The random threads

Here, as always, is the thread to post all your comments and thoughts that don't fit anywhere else.

Biff

Biff's speaking voice, worldview, and penchant for taking credit for major inventions are engaging characteristics that help keep us turning more than 400 pages. But when all is said and done, do you like Biff? Would you want to be friend with him? He seems to have some very negative character traits. He is misogynistic, referring to many women in the book (aside from the Magdalene) as a "shrieking harpy" or besought with demons. He lazes around and sends the other disciples off to do tasks. He has an overactive punching reflex. But he's utterly devoted to Joshua. So: is he the best man at your wedding, or is he the guy you put in your bridal party in order to keep an eye on him?

The Bible in "Lamb"

I was not raised in any particular religious tradition and have never studied the Bible. Despite that, I could recognize reframings of familiar events from Jesus' life as they are recounted in the scriptures. What struck me is the way Moore almost glossed over the major events that we are so familiar with today--for example, the Sermon on the Mount. He seems to be saying that it was the everyday learning and the everyday acts of compassion that made Jesus/Joshua who he was.

The passages that resonated most with me described Joshua's healings, especially the ones that occurred when nobody else was watching.

"Lamb" describes the maturation and coming of age of Jesus Christ. As characterized by Moore, what kind of Jesus does Joshua become? Is he the Jesus you were raised to believe in, or have come to believe in (if in fact you do believe in him at all)? Is this interpretation an old-fashioned or a modern one?

Sex in "Lamb"

Biff has sex. LOTS of sex. So much sex that I began to wonder if Moore included it as part of a larger narrative or characterization purpose, rather than simply for laughs. Was he successful playing [raunchy!] sex for laughs in biblically-based tales? Or did it distract from the story?

FINALLY getting around to this

For the two or three of us that probably managed to read "Lamb," here are some points for discussion. As for me, I really enjoyed this book. My brother has been recommending it to me for years and I'm glad to have finally read it.

An irreverent treatment of Jesus Christ's adolescence and early adulthood can be a really iffy subject. If you Google the book, an equal number of glowing reviews and raging attacks on Moore's character and values pop up. So my first question is: what was your gut reaction to this book? Did you love it? Did you hate it? Do you think Moore was exploiting the polarizing effect the topic might have on readers? Did it change the way you think about Jesus, Christianity, and your faith? Would you recommend this book to somebody else, and why?

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned

I know I haven't been the most active reader the last couple months myself (unless you count the innumerable number of crappy essays 100 or so students have been throwing at me all semester) but I won't let this experiment go down on my watch. My next selection, the book I'm adding to the blog pipeline, is Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower.

I chose this for several reasons, but the main one is that we haven't discussed short fiction here yet and I think the blog format lends itself well to a conversation about this type of writing. EREB consists of 9 different self-contained stories and hopefully we can create a thread for each of them. Read one, read none, read them all, whatever works for you. My goal once the semester ends in a few weeks is to catch up on some of the reading I've missed and start on a discussion in EREB in one month's time.

I've read a few of the stories already and what is really striking is the synthesis of comedy and tragedy. The book has been generally heralded with rave reviews. Here are some things:

From the Publisher:

Viking marauders descend on a much-plundered island, hoping some mayhem will shake off the winter blahs. A man is booted out of his home after his wife discovers that the print of a bare foot on the inside of his car's windshield doesn't match her own. Teenage cousins, drugged by summer, meet with a reckoning in the woods. A boy runs off to the carnival after his stepfather bites him in a brawl. Wells Tower's version of America is touched with the seamy splendor of the dropout, the misfit: failed inventors, boozy dreamers, hapless fathers, wayward sons. With electric prose and savage wit, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned is a profound new collection of stories.

From some blurbs:

• "Well's Tower's stories are written, thrillingly, in authentic American vernacular--violent, funny, bleak, and beautiful. You need to read them, now." - Michael Chabon
• "There are lurid, ingenious, beautiful, delicate, and very funny stories. Full of pity and terror, they are also great fun to read. Wells Tower has written a brilliant book." - Benjamin Kunkel
• "Wells Tower is a blindingly brilliant writer who does more than just raise the bar for debut fiction: he hurls it into space. With the oversize heart of George Saunders, the demon tongue of Barry Hannah, and his very own conjuring tools that cannot here be named, Tower writes stories of aching beauty that are as crushingly funny and sad as any on the planet." -Ben Marcus

Also, an interview with Tower on Bookslut and, strangely, an animated short I found on Youtube based on an excerpt/adaptation from the title story:




Finally, if you don't want to shell out the cash, you can read the title story in pdf form here and as well a different story from the collection (which is told in the challenging Second Person Limited), "Leopard," as it appears online where it was originally published in the New Yorker. You can read and discuss those puppies for free!

Our next selection is....

Well, I hadn't planned to post a next choice because I was sensing a bit of book club fatigue. Then somebody told me that he was nearly finished with the book that I had casually mentioned I was thinking of choosing, and after that Dan informed me that Book Club was still up and runnning, just more casually than before. (His exact words: "Wife, don't you listen to anything? We're just putting up books and putting up discussion points and if you come late to it, then that's fine. Jesus.")

So I stand corrected, and with a lovely segue ("Jesus") into our next book:

It comes strongly recommended by my brother, Jay, who has an excellent and very irreverent sense of humor.

The Interrogative Mood: A Novel?

Just as trivia: Powell's gotten increasingly experimental over the years and his new novel is nothing but questions. He reads it:

Miscellany

Here's some other stuff worth discussing, mayhaps:

• the absence (but at the same time presence) of Theenie
• The Baby Grand and its underage-serving inhabitants
• the "ludicrous as all get-out" (68) faculty party the Doctor throws
• the Ali-Frazer boxing match
• the use of the word "jake" throughout
• race relations, representations of race through location and language and dialogue
• significance of mullet
• custody junkets and their import
• the (confusing?) beginning
  
• the (rushed?) ending
• and a bunch of other stuff I'm not thinking of at the moment.
  

The Dutchess, Taurus, and The Progenitor

Simons' relationships with the above three concern the great most of Edisto, as does:

• the Doctor's "paramarital twinings" with both,
  
• the stand-in father figure that Taurus becomes,
  
• the reconciliation of Mom and Dad,
  
• who gets the say in the "books vs. baseball" parenting debate,

and some other stuff that I thought I'd leave unsaid in the hopes of inspiring an open thread.

So have at it.

Call Her My First Love, Fine By Me

Two girls worth exploring here in terms of Simons emerging manhood:

1. Diane Parker, she of the draws-dropping "field trips" (92).
2. Snug Harbor's Altalondine Jenkins Jenkins (133).

These two harbingers of our narrator's puberty--a puberty he's smart enough to know is coming but not mature enough to prepare properly for--sort of punctuate the B-story of Edisto, if you will, and adds to the coming of age story with its frankness. One's the backwoods girl who'll give you immediate answers, Two's the girl that makes those answers emotionally manifest, both of them pull an important curtain back on the mystery of the opposite sex Simons has become aware of.

Show you mine if you show me yours. Kissing underwater. Floating tits. Do kids even have to live these sorts of things anymore to learn about sex? Doesn't Google (and worse yet, 4chan) do all that heavy lifting for them?

The slow burn that was Simons complementing his very grown up adult mind with an increasingly adult body felt to me like a eulogy for the act of simultaneous sexual discovery. Maybe more like an Irish wake--it was fun to watch Simons smooth familiarity with the world betray him in this oh-so-important way.

As kids didn't we all "worry about round, wonderful girls [boys for Mags] with their edges ruined by life's little disasters, who remain solid and tough in their drive to feel good--to themselves and to you--and offer a vison of snug harbor" (137)? And wasn't the arriving at that motto half the fun?

The Paste of Life

"You try to put the world in simple terms when it's complicated" (47).

Who the hell is Simons kidding?

Edisto gets all sorts of things right--things I hope we discuss--but first and foremost this book is a celebration, a luxuriation of syntax. The way syllables form words and words turn into sentences and sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into chapters and chapters into story and story into themes. Powell practically wallows in the possibilities of the English language.

I'm not sure how discuss-able the language of Edisto is, but I am sure I want to share my favorite passages:

• "And one of the ways to prolong pleasure is to not chop up time with syllables. [Dudes at the Baby Grand] go for something larger than words, but no essays" (9).
• "...I the homunculus..." (46).
• "...that he moved like a fish in cool water because I stocked the tank" (49).
• "TV and the law are both these large things that are technical and controlled by white people, so it nerved her out" (56).
• "I'd heard enough. The good old days were on a respirator. A boarding school and landed gentry snot-nose college prep buggers for Simons Manigault" (151).
  

The Boy Act

One of the ways Edisto skewers reader expectations, I think, is not just by affording an impossibly adult sophistication in such a young man, but by making Simons aware of his precociousness and able to switch it on and off with varying levels of success. Early on, page 17, he decides that "The Boy Act is the best thing when in doubt," and in subsequent encounters, he relies on it when he:

• sizes somebody up,
• gains more information on a situation,
• helps Taurus out.

But does it work? The Boy Act doesn't seem to fool anyone, really. Most of the adults just seem to appreciate the efforts Simons is putting into making them feel more in the company of a child than of a man-boy with perception beyond his years, but his efforts at The Boy Act seem to buttress awkward situations just enough.

So we juxtapose this way. Anybody notice any other such stark differences?

the Swan Thieves

Someone please go on NPR and listen to the interview with Elizabeth Kostovo that aired this morning discussing her new book, "The Swan Thieves." Preston Brooks couldn't have said it better.

New Book Time? New Book Time.

Edisto by Padgett Powell

1985.
Nominated for American Book Award (Best Debut).
Powell runs the MFA program at U of Florida.
192 pages.

"Southern" and "coming of age."
And "kinda experimental."

The Believer interviewed him one time.
Which is how I heard of him.
(I've not read this book.)

I begin discussions on February 1st.
Lost starts back up on the 2nd.
We discuss till the 10th.
Courtney announces the next book whenever she feels like.

Bring a dictionary, if the first few pages are any indication.

Walker Percy: "A novel that has drawn comparisons with the work of J. D. Salinger, Truman Capote, and Flannery OConnor, Edisto centers on one Simons Everson Manigault, a twelve-year-old possessed of a vocabulary and sophistication way beyond his years and a preadolescent bewilderment with the behavior of adults. These include his mother, who is known as the Duchess, and his enigmatic father-surrogate, Taurus. Imbued with a strong sense of place, an isolated strip of South Carolina coast called Edisto, Padgett Powell's novel is truly remarkable . . . both as a narrative and in its extraordinary use of language."