Impressions: "Deliverance" by James Dickey

This is the 1970 novel in which the more familiar film is based. Author James Dickey is better known as a poet than he his a novelist, having published numerous poetry books. For those who have seen the film but have not read the novel, you’re in for a wild ride. Usually, the novels are superior to their celluloid counterparts. This is another example. For those who have seen the film, the book has much more depth, the main and most important difference being that the novel is told from a single point of view, that of the character Ed. He, along with three of his buddies, decide to forgo city life for the weekend to go camping and canoeing in the Georgia wilderness to discover freedom and to connect with the wild - the “pure” wild. What begins as a weekend getaway among friends soon turns into one of the most horrific events one can imagine. I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t read the novel nor seen the film, but it’s an adventure well worth taking, believe me.

There are times where the story reminds me a hell of a lot of Ernest Hemingway’s “Nick Adams” stories, with their lush and beautiful descriptions of the wilderness; the pace of the novel seemingly echoing the pace of the river. It is with these descriptions where Dickey’s prose really shines and I’m sure it has everything to do with the fact that he is a very accomplished poet. The themes of survival and connecting with the wild are very strong here and offers a wonderful contrast with the character’s lives as “city people”. Their near condescending attitude towards the “backwoods” population they initially encounter also provides a wonderful symbol of entering a world that’s dangerous and unfamiliar; one that will put their ideas about survival to the ultimate test and each of the characters lives will permanently change after their experience.

There is a theme of hubris running through the novel: City vs Rural, Man vs. Wilderness, Man losing his “masculinity” in the modern world. There is a definite “macho” tone throughout the story but its one worth thinking about, particularly when the tables are turned for the characters. It is a very well written book and one I recommend.

Rating: * * * *

Impressions: "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy

Man, how I loved this novel. Simultaneously grand and simplistic. A father and son - virtually the only characters in the book - are traveling through a post-apocalyptic America. Knowing that they would not survive another winter where they were, decide to head south in search of warmth, food, and possibly other people who they deem “good.” They are “carrying the fire” of what’s left of humanity. It is a bleak world - covered in ash due to a seeming nuclear winter (the exact cause of the calamity is never mentioned), cities utterly destroyed, forests nothing more than charred stumps of trees. Throughout the novel the nameless father is doing whatever he can to protect his nameless son, a lot of the time at the expense of his own health, which is slowly weakening throughout the story. The father is something of an isolationist, trusting no one, as they make their way south, trying to avoid roaming bands of cannibalistic tribes. The son, in contrast, shows a little more sympathy for the few poor souls they do wind up coming across along the way.

McCarthy creates a vividly bleak world, the father and son providing each other “warmth” as they struggle to survive and that is the core of the story - the relationship between father and son and that’s basically what you have here: a father and son story. It is also a journey story, in some ways epic and in other ways frighteningly simplistic - just like McCarthy’s prose here: simplistic yet extremely powerful; short sentences that create a very vivid picture of the world in which these two characters now live. It is definitely one of the bleakest novels I’ve ever read yet there seems to be a ray of hope underneath it all and despite the isolationism of the father, he carries on with the hope that there will be “something” left, if not for himself, then for his little boy. It is a very powerful and touching story in many ways and there’s no way to really describe it further without giving away what happens in the story or giving away the dark world it has become. You get the sense that the message here is despite how bad things may be in the current world that we all live, there’s still a lot to be thankful for, since this is the kind of world it can become.

Highly highly recommended

Rating: * * * * *

Down with the King: A Personal Reassessment of the Work of Stephen King

“There's a great deal of good stuff out there and not all of it is being done by writers whose work is regularly reviewed in the Sunday New York Times Book Review. I believe the time comes when you must be inclusive rather than exclusive.” - Stephen King, from his National Book Award speech.

It was the winter of 1978. My late aunt, who was an avid reader, gave me this strange little paperback telling me that I should read it, that I would enjoy it. It was all silver, with a head of a young boy without a face, and the book was called “The Shining” and the author was a then fairly new but already very popular Stephen King. This was his third novel but at that time I hadn’t known it. I hadn’t known who Stephen King was. I was 12 years old, already an avid reader myself, having consumed tons of books of varying types at that point - including, believe it or not, “Helter Skelter”, the story of the Manson murders, a book my then 6th grade teacher had confiscated from me as being “inappropriate” for me to read. My aunt knew I loved to read and she was sure I would enjoy “The Shining.” She was right. I was spellbound by this book and I remember very clearly lying in bed at night and reading it, unable to put it down. This was my introduction to Stephen King - and surprisingly, the last book from Stephen King that I read until many years later. The reason for this - and it’s not a good reason but it is a reason, nonetheless - was because I got lazy and instead of reading the actual novels, settled for the films of these novels instead. This move shaped my opinion about Stephen King for years to come.

This was a mistake, of course, mainly because the old adage is true: The films are never as good as the books. I would go further and say that except for a few rare instances, the film is a whole different animal than the book. Most of the time the film is a screenwriter’s or director’s vision of the same material. The book is the author’s vision and most of the time, the two do not coincide. I liked some of the films that were based on King’s novels, but many of them were just simply bad - or badly made - or I found them “corny” or very unentertaining. This unfortunately clouded my perception of King as a novelist and for years I avoided reading them, the films prejudicing my opinion. “The Shining” is another example. Although I enjoyed the film as well (Stanley Kubrick had always been one of my favorite directors) it was vastly different from what I had remembered reading. Without getting into a whole polemic about the film, let’s just say that the film failed to capture the true nature of the “horror” of the novel - that is, the slow disintegration of the character Jack Torrence. In the film, the Overlook Hotel is a haunted place, populated with ghosts and all kinds of other supernatural occurrences. In the novel, the “ghosts” aren’t so well defined. Are they a product of the disintegration of Jack’s mind? Are they simply symbols of unaddressed mental problems? Or are they actual, physical supernatural beings? It’s sort of open to discussion, I think. Who can forget the boiler in the basement, ready to blow, yet another symbol for the slow deterioration of Jack’s sanity? All these things are missing from the film. From watching the film, you get the sense, right from the beginning, that Jack Torrence isn’t so well in the head. The point is, the book always has more to offer than it’s celluloid counterpart - most of the time, anyway.

Another reason why I avoided Stephen King’s work was because I just wasn’t that big a Horror fiction fan. I had read a few - “Ghost Story” by Peter Straub, which I enjoyed immensely, a few of the “Books of Blood” by Clive Barker, and one or two others from authors that didn’t go on to become very well known. Science Fiction was another genre that I only read sparingly - Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, and a few others, but the whole Horror/Sci-Fi genre didn’t really do much for me. As a youngster, I was drawn mainly to Hardboiled mysteries/Noir: Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, Jim Thompson, Lawrence Block, etc. But my real love of reading came from books by George Orwell (“1984”, “Keep The Aspidistra Flying”, “Down and Out in Paris and London”), Aldous Huxley (“Brave New World”, “The Doors of Perception”) and books like “Lord of the Flies” and the teen novels of S.E. Hinton (“The Outsiders”, “That Was Then, This is Now” and “Rumble Fish”). As the years moved on and the older I got, my tastes tended to be more “Literary” in nature and for decades that was the types of books that I read almost exclusively - ignoring most of the so-called “popular fiction” of the day. Not that I thought they were bad books but my feeling was that I much rather have read something more “meaningful.” It was only when I began to write seriously myself that I started to become aware of the huge chasm between “popular fiction” and “literary fiction” and the way each side viewed the other with such disdain and disgust. The truth is, there are many “popular fiction” books that can be just as meaningful. Conversely, there are quite a few “literary” novels that are utterly meaningless. The best of the bunch are those that can cross the lines of genre and be both and there are many of them out there as well.

It was during the struggle to write my second novel (“Nadería”) that I realized that something wasn’t working for me creatively. Something was just “different” about how writing was making me feel. When I was very young, I just wrote whatever I felt like writing, without a care in the world about what category it fit in. One day I remembered the pleasure I got out of not only writing whatever I felt like writing but reading whatever I felt like as well. What was the point in discriminating on the basis of “genre”, I thought? I never did that with music, art, films or anything else. Why books? It was as if a bolt of lightning hit me. Suddenly, the clouds began to dissipate and everything became very clear in my own mind. I realized - albeit somewhat reluctantly - that I had become a literary snob. I immediately took the steps to turn that around and remembered why it was I loved to read and why it was that I loved to write in the first place. Naturally, this brought me back to the time when my aunt handed me that battered, well worn copy of “The Shining” and how I took to it without any prejudices and just read it, taking it for what it was. A book. A story. Nothing more, nothing less.

Finally admitting to myself that I was indeed a literary snob, I thought about the one writer that most literary snobs love to hate: Stephen King. He is hated by most literary snobs for being a “hack” - nothing more than a popular fiction writer who wrote for the masses (read: the lowest common denominator) and offered nothing more than cheap entertainment without any “serious” things to offer a “serious” reader. I thought about how much I enjoyed “The Shining” as a kid and told myself that I was going to read more of his actual books and reassess my judgment accordingly. After all, it wasn’t fair to judge the novelist as a novelist based on the bad interpretations of his books.

So I began, starting with the “non-horror” books first. “Hearts in Atlantis” and “Different Seasons” - both wonderful books, particularly the stories “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption” and “The Body” in “Different Seasons” and “Hearts in Atlantis” in the book of the same name. What I found was that Stephen King was getting a bad rap. He didn’t deserve all the heat he was getting from the “serious” literary world. I delved further: “Thinner,” “Misery,” and then “Lisey’s Story”. “Thinner” was all right but “Misery” was a damn good book with a damn good story - a book, when you scratch just under the surface - is a very good meditation on America’s obsessions with celebrity and the often twisted folk out there who feel they must have a piece of it and feel the right to be “a part” of their favorite celebrity’s life (in this case, a novelist). The novel gets into a part of American culture that seems to be uncomfortable for many people - the actions of the mentally ill and their inability to separate the fiction from the reality and the sense that the creator is “owned” by its public, subject to its demands and expectations. “Lisey’s Story” delves into the world of words, the trauma of dealing with the death of a loved one, the rarity of finding that special someone who is willing to live the life of the imagination with you. A deep book on many different levels but accessible enough for the general reader. This is not at all how any of the films of Stephen King’s books operate - most of the time, focusing on the “horror” that manifests itself as physical ghosts or demons or what-have-you and completely ignoring the subtext going on beneath these stories. That subtext is what horrible things are actually bubbling under the surface in American culture - things that Americans are in denial about. King seems to have his finger on that pulse and he gets it all across by knowing how to tell a story. His storytelling abilities are topnotch. King is not only a creature of his culture but also a creature of his generation. King is a Baby Boomer and it’s clear from reading him that the Baby Boom generation is the very audience he is writing for, despite the fact that the stories are intended to be universal. His stories are littered with references that those in his generation will connect with and relate to immediately. I question whether or not that will have the same resonance with much younger readers. People my age - late 30s to late 40s - will get it. Will someone who’s 12, 13, 14 years old get it? Hard to say, really, but King knows who is core audience is. That’s who he is writing to and for. This is not to say that the younger generation won’t find something in his stories - but I’m certain that much of the references will be lost on them. His upcoming novel “11/23/63” - a novel about the Kennedy assassination - is further proof who is target audience is. Will the lovers of “The Twilight Saga” and the “Harry Potter” series be able to fully relate?

Then came “On Writing,” his quasi-memoir but mostly his thoughts on the writing process. It was one of the few books on writing that actually spoke to me and one that I could relate to. The main reason for this being that King addresses the reader from a very laissez faire point of view. He doesn’t address this book to any specific genre of writing. It is addressed to all, whether one is writing genre fiction or literary fiction and there are many examples he uses throughout the book - both literary and genre - to make his points. In other words, I found this book on writing refreshingly devoid of bullshit which many others I have read are often filled with. It also gave insight into his own creative process, a process that gave me a hell of a lot more respect for him as a writer. Reading this book only spurred me on not only to read more of his work but to finally demolish the wall between the genres and enjoy reading for reading’s sake; to enjoy a book for what it is rather than what it should be; and over the last two years or so, my reading has become much more eclectic, just as it had when I was that young boy, who didn’t discriminate from one thing or another and just fucking read a book and took it for what it was, making up my own mind about it after I finished reading it.

All of this ties into the creative process if you are a writer yourself. An artist of any stripe - whether you are a painter, a musician, a filmmaker, a screenwriter, etc - it’s always good to keep your creative windows open and not limit yourself to one type of thing. Creatively, one can throw it all into the pot, mix it up and use what you want according to your own desires. This is how creativity works. A musician does himself a disservice if they only listen to one kind of music. A painter, filmmaker, screenwriter, and novelist, likewise. Shaking off the shackles of what is deemed “acceptable” by a certain group of people was the best thing I could have done. It’s opened new avenues of possibilities for me personally and, of course, creatively.

I know in certain literary circles reading Stephen King - or even admitting that you like him - is tantamount to blasphemy. I don’t care. I plan to continue to read his novels and judge them on their own merit and my own sensibilities and not the opinions of a group of people who appointed themselves the keepers of the gate. What I got from reading just those novels I mentioned was enough for me to want to continue to explore his work - work which I believe, in the coming years, will be reassessed by even those who are most passionately against him. He may be one of the most popular authors America has produced in the last 50 years. That’s not a good enough reason to dismiss him out of hand. There are those who will always do it - even those who never cracked open a cover of a Stephen King novel or collection of short stories - because it devalues their “hipster street cred” and “embarrasses” them to admit or to be seen with one among their fellow snob peers. They will continue to ignore what he has to offer in these stories merely because he is popular (unless of course, they read him “ironically”, then they get a pass.) It’s one thing to read him and then form your opinion. That’s fair, obviously. It’s quite another to form an opinion without having read a single word and some of these folks do just that.

For me personally, he is another novelist to be read, along with many others that I have on my ever expanding pile of books to read and authors to explore - both literary and popular/mainstream. I can’t say whether I will like everything he does but I won’t know unless I actually read them and decide for myself. So far, since I begun to reassess him as a writer, I have to say I feel foolish for falling for the general line and for judging his work on the basis of a bad film. There’s a lot more going on there that meets the eye and I think if one just dropped their literary pretenses and just read him, they might come to a different conclusion about his work. King has referred to himself many times that he is a creature of his culture. How true this is - in ways many would never dream possible. He has tapped into a side of American culture in ways that millions of his fans have already discovered - and eventually - his detractors will discover as well. Form your own opinion about him by actually reading him and for God’s sake I think it’s high time we rid ourselves of the divisions that can sometimes prevent us from enjoying ourselves and - God forbid - be entertained as well. I look forward to further delving into King’s world.

Impressions: "The Fortunate Pilgrim" by Mario Puzo

Really good novels about Italian-Americans are few and far between. There’s an unfortunate tendency in some circles that feel that novels about Italian-Americans “don’t sell” unless they’re about the Mafia. I suppose this was because of the huge success of “The Godfather” in 1969 and the subsequent films based on the novel in the early 1970s. Ironically, the author of that hugely successful novel had written what I feel is one of the best Italian-American novels 4 years previously. That novel was “The Fortunate Pilgrim.” A critical success in its day, the book didn’t sell all that well, which caused, according to Puzo himself, him to sit down and consciously write a bestseller. He had a family to feed, after all, and a job as a government clerk at the time.

This is a beautifully written novel with a wonderful story about a widowed matriarch of an Italian-American family in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood struggling with immigrant life and trying to raise what is in a sense two families - the children of her dead husband, and the children of her second husband, a man who was absent for most of the children’s lives, only to return home and wind up going insane and to be shut away in an asylum. The novel centers on the mother, Lucia Santa Angeluzzi-Corbo and her growing children, trying to navigate this new world with its new values and customs. The children are thoroughly Americanized, most illustrated by the oldest daughter Octavia. The story follows the family from the Depression era all the way through the early years of World War II and it is a wonderful portrait of tenement life and the lives of immigrants in New York City who struggle with this conflict between old world values and the values of the new world they now find themselves in. There is a Mafia element here as well, but its not the focus, thankfully. This is not a “Mafia novel” by any stretch of the imagination but its presence in the story was a fact of life in those days in the Italian-American immigrant community - and it seems to hang like a specter, a remnant of the old world which now also finds itself trying to ingratiate itself into the new.

This, along with “Christ in Concrete” by Pietro di Donato, should be read by those interested in good Italian-American fiction and who are tired of the same old “Mafia” genre that seems to get most of the attention. This is the book that should have made Puzo famous. A wonderful book and highly recommended.

Rating: * * * * *

A Word on Artistic Feuds

They are abundant, aren’t they? I had been involved with one once, many years ago, with a now aging poet who is/was somewhat renowned in the underground poetry scene. They aren’t fun. They’re childish, particularly when it is coming from someone who has a very high opinion of themselves and because they believe - whether rightly or wrongly - that since they are a big fish in a small pond they wield some kind of power and they will use that power to “crush” you. That’s what happened with me. This particular poet vowed to “ruin” me. Needless to say, nearly a decade later, he didn’t. You can’t “ruin” someone that no one knows about. The whole thing was just absurd.

Two things bring this up: Listening to a young hipster writer in Barnes & Noble the other morning off on a rant to his hipster girlfriend and perusing various writer’s blogs across the internet.

Artists, it seems, are a fickle, competitive bunch by nature. I don’t know why this is. When I was in my twenties, I too was one of those who grabbed the megaphone and proclaimed quite loudly that a particular artist or musician “sucked” and that they weren’t deserving of the attention they were getting while I - being their superior, naturally - struggled for even a sliver of the attention they were getting. It occurred to me that envy is a very ugly thing and if I wanted to be honest with myself at the time (I wasn’t) that was the driving force behind all the ranting and raving. Age puts perspective on a lot of things - or should - but also stepping back and realizing that there are far more important things in this life than your pet project and your creations, despite how important they are to you. My wake up call came with the passing of my father. Almost instantaneously all the petty artist feuds seemed to be just that. Petty. Unimportant. Silly. Childish.

Now I am in my middle forties but sadly the artistic feuding and the competition between artists is as hot as ever. All one has to do is scour the internet and read blog posts from various writers, musicians, etc. Writers seem to be the worst of the bunch. The amount of sniping and crowing is astonishing. I have to ask myself, why? Sure, everyone has a right to an opinion and lord knows if you’re around artists of any stripe over the years, you will hear plenty of them. I’ve noticed lately that the vitriol is at a fever pitch - sort of reflecting our society as a whole. Everyone else is “stupid,” a “dick,” “sucks,” “a pretender,” etc. Everyone except the one making the proclamation, naturally. It almost sounds like the daily conversations one overhears when walking the streets of New York City. Everyone is targeting someone else. The reasons vary. The same old story that’s been going on for time immemorial.

I have reached the stage in my life where I just want to do my own thing. Nothing wrong with that. I want to do my own thing and do it with as much joy as possible and try to achieve whatever personal goals I set for myself - both creatively and professionally. I’m not interested in competing with anyone. You do your thing, I’ll do mine. It seems very simple to me. I am not interested in engaging those who want to turn everything into a fight and/or a competition. I’ll leave that to those who cherish the Calvinist nature of American culture. I’m not interested. The older I get, the more I realize that there are those out there who aren’t interested in what you are doing - or trying to do - anyway, so what’s the point of slamming your head against the wall? Concentrate on your own goals, your own path, and what you are trying to achieve creatively and artistically. No matter how much you succeed in that effort, there are always going to be those crowing from the peanut gallery about how you suck and how they deserve all the accolades and not you. If some of these folks put as much energy into their work as they do writing blog posts on the internet about how much this writer or musician sucks, perhaps they can make something happen or achieve whatever it is they are trying to achieve.

I think this is perhaps why I find myself growing less inclined to associate with other artists these days. The amount of childishness and pettiness is simply stunning and I feel I’m getting too old to deal with it and listen to it. When is enough enough? Perhaps its just human nature. I don’t care anymore. I’m just going to do my thing no matter what others have to say about it. I’m honestly not interested in being “better” than someone else. I’m interested in carving out my own niche among the noise. There will be those who will enjoy what I do and others who won’t. If I don’t like something, I don’t waste an ounce of energy or pay any attention to it. It seems very simple to me but for others - well, I can’t speak for them nor do I want to. Believe me, there are plenty of things that I don’t like out there. Plenty. But instead of focusing my energy on hating that, I’d rather focus my energy on trying to become as good as I can and trying to achieve the goals I set for myself. I think its high time for people to grow up and focus their energy on where it counts. Their work.

I realize that this pursuit is competitive by default - meaning - there are so many people vying for attention and so little avenues available to them. Talent, of course, is important but there is also a tremendous amount of luck involved as well. Lord knows the world is full of amazingly talented people who do and will languish in obscurity for the rest of their lives. Sometimes, connections help and believe me, there are many who have them and use them to their advantage - just like all things in life.

Here’s the dice. Take them. Play with them to your heart’s content. Life is just too short for this kind of nonsense. Fight amongst yourselves. Have fun.

Impressions: "Intruder in the Dust" by William Faulkner

The plot of this novel is simple enough: a black farmer is accused of murdering a white man in the south in late 1940s America. Black and white teenagers, a white lawyer and a spinster from an established southern family work to exonerate him from the crime he didn’t commit. Meanwhile, there are those in the town who are waiting to get their hands on him in order to lynch him, providing their own sense of “justice”.

Faulkner’s use of stream of consciousness narrative, infusing memories of the Civil War, make this a very enjoyable read, despite the plot being something tread over a million times before. It makes this read just that much different from other stories of the same type. It’s not an “easy” read by any means but it’s far more accessible than the more experimental “The Sound and The Fury”. It is a good portrait of the south and its racial problems during the mid-20th century and its clear that Faulkner aimed to address this issue with this novel.

Recommended.

Rating: * * * *

Three Poems

Three poems, "Sanity in a Cyclone", "Blood and Sand", and "Patriots" have been posted at the Poetry by Cher website. Thanks again Cher! Appreciated as always!

Impressions: "Quiet Chaos" by Sandro Veronesi

Damn these Italians! There’s something going on there lately and I’d love to learn the secret. Here is yet another fantastic novel coming from Italy that knocked me for a loop. A superbly written, thoughtful, entertaining and sometimes “deep” novel that will have you thinking about its themes long after you finish reading this. This, again, was one of those “chance” finds and I’m glad I picked this up and read it. It is one of those contemporary novels that are so desperately needed in American literature these days, in my opinion, of course. As far as I know, this is one of the two or three by this author that has been translated into English and the easiest one to get a hold of. By all means, do so. It is truly a wonderful book.

The story centers around the narrator, Pietro, who along with his brother, rescue two drowning women. What Pietro doesn’t know is as he’s saving the life of one woman, his “wife” had died at their summer home, in front of their young daughter. As the school year begins and Pietro drops his daughter off at school, he makes the decision to wait outside for her - each and every day, forsaking his job, in which his company is going through a shady merger. As the weeks pass, the small parking lot in front of the school becomes something of a refuge as well as a place where his friends and colleagues come to relieve their own suffering. As Pietro delves deeper and deeper into his life, a truth is revealed, one that had been in front of him all along.

But you have to look well past the basic “plot” of the novel in order to feel its full impact. It’s the interaction between Pietro and his daughter, his brother, his sister-in-law and coworkers that reveal an enormous amount of depth about contemporary life. There are some uncomfortable truths here - about how we relate to one another, how we encounter death and the grieving process and what we learn about ourselves once we begin going deep into our own lives.

This is an absolutely wonderful novel and Veronesi is definitely an author to watch. Highly recommended.

Rating: * * * * *