Month / October 2005

by Edward Champion

Bad Lost Theories #1

Since speculating about the meaning of Lost is apparently the thing to do at cocktail parties (if not a pretext to get someone’s phone number), and since said activity has replaced speculating about, oh say, real people across the room as the topic du jour, I’ve decided to offer a running series of theories explaining the motivations of the show. **SPOILERS SPOILERS** and all that.

Theory 1: It’s All About Sexual Repression. The show’s creators have been reluctant to explore John Locke’s sex life (until this week’s episode, where a relationship was profiled). That is because John Locke is sexually repressed. After his kidney was removed by his father and Locke was left hung out to dry, reduced to sipping coffee with a disturbingly giddy grimace on his face in a car (the grimace itself closely matching the cup’s shape), note that Locke had great difficulty snuggling in bed with his girlfriend (who, not so coincidentally, teaches an anger management class). Even when she gave him the key to the house! (This is an ancient myth that goes back to the classic cinematic comedy Ghostbusters, whereby the Gatekeeper and the Keymaster must enjoin.)

The kidney represents virility and shares its shape with Locke’s grimace and his girlfriend’s beautiful ass crack (unseen, because this is teevee we’re talking about). Keep in mind too that Locke did resort to a phone sex line with “Helen” (a woman who he never met and, indeed, did not see, a sly reference to Helen Keller!). His idea was to go to Australia, aka Down Under, i.e., “going down under” on a woman. Locke then is partially frustrated because he has been unable to perform cunnilingus. Thus, he must “walkabout” the continent that is the global equiavlent of Helen/Anger Management Teacher’s vagina. It has not yet been revealed, but I suspect that the trajectory of Locke’s planned walkabout resembles a grimace, thus maintaining the symbol of the slight curve. Locke is also confined to a wheelchair — thus, reinforcing the circular motif. Is the real miracle then not Locke’s use of his legs, but his forthcoming ablity to lap his tongue with gusto?

Now, conversely, the French woman (who is, incidentally, named Rousseau, a philosopher exploring similar social contract issues as the 16th century philosopher John Locke) is also quite a lonely woman. What’s the first thing she does when Sayid comes looking for? Why, she ties him down and gets extremely close to him, demanding that he not bolt out of the building. Now it’s worth noting that Sayid is tied down to a square and uncomfortable bed, thus demonstrating that Rousseau is the exact opposite of Locke! (And where Locke is a man, Rousseau is a woman — another set of obverses. And where Rousseau has wild and unruly hair, Locke ain’t got much on top.) Where Locke has problems expressing intimacy and must resort to grand and despearate bravado (such as expensive plane tickets bought for phone sex operators), Rousseau is a woman ready to party (no LCD Soundsystem in her lair to speak of, but there is, at least, a music box; the woman can improvise). She also speaks French, the language of love.

Thus, it is the love/sexual repression that is one of the island’s many experiments. Locke and Rousseau are mere pawns. By the middle of Season 2, we will see rampant copulation among the island’s population. This season’s finale will end in an orgy uniting “The Others” with the survivors of Flight 815 in a very naked and licentious way. Kate will become the island’s dominatrix, demanding subservience from both Jack and Sawyer. Dawson will apply his carpentry skills to the construction of bamboo-related toys for the dungeon. And the Mamas and the Papas’ music will form a lasting soundtrack for this televised debauchery.

by Edward Champion

Morning Nibbles

  • Mr. Rake spends an evening with Zadie Smith.
  • Robert “Two Sheds” Birnbaum gets busy with Stuart Dybek.
  • Haggis holds a contest.
  • For a morning roundup, this is looking very much like one of those dastardly Mouseketeer Club intros. So I’ll cop and fess that, despite the fact that while these are all links worthy of your attention, the motivation, the raison d’etre as it were, for this post is to tell the world that yes I am indeed alive and to fulfill the basic obligation, which is at least one post a day. The idea being that if I were to miss a day, you (the audience and concerned friends) would conclude that there was something wrong: that I had jumped off a ledge or checked into a monastery or registered as a Republican. Of course, if one were to simply declare one’s self alive, this would not be of much interest (“I’m alive! Boo yah! How you like them apples?”), as it would not fulfill the basic requisite, which is to cover literary happenings or things of related interest. So instead I’ll conclude as gracefully as I can and report that I’m quite, quite, quite busy (nothing wrong, mind you, just highly diligent!) and I’ll try to check in with something thoughtful later, don’t know where, don’t know when.
by Edward Champion

“Love Me Two Times and I’ll Buy You a Clearblue Kit Just to Make Sure” Not Likely to Happen Anytime Soon

Los Angeles Times: “Offers keep coming in, such as the $15 million dangled by Cadillac last year to lease the song ‘Break On Through (to the Other Side)’ to hawk its luxury SUVs. To the surprise of the corporation and the chagrin of his former bandmates, [drummer John] Densmore vetoed the idea. He said he did the same when Apple Computer called with a $4-million offer, and every time “some deodorant company wants to use ‘Light My Fire.’ ”

by Edward Champion

A War on Working Class Fiction?

Laila Lalami asks, in a Powell’s essay, why the impoverished are so underrepresented in current literature. I suspect that there might be similar reasons for why the American novel also fails to acknowledge work or employment, or, for that matter, tales outside that socioeconomic rank favored by our plutocratic society.* It may be too quotidian for those hermetics accustomed to reading flaacid tales of a middle-class, middle-aged Caucasian man having yet another midlife crisis (that hackneyed literary genre best represented by Richard Ford and John Updike that I would style the “middle novel”).

Do the majority of the pepole who read books (i.e., heavy readers who are likely to buy and read at least 50 books a year) have an expendable income with which to afford these books? Is the publishing industry aware of this particular type of consumer and, in some small way, marketing directly to him? Further, are these possibly affluent heavy readers even interested in novels which deviate from their own comfortable class, ethnic and monetary trappings?

Here in America, we’re so accustomed to asking “What do you do?” to someone at a party. If one answers “plumber” or “barista,” an elitist interlocutor will often categorize that person as beneath his class and education, rather than basing his judgment on the individual. If such a mentality has been transposed to how people select and read fiction, then I hope that there’s someway it can be averted. For it’s often the plumbers and baristas who often have pivotal perspectives and important existential answers that are worth considering — particularly, if you’ve lived a lifetime without ever missing a hot meal.

* — The following observation doesn’t deal specfically with literature, but it’s worth considering. Kieslowski’s Bleu tries to explore how much one can find personal liberty while shutting one’s self off from society. But even a master like Kieslowski couldn’t do this without making Bleu‘s protagonist financially solvent. Since most people wouldn’t be lucky enough to live in such a condition, is Kieslowski’s rhetorical question invalidated because it’s not true liberty? Or did Kieslowski take the easy way out? Or have we become so accustomed to the habit of an affluent protagonist that a major overhaul of our hard wiring is in order?

by Edward Champion

Caitlin “I Checked My Nuance At The Door” Flanagan Strikes Again

From the What the Fuck Department comes this Caitlin Flanagan review (no surprise) of Peggy Drexler‘s book Raising Boys Without Men (as discovered by Scott). Flangan’s essay originally appeared in The Atlantic and has, much to a thinker’s regret, invaded Powell’s fortifications. Drexler has apparently posited a fascinating thesis: boys raised by women without men (read: lesbians and single mothers, referred to here as “maverick moms”) turn out better than boys raised by mothers and fathers. Instead of examining this interesting premise with some nuance, Flanagan takes umbrage against it, failing to realize that a son “better” raised by a maverick mom doesn’t necessarily translate into a “flawless” adolescence or, obversely, a mom and dad there to “fuck you up” — to use Flanagan’s hyperbole.

Scott argues that the problem with Drexler’s book is that there’s no middle ground. But I would argue that it is Flanagan herself who is incapable of walking the middle ground. This means we have a great problem with how the book is being presented. Because when it comes to something as complex as parental roles and child development, a critic cannot cling to cheap dichotomies like a life preserver if she expects to think her way up the river.

Even if we accept Flanagan’s notion that Drexler presents “the low-down rottenness of men” (nowhere in her review does she present a quote from Drexler’s book supporting this idea, other than the “wounded rhinos” thing, which strikes me as more metaphor than calumny), I’m wondering if Flanagan is threatened by the idea of someone not only pointing out “competition, dominance and control” as male issues, but also Drexler’s suggestion that women can instill some variant of these issues. (By way of contrast, both this review from the San Francisco Bay Guardian and this Library Journal review seem to suggest that Drexler is only stating that “maverick mom” relationships exist as a viable alternative and that might, in fact, be better for the developing child.)

A real critic, even a cogent conservative (cogency seems to have escaped Ms. Flanagan from Day One), might have challenged Drexler on whether or not paternally imbued masculinity is essential to child development. Instead, Flanagan puts crass metaphors into Drexler’s mouth (“In her opinion, maleness is a bit like Jiffy Pop”) and then proceeds to categorize Drexler’s book as “the latest entry” in “‘You go, girl!’ studies,” ending with an antifeminist tirade that has little to do with the book, much less Drexler’s argument.

This is reviewing? I certainly hope that this sort of black-and-white depiction of gender roles isn’t what the Atlantic considers to be the apotheosis of criticism.

by Edward Champion

In Defense of Bret Easton Ellis

Just when we thought we had heard the last about Lunar Park, Dan Green has offered this thoughtful post on the book, approaching Ellis’ work from the standpoint of Lunar Park (Dan’s sole exposure to Ellis, but this does not stop Dan from criticizing books that, by his own admission, he has not even read) and not finding him agreeable.

It is interesting to me that Ellis, even with this latest offering (which is, I must confess, lacks the ardor of Less Than Zero, The Rules of Attraction, or American Psycho, but is not as middling either), continues to divide people. And I would suggest that the divide occurs more between people who enjoy entertainment and people who enjoy literature and, to a greater extent, style vs. narrative.

Ellis’ work is largely episodic in nature. If you’re coming to Bret Easton Ellis for a coherent plot, then you’re best advised to look elsewhere. It unapologetically drapes itself in brand name description. And it often goes down extraordinarily atavistic routes that involve graphic mutilations of women (the source of most of Ellis’ controversy). Does this preclude us from enjoying Ellis? I don’t think so. The key to appreciating Ellis, I think, is that you’re not intended to relate or identify with his characters. (Certainly, one cannot imagine a level-headed person relating to American Psycho‘s Patrick Bateman, who is clearly a homicidal maniac.) Rather, you are supposed to remove yourself and see these characters from the outside, determining whether or not you can accept the fact that terrible behavior is happening around you. Are you truly acquainted with this world? Is this a world that you’re deliberately ignoring? Ellis’ pugilistic tone does often test a reader’s limits. It might be argued that the prose itself contains a blueprint for a certain culture that Americans often overlook, framed within what seems a throwaway read.

Consider the opening of Less Than Zero:

People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles. This is the first thing I hear when I come back to the city. Blair picks me up from LAX and mutters this under her breath as her car drives up the onramp. She says, “People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles.” Though that sentence shouldn’t bother me, it stays in my mind for an uncomfortably long time. Nothing else seems to matter. Not the fact that I’m eighteen and it’s December and the ride on the plane had been rough and the couple from Santa Barbara, who were sitting across from me in first class, had gotten pretty drunk.

If we take this at face value, then we see writing composed of repetitive details, formed through run-on sentences, composed of simple language that feels disjointed, and details that are extraordinarily general. However, if we filter this passage through perspective (and this, I would argue, is the key to appreciating Bret Easton Ellis’ work), then we see a dead-accurate portrayal of Southern California life in the 1980s: obsessed with mundanities, groping to remember things and struggling with details. Perhaps this represents a mind set that Dan Green may not find palatable. (He calls the fictional Bret Easton Ellis of Lunar Park “an extremely annoying character” and his umbrage seems to be targeted towards the character’s behavior. Because he then complains that this BEE is “unpleasant” and “utterly contemptible.”) But is it truthful? Should it be explored? I say, you bet.

And I would argue that forcing the reader to examine the rudimentary underbelly is precisely Ellis’ point.

In the passage cited above, we see Clay (the narrator) trying to take in some half-assed remark, perhaps some primitive homily to hang onto, and we immediately establish the mental timbre at which this world operates. It is not always absurd. It is often quite brutal. But it is certainly one that involves a wholesale reversal of conventions (McDonald’s seen not as a family-friendly restaurant, but as a place to eat alone in Less Than Zero; tacky and commercial records favored over the artistic in the Huey Lewis, Genesis and Whitney Houston in American Psycho; and trick-or-treating in which youngsters don’t walk from house-to-house, but hop into their parents’ SUVs to travel such a short distance in Lunar Park). In this way, we can style Ellis a cultural observer and, at least to my eyes, an entertainer. This is funny stuff.

I would agree with Dan that the book’s horror elements, hung upon mere homage, fall notoriously flat and cause the book to peter out just as it has dared to bare its soul. But where Lunar Park is ambitious in the way it adds another level to Ellis’ stylistic cultural riffing. Now, in addition to wondering whether the world and mentalities as presented within the prose can be believed, we’re also wondering how much of the extant details reflect the real Bret Easton Ellis. The metafiction, it turns out, has been there all along. No, it’s not Infinite Jest or Gravity’s Rainbow. The writing itself is often ingenuous. But I believe Ellis’ purpose in planting a version of himself into his novel is to suggest that, all along, his novels have been operating as a fey anthropological filter.

The “supremacy in imagination” doesn’t come from the characters or the patchwork plots (Glamorama is, perhaps, the most ridiculously plotted of all of Ellis’ novels). The imagination in question has everything to do with how much the reader is willing to expand his own world consciousness. And what Ellis is telling us, I think, is that this world is an ugly place, hombre, and we better start paying attention.

by Edward Champion

“Where Are the Litblog Groupies?”

The last time I went to the bookstore, I produced my business card to the sexy and bespectacled young lady behind the counter shortly after informing her that she had the most beautiful tits that I had ever seen. I was, of course, tactful about this. I did not, for example, use the word “beautiful.”

I told her that I was Edward Champion and that I ran one of the greatest literary blogs the Internet had ever seen since September 30, 2005. She asked me what century I thought I was in. I answered, “The 21st.” She then told me that I was a hundred years behind the times, knocked the wind out of me with a hard and painful chop to the jaw, and had several impecunious teenagers (scrawny young men whom she referred to as “co-workers”) using their diminuitive muscles to throw me out of the bookstore. There were five attempts to push me through the door, but all tries proved useless until the last one, when these two gaunt co-workers threw me onto the sidewalk without losing their breath. One whapped me with the latest issue of Marie Claire the entire time to keep me appropriately stunned. His ruse worked. I was then photographed by the young lady and added to a “Megan’s Law”-style database of men who hit upon attractive bookstore clerks.

As any of my readers know, I got into the litblog business for the chicks. My love of literature, if any, was tertiary at best. Like other people, I expected this young lady to allow me to feel her up or offer a Linda Lovelace impression simply because I was entitled to it. Was this really a mistake? I was a litblogger, dammit! Where other people earned their way into bed through an osciallating combination of charisma, caring and alcohol, was not I, as a litblogger, deservedly on the fast track system by default?

Didn’t my obsession with literature entitle to me to complimentary rolls in the hay? Women I didn’t have to pay for? At the very least, she might sell her story to The Sun and find out if litbloggers were, as the rumors suggested, worse in the sack than some of our most shameless septuagenarian whoremongers, who also doubled as men of letters and were eventually published by the Library of America shortly after their penises dessicated into an unusable state and they eventually met their maker.

Say what you like about being a litblogger and a cad, it leads to a wide spectrum of silly things to write about. Now, whenever I write a blog post, however much I might be looking forward to exposing some literary news development, once I see the “Publish” button in my blog software template, all I can think about is the one time I sat at my computer and jerked myself off silly, simply because I was bored and had run out of books to read.

I had apparently spent the night alone: I had apparently stripped down to my socks and sprayed aerosol cheese over the whole of my body. I then called a friend and asked if he knew anyone could lick the cheese off, ideally wearing a Wonder Woman costume. The friend then told me that I was a sick reprobate and refused to speak with me again — even after I sent him complimentary tickets to a ball game, as well as a 312-page letter of apology.

Maybe in America, the litbloggers with sexier names than mine, Gwenda Bond, Mark Sarvas, Maud Newton, are rock’n’ roll enough to spend better evenings than this. They are probably more focused and they have probably never touched aerosol cheese in their lives.

Have I gone too far?

by Edward Champion

Behind

Here at Mabuse Cental, we are inunundated beyond compare. We’re sitting on four Segundo shows (yeah, we know, but we’re really trying to clean up some audio for the next show without it all sounding trebly sans midtones), we’re trying to create (read: steal) a feasible script for the Naughty Reading finalists so that you can all vote and the almighty Powell’s card can be awarded, we’re trying to finish up a lengthy post on The Rainbow Stories that we’ve been tinkering around on during sporadic moments, we’re trying to somehow squeeze in cogent thoughts for this week’s LBC dialogue, and we’re in the early stages of organizing a major regular addition to this site that should prove quite exciting and should solve the bookpile problem in one fell swoop. All this while we’re working on something major (read: MAJOR) that we seem to be kicking ass on but that we’re notoroiously retentive about.

Also, we’re terribly behind on our email backlog. We apologize.

Because of this, posting will be light, following by occasional showers and thunderstorms. Be sure to wear a porkpie hat and coat. Good stuff is in the works. We’re just not sure when we’ll be able to get to it.

In the meantime, please feel free to check out Sam and Gwenda‘s additions to the ol’ Auctorial Offerings motif. Perhaps as we push ourselves to brain rot, we’ll offer a few more installments ourselves.

by Edward Champion

Lost

I was very skeptical. Friends keep telling me that I must see it, that even my jaded opinion of television and my annoyance at the medium’s hollow artifices would be mollified by this series.

Well, I have at last seen the first few episodes of Lost and I can happily report that, from what I’ve seen, this television show cuts the mustard in almost every way. It is as enchanting as a baroque tapestry. It is as beguiling as a James Ellroy novel. It is, one gets the sense, leading somewhere, which is a rarity on episodic television. By some miracle, Lost does not insult the intelligence of its viewers and it even has the audacity to reward those who are paying attention. People are not what they seem to be. The setting is not what it seems to be. The situation, indeed, is not what it seems to be. One is left delighted by the confusion, driven compulsively to watch more, wondering what details the writers will throw in next.

Lost is one part Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, one part The Prisoner, one part Cast Away, and several parts a parable of humanism and interconnectivity. To wit, it may very well fall into that rarest of categories: sui generis.

In particular, one episode revealing the origins of Locke, a mysterious man with a penchant for knives and a capacious threshold of history and obscure trivia, was, much to my surprise, a moving tale of surprise revelations and indomnitable will. We see early on a young middle manager’s cruelty and agism directed to Locke, and realize much later that it is something more atavistic and unpleasant, yet ultimately futile. That television is still capable of exploring such human complexity, that indeed Hollywood is still capable of doing this, is nothing less than a miracle in this epoch of braindead entertainment designed for mass consumption.

This is that rare series that threatens to draw me away from my work and that may keep me up late. Let us hope that Lost‘s success finally gives the programming heads some clue that if television is to survive, it must, like Lost, be nurtured.