We Both Have Truths - Are Mine the Same as Yours?

Finally, FINALLY, I finished 2666 this week. Although I enjoyed the fifth and final section far more than the fourth and longest section, what had come before had wearied me so much that I was really pushing to get through it, force-feeding my eyes with the content of each page, rather than enjoying the journey, which is a shame. Also, I had hoped the storylines of the book would all tie up, because the writer so obviously knew what he was doing. They did not. Very little, close to nothing, was clearer at the close than it had been when I started the damn thing. I admire this book, but can't recommend it. Pieces of it took my breath away, and I enthusiastically enjoyed its unpredictability in the first few hundred pages, but I wouldn't wish on anyone such frustration as I ultimately felt.

I do agree pretty much 100% with this review. Spoilers there, and a real shock: the crimes, the murders of hundreds of women described in sickening, wearying detail, are real.

On New Year's Eve I read The Lifespan of a Fact, which engaged and interested me more than pretty much anything I've read in print (i.e. anything not longform journalism on the internet) since The Chronology of Water. I previously wrote about its central problem, and about it, here. I know I have friends reading this who are as interested as I am in nonfiction vs. fact and the awkward place of "the truth" in both essays and reality. Buy. This. Book. Don't miss it. Don't let the formatting or the overpricedness deter you. Get it and read it, and maybe read it again.

My other suggestion (presuming that you take the first one) is that you read a little tidbit about John D'Agata and his purpose as a writer before you read the book, or you may end up thinking he's just a complete dickface right up to the point where the book's 75% over. For instance, that he has an MFA in poetry lent some meaning to his claims about the rhythm of this or that phrase.

If you hate the fact-checker instead for his obscene attention to detail, well, let's dialogue about that. Soul of nitpicking that I am, I adored him.

Right now I'm reading The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter. I'm having a bit of a where-have-you-been-all-my-life reaction to her. Such fascinating, subtle, unique writing. Like Poe with sharper knives.

A break for music. I'm having an intense romance with electropop and I can't stop listening to this one:

I also recently read two longform articles I wanted to draw some attention to. First is this one, a Wired article (which I read in the actual physical magazine!) about John McAfee, the guy who invented the eponymous software and is now being sought for murder in Belize. In the reading it reminded me of one of the most interesting longform articles I've ever read, this one, about a guy who crashed a $1.3 million Ferrari after many bizarre only-in-America (and-possibly-Dubai-at-this-point) adventures. If you like long interesting profiles, the one about McAfee is as much a no-miss as the one about Eriksson.

I also read this article, which I found unfocused and snooty and indulgent and confusing. What am I missing about it? Maybe just that it's Harper's? I thought it had some kind of essential, thundering, Rome-too-shall-fall point to make but completely missed the mark in making it. But perhaps I'm not smart enough or old enough to see it.

On to the writing: I revised the opera story yesterday thanks to some strong feedback and sent it out to a market. I also typed the chapter of KUFC that I'd written in my notebook back in the halcyon days of 2012 and fretted briefly about chapter divisions not working out especially well in the last 5,000 words or so. Then I wrote another few pages before bed, a scene that I'm not sure I'm actually going to use, and laid in bed for a few minutes wanting very much to go back into the living room and turn on the light and write for another three hours. And then I fell asleep. There are lots of reasons why I don't stay up late and write (something I am always wanting to do but never do), all of them good, but I wish I had the stones to push them all aside and do it.

Yesterday I learned that Victrolas don't have horns; those are gramophones. Victrolas are big cabinets. I think I'm going to have to learn some things about Zeppelins in order to keep writing. I love learning things, but annoyingly, my projects seem to set me in search of obscure shit instead of easy-to-find shit. It was a pleasure to have to learn a bit about the Civil War last year, because it was so much easier than learning about the history of goddamn Greenland.

On Saturday I go to the opera for Les Troyens. Which is five hours and forty-five minutes long. I'm bringing a sandwich.

Finally, a PSA. On this blog I tried to keep to every-other-day posts in 2012, and I've determined that that's too often. Not for me, but for you. When I space out the posts, I get more comments, which indicates to me that people are reading with more interest. So maybe it'll be every three days, or twice a week, or something. Not as often as before. Just so you know.

See, Because She's Sneaky

For no reason: 

Not a movie I have much affection for (I know, I'm crazy, but I saw The Sting first and liked it better), but ooh, those boys. Matt compared this picture to a double-barreled shotgun. I added "of sexy."

After last week's longhand stuff was typed, KUFC stood at 29,860. I told this to Matt on Friday and he said "Oh, come on! Write an exceptionally long SENTENCE!" But I didn't do any drafting this weekend; other things happened instead. 

One of those was plotting for this week's writing. Years ago I read about a potential reboot of Superman (this was before Brandon Routh) and the ideas the screenwriters were tossing around. One of the producers insisted that he wanted a big battle to take place at the Fortress of Solitude. A screenwriter argued that you couldn't do that; it's the Fortress of Solitude, which indicates by its very name that there's no one there. Can't really argue with that. Apparently the producer just wanted to use a cool set for a big battle. 

I found myself in a similar predicament. In my book there's a prison that's located in a Zeppelin floating above the city, and I very much wanted my main character (the nominal KUFC) to be in a big action scene there. I mean, what production designer could resist an awesome Parkour fight around and across a Zeppelin prison? The problem was that plotwise, I couldn't come up with a way for this to work. Logic noted that the fight would be purposeless, and would have plot-hole repercussions that I just couldn't write around. So, I told Matt, I guess she'll just sign in and interview the prisoner like a normal person, and I'll write a big fight scene next chapter at a less interesting location. 

Wait, sign in? he said. Your cool ninja assassin chick is going to sign in? Well, yeah, I said. She needs to interview a prisoner. She's a ninja assassin, he said. Have her break in to the prison! It shows just how much of a badass she is that she's breaking into a prison, and not just any prison but a Zeppelin prison. 

Oh. Right. 

This is what comes of being a head-to-toe lawful good person in real life and writing a character who's chaotic good/neutral. You forget from time to time that she doesn't feel the need to follow the rules. 

I'm over page 500 in 2666, and I can't recommend it so highly anymore. The longest section of the novel, where I am right now, is about a series of more than 200 murders of women that take place over the course of a few years, and the book details the finding of each and every corpse: what had been done to the woman and in what state she was found, and then whether the crime was solved or not (mostly not). Nearly all the women have been raped and all of their bodies are abandoned, found in parking lots and ravines and garbage dumps. Reading about this over and over and over and OVER is not at all a pleasant experience. There are other characters in this section, of course, and some of them have interesting stories, but centrally it's 300 pages about these women and their terrible deaths. It reminds me of a book on the Green River Killer that I read. Murder fatigue. Yet this book's different sections and characters hook together so subtly that I can't just skip it, in case I miss something that is important to the final section and/or to untangling the book on the whole. Which I very much want to do. 

This week I'll be editing the opera story. I've let it sit for two weeks, so I look forward to rediscovering what I put in it. Like a fruitcake you set aside for a year. Jeez, did I really use those radioactive green things? 

"What's on your mind?"

Yesterday I wrote about 3,200 words on KUFC. Although I whinge and wheedle, I'm now sure it's the right thing to do to go on and write this book. After reading through what I'd done most recently (months ago, before this whole literary adventure), I felt a rekindling of interest in the idea and the main character, to my great relief. It's good stuff, and I'm pretty sure it's going to be a terrific book. I'm especially interested in the project because I came up with a terrible, wonderful choice for my MC at the final turning point of the book, tens of thousands of words away. The kind of choice where neither option is particularly good, i.e. a realistic choice. Great tension in that.

I feel like until now I'd been writing half-asleep, without really considering how things fit together in the world of a novel. I'm still not at the point where I can outline things very specifically more than about two chapters in advance - which may indeed be evidence that I'll have to rewrite this one, too - but I'm determined to let character propel the story, rather than just my ideas of what must come next.

I'm now about 300 pages into 2666, and I still have my opinion of BOY. Jeez oh Pete. This is a weird book and I have no idea how all this shit goes together and I can't wait to read the next hundred pages.

I'm also enjoying some new-to-me music lately. Although I'm only now listening to more than a song or two of hers, Regina Spektor feels like an artist I've been listening to for years, like a friend I've known since we were teenagers. She hardly feels new, just natural.


I found this fantastic band, the Leftover Cuties, who I think would resist "hipster" or "retro" and insist that what they're up to is 100% normal:

And I'm completely obsessed with this song (please ignore the source...):

Even better with headphones. And there's also Callas. Lots of Callas.

Finally, I'm trying to dislodge the hold Facebook has on me. I read a bunch of addiction narratives in a row, rather by chance, a couple of weeks ago. In thinking about what they had in common, and the general pattern to which addiction adheres, I discovered that the way I feel and behave about Facebook is, erm, pretty unhealthy. Of course Facebook isn't nearly as destructive as, for instance, heroin - that's a stupid idea - but it's still remade the pattern of my days in a way that is bringing me less peace. So the concentration and attention I give it is declining.

I thought I'd write a lot more about this, but it seems so lame, and I can't find the right words without skipping into other topics. And it doesn't matter much. I'm slowly backing away from Facebook, which is both challenging and pathetic, and the details aren't too interesting to anyone except myself.