Weekly Endorsement: This Fact

Matilda was published in 1988.

I just found this out yesterday, reading a boring article I don’t endorse. 

I find this shocking. Matilda was such a standard of my childhood, but it didn’t come out until I was 5. It’s kind of amazing to think of my parents reading the New York Times Book Review children’s books issue, and being like, “oh, a new one from Roald Dahl,” and then going to a bookstore and buying it. I knew my parents didn’t grow up reading Dahl the way I did, but I had always lumped him with the classics. I thought his popularity had long been decided on, and was not a choice made by consumers. I actually own a hardcover of Matilda, which I had assumed was just some special edition, but was probably purchased soon after its American release. 

As an aside: Roald Dahl: kind of the best. If you don’t have young children in your life, check out his adult short fiction, much of which was published in Playboy. His adult stories are macabre and fun, just like how you would imagine Matilda to grow up to be. 

Weekly Endorsement: "Kite Whistler Aquamarine"

There was a Budweiser commercial during the Super Bowl, you know, the one about a horse, that reminded me of a Maile Meloy story about a colt. The story isn’t really about the colt, but his birth into freezing weather and his inevitable death structure the piece. “Kite Whistler Aquamarine” is really about a lawyer with bad allergies who is married to a hobby rancher who should stick to his day job. 

As moments go, Maile Meloy is maybe the best there is at capturing them. Her stories don’t fit into a sentence. They’re about that moment when a character’s life, their choices, their regrets, and their failures come into focus. 

Something generally about novels versus short stories: a novel is inherently more of a narrative, about a beginning, middle, and end, about a character who changes, or doesn’t change, in some fundamental way. A short story does not have that hubris; a short story is about a time in a character’s life, not when something necessarily changes, but when something true emerges. 

If you like short stories, you should be reading Maile Meloy. And side note, my favorite piece of trivia is that her brother is Colin Meloy of the Decemberists.  

Other things I enjoyed this week were the Passion Pit performance on Tiny Desk Concert, the Slate Culture gabfest on Steve Jobs, and the sun setting later. I can’t link to the earth’s orbit, but the clocks are going to spring forward in less than three weeks, which means darker mornings and brighter nights. Mostly, it means the feeling of warm evening air on the backside of your arms is coming soon. 

Weekly Endorsement: Best-Selling Author Curtis Sittenfeld Introduced (Roasted!) by Little Brother PG Sittenfeld

I’ve been obsessed with Curtis Sittenfeld since I read Prep in 2007. Because of the initial, largely female driven success of that novel, Sittenfeld has been sometimes relegated to chick-lit. She’s not chick-lit; she just writes about the undesired woman. (And sometimes fan-fic about the First Lady.) Any time I see one of her books in someone’s home, I’m optimistic about a new friendship. 

But my fandom has led to some questionable action: years ago, when the fact that two people were on Facebook was somewhat of a coincidence, I befriended Sittenfeld’s little brother, P.G. Though this remains weird, I really enjoy being P.G.’s Facebook friend. He’s a City Councilman in Cincinnati and has more civic pride than anyone I know, online or off. 

Yesterday, he posted a video of himself introducing his sister at a reading at their old school. His speech was equal parts sentimental and jabbing. When Curtis came out, she made some jokes about P.G. having 1.5 suits, and also made reference to getting Skyline chili with her dad, which calls to mind an old segment of This American Life. 

There’s something humanizing about this video. Here we have a New York Times best selling author having an annoying but lovable little brother and talking about sleeping at her parents’ house and forgetting how to use their shower.  It’s a reminder that creative people are still people. 

Other things I liked this week:

• Zadie Smith’s Q&A about her recent short story, The Embassy of Cambodia.
• Satisfaction Not Guaranteed: Reading Lance Armstrong by Ian Crouch.
• Plugging In, Dutch Put Electric Cars to the Test, Elisabeth Rosenthal.

This is probably not even interesting to my grandkids who are googling me out of some existential crisis, but in 2007,  I saw a live performance of This American Life alone at Lincoln Center. It was right before their Showtime series started, and I don’t think podcasts were really a thing yet, though maybe you could stream episodes online? It wasn’t the golden era of Ira we have today, where conversations can begin and end with “Did you hear that episode of This American Life?” 

I remember feeling like there was an incredible energy in the theater, maybe one I projected, because I was so excited to be in a room of people who wanted to spend $45 to see Ira Glass. I was almost 24, but I had just come to a place in my life where I knew the things I liked. In terms of verbs, I liked to read, I liked to run, and I liked to write. And like so many people who enjoy those verbs, I also liked This American Life. 

Anyway, Mates of States were the house band for that show, and afterward, I downloaded two of their songs. I was just doing my taxes and listening to Matchbox 20 (naturally) and soon enough, Mates of States came on. I wonder what they’re up to now, though I don’t wonder enough to do a cursory Google search. I hope whatever they’re doing, they don’t have to explain the gap in their resume as that time they were in a rock band. I listened to this song a lot in the spring of 2007, and listening to it again in the winter of 2013, I wish I liked it more. 

Weekly Endorsement: This Email From My Friend

How was your weekend? I mostly worked. On Thursday I saw Lorrie Moore read at NYU. It was really good. She read something that had been rejected by the New Yorker (and told us she once read something that had been rejected by the New Yorker at a New Yorker festival). The story was bizarre but really very funny, as were her answers to audience questions. She was totally on her game, if not a little buzzed. An undergraduate asked advice on becoming a successful writer and she said forget the “successful,” and just write. Also: learn to get by on very little, materially and emotionally. It all seemed so wise at the time.

In more link friendly news, Simon Rich’s serialized novella, “Sell Out” and the Slate Audio Book Club on Pride and Prejudice were also pretty great this week. 

Bad Luck and Bad Decisions

A few days after I came home from Part II of the Teen Tour Summer, Eastern European odyssey, I was in my hometown on my way to buy ice cream, when a woman approached me. She looked like she was about to cry, and said she needed $20 because she was locked out. The rest of what this woman said won’t make my ultimate decision—to loan her $20 and keep her son’s social security card as a kind of collateral—seem any wiser. 

But I had just come back from a trip where a lot of people helped me. There was the college acquaintance who let me stay in her apartment in Berlin, the Israeli real estate investor who gave me a ride to the train station in Burgas, and the teenage Turkish girl who showed me around the Asian side of Istanbul. She approached me when I got off the ferry—I was with some cyclists who I had met at the Black Sea in Bulgaria—and said, “I know a lot of people in Turkey are trying to rip you off, but I just want to show you around.” 

As sales pitches go, this was maybe not the best approach, but the bikers believed her, and I was with them. She led us to a good place for a lunch, took us to the bathhouse we wanted to visit, and brought us to a beautiful meditation garden, where she often reminded me to cover my legs. She was insistently friendly and odd, so odd that even though she paid for our bus tickets, I worried all day that she would lead us into an alley where we would be killed. But she didn’t, and now she and I are Facebook friends. 

All this is to say, when I got back to New York, I wanted to do the universe favors. I wanted to live in a place where if I got locked out of my apartment, someone would lend me $20 for a locksmith, and I would return that money. 

For a while, or like a week, it bothered me that I was naïve to give that woman money, that I should have paid more attention to how dirty her fingernails were, that no one responsible enough to pay back $20 would be willing to give her son’s social security card away, or would have the social security card of a stranger. I’ve outgrown that feeling. I’ve returned to a self I wouldn’t even call hardened, but a self that can’t get caught up in calling a strange woman every day for a week to get $18 back on a $20 loan.  

There are homeless people in Denver. They hang out at long traffic lights, willing to trade cigarettes for dollar bills. They hold signs about their service or their kids to distinguish themselves from travelers and oogles. In New York, when the subway door opened, and a man with no shoelaces and three coats shuffled through, there was no need for a sign. Still, anyone spending their day at the corner of Colorado and I-25 is probably not in a great place. And somehow, or because that’s the only way to get to work and get on with it, you have to roll up your window and not think too much about the world you would like to live in if you locked yourself out of your home. 

Weekly Endorsement: The Non-Puff Pieces Surrounding 'The Canyons'

However The Canyons turns out, the promotional media around the Bret Easton Ellis-James Deen-Linsday Lohan vehicle has been great. First there was that hilarious and sort of sad New York Times Magazine piece about Lindsay Lohan, and last week, New York Magazine ran a smart profile of Bret Easton Ellis. 

I’m not sure if anyone can like Bret Easton Ellis in earnest without coming off a bit like a sociopath. Still, he’s the best there is at describing the superficial, even if he doesn’t exactly condemn it. Vanessa Grigoriadis gets at all the Ellis contradictions, plus she makes a strong argument for the Tweet as the Haiku of our time. 

When someone asks me if I’ve heard of Portnoy’s Complaint

Weekly Endorsement: "I'm Going Down"

Careful followers of my internet presence will remember in 2011, I posted a Vampire Weekend cover of the Bruce Springsteen’s song “Going Down” to my Facebook wall with the disclaimer, “Who’s the whitest person you know? Me? Great. Now that that is settled, I really enjoy this cover.”

Fittingly enough, this song played over the credits of the season two premier of Girls. What can I say? I like Girls, I like Vampire Weekend. I am of my demographic. 

Along with re-endorsing “Going Down,” I also endorse Shoshanna’s speech to Ray in the middle of the season two premier. For all of Shoshanna’s innocence, she is the only character on the show—and perhaps the only female character on television—who knows what she wants and thinks those wants are valid. 

After being dumped by Ray between seasons, Shoshanna is hurt, but won’t pretend that being friends, in Facebook or real life, was ever part of the deal: “You don’t want to date me, that’s fine, because I don’t want to date you either, because I only want to date people who want to date me, because that is called self-respect, but I do not have to like you. Ok? You were never my friend, you were only my lover, and that is now over.” 

A major, absurd plot point of Sex and the City was Carrie’s need to stay friends with Big after they dated. It has also been a major, absurd plot point in my life and my friends’ lives. But here are the facts as Shoshanna offers them: it’s ok to be hurt by being dumped, but there’s no sense in acting as if less than what you wanted is enough. There’s a lot of talk about courtship ending, but the only way a woman can go on a 10:30 group date offered at 10:15 is to show up. As Shoshanna’s self-help books will tell you, it takes two people to make you feel bad about yourself. 

Weekly Endorsement: Niggle

Niggle, verb: To cause slight but persistent annoyance, discomfort, or anxiety.

You know when you’ve never heard a word before, and all of a sudden you hear it everywhere? That happened to me on Thursday with the word niggle. I’ve been having some cramping below my calf, and my running buddy, who ran track in college, said my recent increase in training was giving me the niggles. Later that day, I explained my semi-injury to another friend, who also ran at a high level, and he used the same word to describe my problem.  

I realize this is not a fantastic story, but as a word, Niggle has a great onomatopoeic quality. It’s also a word that seems to reside completely in the culture of endurance sports. This happens to every subgroup. Being super into anything comes with a language and a set of problems unique to that interest.  Beer people have all sorts of adjectives that make no sense to me; tennis players have to accept asymmetrical muscle mass. Runners have niggle, and this morning, a tender calf. 

Weekly Endorsement: TextEdit Speech

As a writer, and as a person, I tend to rush. I don’t know how many bruises I’ve gotten on the sides of my legs for thinking I was too busy to walk around the corner of a desk, but it’s been a lot. This rush happens in writing, too. I can’t type as fast as I can think, and I end up losing a lot of small words to bad copyediting. My more patient writing friends have advised that I read everything back aloud, but I rush when I read too, and tend to put the small words back in myself. 

One solution is TextEdit Speech. Obviously, we have the technology to have a machine read something aloud, but I didn’t know where this technology was until last year, and I didn’t start using it all the time until recently. While TextEdit Speech won’t catch their/there/they’re mistakes, it will let you know, in its awkward, passive aggressive way, that the article you thought you had included is missing. It’s also nice to hear your words in someone else’s voice. Even if it’s a voice from the future getting ready to destroy you.

The Smiths always remind me of that time I made a mix for someone who didn’t like The Smiths.

Weekly Endorsement: 'This Is 40'

For a long time, I’ve wanted to make a reality TV dating show called The Tedious and the Mundane, where a newly introduced couple has to shop for groceries for the week and see if there are sparks. Because, helicopter and hot air balloon rides—really, any personal air travel—is not a part of a real relationship. To me, any sound love is based on an initial attraction, a shared sense of humor, and a willingness to do tedious things with the other person. 

Short of a grocery shopping dating show, I recommend This Is 40. Disclaimer: I’m not great at recommending movies because I rarely see them. And even with my ignorance of the field, I can acknowledge that this movie is too long, is concerned with problems that affect only the white and the wealthy, and demands an appreciation of the director’s wife’s ass.

Still. Most movies show the beginning of relationships, when the social differences between a management consultant and a prostitute are endearing, when the energy of the new love between a klutzy woman and a hunky man radiate off the screen. But how these couples will figure out whether to watch Masterpiece Theater or Sunday night football in the future is left to an unmade sequel.

This Is 40 shows what it is to be committed to someone who isn’t perfect, who can be selfish and difficult, and whose home you must, out of will, practicality, and some genuine affection, continue to share. While the central 40 year-old couple in the movie resolves some of their issues by the end, the audience knows, even if the couple pretends not to, that many of these problems will return.

Everyone I know in a relationship is working against something—a husband who drinks too much, a girlfriend who is bad with money, a fiancé who plays smartphone games during dinner—that could be a deal breaker for someone else. But despite intermittent complaining, they have all chosen to accept one set of problems as their own. This Is 40 shows what it means to be in an imperfect relationship, and stay along anyway.

Year in Read, 2012

2012: Well, the world didn’t explode, though parts of it did go under. The high of 2012 was the Big Sur Marathon; the low was crying in a parking lot in Broomfield. The best meals were the Kosher Fried Chicken, the Vert practice dinner party and the Momofuku Pork Butt. The worst meals were the many times I had two Eggo Waffles and an avocado for dinner. In the past 12 months, I voted in a swing state, hiked two 14-ers, swam in a creek, pond, and an ocean, wrote some, and read more. After the jump, the books I read over the past year.

The Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach

I like the Midwest, I like Moby-Dick, and I like gay people, but I didn’t like this book. Which is too bad, because everyone else seemed to really enjoy it, and there’s nothing I enjoy more than a good book.

Like Life, Lorrie Moore

The Marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides

Big Sur, Jack Kerouac

It’s hard to take Jack Kerouac seriously as an adult.

The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson

This is a book about black migration during Jim Crow era. The bookmark in my copy is a ticket to a Denver Nuggets game.

The After-Life, Donald Antrim

Related recommendation: “I Bought A Bed" 

Less Than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis

I guess I find nihilism aesthetically pleasing, because I really enjoyed this book. I thought it had something real to say about the 80s entitled teenage experience. Related: If Only There Were a Book Club For Every Literary Experience I Have, Less Than Zero Edition.

Scenes in America Deserta, Reyner Banham

The American desert fascinates me, but I couldn’t imagine living somewhere so inherently inhospitable to life.

Dykes to Watch Out For, Alison Bechdel

The Gaggle, Jessica Massa (with Rebecca Wiegand)

My friends wrote a dating self-help book!

After Henry, Joan Didion

The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, Deepak Chopra

Desperate Characters, Paula Fox

Wild, Cheryl Strayed

A woman finds herself while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Obviously, you want to hate it, but there’s no way to. It’s a great book.

Coming Into the Country, John McPhee

Red Letter Secondhand Books and Alfalfa’s are my favorite retail establishments in Boulder. They’re the first two stores I visited east of the continental divide in Colorado, and though they are now places I frequent regularly, they still remind me of my road trip buddy. Whenever I go to Red Letter, I usually buy a book he would like. He’s the one who introduced me to John McPhee, and I bought this book here. If you’re curious about the Last Frontier and people who would literally rather pull their tooth out themselves than be apart of society, this is the book for you.

Love Is Not Constantly Wondering If You Are Making the Biggest Mistake of Your Life, Anonymous

Great title, obviously. That’s the best part of it

Prep, Curtis Sittenfeld (reread)

I Don’t Care About Your Band, Julie Klausner*

Columbine, Dave Cullen

Once A Runner, John L. Parker, Jr.

Runners believe this book is great in the same way that cyclists believe Lance Armstrong was clean.

The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway

I didn’t like this book in 1999 and I didn’t like it in 2012.

Rock Springs, Richard Ford

Previously. If you have any interest in the short form, the American West and loneliness, you should read this book.

Nothing to Envy, Barbara Demick

Usually the people of a repressed state know they’re starving, their leaders are dictators and life is lacking. The citizens of North Korea have no idea. There’s a lot that’s less than ideal in America, but at least we can talk about the problems. Plus, there’s tons of food. No book has made me feel luckier to be an American.

On Writing, Stephen King*

This Is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz

The best book about failed love I’ve ever read.

The Sportswriter, Richard Ford

Look at Me, Jennifer Egan*

Midnight in Sicily, Peter Robb*

Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

Oh man. Do you want to have that feeling of not being able to put a book down? Then read this one

Goodbye, Columbus, Philip Roth (reread)

I first read this novella when I was 20 and in love for the first time. Reading it now, when my understanding of emotional intimacy has evolved to include a willingness to do tedious things with another person, was a completely different experience. I wasn’t rooting for Neil and Brenda anymore; I could see how a life for them would be pretty miserable. Even so, I had to put the book down when Neil was visiting Boston. Related.

In Strange Gardens, Peter Hamm

The Secret Race, Tyler Hamilton

If you’re curious about subcultures and athletics, this book is a good read.

The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway (reread)

This book feels like a secret between Ernest Hemingway and me, and every time I reread it, it becomes funnier and sadder.

* = Didn’t finish.

Previously read: 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006

Weekly Endorsement: Bringing Down the Horse, Side A

Though occasionally given as a gesture or as a way to transport stolen music, CDs are mostly obsolete now. But CD players are still common in cars, which makes any automotive collection a bit weird. 

Most of my car CDs come from my friend Jordan’s music buying youth. We stopped at her childhood home on the way west. Since she doesn’t have a car or a CD player, she offered her collection,  once developed in $14.99 increments, to me . Though my old CDs are lame, hers are lame in a way I didn’t grow up with. No matter how hard I try, I just can’t get into the Moulin Rouge soundtrack. So last time I was home, I brought some of my old CDs back to my car in Denver. 

One such CD was Bringing Down the Horse, the breakout album of the Wallflowers, a 90s band headed by Jakob Dylan. Forgetting about the existential crisis of being pretty decent at something your father remains much better at, and also those eyes, I stand behind Side A of Bringing Down the Horse. This album was produced at a time when people bought a band’s music wholesale. With that in mind, the Wallflowers wisely put their best stuff up front. The album starts with their second hit, “One Headlight,” and continues to their first, “Sixth-Avenue Heartache.”  All of their other singles are within the first five tracks. 

Listening to Side A of Bringing Down the Horse feels like opening a time capsule of mid to late-90s pop. I’m sure someone as handsome and related to fame as Jakob Dylan could be popular now. And I wouldn’t even say the Wallflowers best songs changed anything about pop music. I’m just saying, it’s not a bad few tracks, and listening to the album feels like opening a yearbook.  

Be Thankful, 2012: New Friends

I moved to Colorado without knowing anyone, which was romantic, but also stupid. The practical implications of my rugged individualism turned out to be watching old episodes of 90210 while eating Caesar salad alone. Of course I wanted to meet new people, but I didn’t have much experience actively making friends. My friends were people I had met in school or at work, at times when I wasn’t desperate for or even aware of new companionship. Friends were just people who popped into my life and stayed. 

What I learned moving out to Colorado is that making new friends is a numbers game. You have to meet a lot of jerks to find someone who is cool. For instance, out of three alumni meet-ups I’ve been to, I’ve made one friend. Those odds aren’t bad, but at the first two events, I was pretty depressed to be hanging out with people whose life highlight seemed to be getting into a good college. 

But one advantage of needing to make new friends is being aware of the moment when the person stops being a number in your phone becomes real. The other night, a new friend called me to gossip about the previous night’s party. And even though there’s nothing like an old school friend, one who borrows a book from your mom while you’re out of town, there is something nice about being part of a nascent friendship. 

Weekly Endorsement: Garner’s Usage Tip Email

Do you like learning? Do you like new email? If so, the Garner’s Usage Tip maybe for you. 

The best email I received all week was from them, on the etymology of sour grapes: 

This is one of the most commonly misused idiomatic metaphors. It is not a mere synonym of “envy” or “jealousy.” Rather, as in Aesop’s fable about the fox who wanted the grapes he could not reach, “sour grapes” denotes the human tendency to disparage as undesirable what one really wants but can’t get (or hasn’t gotten). For example, a high-school boy who asks a girl for a date and is turned down might then insult her in all sorts of puerile ways. That’s a case of sour grapes.

I believe Larry David was involved in a movie whose title was a misuse of this expression. I also like the idea of a separate category of bitterness for something wanted and not received. 

Other good things about this email: it comes only Monday to Friday, arrives at a good time in the day (around 10 am MST, right when you could use a new email) and it speaks to the inscrutability of the English language. Like with cooking or running, or really any hobby other than solving basic algebra questions, language is something we can never do perfectly; we can only work at getting better at it. And getting better at things is something I endorse every week.