Book Review 3 of 52: Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

When I first came across Franny and Zooey I was doing theater in high school (It may have been during Romeo and Juliet, at least that's what I remember). One of our theater directors, the late Mark Collins, said before every performance to "Do it for the Fat Lady." I was always kind of puzzled by what that was supposed to mean and he said to read Franny and Zooey to find out. I read it in high school, fell in love with it. Then I moved on to The Catcher in the Rye and moved on to Nine Stories from there.

Franny was published in 1955, Zooey in 1957, and the two were finally collected in novella form in 1961.

Franny and Zooey focuses on Franny and Zooey Glass from the Glass family that Salinger visits in the majority of his stories. It starts with Franny meeting her boyfriend Lane for a cocktail party followed by a football game. What follows is a late lunch where Lane goes on about school and a paper that he wrote, and Franny starting to tear into him in a self-professed mean streak she can't seem to shake. Franny starts to light up when Lane finds a book in her purse, The Way of the Pilgrim. She explains the book is about a Russian Pilgrim who wants to find out the secret to 'praying without ceasing.' He goes around, meets a bunch of interesting people, meets with priest after priest until he finally finds one who unlocks the secret to praying without ceasing. Basically it's repeating the Jesus Prayer, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner, until the prayer becomes as natural to you as breathing. I could go a lot more into it, basically she's fascinated by it and Lane just kind of brushes her off. Finally she faints in the restaurant and after fainting, when Lane goes to fetch her some water, she starts mouthing the words of the prayer.

End of story, cut to Zooey. Zooey is the older brother to Franny (There are seven Glass children in all) and we meet him in the bath reading and re-reading a four year old letter from his brother Buddy. We learn Zooey is a television actor by the fact that he also skims over a recent script he was handed. His mother, Bessie, interrupts him and they have a long discussion ranging from Franny's recent emotional collapse (While Zooey was published 2 years later it takes place only 2 days after her visit to Lane), his acting career, the other Glass children (We learn one of the older children, Seymour, commited suicide which is the subject of the short story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish). They do a little verbal sparring and once he's out of the bath Zooey goes and talks with his sister.

Salinger's stories are pretty much 90% talk. It's a lot of inner monologue and conversation that just works superb. It's usually people with two different agendas going back and forth, sometimes completely ignorant of what the other person is saying, but it's always incredibly engaging. Everyone has their own distinct voice, no one sounds contrived, no one says anything that you think was put in there just to make a point in the conversation or to further the story. Everything just flows so well.

When Zooey talks to Franny who is having her emotional collapse in the living room it's a wonderful conversational dance where Zooey is going around the room from the desk to the piano to the window, going from attacking Franny, to attacking the Jesus Prayer, to finally explaining the Jesus Prayer (Also bringing up its close relation to Eastern religions) and basically enlightening her. Eastern religion is at the core of a lot of Salinger's work as he practiced numerous Eastern religions throughout his early life and injected them into his stories.

Franny and Zooey is wonderful for its perfect use of wordplay. Salinger always saw himself as a succesor to F. Scott Fitzgerald and it really shows. They both knew their way around dialogue and putting a lot of underlying meaning into their stories. They were (Okay, Salinger is still alive but he's been so secluded we can talk about him in the past tense) also wonderfully screwed up people but what writer isn't?

The Glass family is a wonder to read. After Franny and Zooey I suggest moving on to Nine Stories and Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction. Make sure to also spend some time with The Catcher in the Rye but don't go writing "This is my statement" in the cover and killing John Lennon, that's just tacky. If someone did that with one of my books I'd go into seclusion too.

Also it turns out Salinger has been writing, writing, writing for himself these past few decades and has what may turn out to be a great library of post-humous literature ahead of him. Not that I want him to hurry up the process because I want him to keep on writing as long as he can hold up a pen, but I'm really excited to see if he's been keeping up with the Glass family all of these years.

John Dufresne and Wii Fit (Have Nothing to do With Each Other)

I said in my next post I would sing the praises of John Dufresne. On second thought go and buy Deep in the Shade of Paradise or Love Warps the Mind a Little. They're two of the greatest books I've ever read, hands down. I'll let John do the talking for me.

Stassney's birthday was this past Friday. She got a sewing machine (she wants to design wedding dresses), and among other things she got a Wii Fit. The Wii Fit is a strange tool as it's an exercise tool masquerading as a video game.

It told me my weight (high) my BMI (overweight), and my "Fit" age (21!). Of course there are a multitude of exercise activities ranging from the silly (hula hoop!) to yoga and bonafide strength training (rowing squats). While the actual validity of Wii Fit will always be disputed as it's been used in actual professional exercise trials all the way to "watch my girlfriend hula hoop in her underwear" Youtube videos, it remains that the Wii is aimed at casual gamers and the Wii Fit is perfect for "casual gamers" who have "casual gamer" bodies. So far I've stopped drinking caffeine and sodas all together, I've maintained my minimum of 20 minutes of exercise a day, and I've so far been losing weight.

See back in the day (pre-college) I did kickboxing for about four years at which I had a really nice, lean kickboxer body. Then I broke my ribs, both my pinkies, and managed to sprain both of my ankles to the point that the arthritis they suffered from just a little bit has turned into a lot. Then (college) I gained weight to the tune of 210 pounds or so and stayed that way due to various reasons. Then post college and a bad breakup later I was running every day at Shelby Farms and eating a lot less than normal bringing me to the 160 pounds I was when I met Stassney. Then I moved to Austin, started eating like a normal human being and playing way too much World of Warcraft to be concerned with trivial things like exercise and health. Now we both want to get back into our prime shape (She used to row, I used to overuse parentheses) and Wii Fit has actual got us back into our exercise minds where we watch what we eat and exercise on a regular basis. What other video game has had that affect on you?

On top of that I've started writing again and I've been more inclined to actually take pictures with my camera rather than using it as a paperweight.

Also I'm getting more used to the idea of furniture shopping and apartment hunting. Stassney's blog is a great place to catch up on how our furniture tastes differ and also to catch up on her pursuits in fashion design and how her sewing is coming along. She already sewed Veronica a lining for her cage and a bed for her to sleep on. So far she's taken to the lining but has rejected the bed. Then again we tried to have her sleep with a piece of my t-shirt in her house and she repeatedly drug it out of her house for a few days until she finally made it a part of her home so it's a matter of time before she takes to it.

On that note I have another bottle of Killian's waiting for me. Until next time.

You are not a Beautiful and Unique Storyteller

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Book Review 2 of 52: How to Be Lost by Amanda Eyre Ward

I came across this novel when browsing through Hastings. It's a wonderful place to get cheap used books (I think I got three or four books for 9 bucks).

Now my book buying process goes as such. First the cover must be mildly appealing. Especially if it's from a major publisher. If the cover is lackluster it's pretty much a throwaway cover for a throwaway book they're sorry they published and want to let it die a slow and peniless death.

Then again that's not always the case so we'll call the cover 30% of the process.

Next is the author. Some author's I'll never ever read again I don't care what they write (Chuck Palahniuk, David Foster Wallace). Some author's I'll read no matter what (John Dufresne). This would be 20% of the process. I don't rule out unknown names, which is where the third part comes in.

50% of the process is the synopsis. The back cover/inside flap has roughly 2 paragraphs to get my attention. This includes the 2 or 3 review quotes they'll add and I'll immediately disregard. Be wary though, sometimes the synopsis has NOTHING to do with the book which I'll get into in a moment.

First, my brief synopsis of the book: Caroline, Madeline, and Ellie are sisters. When they're young they want to run away but Ellie gets kidnapped and they never find the kidnapper and Ellie never returns. This drive the family apart. The dad's an alcoholic, Caroline runs off to New Orleans, Madeline...well she doesn't really do anything, and their mother Isabelle relentlessly pursues her missing daughter from the comfort of her own couch. She spots a photo that looks like her missing daughter and her kind-of-sort-of dying wish is that Caroline pursue the girl in the photo in the hopes of finding long lost Ellie.

From my count it took 165 pages to get to that point. It took over half of the novel just to set up the damn thing. Now Caroline is the narrator, along with Agnes Flowers who is writing letters to a man she met on AlaskaHunks.com (don't even try it, it's not a real website). There's also Caroline's childhood flashbacks, and flashbacks to when her mother/father were engaged.

Now if you're to believe the reviews it's "A compelling page-turner [that] unfolds as part suspense novel, part memoir...[How to be Lost] chronicles Caroline's tale with vivid eloquence, clarity, and dark nuanced humor." At least that's according to the Boston Globe.

Let's go backwards here. First off, it's not funny. There's no dark humor. There's no humor period. Caroline is not a funny or engaging personality. She drinks a lot, but not to the point of being drunk or letting if affect her life, or having any point other than having her go into bars, ordering a lot of whiskey and not feeling any sort of effect from it.

There's no clarity in this novel either. Is it about Caroline's search for her sister? Is it about the effect Ellie's disappearance had on their family? Is it about her mother's failed engagement to Bernard? Is it about Agnes Flowers laughably bad letters to her AlaskaHunk? Pick one, ditch the others. When the search for her sister finally gets underway after page 165 it takes about 40 pages for it to start and end, rushing through to make it to the "Oh my God everything turned out great!" ending.

We can rule out suspense as well. I'm glad the novel spoon-fed me the mystery before the search for the sister even got underway. Now usually I'll think I have it all figured out and there will be some curveball about two-thirds of the way through that will throw things off in a satisying way. Not this one. Once you have it figured out, that's it. Nothing will change, the novel will stay on its one track, it will make it to the station on time, and everything will go according to plan. It's not suspenseful, it's paint-by-numbers and it got a few of the colors wrong.

Let's just get something out of the way too. If you're going to put sex in a novel, please call it sex. Don't call it "tangling the sheets." Tangling the sheets is what I do when I try to get out of bed in the morning and I'm still half asleep. We're all grown-ups here. Sex is sex. Either be an adult about it or cut it out of your novel.

I do have to agree that the book is a page turner. I did have to physically turn the pages in order to finish the book. Now I wasn't excited to turn the pages and I wasn't biting my nails in anticipation of what lay in store on the next page, I just knew I had 52 books to read and I couldn't give up on one mid-way no matter how bad it turned out.

I'll cut to the chase. Do not read this book. Read The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. It's pretty much the same premise except it has an actual plot to it that it sticks to and doesn't waver from. Also it has an ending that's actually satisying and doesn't make you feel like you've watched some hastily put together Lifetime movie while hopped up on painkillers.

I will make a promise though. The next time I read a book that has anything remotely close to this within its pages:

'She screamed It's not true! It's not true!' But Bernard knew it was true.

I'm going to throw the book into a fire. Thank you very much for telling me that one of the characters is aware of something that just happened to them. If it wasn't for you I would have never known that the character was aware of something he was actively a part of.

Book Review 1 of 52: Why We Suck by Denis Leary

I decided to give myself a reason to read more books this year I'd read 52 books and write 52 reviews. I was going to do it as a once a week thing but obviously I missed that boat so I'm just going to do 52 between now and New Years.

So the first book of 2009 that I got through was Why We Suck by Denis Leary. I should probably start off by saying that I love Denis Leary. I've loved him ever since I saw No Cure For Cancer many, many years ago. I loved him in The Ref, I loved him in The Job, and Rescue Me is probably my all time favorite show ever.

So the book is half Denis Leary trying to say why Americans as a whole suck and half talking about his childhood which ends up having pretty much nothing to do with why we suck. Also did you know Denis Leary was Irish? If not he's going to let you know, a lot. He's going to talk a lot about his Irish parents, his Irish brothers, his Irish relatives, his flat, white Irish ass.

I mean I'm Irish from an Irish family (even though I'm third generation and he's second so he's more Irish or whatever) and have wacky Irish stories. I even thought I talked a lot about being Irish except Denis Leary takes the cake. He talks about it during his stand-up, he makes sure his character on Rescue Me reminds everyone around him that he's Irish, and his book drives the point home that much more. Just brace yourself.

Then he goes into the standard stupid American things. Yes Anna Nicole Smith was a talentless drugged up whore. Yes Britney Spears is a big joke. He also tossed a K-Fed joke in there, I guess to stay topical. We're fat, Nascar is stupid, My Super Sweet Sixteen and anything on VH1 should be considered cruel and unusual torture.

At this point I thought Denis was going soft and just playing it safe. I mean if you've seen any comedy routine by anyone in the past 5 years you've heard all of these jokes before. If you've ever had a pop culture infused conversation with anyone at all you've told these jokes before.

Then the book starts to pick up. He starts talking about bad children and even worse parents. He goes on about the big autism and ADD boom that's been going on for years. This is where Denis hits his stride and personally I agree with him on every point. Just because your kid is a little socially awkward, or has a hard time concentrating and is more infatuated with boggers than homework doesn't mean they're retarded or special, it just means they're a kid.

Me and my cousin were diagnosed with ADD at around the same time. My parents chose to treat me like any other kid, no special pills, no special classes, no special helmets, mostly because they thought the diagnosis was wrong. My cousin was always hopped up on ritalin, always treated like some sort of special needs kid and one of us ended up a heroin addict in prison. Think about which one of us that was.

So anytime I hear someone say "I can't do two thing at once, I have ADD, I just can't concentrate," I want to throw them off a building. You know what, Denis you grab the arms, I'll grab the legs and we'll throw on three.

Also Denis keeps going on and on about how beautiful his wife is, how perfect she is all in a really clichè manner. Actually he sounds like a guy who got caught cheating on his wife and wrote this book just so he could put pictures of her in there and talk about how great her ass looks when she gets changed just so he could have a 240 page public apology. The book might as well have come with flowers and a mix-tape to bring it all together.

His chaper on racism is one of the best in the book, and he doesn't skirt around any racist terms. Actually he organizes them from the least to the worst to see which race has it the worst. He does stay in safe territory though and keeps his focus on Jews and (surprise, surprise) the Irish.

So the book starts off with a clear purpose, to explain why we suck. But then the book doesn't tell us why we suck. It starts off down that path but then goes into childhood anecdotes and why Denis did theater in college. It probably would have been better just to have had no purpose and just have been a book by Denis Leary than to give us a defined goal of where the book wanted to go and not follow up on the promise.

If you're a fan of Denis Leary, get it, even though there are going to be parts of the book you'll read and think, "Haven't I heard this before?" Then again the book reads like a transcript of his stand-up act, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Don't Mess With Texas

Me + Photoshop = This. It would have been a lot easier if it wasn't for the texture of the sign. Road signs have a reflective texture on them that makes any sort of minor photoshopping a pain.

Veronica in the wild

Today Stassney and I were playing with Veronica (my hedgehog for the uninformed) in between rounds of Guitar Hero: World Tour and decided to take her outside and let her roam around the front yard. Now usually Veronica will still be defensive about her surroundings, especially when we have her out on the bed or on the floor. When we put her in the grass she immediately took off and I was trying to follow her with my camera but because she's so small I had to lay down to get any good pictures and she was moving so fast that I had to keep getting up, getting down, getting up, getting down. She did a lap of the front yard, even walking down the gravel next to the road which Stassney and I joked was Veronica hitchhiking trying to find a ride out of here.

When Veronica tried to burrow herself into a rosemary bush we decided it was time to take her in and 63 pictures later (Thank God for my DSLR being able to take a lot of pictures very quickly) a few really good ones came out of it.

Memphis Zombie Walk

Last April (just a handful of months before I made the move to Austin) I went to the Memphis zombie walk with a few of my friends. The walk started on Beale Street and went across downtown and ended at Ernestine and Hazel's bar. I went in a strictly photographic role while my friends Eric and Jared got there early and got themselves made up as zombies for the walk.

The first picture is of Eric just before the walk started when it would start raining, stop raining, start raining, stop raining and we were all standing around wondering if it was going to be a complete and literal washout.

Next up is Chris from Trilogy tattoo who wore her actual wedding dress to the zombie walk showing just how well her marriage turned out.

The zombies attacked a tour bus, smeared blood on every window and sign between Beale and the bar (much to the un-amusement of the people who were attending various showings at the art galleries). The third picture is a random zombie who was very much into it and very much zombie-like as he lunged at my camera.

Jared found someone who had a gallon jug full of fake blood and just kind of poured it on his face looking like he came from a fresh kill. The fake blood was kind of a pain in the ass as it stuck to everything and was a pain to get off, especially when it came to skin.

Finally we got to the bar which we ended up on the outside of because the place was so jam-packed with zombies. We stuck around for a while and finally went back to the car where we went to Ubee's (a wonderful Memphis establishment where everything is cooked in a vat of grease). It was me, our friend Mike, and zombie Eric and zombie Jared. The frat crowd in attendance got their yuk's by coming up and pointing out that "had some red on them" and other jokes. Then we went back to Trilogy for another round of pictures. One woman who walked into the store took one look at Jared and promptly turned around and left.

Then we went to the diviest of dive bars down the street for drinks which me and Mike stayed at for almost 5 minutes. The bar only took cash and got all of their drinks from the convenience store down the street it seemed like. Stay classy, Rally Point.

Too bad I missed the Austin Zombie Walk this year which seems a lot more organized and purposeful with the whole march to the capital thing. Oh well, there's always next time and maybe I can take a short trip back to Memphis for the next march.

Town Lake Photos

This is a picture I took last summer under one of the Town Lake bridges here in Austin. Me and Stassney decided to go downtown for some picture taking and the temperature was peaking at 100 degrees, possibly a little bit over. I just personally like the picture because at the time I was a bit jealous of the people under the bridge getting to relax in the shade while I was lugging around a camera bag. It was a nice day though and a few good pictures came out of it. Also here's another one of the pictures. For those of you who haven't been to Austin before there's an old defunct power station downtown that's more of a landmark than anything now, but it's an amazing looking structure especially the entrance which looks less like a power station and more like a front for some old school supervillian hideout.

I figured I'd get back into blogging again after a bit of a long hiatus. I actually used to have a semi-successful blog about my previous job as an IP relay operator that was actually getting a few thousand hits a day to the point where random people were writing articles about it and people at work would come up and ask me if I was the guy writing the relay blog. It was cool and all but I was breaking a long, long list of work rules by making the blog and rather than deal with the wrath of the Verizon legal team I shut down the blog. Then I got laid off from my job, not due to the blog, but due to outsourcing. Maybe there's someone in the Philippines who is writing the spiritual successor to my blog. One can only hope.

Other than that I guess introductions are in order. My name is Thomas and I live in Austin, TX with my girlfriend, Stassney. I'm an occasional writer, sometimes photographer, full time technical support representative. I figured if I write it'll go up here, same with any photos or general nonsense I feel like talking about.

Also I'm huge into reading. You know, books, that archaic form of storytelling. Right now I'm staring down a large stack of books.

Why We Suck by Denis Leary
Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth
The Myth of You & Me by Leah Stewart
How to be Lost by Amanda Eyre Ward
Personal Days by Ed Park
Weird Contemporary Fables by Alvin Fixler
An Invisible Sign of my Own by Aimee Bender
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
and Blow-Up and Other Stories by Julio Cortazar

Those are just the ones I have at work. That doesn't count Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger that I have waiting for me at home along with a few other books I can't put my finger on at the moment.

I do wish I had more time for reading, but between my long work commute (at least for me it's long, an hour there, an hour back) and other responsibilities some things have fallen on the wayside, mostly reading, writing, and photography. Yet I still manage to find plenty of time to play video games. Maybe my priorities are a bit out of whack.

Anyways, I digress. This blog will be mainly for book reviews, stories, personal photography, and anything else.

On that note your first assignment is to read The Harvest by Amy Hempel which can be found here. It's a pretty short fiction piece and one of the best short stories ever. That should hold you over until next time.