Romantic, Expatriate Paris

I received my first delivered edition of the Wall Street Journal this weekend (don't worry, I traded in frequent flier miles for the subscription) and beyond the usual business news, things I've learned I need to keep up of for work (you know, the real job) there was an excellent article titled Why the Expats Left Paris, by Dinaw Mengestu.


As the title indicates, Mengestu looks at how different Paris is today from the way it was different expatriate waves that took over it's cafes, when American intellectuals and artists could be found on every corner of the left bank. It is the notion of the American expatriates' Paris that has always made the city attractive. Beyond the city's own dandies and intellectuals, from Baudelaire to Sartre, it is the idea that Hemingway and Gertrude Stein are hanging out at one bar, while (in another time) Richard Wright and James Baldwin are at another.


Those times are gone. I went to Paris in 1999 in search of that Paris, looking for the heady cafe conversations, while chasing the history of my favorite Parisians. Even then, while the city remained romantic in my mind, the old Paris was gone. Walking the Champs Elysees should tell anyone that individual Paris, the city with it's own single identity is gone. The big American stores are here, with all the American vulgarity that the expats were looking to leave behind. The article points out that across Germain de Pres from Cafe de Flore and Deux Magots, an American Apparel store, with all its trashy clothes, has set up shop.

While the old expatriates' Paris is gone, the city remains romantic in the minds of many of us, include the article's author:

Unlike many of the writers and Americans who came here before, my reasons for being here are purely selfish and self-absorbed, with nothing and no one to run from. I used to say that I came to Paris because it was so quiet, in large part because at the time I could hardly speak the language. While today that may no longer be as completely true, the city still strikes me as quiet. There's no romantic ideal to be lived out here anymore -- no cafés, readings or events that can't be missed. What remain today are largely ghosts that are easy if not even comforting to live amongst. They had their Paris -- garrulous and crowded with the politics and culture of America -- and now finally, with no one else around, I can have mine.

Franchising Booksellers

I'm always thinking about ways to resurrect/save/reinvigorate the bookselling business. So, when I heard this week about Starbucks' trouble (closing 600 company-owned stores), I begin to wonder about their troubles and translating it to another retail industry


I am one of those hypocrites who complains about the big-box bookstores killing the industry while simultaneously shopping there myself. There's a Barnes & Noble gift card in my wallet right now. There are maybe two main reasons people like us shop at these stories. First is their ubiquitousness. These stores are everywhere. Certainly much closer to me than my nearest (decent) independent bookstore. The second reason we frequent these sorts of places despite our moral qualms is that we know what to expect.

The retail franchise model supports these two explanations, but does something more. It puts the success or failure of the store in the hands of the franchisee. This is why I think it could succeed as new model for bookselling.

The corporate office in the franchise provides branding, which may be the most important element of what they do, but they also offer support. Support is much different than mandates. I'm not sure how much liberty the buyer at the local Borders has, but I'm relatively certain the books they chose to promote, what ends up on the stores displays, in their windows, are directed from some corporate office far, far away. An independent owner/operator, though, would have freedom to respond to his/her individual market, absent of corporate mandates.

Now, since the time my mind crossed this possibility, I've been imagining many different scenarios, many different ways the relationship between franchiser and franchisee could work. I just want to put the thought out there. I know little about the industry in detail, and my knowledge of the franchise set-up comes from my time as a manager at a pizza delivery chain. So, I'm no expert, but maybe someone out there knows more and could help build the business case--or, tell me I'm just wrong.

Happy 4th

Or as we sang last night over a red, white, and blue cupcake with two candles burning in it, "Happy birthday dear America...."

From Anti-establishment to Executive MBA

About fourteen or fifteen years ago, I wrote a journal entry while sitting downtown at The Market on an early workday morning. I, of course, was not going to work. I had dropped off a lady-friend at work. I sat there, drinking my coffee, in the shadows of skyscrapers about the freshly washed sidewalks, watching the day start, watching the gears of commerce begin to turn. I'd been reading Celine and was feeling very anti-establishment. Watching people going to work, the buildings filling with workers, I wrote a journal entry railing against this world. It was all absurd and served no purpose, I wrote at the time. I had no idea then that many years later would find me at the same location in a very different frame of mind.

This Wednesday morning, I was back at The Market, having a coffee. Only this time, I was wearing a suit. I was wearing a suit and killing time waiting for an interview. An interview for admission to an Executive MBA program. So, however many years ago I had felt bad for those part of the large mechanism of capitalism, thinking about how the system had stolen their souls. And then there I was this week, eager to become further entrenched.

I'm not sure if it is simply ironic, if the system has stolen my soul, or if simply says something about evolution.

Sixth human foot found on Canada's Pacific coast

Sixth human foot found on Canada's Pacific coast - USATODAY.com: "VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) — Another human foot was found Wednesday on a British Columbia shoreline, the second this week and the sixth within a year in a bizarre mystery that has confounded police.
Like most of the others, it was a right foot encased in a running shoe, said Sgt. Mike Tresoor of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He said a citizen spotted it on a beach and no other remains were found."

Okay, this just gets weirder all the time. No one knows anything about six missing people? Or six people with missing right feet?

And Another Book Sale

I made it back in time from by camping trip to go to "bag day" of my local library system's book sale, where a bag stuffed full of books costs you $5.00. Coming in on the last day of the sale pretty much guarantees that I missed most of the good books, the recently published books, but "bag day" means I can rationalize picking up books I might ignore if I had to pay more for them.

The trouble is that I have a hard time remembering what's in my own library anymore. There's a good chance that some of these books are already on my shelf. Here's what I brought home anyway:

Tomato Red - Daniel Woodrell
Situations - Jean-Paul Sartre
Rabbit Redux - John Updike
Rabbit at Rest - John Updike
The Road Home - Jim Harrison
Quarantine - Jim Crace
The Plot Against America - Philip Roth
Who Will Run the Frog Hospital - Lorrie Moore
Transmission - Hari Kunzru
Lucky Girls - Nell Freudenberger
A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
(1949 Bantam edition, on the back "Brutal...Terrific...Awesome...and Beautiful!")
Them - Joyce Carol Oates
Sometimes a Great Notion - Ken Kesey
The Reivers - William Faulkner
Grendel - John Gardner
Falconer - John Cheever
First Light - Charles Baxter
Rising from the Plains - John McPhee
Waiting for the Barbarians - JM Coetzee
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
The Sportswriter - Richard Ford
The Western Lands - William S. Burroughs
The Wild Boys - William S. Burroughs
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce
Black Water - Joyce Carol Oates
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Raymond Carver
Best American Essays of the Century - Edited by Joyce Carol Oates
A Manual for Writers - Kate Turabian
South of No North - Charles Bukowski

Book Sale Finds

When travelling, I have a natural tedancy to turn my head when I see signs for bookstores. A sign for a "book sale" will often get me to hit the brakes and swerve across lanes of traffic. This is exactly what happened over the weekend when I found myself in Alamosa, Colorado, in the southern part of the state. At $1.00 for hardbacks, and $.50 for paperbacks, here's what I nabbed:

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead - Tom Stoppard
Fear and Trembling - Kierkegaard
A Lesson Before Dying - Ernest Gaines
Zombie - Joyce Carol Oates
Childwold - Joyce Carol Oates
Absurdistan - Gary Shteyngart
After Dark - Haruki Murakami

The real find of the day, though, was a rare edition of Anna Kavan's Julia and the Bazooka. Made a whole gas-guzzling, rainy, and wind-blown camping trip worthwhile.

Heartbroken man climbs into morgue freezer

Heartbroken man climbs into morgue freezer - Yahoo! News
TAIPEI (Reuters) - A Taiwan man grieving over the death of his girlfriend climbed inside a morgue freezer to be with her and was only pulled out alive half an hour later, media and an official said on Tuesday.

The 41-year-old man was discovered on Monday when workers detected an unusually high temperature in the freezer and realized the hatch was not securely fastened.

"A morgue manager opened the hatch, saw two people lying inside, felt scared enough to yell out and then even cried," the Liberty Times reported. "She didn't stabilize for a long time."

The man took a drug before entering the freezer to speed what appeared to be suicide attempt, local papers said. They said his girlfriend died on Friday from an overdose of sleeping pills.

The morgue would step up security to ensure that family and others who come by to identify bodies do not stay too long, morgue administrator Chang Lung-ching said.

Overheard in a drug ad

"Call your doctor right away if after taking Lunesta you walk, drive, eat or engage in other activities while asleep."
-From an ad for prescription sleep aid Lunesta. Yeah, driving while sleeping might not be a good thing.

Mystery deepens as 4th severed foot found - Yahoo! News

Mystery deepens as 4th severed foot found - Yahoo! News: "VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - Another severed human foot has been discovered washed ashore on Canada's Pacific coast, but police are no closer to solving the gruesome mystery.
The foot, still wearing a shoe, was discovered on Thursday on a small uninhabited island south of Vancouver in the Strait of Georgia, and is the fourth discovered in the region in the past 10 months.
The previous cases all involved right feet still in sneakers, and each was found on a different island.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have not said if the latest discovery was a right or left foot.
DNA testing has failed to link the earlier discoveries to any missing person cases."

The Cure at Red Rocks

Twenty-one years ago, I saw The Cure at Red Rocks. It was 1987, and I was 16. Then, this week I was there again. Twenty one years later. Twenty one years older.

And it was a great show. Playing as a four-piece again, three of the members the same as the Head on the Door heyday, they really rocked. Even pop songs like "Lullaby" and "Hot Hot Hot!!!" came off heavy without all the horns and strings. Then they pulled out some songs a little less pop, and a little more rare, like "The Blood," "Push," and "If Only Tonight We Could Sleep." And they played a few new ones that made me eager to hear the new album. The third encore, maybe the best part of the show, was all songs from their first album, including "Grinding Halt."

Here's the video for one of the new ones, "The Only One":



And here's one of the many videos on You Tube from the show this week at Red Rocks, "Jumping Someone Else's Train":

Denis Johnson and Antonin Artaud

I forgot to mention that Denis Johnson gets extra points for quoting extensively from Antonin Artaud's "Voyage to the Land of the Tarahumaras."

Mallarmé for Babies

Yesterday, while in my basement study, my son (he's one) pulled from the shelf and brought over to me, with an eager look in his eye, a collection of poems by Mallarmé. I opened it and read to him,


M'introduire...


To bring myself into your tale
is as a hero much afraid
if he has touched with naked heel
any grass-plot of that glade


Ravisher of glaciers I
know no artless sin that after
hindering you'll not deny
its very loud victorious laughter


And am I not joyous, say,
thunder and rubies to the naves
to see in the air pierced by fire


among realms scattered and afar
as in a crimson death the wheel
of my chariots' only vesperal.

Book Review: Tree of Smoke

Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson

I should begin with an admission. I don't care for war novels. Usually. It's not something I generally relate to or am even interested in even following. Johnson's Vietnam novel does things differently. There's half a dozen characters to follow, so pay attention. There's a fair amount of downtime, some general pointlessness, but when the chaos hits it really is chaos.

The story here is driving, though. It was the kind of thing that pulls you along. There's plenty of mystery and misery to keep things compelling among a slew of characters. It's really the writing here that makes things so strong. The language is solid, the dialogue is spot on. As dense and difficult as this novel could be, I enjoyed the reading all through its 600+ pages.

Now, I could complain some about the ending. I just finished it this afternoon, so maybe I should give it some time to sink in before I criticize, but the ending left me wanting. I'm guessing Johnson, maybe, had a little trouble finding a way out after writing such a long book. And how on earth would I be satisfied with any exit?

It is though, a great novel, and not like any of the Denis Johnson I've read before.

Movie Review: Running With Scissors

Running With Scissors

This movie is so bad that I can't believe the book is any good. Now, I haven't read it, but it sits on my shelf next to other memoirs waiting to be read. There's not a likeable--or sane--character in sight. There should be at least one foil for us to relate to, someone to say, geez, these people are crazy. Young Augusten has no personality. Then when he does begin to act out, it seems out of place and uncharacteristic.

Maybe this all has to do with the film and is not reflective of the book. The movie, though, had nothing pulling me through, nothing that made me care a lick about what happens with any of those people.

Another Damn JK Rowling

Frustrating? Yes.

'Twilight' Author Pens Other-Worldly Romance : NPR: "Few writers can imagine this kind of commercial success. And what may be even more frustrating for those who write in obscurity is Meyer's insistence that she never set out to be a writer. The way she tells it, the Twilight series began with a dream about a vampire and a teenage girl. Meyer wanted to remember it, so she wrote it down and then began expanding on the story."

Notes for a New Project

I'm barely done with the hard work of the last project and still going through it again before I send it out to readers, and my mind is already mulling over the next project.

The jumping off point is a man, up early in the morning, sees one of his neighbors sneaking out of the house of another neighbor. Their spouses are either out of town or working. The man watching is shocked and disturbed by the affair. They are both people that the man and his wife know well from the neighborhood. People they would never think of as doing this sort of thing. It sews doubts in him. It takes him a while to tell his wife, worried at first that she is aware and hasn't told him. It disturbs the foundation for both of them.

I want to do this in a very different style than the last project. I want to be close in, more stream of consciousness, more modern. And I want forward action. So much of what I've been doing involves recall, people looking back and scenes occurring back in the past. And, unlike what I've been doing, this would not be an ensemble work. I want this to be a linear novel, at least on a linear timeline, which seems to require some sort of adventure, a plot. The trouble is that I often resort to a course of disintegration. And certainly that needs to happen here.

This minor neighborhood intrigue, the affair, sets his marriage on edge. Things get turned upside down, things that once seemed firm become fragile. An underlying unhappiness comes to light. His wife, it turns out, is unhappier than he is. She thought she was destined for a different life. In the arts, dance, theatre, with creative types, not here in the suburbs married to this man. It's a pedestrian life.

For him, it's more than the marriage, it's about right from wrong, about justice, and also about what's hidden. If this thing across the street has been going on, what else doesn't he know about? Couldn't his wife be having an affair? Could he have an affair? I'm think this is where it leads him. He sees an opening, the foundations are not solid, and he could be a different person. He could be someone who has affair. He could quit his job, leave his family, and do anything he wants. So, does he go this course, or is it about his consideration of these options?

It seems like it requires some adventures, misadventures. Maybe he makes a move on his neighbor who is having the affair. Or a waitress, or someone else. Maybe he decides to confront the man. The man had been his friend, maybe they played poker together, and maybe they fight. And what about the children? They must have kids. What is his relationship to them?

While this situation opens up some underlying unhappiness for my character's wife, what he must go through is more existential. It shakes the walls, unsettles his sense of being. He'd really only been hanging on a thread as it was. He was achieving great things, on a particular path. And maybe it was stealing his soul, or maybe he never had it to begin with.

Do you ever feel bad for the books in the bargain section?

I do. I admit it. Not for the schlocky books that of course they over-bought. But I feel bad for the quality books sitting there, with their marked down $5.98 price tags, being ignored. It is the first section I go to, before even the new releases. But, did I buy anything there on my most recent trip to that big-chain-box-store? No.

Rain Taxi Reviews Anna Kavan's Guilty

In the Spring 2008 edition of Rain Taxi, Kate Zambreno reviews Guilty by Anna Kavan and, though the article praises Kavan's "lost" novel, Zambreno spends more time describing the book than actually reviewing it.

The writing is good and the review serves as a decent introduction to Kavan's work:

Nearly everyone compares Kavan to Kafka, her alphabetic peer, although there is a difference between "Kafkaesque" and "Kavanesque": in Kafka there is a paranoid fear that everyone is laughing at youer, whereas in Kavan there is the ice-cold realization, the unlaughable certainty, that everyone is persecuting you.

But finding the real judgments is difficult work. To the reviewer, it is "one of Kavan's best works." So sure of it is Zambreno she concludes, "In the best of Kavan, of which Guilty can now be included, Kavan tells the story of not only the homeless but those who feel displaced inside their own home."

But who am I to criticize a review? Some times we really need to learn about the book that is being reviewed. Sometimes that's how I learn that I'd like to read a book. What I really want is to hear about the quailty of the book. I want to hear why the book is good, or bad. Of course, when I review a book here, I do little more than that. Thumbs up, thumbs down. What else do you need?

As far as Guilty goes, I don't really regard it as one of Kavan's best. I do have to say, though, the book has lingered with me since reading it. I still think that if she'd had another chance to revise this book, it could have been great.

Second Draft Complete

This week I finished the second draft of the novel I'm calling Barnes County. While there are likely still some larger revisions necessary, it's just a strong line edit that is left. It is time to look closely at the word choice, the flow, and the the sounds of the words. This is where I should be reading it out loud, though that's hard to get away with in public.

It's been about a year and a half's labor and it feels like a long time coming. But there it is, 435 manuscript pages of hard work. And still more to come.

One of these days I'll have to tell you what it's about.