize much. Of course there is good writing here:

I knew where my father was--in Beijing, trying to wedge his securities firm into the Chinese century.

At the library, I devoured about a hundred pages a setting, small cramped type.

He shaves, we thought. He cuts himself and says shit. He wads up a sheet of toilet paper and holds it to his cut. Then he leans into the mirror, seeing himself clearly for the first time in years. Ilgauskas, he thinks.

I just was hoping for a little more from DeLillo in the New Yorker. But, then again, maybe it's me.

Book Review: Lust

Lust by Susan Minot

The topic, very cleary, of all of these stories is relationships, or more specifically the complications of emotions involved when we get involved. Minot's characters often expect too much, even when they expect nothing, and are left feeling vacant and wasted. The eagerness with which the women in these stories would search out any sort of love is so earnest and sad. The stories, often told in first person, reminded me in the end of the stories of Anna Kavan. They are that good. Though I don't know it for sure, I would find it hard to belive that Minot didn't at some point read Kavan. The stories are brief and sharp. Languishing in the misery that appears inevitable here would be unendurable, but Minot gets us there, hits us quickly, and moves on. I read these stories in a single evening and it seemed to me to be the perfect way to digest these terrific stories.

Surefire Plot Generator

"Put your left hand on the table. Put your right hand in the air. If you stay that way long enough, you'll get a plot." - Margaret Atwood

Work Mode to Writing Mode

Sometimes the go-go-go gets to me.

I am eager to get ahead at work, at school, to learn everything I can, to get better. Yesterday, I was reading Harvard Business Review, CFO Magazine, Business Week, and the Wall Street Journal. All in an effort to learn what I can learn. But there in the Journal was an interview with Alice Munro.

There was a physical click in my head, a switch turned from one mode to another, and I was thinking about writing. Not just the outcome, but the process. And it made me eager to write again. To be creating. The feeling didn't argue against the other part of my life, but it was a reminder of a calling. Something inside me is deeply linked to that process of writing. Of course that part of me has been neglected. I've had the pleasure of writing papers. There is always that pleasure in stringing words together, in getting the right tone, the right emphasis. But all other forms of writing have been neglected.

So, I may be in the need of a break, but I'm also eager to get back to work.

Book Review: All the Pretty Horses

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

McCarthy really knows what he's doing. Disregards the rules and it all works. This is the fifth book I've read by him and I'm always amazed. And each book stands alone. This one is reminiscent of Blood Meridian and even No Country for Old Men because of the wandering over dry landscapes. But where Blood Meridan at times seemed pointless, John Grady Cole is driven. And he drives the reader on. I usually don't go for books with settings that are too unfamiliar. I will usually get lost trying to imagine things I've never seen, or I get lost because the writer assumes the reader has a basic understanding of the setting. While McCarthy uses names for plants and landscapes that I don't know, the settings are so much a part of the mood and the tone of the text that I don't feel like I've missed a thing. If anything, I'm only more inspired now to go see the places he has described.

Tragedy always seems to be around the corner in McCarthy's novels, but even though I know it is coming, I am always appropriately shocked. I don't think this novel has the same spark as Suttree, but everything in All the Pretty Horses has a purpose, is firmly grounded in a sense of justice. It may not be a justice we're familiar with, but everything feels well anchored.

Love is not a often a subject in McCarthy's novels, but here it is a key element and handled with deft and tact. No one would accuse the author of sentimentality, but the reader does not doubt that the emotions being described are not true.

Obviously, I should have read this book many ages ago. And the pleasure I had in reading the novel moves up McCarthy's other novels on my reading list.

Summer Reading Book Reviews to Come

As crazy as things have been over the summer and this fall, I have managed to read a slew of books. And I promise that reviews--as brief as they're liable to be--are coming. Here is the list:

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
Lust by Susan Minot
The Easter Parade by Richard Yates
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
The Death of Sweet Mister by Daniel Woodrell
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles
No One Belongs Here More than You by Miranda July
Child of God by Cormac McCarthy
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

BNSF and Warren Buffet: Does it mean anything?

After the announcement this week that Warren Buffet was going to buy out the remaining bit of Burlington Northern Santa Fe that he didn't already own seemed to spark some debate about what it should mean. I suggest that we might not want to read too much into it.

Buffet deserves a huge amount of deference because of his ability to make money, to make smart choices, to see the fundamentals of the fundamentals, but it might not always be a good idea to think that the common investor, or even an economist, should mimic his actions.

A GDP play was how most people seemed to read it this week. The idea is that as the economy cranks back up so will the fortunes of BNSF. There is truth in it. When cargo falls away to nothing there is nowhere to go but up.

An oil-price play is another way to take it. If the price of a barrel continues to climb, and as the dollar falls, fuel prices will escalate. Trucking becomes increasingly inefficient and rail begins to make a lot more sense for moving freight around this country.

The problem with both of these notions is that any advantage rail has is strictly near-term. Until there is significant investment in the rail infrastructure, until we can actually move more trains and more freight, the growth potential is limited. Expansion of the US rail lines is absolutely necessary. Passenger rail is limited by the constraints on freight rail. When they compete for the same space on the same set of tracks, we are losing some potential in both.

Unless Buffet knows something more about real infrastructure investment, the chances of making huge sums of money in his purchase of BNSF seems unlikely. He'll make some money in the recovery, and he'll make some money as the price of fuel climbs, but it is unlikely that he bought it for any of these reasons.

The two reasons Buffet gave are the more likely reasons than any of the speculative motives: he is always willing to buy more of anything he is invested in---and his father never bought him a toy train when he was a child

Comcast, NBC Deal Bad for Consumers

It is not a bad idea for GE to get out of the TV business. If there a step too far in diversification, this might be it. There are other companies out there who could give NBC the attention it deserves (though, what would happen to all of those GE jokes on 30 Rock?). Comcast, though, is not the right buyer.

Cable providers, in most markets, seem to have us where they want us. If we want cable, we only have a few choices, including the satellite companies. Here in the Denver area, for instance, Comcast is it for cable. The only other option is for a dish company.

So what happens, then, when a behemoth in the cable market owns some of the best content on broadcast and cable? How much are the competing companies have to pay to get access to those channels? And how much is your cable bill going to go up?

Now, I understand the position Comcast is in. Internet viewing, including on demand, is screwing up their model. So, the NBC/Universal thing is clearly a defensive play. There are ways, though, to embrace the changes, forge new deals, and take advantage before too many standards are established. If a subscriber model works for cable, wouldn't it work for online television? It would be good if my cable subscription gave me access to all of the shows I missed during the week so I could watch them from work while I eat lunch (okay, maybe while I work, too).

Maybe this deal could be good for both GE and Comcast, but I don't think it would be good for me and you.

Dismissing Slack to Raise Inflation Fears

The Wall Street Journal on Monday (yes, I am that far behind) had a lengthy article on the slack in the economy. And while the article goes in depth on various components of the economy that have room to make up before inflation could ever begin to kick in, they of course get it (purposefully) wrong.

The begin the discussion on track:
The interplay between slack and inflation is at the heart of that decision [for the Fed to raise interest rates]. Slack is important to their equation because, in theory, it should suppress wages and keep inflation down.

You can sense the skepticism there, but it continues:
But if the Fed misreads the dimensions or significance of slack, it could unleash an unwelcome bout of rising prices.

Not wrong, but you're beginning to see their thesis. And then:
The risk of inflation is significant.

Alright, back down. There is a difference between long-term and short-term here. Sure, keeping rates low after the recovery begins kicking in (like the Fed did under a different Administration) could certainly lead to inflation. I'll agree that the timing is critical, but the risk right now is not significant.

Of course, it's not just a question of rates. The liquidity in the system, will need to be absorbed as well. And budget deficits don't help. But durable goods order shrunk last month, the ISM manufacturing index barely crossed 50 into positive territory, and jobs will continue to be a problem for some time. I don't think we're in much danger right now of rising prices.

The article then injects an interesting theory:
If businesses and workers expect more inflation, the theory goes, they start demanding wage and price increases and set off the inflation they fear.

So, I'm a manufacturer, let's say, who believes that the Fed is really mucking things up and inflation is right around the corner. And, though, I haven't seen an increase in raw material prices yet, I'm going to raise prices in a struggling economy to try and recapture some of the money I think I'm going to lose in the future.

Or, I'm a union rep negotiating a new contract, when job losses are happening all around me, and I'm going to demand wage increases for men and women who are grateful to have jobs because I think that the cost of living is going to rise, at some point.

Both things would be a mistake. And, yes, I could see how those things could help stir up inflation, but the likelihood of anyone taking those risks when recovery is still uncertain is pretty low.

Though the article throws in plenty of numbers and some good quotes on the extent of slack in the economy, the purpose of the article is clearly to gin up inflation fears. Maybe it's just a supply-side issue, and the people overly concerned about inflation are just ignoring the demand side of things that becomes increasingly critical when things turn bad. Waiting too long to raise interest rates is dangerous, but raising interest rates will not lead us to recovery.

The Fed Needs to Look to the Future

The FOMC statement released yesterday made it clear that, despite improvements in the economy, the Fed is not interested in raising rates or reabsorbing any of the liquidity out there. In fact, they "will continue to employ a wide range of tools to promote economic recovery and to preserve price stability."

I don't expect a change right now. Raising rates now or trying to get the Fed's balance sheet back to normal anytime soon would shock the system. Now is not the time. But we don't really read the Fed statement to read the committee's take on the current economic stituation. We are looking for some hints to the future. Apparently, the Fed is not looking far enough into the future to even hint in changes in policy. Alright, they "will gradually slow the pace of these purchases [mortgage-backed securities] in order to promote a smooth transition in markets," but this doesn't provide much guidance.
The main concern over rates is the impact on mortgage rates, and thus home purchases. If the Fed raises the target range for the federal funds rate from its current 0.0%-0.25%, the arguement goes, then mortgage rates go up and less people will buy homes. This is true, but not necessarily a bad thing. Many blame the whole housing bubble on Greenspan keeping rates low for so long, letting many people who shouldn't own homes get into them cheaply. Higher mortgage rates could slow recovery, but we face some risk in keeping rates low.

The real problem with low fed rate now, as I see it, is the effect on financial markets. With low rates, the yields that banks make on lending is also low. So, not only are banks reluctant to take on too much risk right now (for good reason), but they also don't have much financial incentive to do so. If the statement had hinted at the possiblity of raising rates even as soon as the first quarter of 2010 this would have gone a long way in getting money flowing again, inspiring banks to lend, helping businesses make the investments they should be making in this downturn.

I certainly agree with the inflation statement:
With substantial resource slack likely to continue to dampen cost pressures and with longer-term inflation expectations stable, the Committee expects that inflation will remain subdued for some time.
When prices are dropping there is little need to raise rates to slow down anything. I would have liked, and it seems like the market would have liked, a stronger hint as to when and how the Fed will reign in all of its liquidity programs and begin to inch up interest rates. It also would have helped people to believe that a real recovery is taking place.

Those Afternoons: An Excerpt

The following is an excerpt from my short story "Those Afternoons":

The letter was stashed between a repair manual for the 1968-1976 Dodge Duster and another for the 1986-1987 Ford Taurus which leaned against one another on a shelf over his workbench. Harrison knew it was there as he walked out the side door of this house towards the garage. He had known it was there while he sat at the table eating grapefruit with his wife earlier that morning. He had known it was there the night before when he lay next to his wife in bed. He knew it was there since he put it there yesterday.

The letter came in the mail on Saturday. Harrison was working in his garage, sitting on a stool, trying to fix the fast idle cam on a carburetor when the mailman passed. He was glad to quit struggling with the thing and get the mail. He was in his late forties but already his hands felt blunted and shaky and looked perpetually swollen, calloused and dirty. Too much of his life had been spent underneath hoods trying to loosen rusted bolts that hid out of sight and nearly out of reach. His hands and back paid the price for that labor.

The telephone bill, the utility bill, two credit card applications, a new JC Whitney catalog and the letter. He recognized the handwriting immediately. Thirty years hadn’t changed it much since he’d first seen it, the words to “Rebel Rebel” written on the cover of a spiral notebook. But he hadn’t heard from Randy in many years. It wasn’t just the author of the letter, though, that made him hide it. It was the local return address.

Instead of walking the mail straight inside and using it as an excuse to have a Dr. Pepper and check the news from his recliner, he went back to his garage, a detached one-car unit that still had the old door that swung up flat in one piece, without the aid of an opener, the same garage where he’d worked with his father and his own son after that. He slid the letter between the soiled books without opening it.

Sunday morning he had patiently spooned bits of his grapefruit into his mouth while he looked over the classifieds, looking as he had for years for cars in need of repair that were going cheap, cars that he might turn around for a profit after a couple months’ worth of weekends spent working on them. And the whole while he could think about nothing but the letter, about what could have precipitated it, about what Randy could have to say to him now, after all this time.

Of the letter he said not a thing to his wife. She sat across from him, clipping coupons for her trip to the grocery that would follow church. Grace believed that going to church made her a better person. Not that God would look kindly on her, but the sermons and hymns served as a reminder of how to live a decent and moral life. Harrison had long ago wormed his way out of this duty, after his son, Jake, became too old for Sunday school. He was awkward in social situations and all the hand-shaking and niceties didn’t suit him. Grace seemed grateful for the ease of going alone, and Harrison was glad to have the house to himself, if only for a few hours. Usually he spent that time as he would have had she been home: in the garage.

This Is What He Does: An Excerpt

The following is an excerpt for my short story "This Is What He Does":

Mitch stands in his bathrobe, staring out the living room window. Among the drooping arms of the fir trees dusk is gathering. There it is. The movement of something slipping stealthily between them in the corner of his eyes each time he blinks. The movement of some thing that his eyes will not catch.

The dusk creeps in for hours around this house, seated in a steep Colorado ravine that allows only a small respite from shadow each day, only a brief period of sunlight. Darkness grows from under the savage armed trees and slowly, nearly invisibly slides its way across the lawn until it envelopes the house.

He knows the smoke of darkness that blots out the world outside also surrounds him in the house. If he turns his eyes from their scanning of the yard, he will notice that he cannot see the wall behind him. No wood-paneled wall, no green worn couch begging to be replaced. Just a black void.

She should be home soon. Her lights will cut the darkness, stab through the trees, long shadows arcing over the grass. Unless. The drive from Denver is long, over chaotic freeways and winding foothill roads. She faces many dangers. Is it not a miracle that she makes it home everyday? A car might brake too quickly, a truck slide into her lane, her eyes wander from the road and her car be sent into the creek that chases the road leading to their house. Maybe she is there now, headlights beneath the surface of the water, a deep wound on her head. While he stands here.

The dark is breathing on the back of his neck when her headlights splash light suddenly into the room. He turns to find the kitchen, where she would enter. She cannot find him paralyzed in the living room. Reaching a hand where he cannot see, he finds the switch. In a moment of bravery, something against which he must draw his breath, steel himself, he flips the switch. He scans the room quickly for anything out of place, anything unexpected, unwanted. It is an act of daring, each door opened, each room suddenly illuminated, because he expects something. What, he doesn’t know. A monster, a dead body, maybe a burglar. Something sinister is waiting for him. Everwhere.

Joslyn enters to find Mitch at the kitchen table, seated before a glass, and she holds her breath. She cannot say a word to him yet. Still in his bathrobe, the man has not left the house today. Barely left since the day he lost his job. She’s tried not to be hostile with him, though she’s not sure why. That is most certainly what she wants, to scream in his face, to curse at him. But she doesn’t do this. No. She is reserved. She knows that her hostility towards him will find other outlets. And there is the possibility that he is not doing this on purpose. But, if he had any will, he could beat whatever paralysis he faced. To Josyln everything is a challenge, something to be sorted out, overcome, or conquered.

Nearly six months prior, on a night such as this, he had waited at the kitchen table for her to come home. He had no real explanation, stumbling over it.

“And you didn’t know this was coming?”

“No.” He looked pathetic. “Not really.”

“Restructuring?”

“That’s what they said.”

“You’ll get a good recommendation?”

“I assume.” The lights in the kitchen are bright and the windows only splash the fluorescent light back at them.

She wasn’t looking at him, staring instead at the intersection of wall and ceiling, sorting it out. “Contacts. You have contacts? Somebody you can call for other recommendations, or another job?”

“I suppose.” He obviously had not thought yet about another job.

Resting: An Excerpt

The following is an excerpt of my short story "Resting":

Brookforest was a low, sprawling facility that from the sky probably looked much like a smashed spider. The complex bore the traces of twenty-plus years under the Nebraska sun and storms and the neglect that reflected that familial neglect of those interred within.

Tracy’s stomach tightened each time she approached with the same tightness she remembered from the one time she had instigated an exercise regime that left her sore and sorry for herself. Coming up on Brookforest with Les made her feel worse. Surely he would think that she had just written her mother off and put her away for others to care for the way housekeepers care for the rooms of a highway motel.

Les, for his part, seemed as eager and interested as he did in any aspect of her life. He sat in the cab of her truck, his hands clenched, one around the other, betraying a nervousness. It had been his idea to meet her mother. He said that if they were starting an honest relationship than he had better meet her mother. Tracy had wanted to explain to him that what they had was an adult relationship that was not in any traditional way “honest.” She was concerned, though, that his real goal might be to size up their future, by seeing what she was likely to become, before getting in too deep.

They were only a few weeks into this relationship and she would take her chances. It had started, out of character for her, somewhat impulsively.

Like any other day, Tracy had steered the pick-up into the rest stop, with the AC blasting and the AM radio yammering about a harvest day festival at the county fairgrounds. She spun the wheel of her truck easily into a parking spot with one hand, while the other touched the sun-warmed saddle blanket seat cover and the blue workpants covering her thigh. First stop of the day and it was already hot.

To Tracy calling them rest stops didn't fit. While some resting took place, the half-acre that hugged the side of the interstate was mostly used for the bathrooms. Linking relieving one's self with resting didn't make much sense to her. Because she was employed to maintain rest stops, Tracy was more concerned with dirty diapers dropped in the parking lot and graffiti written in the stalls than the terminology.

The two rest stops on Nebraska's I-80 where she spent her days were so alike that she could forget whether she was on the eastbound or westbound side. The line of wind-whipped trees surrounding the area, and the others dispersed among picnic areas did little to stop the heat from collecting in the concrete and radiating back to her as she started a patrol of garbage cans. Tracy leaned her arms across the sides of the plastic trash bin she pushed along, the casters chugging uncomfortably against the concrete. Her eyes went momentarily to the three tractor-trailers parked in the far lot. Outside the shelter of the air-conditioned cab of the utility pick-up she drove, she began to sweat quickly. Beads rolled down her forehead, out of the short but thick and curly hair. The heat, though, did something positive to her. Because of her stocky shape, the heat gathered in her quickly, but it didn't overwhelm her. It radiated from her inside, out through her skin, making her aware of all the parts of her body. It began in her soft belly, her sides, her thighs, warming her center. The heat made her feel alive.

Long Live the "Difficult" Novel

I have read some difficult novels in my time. And I have read some page-turners. I've even read some literary page turners. But let's not think for a moment that the literary novel is dead.

Lev Grossman, in his Sunday article in the Wall Street Journal, "Good Books Don't Have to Be Hard," is under the serious misunderstanding that someone was forcing him to read hard books. He was apparently forced to shun commercialism, and he lumps us all in there, stating, "We crave such entertainments, but we despise them." This dichotomy between commercial and literary fiction has always been false. Indeed, there are the James Pattersons churning out book after book, but those books serve a purpose. And while I'm not going to like them, I don't despise them, or shame others for enjoying them. There are million shades of grey between black and white, though. Many of the book club books, books that are literary but sell like commercial fiction, are these page turners, these more accessible novels that Grossman think are just now returning.

I'm glad that Grossman's conscious has released him to read books with plot, but lets not "blame the Modernists." I agree with his assessment that "the Modernists broke the clear straight lines of causality and perception and chronological sequence, to make them look more like life as it's actually lived." And we should thank them for it, but the novel has moved on since Joyce and Woolf, and even Faulkner and Hemingway. But then he drags Cormac McCarthy into it. Neither No Country for Old Men nor The Road are anywhere close to a conventional model. I think some might call them downright hard, not to mention depressing. I don't think anyone could call McCarthy's fiction "a literature of pleasure."

"Should we still be writing difficult novels? Isn't it time we made our peace with plot?" Grossman asks. When novels are overrun by plot or simply difficult to be difficult, they fail and I'm not going to like them. The time for so-called difficult novels has not passed. There is no "revolution...from the supermarket racks." There is still place in this world for books by Denis Johnson, Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, and Richard Ford. These are writers of books that are not driven by plot, but also not entirely commercially palatable. And I will take these books any day over something out of the mass-market factories. Call me me an "elite" if you wish, Mr. Grossman, but I'll take lyricism over simple "suspense and humor and pacing." You can have the novel that "entertains;" I'll take the one that moves me.

Barnes County: An Excerpt

The following is an excerpt from the novel I finished revising last summer and will one day get around to submitting to agents.

Terry Stegman did not know that she was about to die. Her heart did pound in her chest harder than she wanted to admit. It was surely due to the speed at which her cruiser traveled the narrow gravel road, gliding just on the surface of the stones. If any animals, a thin little whitetail, a possum, a mangy dog, dared to step into the road they would die. She could not swerve for fear of her own safety. Or, if another vehicle approached from the other direction, just over the next blind hill, the outcome was certain. This danger elevated her heart rate, but it was also likely due to the images of two dead bodies that flashed in her mind.

Terry, Deputy Stegman when she donned the tan uniform, had worked for the Sheriff’s Department for more than ten years and had many occasions to see the dead. Auto accidents were common on the winding black-top highways of Barnes County, Missouri. Elderly who had died alone at home. Farm accidents, men gored by bulls. She had never been early on the scene of a double murder. A young couple, meth-addicts most likely but a young couple just the same, each shot several times and apparently beaten as well. It did not horrify her, nor did it really sadden her. She had her own experience with the sadness of death for perspective. It was the violence of it that left her feeling a little stunned. And here she was, speeding these back roads to the home of the suspect.

At least Bill was right behind her. County Sheriff for what must be twenty years, he had saved her, given her purpose after her husband’s death. He had leaned his long arms across the cattle gate and told her that her sense of justice would make her a natural.

“What makes you say that?” She was lining a trough with sweet grain.

“You want to set things right. You always knew how to keep Bob from going too far.”

“He knew how to conduct business.”

“A powerful man can lose sight of right and wrong. I expect he had some help keeping hold of how things should be done.”

On Sunday mornings Terry and Bob used to have breakfast at a place called Lou’s in the nearest town, the nearest thing that amounted to more than a dot on a map or the crossing of two state highways. It had been a time they set aside to be together, away from the responsibility of the farm, the phone calls from Bob’s lawyer or various realtors. All of that could wait.

They could have been going to church. They probably should have. Around every corner there seemed to be tucked a little white Baptist church, so many in fact that no one likely knew that there wasn’t a one that they’d set a foot in since the day they were married. Asking someone what church they went to was a common question when getting to know someone, right up there with ‘Do you think we’re gonna get some rain?’ A question by itself that irritated Terry because they’d next ask when you thought the rain’d let up. She’d usually answer the church question by saying she’d go to any church that had a preacher worth her respect. To the other question she’d say ‘eventually.’

So It Starts: The first term of the second year of the EMBA program

Thursday I received my box of materials for the next term of the Executive MBA program. One of the luxuries of such a program is that they take care of the books. No waiting in lines. One day before the term starts, there's your books, a couple of binders full of syllabi, assignments, readings, Harvard cases. Of course now I know what's due for that first day of class, so I've got that hanging over me.

One of the peeves I have, after taking many, many classes, is how poorly put together the syllabi are for these classes. They need to teach these professors a class on how to prepare them, or at lease standardize them. Every term it's a big exercise to sort out what each professor means, how things are graded, what's due when, and the like. This is an executive program, full of overachievers, working full-time and trying to get the most out of this that they can. To not have the answer to every question laid out before them gets them (and me) a little anxious.

So, now it starts. The late nights, the heavy workload, the group work, the feeling that every minute should be spent doing something valuable and productive. This term it's "Interpreting the Economic Environment" which translates to Macroeconomics. I'm excited for this one, though I know it's not going to be that easy. I'm sure I'll like it more than others in my class. And the textbook is written by Paul Samuelson, so I'll have to give a lot of credit to what it says. And there's "Managing People in a Global Environment" which is really just human resources class. And the professor for the class also wrote the text for the class.

For now, grab every last second of summer, wrap up all those half-finished projects, clear the desk, and get ready to work

Beware "Grim" Retail Sales Data

It's bad. But it's not that bad. The Commerce Department reported yesterday that retail sales fell 0.1% last month. The figure was a surprise to some because it follows two positive months, and the "cash for clunkers" thing along with a looming recovery were expected to lift sales more. Then when you strip sales of autos and parts, sales dropped 0.6%. This figure should not be surprising given the level of discounting retailers are doing, and the general reluctance by consumers to spend.

Though the WSJ pushes this as "grim data," it is a story about the past, not the future. Beware the negative feedback loop. If a slower sales figure makes us disbelieve a recovery is around the corner, and thus we spend less, then sales will decline again. Consumer spending and consumer confidence will some of the last figures to rise in any recovery. Unemployment will continue to go up though GDP may improve and that will be enough to make people reluctant to spend. There's enough information to say that some segments of the economy may improve quickly, but it would be foolish to bet on a quick recovery. That may be so, but let's not make things worse by getting gloomy over figures that aren't as bad as they seem.

The Meaning and Impact of Cash for Clunkers

With an additional $2 billion being poured into the Cash for Clunkers program, it is easy to define the program as a success. Never mind the fact that there was no foresight into the extent of the demand that depleted the the program's funds in ten days. Even if the program is, on its face, a success, there are plenty of questions about its effect and just what the success might signify.

To me, the number of people who were willing, despite questionable economic times and mounting job losses, to purchase a new car implies a large amount of pent-up demand. People have been holding off purchases because of economic conditions, because of fear, and not necessarily because they can't afford the purchase. Indeed, they are only waiting for signs of stabilization and some strong incentives. Certainly the incentives help, but if there is this much pent-up demand for some thing as expensive as cars, then the demand for other goods is likely to be pretty high. This is a sign to me that recovery could be swift.

Some have said that all the program has done is to pull in sales that would have normally occurred in the next couple of months. And, sure, there is some of that. I think it's more likely that these are sales that should have happened over the last several months. We'll not get back to the normal pace of auto sales for some time, but there are obviously people out there who want to buy cars. With the right incentives, including lower prices, people may again start buying cars and other things like computers or appliances.

Auto dealers have reasons to be happy and sad about cash for clunkers. Without a doubt it is a good thing to have people thinking about buying cars again, even if they don't do it now. Anything that puts buyers on the lot is a good for business. Low inventories because of producer plant shut downs and bankruptcies, may cause some difficulties but it is better than having the opposite problem. It's the back lot at the dealers' that may be the issue. But even if they have the responsibility to disable and scrap these clunkers, it only makes the other used cars on their lots more valuable. They'll find reasons to complain, but the auto dealers (despite the many difficulties of the last several months) have reasons to be happy.

Auto mechanics are also complaining about the program, because people have begun trading in their cars instead of taking them in for repair. I think, though, that taking 200,000 old cars off the road is not likely to have a great impact on the total number of cars rolling into the garage.

What bothers me, as a car guy at heart, is all of the car parts that won't be reused. I've been that guy scouring scrap yards looking for a replacement alternator, radiator, or taillight. I've also known enough people who restore cars and have spent a great deal of energy searching for that elusive part. Now, I doubt that in another twenty years there will be many people looking for a particular piece of chrome on a 1992 F150 or Grand Cherokee, but for every clunker we happily remove from the road a car-ful of useful parts is wasted.

Enough with the Hiatus

Seems like I the took a pretty serious break this summer. Certainly I was well overworked by the first year of the MBA program, and a break was well deserved. And then there was a baby that came right in the middle of everything. Plus I had a family reunion to organize. I did manage to read a slew of books. Those are all things worth doing and kept me very occupied so far this summer, but all the other things I intended to do remain not done.

So it's time to get back on the plan. I'll be writing about business and economics, with the personal essay and book review thrown in. The goal is to give myself strong enough deadlines so that I get something done and we don't go months--let alone weeks--without a post.

Let's see if I can live up to my own expectations.

Book Review: Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust by John Fante

I took a break from reading a 600+ page collection of Cheever stories to read John Fante's Ask the Dust. I'd heard the book mentioned many times without any real idea of what it might be like, but when I settled into it, I couldn't put it down.

The novel is, in so many ways, like things I've read before. We have the poor, destitute young writer, struggling to feed himself and occupy his time when he is not writing. And, as we know, there is a lot of time spent not writing. It was reminiscent to me of a time so far in my past, so removed from my current existence, that it is hard to believe that was how I lived. There were certainly times like these for me, when I was out of work, writing a lot, and spending a lot of time just wandering. Sometimes the wandering led me to the library; when it didn't it led to trouble.

Of course, Fante's Bandini, the novel's protagonist, wanders into trouble. Not just trouble, women trouble. A waitress, no less. It is easy to fall for them. Bandini is searching for something. Fame as a writer for sure, but something else, and he is willing to follow or chase his waitress, Camila, to find it. The trouble is that she doesn't like him, and worse, he doesn't like her. Bandini is so blatantly racist and misogynist and so hostile about it, yet Fante gives s not real motivation for this. I'll believe the best. I see how others could think that the lack of justification for Bandini's actions could mean that Fante doesn't believe they require justification. That he believes these actions are acceptable. I'll have faith that Bandini's lack of experience with women and his sense of vulnerability lead him to treat Camilla, and the other women he meets, so poorly.

What you would never guess about this novel is that it takes place in the 1930's, that it was written in that era. It could easily be in the Los Angeles of the 1970's or even last year. The surroundings and circumstances would not change in any other decade. The only thing that gives it away is the discussion of marijuana as something new (that, and the use of the term"hophead").

Ask the Dust is a tremendous book. I rarely can find the time to finish a book in one day, but this book motivated me to keep reading. The book has its faults, though, that will keep it from raking too high on my list. Bandini is so self-centered, self-absorbed, subject to flourishes that add or reveal nothing, that it is hard to like him, hard to care about him. The novel, just maybe, lacked a level of depth that would have made it more profound and simply a better book. And, I liked it nonetheless.

New Standards for Executive Pay

Many people will be lodging complaints about the Obama administration's meddling in the affairs of private companies by imposing controls on CEO pay at firms that have received TARP funds. I'm with those who say that the White House should not be involved in controlling how companies choose to compensate executives. Those companies who have taken TARP funds or bailout money have sacrificed their independence, though, and we should all be concerned about how the heads of these companies are being paid. Does it make sense to have a company that has essentially failed, made bad choices, giving excessive pay to the CEO who was in charge? Shouldn't their be a downside for these guys when they screw up?

The trouble with executive compensation derives from perverse incentives. My beef is with earnings per share. Barely "beating the street" is game companies continue to play. And it works. The street doesn't always care that beating current analysts' estimates might not be best in the long run. Compensating executives on continued earnings or stock growth can lead to short-cutting the company's long-term objectives. But this is only part of the problem. Compensating with stock options often leads management to, again, manage the stock price (or properly manage the street's expectations) and neglect the true well-being of the company.

The real problem, as I see it, is that there is little downside risk to executives. Maybe boards can argue that with enough upside, anything else is downside. We've seen enough companies fail in the last year and executives from those companies walk away with huge packages, that I'm can hardly believe that there is shared risk. A CEO's well-being should depend on the company's well-being. And not just for the current quarter. A pay scheme that allows for a measure of future performance might help align interests. It is easy to believe that some of the drastic job cuts we've seen have been out of management's need to cut costs today, to preserve today's earnings, without regard for the health of the company a year from now. Cutting mid-management professionals, those next-generation executives, will prove to have been a mistake for many companies.

We may object to a government's hand in private industry, but the Obama administration has an opportunity to set standards, essentially guidelines for boards in constructing compensation packages. If they can avoid overreach, they can establish compensation packages that are fair to CEO's and shareholders, and give boards the cover they need to reign in escalating executive pay.

Sacrificing Personal Space for Books

Returning back to the library book sale on Sunday, bag day, I came away with some good finds despite crowds. You absolutely have to forego any sense of personal space to do this. The good news is that I don't think I'm competing with too many people on the books I'm looking for, and the professionals were mostly absent this time.

Two heavy bags of books, in no particular order...

Giliead - Marilynne Robinson
Brazil - John Updike
The Good Wife - Stuart O'Nan
Son of the Morning - Joyce Carol Oates
Everyman - Philip Roth
Gertude and Claudius - John Updike
The Ghost Writer - Philip Roth
Veronica - Mary Gaitskill
The Coup - John Updike
Competitive Advantage - Michael Porter
An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England - Brock Clarke
Ten Days in the Hills - Jane Smiley
Haunted - Joyce Carol Oates
An Unfinished Life - Mark Spragg
The Keep - Jennifer Egan
Moo - Jane Smiley
Faithless - Joyce Carol Oates
In the Night Season - Richard Bausch
A Thousand Acres - Jane Smiley
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
The Fortress of Solitiude - Jonathan Lethem
The Story of Lucy Gault - William Trevor
The Feast of Love - Charles Baxter
Plainsong - Kent Haruf
On With the Story - John Barth
A Random Walk Down Wall Street - Burton Malkiel
The Poorhouse Fair - John Updike
Pigeon Feathers - John Updike
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
The Nick Adams Stories - Ernest Hemingway
The Good Soldier - Ford Madox Ford
Too Far To Go - John Updike
The Art of Reading the Novel - Philip Freund
The Quiet American - Graham Greene
Sweet Thursday - John Steinbeck
Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
A Separate Peace - John Knowles
The Amityville Horror - Jan Anson

A White Farmhouse - An Excerpt

"Here." Paul pulled the tiles from his tray and carefully laid them out on the board. First the C, then O, D already there from her word dread, and then the Y on the triple word score. He looked to the concrete apartment ceiling to begin adding the score in his head.

"Cody?" Ann cocked her head.

"I thought we said names were okay. You know, Buffalo Bill?"

"Or, Cody, Wyoming?"

"Ha." He shook his head. "Or like that." He paused purposefully. "Forty-two points." He was content in believing that he might win for once.

She calmly added his score then looked at her own tiles. The board was now crowded with words, leaving few options.

"Do you think much about that trip?" He had thought about withholding his question, but for the wine.

"I really try not to."

"I guess I don't think about it much. I mean, I did. Sometimes, when I get sick, I remember."

"It makes me sick to remember." She didn't look at him.

"It's really…."

"It's strange," Ann finally took her eyes off her tiles to look at Paul. "No, it’s just wrong that things like that can happen."

"If I hadn't been sick."

"If I'd have just told you to suck it up." She was not smiling.

"But you're so damn sweet. Here we are in a strange town, and I eat something bad—"

"You didn't. It was from being in the car for nine hours."

"And you decide to go out and get me something."

"I could have—I should've just stayed and listen to you moan."

"Probably so."

Paul watched Ann as she went back to studying her tiles, gently clicking them together as she struggled to form words. It was about twenty-five years ago and he didn't think of it much, but when he did a world of things came flooding back. After this time it wasn't a thing to be contemplated; it was a part of the fabric, the rebar in the concrete ceiling. Questions, or rather suspicions remained for Paul. He poured the last of their bottle of wine into their two glasses, cradled his in his two hands and leaned back in his chair, surveying the room, and thinking about how much things had changed since that summer trip. Or because of it. They now sat together at their small dining room table situated behind their couch in the large living room. Bookcases filled with books, pictures, and various artifacts of their life together lined one wall. Windows made up the wall in front of the couch, overlooking Cheesman Park and Denver's skyline. Paul had never really thought he would end up in the city. He always imagined himself moving back to the country, from where his parents had ripped him when he was a youth, transplanting him to this squalid city. Instead, he had stayed, not by force, but not by will, and lived a city life. The city is good place for a young adult, first on his own, but in the back of Paul's mind he had always held a vivid image of his future.

Tomorrow's Never There - An Excerpt

The letter was stashed between a repair manual for the 1968-1976 Dodge Duster and another for the 1986-1987 Ford Taurus leaning against one another on a shelf over his workbench. Harrison knew it was there as he walked out the side door of this house towards the garage. He had known it was there while he sat at the table eating grapefruit with his wife earlier that morning. He had known it was there the night before when he lay next to his wife in bed. He knew it was there since he put it there yesterday.

The letter came in the mail on Saturday. Harrison was working in his garage, sitting on a stool, trying to fix the fast idle cam on a carburetor when the mailman passed. He was glad to quit struggling with the thing and get the mail. He was in his late forties but already his hands felt blunted and shaky and looked perpetually swollen, calloused and dirty. Too much of his life had been spent underneath hoods trying to loosen rusted bolts that hid out of sight and nearly out of reach. His hands and back paid the price for that labor.

The telephone bill, the utility bill, two credit card applications, a new JC Whitney catalog and the letter. He recognized the handwriting immediately. Thirty years hadn’t changed it much since he’d first seen it, the words to “Rebel Rebel” written on the cover of a spiral notebook. But he hadn’t heard from Randy in probably a year, and certainly had never heard from him by mail. They had probably only talked a couple of times in the last few years. It wasn’t the author of the letter, though, that made him hide it. It was the source. The return address was of a state prison.

Another book sale (darn professionals)

Friday was the opening day of our county library's spring book sale (never mind that it's really summer now). I stood in a line of probably a hundred people, waiting for them to open the doors. Once inside, we all scattered to our various corners. I went to what they called "adult fiction."

Now, I like used books as much as any book lover would, but I was not pleased to realize that so many in that line were professionals, booksellers (on eBay or elsewhere) with their little hand-held scanners scanning any book that looked valuable. Not only was stepping over these people a pain, but I can't help but resent that these people are trying to capitalize on this book sale in order to resell the books and make a profit. I'm a good capitalist, too, but a book sale is for book lovers, for those looking for a good find, looking to complete a collection, looking to find new reads. If it were up to me, I'd ban those damn scanners and let make those folks scan the books with their eyes like the rest of us.

Despite this frustration, I came away with a decent haul. And I'm looking forward to going back on Sunday, when they charge by the bag.

Here's part one of the haul:
Ask the Dust - John Fante (I've seen this book come up in many discussions, so I'd better add it to my list)
White Teeth - Zadie Smith (Award winner, right?)
The Confessions of Nat Turner - William Styron (Another one that appears on all "the best" lists)
Delta Wedding - Eudora Welty (It's Welty and I haven't read it, so I'd better)
The Sportswriter - Richard Ford (Probably already have this one)
The Tortilla Curtain - TC Boyle (could've grabbed about a dozen TC Boyle books, so just one this time)
The Easter Parade - Richard Yates (this one's supposed to be more depressing than Revolutionary Road, so it's definitely on my list)
Like Life - Lorrie Moore (short stories by a modern master)
Nausea - Jean-Paul Sartre (my other New Directions edition is so well-worn it's lost its cover)
In Our Time - Ernest Hemingway (Scribners paperback)
Ulysses - James Joyce (classic Vintage paperback)
Hunger - Knut Hamsun (another one it's hard to believe I've never read)
The Trial - Franz Kafka (the cover keeps falling off my other copy--I say that's why I haven't read it yet)
Goodbye, Columbus - Philip Roth (some day I'll have and have read the entire Roth collection)
The Human Stain - Philip Roth (add another one)
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway (another old Scribners paperback)
Winner Take Nothing - Ernest Hemingway (and again)
The Colossus - Sylvia Plath (a 1968 paperback)
Walden - Henry David Thoreau (with a handwritten inscription: Readings in Am. Lit., Denver University, Winter Qr '59)
Built to Last - James Collins and Jerry Porras (the one business book -- I don't really like Jim Collins, but this one's now a business classic)

Book Review: Catch-22

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

This is a book about death. At its best and brilliant, the book is about death. Yes, it's funny at times. And there's the whole catch-22, damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't thing. But, really, it's about death. Witness the following snippet:

Man was matter [...] Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot like other kinds of garbage. The spirit is gone, man is garbage [...] Ripeness was all.

The narrative of Catch-22 has an oddly swirling motion. Events circle around, repeat, expand, and disappear. You wonder if maybe you've read something before, if it has been repeated, or if you are purposefully being made to be confused. One character has deja vu, the others are at best unstable. The climactic scene contained within the book's final pages actually happens, briefly, early on in the storyline. My confusion over all of this is, of course, acerbated because it took me months to read this, only getting through a few pages at a time.

The book, though, is not that good. I give it high marks because, at its core, it is a bit existential and death and violence (in dramatic and humorous forms) permeates the text. The humor was a little lost on me. I like to think that I enjoy absurdity, pure humorous absurdity. What takes place here is pointless, empty absurdity.

The writing itself, does not stand out, unless it is discussing death. In the extended quote below, the books protagonist, Yossarian is considering the way people inside a hospital were safer than those outside:

The didn't explode into blood and clotted matter. They didn't drown or get struck by lightening, mangled by machinery or crushed in landslides. They didn't get shot to death in hold-ups, strangled to death in rapes, stabbed to death in saloons, bludgeoned to death with axes by parents or children, or die summarily by some other act of God. Nobody choked to death. People bled to death like gentlemen in an operating room or expired without comment in an oxygen tent. There was none of that trick now-you-see-me-now-you-don't business so much in vogue outside the hospital, none of that now-I-am-now-I-ain't. There were no famines or floods. Children didn't suffocate in cradles or iceboxes or fall under trucks. No one was beaten to death. People didn't stick their heads into ovens with the gas on, jump in front of subway trains or come plummeting like dead weights out of hotel windows with a woosh!, accelerating at the rate of thirty-two feel per second to land with a hideous plop! on the sidewalk and die disgustingly there in public like a paca sack full of hairy strawberry ice cream, bleeding, pink toes awry.

The paragraph, speeds, itself accelerating towards the vivid imagery that, again, hints at something that will reappear much later in the book.

I can knock another one of those "great books" off my list, now, but I'm happy to have read it. I sometimes found myself astounded by what I read, and at other times I wondered about the point of it all.

With whom do you "share" your home?

The Wall Street Journal article this morning on the apparent suicide of Freddie Mac's CFO begins with the following statement:

Authorities recovered the body Wednesday of Freddie Mac's acting chief financial officer after an apparent suicide in the home he shared with his wife and young daughter.

Later, the article states:

Fairfax County police, responding to a 911 call at 4:48 a.m., found Mr. Kellermann's body in the basement of the home he shared with his wife, Donna, and 6-year-old daughter, Grace, in the Hunter Mill Estates subdivision in a Washington, D.C., suburb.

What is this "shared" nonsense? I've shared places with roommates; I live in this house with my family.

I know it's a sad and possible sordid story here, but this "sharing" thing really jumped out at me. It makes it sound like he was sleeping on the couch or in the guest room or something.

Going Public

I am not a good friend. I am not good at staying in touch. In some ways the people of my past stay fixed in that past. They exist for me as only memories of that era. I rarely bring those people forward with me. This is one of the reasons the whole idea of Facebook, of going public, makes me a little nervous.

In some ways I think I'm afraid of worlds colliding. The man I am today doesn't necessarily jive with who I have been in the past. Maybe I'm embarrassed now of who I once was, or maybe I'm embarrassed of who I am now from the perspective of who I once was.

I am 'the man' now. I work a 9-to-5, I'm married, and I have kids. Heck, I even live in the suburbs. I'm not the rebel I once was, sure, but I'm not nearly as miserable as I used to be. In fact, I am quite happy.

There are risks in reconnecting, but it is not like I've been in hiding. I've been writing a blog for something like four years. A Google search will find me pretty quickly. Actually reaching out to people, as Facebook creatively requires, risks bringing up all of those things from the past, all of those traumas and dramas. There is a lot in my past that I'd rather not revisit, no matter how I feel about the people involved.

Who I am today, though, is a result of all that happened before. I may now be an MBA candidate, but I also have an MFA in Creative Writing. I may have a good job in corporate finance, but I also finished writing a novel (still unpublished and not even yet submitted) last summer. I may spend what little free time I have playing with my children, but I also spent years drinking too much and playing in bands. I may be happily married now, but I spent years either pining or having my heart broken by women.

I am venturing forward into a strange virtual world of social networking and at the same time I am venturing into my own past, opening up boxes that had been closed and tucked away. Maybe now, today, I can be a good friend--at least, virtually.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Damon-Garr/1590769401

Why I Don't Care about AIG: Outrage and Indifference

We live in hyperbolic times. Extreme reactions are the mode of the day. Everything is the "worst." Everyone has something to be angry about. Me? I couldn't care less.

This whole AIG mess is a disappointment, but it has been since Day One. In some ways it's like watching a friend with a drinking problem get himself into trouble again. Maybe you could be upset about it the first time something similar happened, but when you find out that he's used the money you lent him to buy more booze, you should not be surprised. Or outraged.

Who should I be angry with? AIG and the poor sap the government (we) put in charge? The government officials who "didn't realize" that they had bonuses to pay out? The derivative traders who took the irrational risks in the first place and got us into this whole mess? The new administration who wasn't even in place when we wrote the company the first check? Or Chris Dodd or Barney Frank?

None of them. I can't bring myself to be mad at any of them. Maybe it's because I have other things to worry about. Maybe because I think there are more fundamental problems with our economy than AIG paying out retention bonuses with our money. I now think we should never have got involved. Though there are problems in that.

The question in my mind is How big is too big to fail? Letting Lehman Bros go under spooked the market and we haven't yet recovered (I blame Hank Paulson for this--he, ex-Goldman Sachs, seemed happy to help out his friends, but when someone he didn't like was in trouble, he said "screw 'em"). So maybe letting AIG, who is responsible for insuring a lot of the debt out there, go under would be a bad idea. And I'll definitely agree that there's moral hazard in all of this. It leads to irrational risk taking. If I keep bailing my drunk friend out of jail, when does he ever learn to shape up?

Couldn't we have said that AIG was too big? Couldn't we have forced them to sell off or just dissolve the division that had put them in this position? Why just say, here you go, here's a big check, and in exchange we'll take a stake in this mess of a company?

But we haven't learned the 'too big to fail' lesson yet. When Merrill got into trouble, we pushed Bank of America into taking them, making them bigger in the process. I understood the theory for all of the bail outs at the time, but I'm ready for a little creative destruction. We have a banking and investment system that is all screwed up. They're all tangled up and twisted around, with no one paying for the risks they've taken.

And sure I could be mad at CNBC and all the cheerleaders telling us to buy and buy, all the people saying the market was going up so things must be great, the economy is strong while out in the real world things were turning sour. The media issue is separate. There should be no mistaking that CNBC or the Wall Street Journal is on the side of business. That's your mistake if you thought otherwise.

Really, I'm disappointed. One would have thought that someone would have realized earlier that using lent money to pay huge bonuses was not a good idea. One would have thought that taking a majority stake or any large stake would have given us a seat at the table. One would have thought that the government officials and legislators would have had the best interest of all of us in mind. One would have thought that there were people around who were smart enough to figure out how to get us out of this mess. One would have thought we'd have known better to believe any of this was true. I'm disappointed--with us.

Mass. Wal-Mart customer finds teeth in wallet

Mass. Wal-Mart customer finds teeth in wallet

FALMOUTH, Mass. – A customer shopping at a Wal-Mart for a wallet claims he found something that definitely didn't fit the bill: human teeth. Police say the man found 10 human teeth Saturday when he unzipped a compartment in the wallet. One tooth had a filling.
The customer turned the wallet and the teeth over to employees at the Falmouth store but left without giving his name.
Police investigating the incident told The Cape Cod Times that the teeth belong to an adult, but since there was no blood or gum tissue on the teeth, they would be unable to perform DNA tests.
A Walmart spokeswoman said the company believes it was an "isolated incident," but will investigate.

Mmmm...okay?

Cheever in the WSJ

As you can tell, I read just about nothing besides the Wall Street Journal these days. Blame it on working too hard and studying too much. Trying to stay up to day takes up what little I have left. Nevertheless, I read a good article today made me want to read. I'm really read... fiction.

David Propson, editor of The Week, uses the publication of The Library of America John Cheever complete novels and collected stories and a new biography as an occasion to revisit Cheever. My own reading of Cheever has been limited, though the big Pulitzer-prize-winning short story collection sits on my shelf and on my reading list. From my suburban perch, the article makes Cheever's study of suburbia sound like something I ought to be reading.

His subjects were the hung-over train commuter, the pill-popping analysand, the indefatigable bed-hopper. Their habitat was the pretty suburban house, the swimming pool, the cocktail party and the bomb shelter -- a habitat only recently erected atop the bucolic land that Cheever adored. They purchased groceries to the strains of Muzak Mozart and ate fast food from "Smorgorama and Giganticburger stands."
...
Cheever's suburbanites aren't stuffed-shirt fogies but shallow hedonists who refuse to grow up. Marriage, far from being a repressive institution, is a sprawling and unpredictable terrain. The extramarital affairs of his male protagonists end in catastrophe, or simply end. Conformity sometimes seems to be the threat, but quite as often it's just one of two evils. People's own unruly natures endanger their happiness, just as weeds creep up the lawn. His characters sense the precariousness of the civilization they've cobbled together and cling to it all the more.

Like I said before about Lee Siegel's idea of suburbia, Cheever's is also one that is hardly recognizable today. Gone are the swimming pools and cocktails, replaced instead by beer and kiddie pools. This is middle class suburbia, sprawl, and malls, and Starbuck-ed neuroses. Today's suburbia deserves the same sort of study. And Cheever deserves another read.

The End of the Rocky Mountain News

One Sunday morning, when I was probably 12 or 13 years old, my parents sent me out to buy the Sunday paper. From where we lived in suburban Aurora, Colorado, there were not a lot of options—not a lot of close options—for buying a paper. There were a couple of newspaper machines around, but other than that, your only option was 7-11.

I headed out with my 50 cents on my bike to one of two area 7-11s. The one I was headed to was probably a mile and half away from home. The benefit of this one was that it didn’t involve any major hills. The other was downhill all the way there, but coming home would have been difficult.
I spent a lot of time on my bike as a kid and I was pretty reckless. So, when I came to a stoplight, it didn’t matter much that it was red. As long as it was clear then I was going to go. At one red light I thought it was clear.

I was barely into the intersection when I was struck by a car. I wasn’t hit terribly hard, but there was in the street, myself and my bike half underneath the car, with two old ladies from inside the car standing over me. Why these two old ladies were speeding to church, I don’t know, but I knew that I was in the wrong and my first interest—before even checking for injuries—was fleeing the scene.

The wheels of the bike still turned and no bones protruded from my body, so I was out of there. At the 7-11, I checked myself out. My shoulder hurt, my knee was scraped, and I was pretty sure that I’d hit my head on something. I bought the paper anyway, and headed home maybe a little more carefully—the whole while imagining that I was suffering from broken bones I wasn’t aware of or bleeding in my head that would eventually kill me.

The paper I went out to get that morning: the Rocky Mountain News.

Today, the Rocky Mountain News has issued its last paper. Lord knows it is a hard time for newspapers, but the Rocky was competing in a two-paper town while sharing a Joint Operating Agreement with its competitor. This situation was untenable. The Rocky got the wrong end of the deal and it was probably doomed from the day it signed the agreement.

It was the paper I grew up with. The comics I knew were in the Rocky, not the Denver Post. When I looked for my first job, it was in the help wanted section of the Rocky. It had a comfortable tabloid format, instead of the cumbersome broadsheet format. I didn’t even know that the broadsheet was the standard format for newspapers until I got older.

So, now Denver becomes a one-newspaper town. A single editorial page, a single sports section. It’s a sad day for the loss of a 150-year-old institution, for the loss of choice and a variety of voices. It feels almost like getting hit by a car.

Fiction and the Economic Crisis

So, we're in the middle of a deepening economic crisis, with the Dow losing 45% in the last 15 months, and with around 3 million jobs lost in the last five months. Personally, my own industry is, as an article on the industry stated yesterday, "running off a cliff." While the pain isn't hitting everyone, the economists are scared. The consensus seems to be that we might at least stop the slide downward by year's end, though the job losses will continue to mount in the meantime, making the prospect of a recovery even further in the future. Some think it may well be a decade before we get to the same level of growth we were seeing before this whole crisis hit.

Crisis is always interesting from an artistic perspective. What will the American fiction of the next few years look like? What sort of country will it describe? First, there will be a lot less of it published. With the big publishing houses shuttering divisions, and book stores struggling to keep their doors open, there will be fewer new books. These changes--this crisis--are subjects for another conversation.

The books being written now could very well describe a country in turmoil, lost in a mix of hope and pessimism. Just when things looked up, like the country might be restored and the outlook brighter, greed at every level has driven us to this precipice. And if it's not us falling over that edge, it's the 43,000 workers at GM who will lose their jobs this year, the 10,000 at Boeing. Suddenly, we look at our credit card bills in horror. What was once the normal way of operating now has proved to be incredibly reckless. Our 401(k)s? Don't even look at them. And add a few more years to your planned retirement age. And the mortgage? Even if you're making your payments, knowing that your house has lost 20% of its value makes you question the reasonableness of the purchase.

Thinking about losing your home, though, is as frightening as the prospect of losing your job. Our identities are wrapped up in these things. How lost is a person who has lost either, or both?
How would such a crisis shift his/her perspective? In what way would he overcome?

It is hard to argue against the powerful notion of the American Dream because it is so much a part of our psyche. But we know it fails at times. We know that hard work and the desire for more doesn't save us from ruin. Alternatively, it seems like the country has developed a sense of entitlement. As if we deserve good things to come our way. And if they don't, by God, someone had better step in and make things right. It's at every level. The bank who expects not to suffer when the risks they've been taking have led them to near-collapse. And it's the home buyer who bought well out of his/her price range with a questionable loan who now wants the government to step in and stop the bank from foreclosing.

All of these things are bound to manifest themselves in the fiction we read in the next few years. Maybe these novels will moralize, tells where we went wrong--as if we don't know. Maybe they will offer hope, they will show us an American Spirit that is truer and more noble than the capitalist American Dream. Or maybe they will show a state of ruin in which we will stay and in which we had damn well better find our way, or perish.

Cato protests govt spending in full-page WSJ ad

I suppose it is no surprise that the Cato Institute would oppose government spending. That it would choose to protest government stimulus in a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal, is a little more surprising. What is really worth noting is that they state, "Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth," and then support the statement with a long list of people who support that statement. My question for the Cato Institute: Where are all the Yale and Harvard economists on this issue?

The ad begins with a quote from the President, "There is no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jump start the economy." Then Cato begins their ridiculous disagreement: "With all due respect,Mr.President,that is not true.

Notwithstanding reports that all economists are now Keynesians and that we all support a big increase in the burden of government, we the undersigned do not believe that more government spending is a way to improve economic performance. More government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the United States economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. More government spending did not solve Japan’s “lost decade” in the 1990s. As such, it is a triumph of hope over experience to believe that more government spending will help the U.S. today. To improve the economy, policymakers should focus on reforms that remove impediments to work, saving, investment and production. Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth.

The undersigned include two members of the faculty of my not very prestigious undergraduate alma mater, Metropolitan State College of Denver. Not exactly A-class economists.

Let's look at their arguments. I do think that most economists would agree that the government needs to spend, if no one else will. When things seize up, as they have, the government is the only one with the purse big enough, and the responsibility to move the economy along by spending.

What led to delays in recovery from the Great Depression were attempts to balance the budget which required increased taxation. And Japan's "Lost Decade"? Government inaction was the culprit there. The belief that things would get better without intervention was the problem then, and it is the reason the US government is choosing to act as quickly as possible. Many economists will tell you that if recovery comes swift, it will be in large part because of fed action.

Now, to the belief that tax cuts cure all, we know it's not true. I'd love to shed my "tax burden" as well, but reducing taxes is not going to get us out of this hole. Tax cuts for individuals tend to be saved. How much of last year's stimulus checks actually got spent? And tax cuts for businesses are not going to encourage businesses to hire or increase output when the demand does not exist. It is estimated that every dollar of government infrastructure spending creates $1.59 in GDP growth, while tax cuts generate $1.01. And considering the lack of consumer confidence, expect most of that to be saved.

I tend to support Cato on a lot of issues because of my own libertarian leanings, but we will not find a way out of this problem by telling the government to get out of the way. My question for my Metro State economists, John Cochran and Kishore Kulkarni: What percentage of tax cuts would actually improve economic performance?

R.I.P John Updike

Boys are playing basketball around a telephone pole with a backboard bolted to it. Legs, shouts. The scrape and snap of Keds on loose alley pebbles seems to catapult their voices high into the moist March air blue above the wires. Rabbit Angstrom, coming up the alley in a business suit, stops and watches, though he's twenty-six and six three. So tall, he seems an unlikely rabbit, but the breadth of white face, the pallor of his blue irisies, and a nervous flutter under his brief nose as he stabs a cigarette into his mouth partially explain the nickname, which was given to him when he too was a boy. He stands there thinking, the kids keep coming, they keep crowding you up.

Book Review: All Aunt Hagar's Children

All Aunt Hagar's Childen by Edward P. Jones

This short story collection may have been the only thing I’ve read by Jones, but from this alone I am tempted to rank him among my favorite writers. In a way, his writing reminds me of Alice Munro. He weaves a character’s rich history with a voice that expresses a character’s isolation even among many others. He writes in a language that is comfortable to read, from sentence structure to tone. The characters themselves are rich and varied, even though they often suffer a plight that I could never understand.

I’ve often been intimidated by African-American writing, believing the experiences being described would be entirely alien to me. I’ve come to realize there’s something in the alienation of the African-American experience with which I associate. There is something in it that is similar to Céline. There something existential in all of it.

I’d read “A Rich Man” in, I think, the Best American series, and though the story didn’t necessarily linger and leave me haunted the way some stories have, I knew then that I wanted to read more. Seeing this collection along with Jones’s novel The Known World receive accolades only reinforced that I would need to read Jones. I was not disappointed. It took me a long time to get through because of other obligations, but flipping back through the stories, I’m reminded of their qualities. They are specific and gritty, fantastical and surreal, and all the time heartfelt.

One of the things linking most of the stories is Washington, DC. The city is nearly a character in the stories. It is a place where some long to go, and a place where others have come. Jones describes the city’s streets and neighborhoods, from the time where there was nothing across the Potomac in Virginia but pastures, to the near present. After reading these stories I feel like I know the city better than some of the people I know.

These are good stories. This is a good collection. I’m tempted to rank it right up there with Rock Springs.

Schumpeter and reading fiction

I took time this weekend to actually read some fiction. Sure, I had other things I should have been doing. It’s just been itching in me. I see it in the way I think. I need to move beyond the tangible randomness of numbers, symbols, equations. School is taxing, zaps my mental energy, but it leaves full parts of my brain unexercised. The closest thing to what I was used to through the rest of my schooling was reading Schumpeter. When the professor passed around copied pages of an old text, I felt a warm familiarity. So many previous assignments came in this exact form. And even then the text called for re-reading, pondering, questioning. Things notable absent from my recent studies.

The question in Schumpeter is the notion of creative destruction, the idea that capitalism is a constantly changing form, ever evolving as even great companies need to be destroyed and rebuilt. He argues, like Marx, that capitalism has an inevitable end. He explained, in ways I had not yet seen, that socialism is seen as a replacement for capitalism, its natural successor. And while I see some parts of socialism as a natural evolution from strict capitalism, I now understand why capitalists fight so hard against socialism. It is the antithesis to the form they believe is best. Any move to socialism means a further erosion of capitalism and a step closer to its demise.

Schumpeter doesn’t see capitalism as inherently flawed in the same way as Marx. It just is not static. It changes, requiring the biggest and most formidable capitalist institutions to collapse in order to be rebuilt. Maybe that explains some of what is going on these days. At least reading this reminds me that I’m much more comfortable with theory than I am with calculating aggregate demand curves or with linear regression.

Hot Wheels, fate, and family

One of the best things about being a parent is seeing my own children playing with the same toys I played with as a child. The day I pulled out of the closet the box of Hot Wheels cars I played with as a boy, my children sat with me as we looked at every car. There were ooohs and aaahs, and woo-woo-woo for every one that resembled an ambulance, fire truck or police car.

Looking at each car I remember the sort of characters each had, which ones my brother and I would choose as a representative of ourselves. It was while playing with these cars as a child that I thought about the person I might become. Sometimes I chose the muscle car or race car, sometimes it was the Mercedes or the tractor-trailer. Doing this I thought about whom I might become, what fate might determine for me, what choices I might make that would lead to such a fate.

To now see my children playing with the same cars, the pick-up truck that I still remember taking out of its packaging, the hot rod painted with Testors model paint, the Cadillac ambulance, it really does something to my heart. I wonder what fate they’ll imagine for themselves, and what their future will deliver.