How It Feels by Brendan Cowell (2010)

Posted on October 29, 2010 by Jess

Accomplished Australian television and film actor, screenwriter, playwright, and director Brendan Cowell has turned his creative hand to fiction, with his debut novel, How It Feels. How It Feels examines the sadder aspects involved in growing up and coming to terms with the choices and consequences of one’s actions and the gradual acceptance of adulthood and responsibility, told with a gritty been-there-done-that narrative style.

On the night of receiving their final school results, Neil Cronk and his friends indulge in drugs, booze, violence and, almost but not quite, sex. This is not the final adolescent party before emerging into calm, well-behaved adulthood; this is an evening that has irreperable repurcussions for all involved. This section is told with the vital energy of youth, that feeling of invincibility and that actions have no consequences. Thought much of the focus is on Neil’s sexual failure with his girlfriend, Courtney, the real highlight is Cowell’s sensitive, though uncompromisingly honest, take on male friendship. The friendships between Neil, Gordon and Stuart are refreshingly free of pretension, Cowell transfers the middle-class, outer suburban male voice and attitude seamlessly onto the page. Though the events of their wayward adventures aren’t of the magnitude of those that will follow, significant changes are already taking place within the characters.

The evening deepened and dipped as everyone packed off into cliques and corners, merging with those they had formed an alliance with over the past one to thirteen years. If adolescence was a war zone then fashion and music were both protection and artillery: they kept us safe and offered us a position to fire ourselves from.

As Neil breaks from his planned life of university and city living and instead studies drama in Bathurst, Cowell brings in some of that pretension that comes with university, and in particular, the Arts. Neil turns from the slightly weedy cohort of his friends to a unrelentingly egotistic and self-involved prick, yet it’s an evolution that makes sense considering the difference between his university crowd and those he left behind. Back home, major changes are taking place, but Neil is too absorbed with the rituals and institutionalized weirdness of his life – seeing it almost as more enlightened than, for example, Gordon going into business. Again, on the eve of graduation and his final performance piece, Neil is shattered by the news of a friend’s death.

As an adult in London with a moderate degree of theatrical success, Neil still maintains a strong connection to those he left behind. This adult section is told in a sometimes disconcertingly fractured way, as the narrative moves between the past in London, the past before the wedding, and the present, it is easy to lose track of where exactly Neil is. Nonetheless, the dramatic events of this section – death, break ups, watching a friend marry your ex-girlfriend, drug use, abuse and recovery – carry great emotional weight.

Told over these three major transitional stages in Neil’s life, How It Feels is a brutal look at masculinity in contemporary Australia. Though there is much to cover in terms of youth, love, loss, heartbreak, success, failure – the running theme throughout is the male experience of contemporary life. Cowell’s narrative voice is strong, at times raw and confrontingly masculine. Issues such as home and the past are deftly dealt with, but what resonates is the connection we have to the place we grew up, despite how far we run from it or how much we try to deny it, and how this place and its people define us. To say this is a strong debut is understating the point, How It Feels is ruthless, wrenchingly felt and truthful, yet not without the necessary light to guide us through.

They gave me another chance, and I am eternally grateful. It is easy to jump out of the village, move to the cities, and spend your time poking fun at the little places we hail from and their routine ways, but deep down inside you know that’s where the real people are, the truly decent souls, and you fight and fight to deny it, until you need them so bad it hurts.

[Disclosure: publisher supplied proof copy from work. How It Feels is released by Picador Australia through Pan Macmillan Australia in November 2010, ISBN: 9781405039291. View the How It Feels book trailer on youtube.]

The Wild Things by Dave Eggers (2009)

Posted on October 27, 2010 by Jess

It’s quite an interesting situation to be in, to have your childhood nostalgia repackaged and remarketed to you as a twenty-something reader. It’s not even an authentic nostalgia, as a kid I wasn’t really much of a fan of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. I liked it, sure, but I wasn’t obsessed. (Tintin, Commander Keen, medical dictionaries, Corey Feldman – now those were my obsessions.) I know that Sendak’s iconic picture book holds a unique status among my generation but I’m not sure how much of that stems from reading it as a kid or rediscovering it as a slightly older than the targeted age group. With the release of the film version last year, Dave Eggers, who also collaborated on the screenplay, wrote a novelization, The Wild Things, of his film script based on Sendak’s picture book.

When considering the figures involved in the film and associated products, this book included, it’s not hard to see who was the real market: film directed by Spike Jonze, known for his cult films Being John Malkovich and Adaptation and music videos, co-written by Dave Eggers of McSweeney’s and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius fame and soundtracked by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Is it as simple as pulling together a few generational icons to repackage a cultural artefact to an older market?

One might think that a boy who was out in the snow for so long would get cold, but Max was not. He was warm, partly because he had on many layers, and partly because boys who are one part wolf and part wind do not get cold.

The Wild Things introduces us, once again, to Max, a product of divorce and television, trying to adapt to his mother’s new boyfriend and his older sister’s change in attitude. This first section of the novel returns us to the boredom of childhood, of being slightly outside understanding and being of the adult world. Max doesn’t fully comprehend the world outside of what it means for him, considering things only so far as according to how they effect him. In a plain, yet engaging, style, Eggers captures the focus and energy of beiing a kid, the moments of great certainty, as well as frightening uncertainty.

Max misbehaves. He floods his sister’s bedroom as revenge for ruining his igloo. He bites his mother for trying to control him. And then he runs away, and after many days and many nights of sailing, finds himself in a land among the wild things. I do like that Eggers doesn’t give us any explanation, that we’re left to our own devices to draw our own conclusions, if we even want to. As he claims his royal right over the group of wild things, he learns about responsibility for others, the repercussions of personal failure. It is an updated, modern fable, but – and maybe this is a sign of losing touch with my own “wild thing” – ultimately I preferred the real world aspects of the novel, the acknowledgement and exploration of the subtle trauma of being young and negotiating the world.

So he had a choice. Would he stay behind the curtain and think about things, marinate in his own confusion, or would he put on his white fur suit and howl and scratch and make it known who was boss of this house and all of the world known and unknown.

Despite Eggers’ admirably sincere writing style and his ability to capture the nuances of childhood boredom, The Wild Things reads too much like the film – both visually and the characters themselves. It is easy to be cynical about the circumstances of the novel’s production, but The Wild Things, as a novel, does seem extraneous.

Life Sucks by Jessica Abel, Gabe Soria and Warren Pleece (2008)

Posted on October 20, 2010 by Jess

If I were prone to making statements like “Life Sucks is like [cultural product x] meets [cultural product y]“, I suppose I’d sum up Jessica Abel, Gabe Soria and Warren Pleece’s Life Sucks as Reality Bites with vampires. It’s an easy comparison to make – the mid-twenties malaise, the directionless jobs, the strongly felt and fought over romantic tryst are similar to those in the film – just with added bloodsuckers. While the love triangle and battle for the love of a mortal woman storyline feels tired already, it’s the twist on traditional and contemporary vampire mythology that makes Life Sucks appealing.

Dave is a socially awkward and very reluctant vampire, sired by a Romanian immigrant for the sole purpose of having cheap and easily controlled labour for his convenience store. Dave’s experiences in the store are mundane, repetitive, and largely unexceptional. Except when the local juice bar closes and the vampire posers and goths, including Rosa, descend on the Last Stop for their late night supplies. Dave is drawn into competition for Rosa’s affections with the surfer dude vampire Wes, an alpha male figure who is at peace with his laid back masculinity and his vampire instincts.

Dave, my friend, there’s no way I could make you feel worse than you do yourself.

As always, it’s the subtle commentary on meaningless, repetitive service jobs and the bonds with friends that appealed to me more than the romance side of the story. There are some brilliant scenes of Dave being bombarded by requests from customers, some normal, some completely outrageous, and his bored facial expression never changes. The idea of vampires as wage slaves is unique, yet apt – who didn’t feel manipulated by a boss that could convince you to come to work even on your one day off? That Dave’s boss, Lord Radu Arisztidescu, reminded me of a boss I had in my late teens made this concept feel all the more familiar.

Dave is reluctant to follow his vampire instincts, unlike his friend Jerome. Instead, he drinks blood from a can (and doesn’t want to know where it comes from) or gets it from the blood bank – anything to avoid having to kill. Tales of Jerome’s bloody conquests make him feel ill. The friendship between Dave and Jerome is portrayed warmly, with small moments of cameraderie celebrated by a fist bump, and a wry routine clearly well established between the two. Some of the facial expressions alone in these sequences made me laugh out loud. Forget the romance, I wanted more of Dave and Jerome.

But, this is contemporary vampires so we can’t leave out that all important romance element. Rosa is not the most enduring character – rather more of a blank slate for the vamps to project their desires on – and both Dave and Wes’ attraction to her doesn’t seem to be any deeper than physical. The competitive nature of their duel is off putting, and difficult to engage with. There is a nice contrast between what Rosa imagines vampires are like to what we know is decidedly unromantic for Dave and Jerome. Of course, Rosa remains ignorant of Wes and Dave’s vampire status and just as things seem to be running smoothly for our hero, out comes the big secret. The dénoument to Dave’s growing predicaments seems a little too convenient.

Look at me! I work like a slave for my master! I’m broke! I can’t even go out in the sun! Is that romantic? Does it sound fun? I’m supposed to be out killing people!

While not entirely convinced or interested by the romance plot, I did enjoy the playful approach to vampire mythology. It’s a unique enough idea to maintain interest, but the story lapses into an all too familiar romantic triangle with a predictable outcome. The highlights of Life Sucks are the accurate portrayal of the banality of contemporary service jobs and comfortable friendships and while these concepts are not original in fiction, mixing them with the vampire myth adds a new perspective.

The Accidental Billionaires: Sex, Money, Betrayal and the Founding of Facebook by Ben Mezrich (2009)

Posted on October 18, 2010 by Jess

Context, as they say, is everything. If I had picked Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires: Sex, Money, Betrayal and the Founding of Facebook outside of the 24 Hour Readathon, I’m not sure I would have read more than a couple of chapters before setting it aside. As it is though, during the long stretches of sustained reading of the Readathon, The Accidental Billionaires provided a reasonably engaging, though highly problematic, read. Billed as non-fiction, The Accidental Billionaires is written in a curious style Mezrich claims is a “dramatic narrative account of real events.” This approach is effective only if you’re not after hard facts, dates, numbers and an unbiased perspective.

The story behind Facebook’s creation is rife with, not quite the betrayal suggested by the title, but human drama based on greed and perceived injustice. From all night coding sessions in dorm rooms to business deals agreed upon over pizza, The Accidental Billionaires presents its cast as the unlikeliest to succeed. Only, as we know, they do and in a way that could not have been anticipated. The ascent from computer geekery to billions of dollars being thrown at Zuckerberg and company is astounding. Amidst Zuckerberg’s success though, there are those that demand their cut of the profits – Eduardo Saverin, a founding investor, and the Winklevoss twins, who made moves to collaborate with Zuckerberg on a networking project of their own.

They were jocks from a wealthy, tony family. Mark was a nebbishy geek who had hacked his way to stardom. This was a class battle the journalists couldn’t ignore: rich, priviliged kids who believed the establishment existed to protect their rights against a hacker who had been willing to break the rules. Honor code vs. hackers code.

The Accidental Billionaires reads like (poorly written) fiction, and it is difficult to know – with so many voices chiming in, but for the conspicuous absence of key player Mark Zuckerberg – what happened and what was perceived to have happened. Especially as so many of Mezrich’s sources are the very same people who sued Zuckerberg, it’s hard not to read this as their way of getting their own back. The flowery prose stretches far beyond Mezrich’s talents, and I’m not quite sure of the motivation for writing this particular story in such a manner.

Another aspects of The Accidental Billionaires that made me uncomfortable was the portrayal and absence of female figures and I’m not quite sure how to approach this issue. Women don’t play a role in this story beyond that of sex objects, things to be viewed, rated and compared. Sure, they serve as the original inspiration for Facebook, and the original inception of the site serves the function of this rating and comparison of appearances, and once the boys find success, the girls come a-running. It is worrying that individuals in possession of such intelligence, whether it be business or programming prowess, so easily buy into this idea of voyeurism and objectification. But then, the tentative factual accuracy of The Accidental Billionaires calls all this into question. Intended as piece of non-fiction, the author can claim to merely be presenting the facts, as it happened, and to have no role in the perpetuation of a sexist ideology. However, while our male heroes and villains are described in Mezrich’s bombastic prose, every woman who appears – visually only, never playing a substantial role – is described as, invariably, “hot”. That’s not even getting into the excessive exoticization of Asian women. Like I said, I’m not sure I have an appropriate framework to properly critique this, but I found it distasteful and troubling.

The Accidental Billionaires offers little analysis or critique of the activities of those involved or the effect Facebook, and social networking in general, has had on our culture and presents the story of the foundation of Facebook with an obvious bias. That said, the human drama, the battle between privilege and hard work, the always interesting aspects of sex, fame, money and business, make this version of the story behind Facebook compelling enough. However, this may end up being one of the very few instances where the film adaptation, The Social Network, ends up being an improvement on the book.

Melbourne Remade: The Inner City Since the 70s by Seamus O’Hanlon (2010)

Posted on October 15, 2010 by Jess

For my birthday this year, a group of friends and I went on the Haunted Melbourne walking tour. The host constantly lamented the lack of old buildings in which these ghostly sightings or morbid stories had occurred. While I imagine that the structural evolution of a city somewhat hampers attempts to revisit its supernatural past, in Melbourne Remade: The Inner City Since the 70s, Seamus O’Hanlon takes us through the myriad of architectural changes within Melbourne’s centre since the 1970s and how they represent the shift from an industrial history to a post-industrial society.

O’Hanlon covers much of the inner city of Melbourne, as well as the hip inner suburbs. Looking at different aspects – landmarks, retail, the Yarra river, events and the iconic streets – he outlines the significant development of Melbourne since the 1970s. Not simply reminiscing the loss of historical structures, O’Hanlon instead insists that history is evident not just within the heritage listed buildings, but in the evolution enforced by changing social, cultural and economic shifts.

Mainly, it is a pleasure to learn stories about places that have become so routine that it’s easy to forget their long history as they are so gradually removed from their past. Take Melbourne Central, for example. Now a bustling underground train station and modern entertainment and retail complex, it was once a closed off and dominated by department store Daimaru. I remember getting lost within the maze and seeming lack of exits many times, or struggling to even find a way into the building. O’Hanlon also points to how the integration of the new, more open retail space with laneways not only opens up Melbourne Central to the surrounding streets and make it more inviting, but also places it within the larger context of Melbourne itself. The now iconic Melbourne laneways exist as almost polar opposites to the mega-development schemes that dominated the city for many years. Here we see the small scale, quirky and local enliven and define the city space, even as they exist alongside the massive globally financed structures.

Soon after completion the Rialto was dubbed ‘Melbourne’s Ayers Rock’ by journalist Keith Dunston; like a member of other former Collins Street defenders Dunstan found himself something of a reluctant fan of the building’s twin blue glass towers that seem to change colour depending on the time of day and direction of the sun. The beauty of the building is breathtaking, especially from a distance. One of the best ways to see it in all its glory is from the West Gate Bridge at dusk. Even up close it has a majesty that’s difficult to describe.

It would be too easy to simply recite all the interesting changes that have taken place over the past forty years, changes that have been evident within my lifetime, and some that their relative consistency seems to erase their past. There is much to learn in Melbourne Remade about the origins of Melbourne in trade and free enterprise and how these traditions are carried on in to our current consumer culture, how the public transport system affected the growth of inner city retail strips, the creation of a recreation space along the Yarra, and the transformation of the inner suburbs from “working class landscape[s] of production” to upmarket residential zones.

Although one aspect of Melbourne Remade that struck me was the creation of Melbourne as an event, sport and culture destination to offset the deindustrialisation and urban decay after the recessions. It was an economic necessity that has significantly boosted tourism numbers and the structure of the city itself. Even more interesting is the fact that less than 10% of the metropolitan population live in Melbourne’s inner city, so that while Melbourne city can now be seen as a hub of culture, events and recreation, this centralisation effectively distances the benefits, both cultural and economic, from the majority of the population. O’Hanlon makes a heartfelt argument, and one that I strongly agree with, that though it may not bring in the international tourists, extending these cultural renewal strategies out into the suburbs will ultimately benefit more of Melbourne’s population. I also wonder, if this sort of extensive influx of money and resources ever happens, will we see the same gentrification of the outer suburbs and industrial areas that the inner city has seen over the last 40 years, thus pushing the outer suburbs even further “out”?

Melbourne Remade shows us how a number of forces, economic, social, cultural and historical, have seen the inner city reinvent itself from a past of manufacturing and industry to a post-industrial, economically privileged retail, recreation and residential space. O’Hanlon provdies more context for these changes than you would think possible for such a physically little book, and even manages to build some hype for Arcade’s next release MacRobertsonland with the intriguing legacy of Macpherson Robertson making an appearance. Most importantly though, O’Hanlon gives us another outlook through which to view our city, through the changes that occur, and keep occuring, allowing us to build our own “visual archaeology” of Melbourne.

[Disclosure: Publisher supplied e-galley of Melbourne Remade: The Inner City Since the 70s, but then I liked it so much that I went out and bought myself a physical copy! Melbourne Remade is published by Arcade Publications, ISBN 978-0-9804367-8-5]

Transmetropolitan: Volume Six, Gouge Away by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson (2002)

Posted on October 13, 2010 by Jess

After having a controversial column censored by the newly elected government in Volume Five, Lonely City, Spider Jerusalem, our understandably disgruntled journalist of the future, is pondering his next step in his mission to confront and bring down the corrupt Callahan government. Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson’s Transmetropolitan: Volume Six, Gouge Away is probably my favourite Transmet volume since Year of the Bastard. (Yes, I know I said I was going to take a break from this series, but seriously, you try staying away from Spider Jerusalem once you’re trapped in his web.) Here Spider is torn from a future of being a safe, barely tolerated public figure and forced to return to his rebellious outlaw roots.

Gouge Away opens with Spider trapped in his overly protected and controlled apartment watching different media perceptions and portrayals of his public persona – from the kawaii cartoon “Magical Truthsaying Bastard Spider!” who delivers moral guidance in the form of truth bombs, to an alpha-male action hero Spider and, probably the clearest sign of making it in the sex obsessed, sexual deviancy tolerating City, a pornographic film of his life. This issue reminded me a lot of the Spider watching television in Volume One, only this time it’s not to show us how outrageous screen based entertainment is in this imagined version of the future, but how these different media portrayals of Spider could destroy his ability to engage in hardcore muckraking journalism.

It’s not only on a multitude of screens that Spider views himself through, but also in a drug induced revenge fantasy and a paranoid dream about his audience. Each of these scenarios are illustrated by different artists, lending a unique visual slant on characters we already know. These single issue storylines are part of what I love so much about Transmetropolitan, how they stand as stories in their own right and reflect on the larger storyline, as well as introducing us to many of the not so alien concepts that abound in the City.

We’re the people you’ve been talking to all along. We’re the people you shriek at every week in your column– but we don’t read fucking newspapers. God no. We’re the ones who only see you on TV, or catch the diluted version quoted on feedsites. We’ve never listened to a word you’ve said.
We’re your audience.

Spider walks around the City, his favourite way of reconnecting with the weirdness and the corruption he, and his ambivalent audience, live with. During his wandering, he begins to realize the potential of other less monitored ways of publishing his work. It manages to be exciting, it makes Spider feel dangerous again. A brief interlude allows us to spend time with Spider’s assistants, Channon and Yelena, in which we get to see them bond, as well as realizing the great danger their lives are in solely because they work for Spider.

Working alone, Spider takes the opportunity to dig deeper into his theories about the Callahan administration’s part in the assassination of Vita Severn. He persuades his Word editor Royce to publish his latest column, beating deadlines that would allow for more government intrusion. As a result, a government advisor outed as a pedophile commits suicide, and we realize that Spider’s vengeance for the death of Vita, once his sole figure of hope within the ravaged system, is going to be bloody. Some of the artwork here is shocking, street carnage of one of Spider’s informers is swift, unexpected and completely brutal. More so because we don’t know, though we can guess, who is behind this violent retribution.

They assume, like most people, that fear will do the trick. Fear will keep everyone in place. Fear will keep everyone distracted from what’s really going on.
Let him know we can beat him up, let him know we could have killed him, let him know we can destroy him, let the fear shrivel him up. Fuck that. I’m not afraid of them. They’re afraid of me.
They’re afraid of the truth.

Transmetropolitan: Volume Six, Gouge Away ends with Spider and his assistants on the run, fired from the Word and booted out of his luxury apartment. Spider is back on the streets, given the free reign to verbally assault the Callahan administration without fear of censorship. One gets the distinct feeling that the new outlets of distribution, the ferociousness of his attitude and the extreme methods of the Callahan government means that censorship is the least of Spider’s worries. However, Spider as we know and love him is likely to continue fighting his good fight no matter the risks.

Previous Transmetropolitan reviews:

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto by Chuck Klosterman (2003)

Posted on October 11, 2010 by Jess

With my expectations significantly diminished after reading Killing Yourself to Live, I decided to give Chuck Klosterman another chance with his essay collection Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto. What can I say, I’m stupidly naïve and sometimes willing to dig beyond my first impression of a writer, no matter how negative my initial response.

In Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, Klosterman muses on various aspects of pop culture, the inane, the arcane and the absurd, all in his overtly self-aware style. This is a style that is annoyingly ironic, attributing meaning where there really probably isn’t any – and this is coming from an ex-cultural studies student. So many of these essays sound like conversations that have taken place in countless number of inner-city hipster bars. One essay, looking at the uncool music of Billy Joel and how he is actually, in Klosterman’s opinion, greatly underrated because of Joel’s lack of rock and roll persona; his songs somehow invite the listener to assume the narrator’s position. Klosterman is completely the opposite, instead aggressively inserting himself in every essay, making the reader all too aware of his presence, never just letting his arguments just exist.

For another example, an essay on people who have been in contact with serial killers had so much potential as an essay topic, but these experiences are filtered through Klosterman. It’s not the close encounters with sadistic killers that Klosterman wants to explore, it’s more specifically his proximity to these people. Only one essay, comparing The Empire Strikes Back with the malaise and hopes of Generation X, was mildly enjoyable, though at the same time slightly ridiculous. I skimmed over many of the sports related essays.

After an aside – each essay is punctuated by an interlude featuring, you’ll never guess, Klosterman’s opinion on things – on hating punk rock and some snide remarks about punk rock icons, I realized the essential difference between Chuck Klosterman and myself, the reason why I don’t connect with his writing and his thoughts. Now, I know punk has it’s own rules, hierachies and laws, but the most important aspect of punk rock, for me, is its sincerity. It seems that this is also precisely what Klosterman takes issue with, and anything vaguely resembling sincerity is something to be torn apart, made fun of, mercilessly mocked. Where I appreciate sincerity and earnestness, Klosterman champions an aloofly distant approach. His writing is a smug smirk intended to make you feel like you’re just not in on the joke. I hate to use the ubiquitous word “hipster”, but that’s precisely what this entire collection is. Klosterman aims for a postmodern hip style, but just comes across as infuriating and self-involved. Again. This time, I’m really done.

(For the shorthand, visual version of everything I’ve written above, this adapted book cover succinctly summarizes everything that I think about Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs and Chuck Klosterman’s writing in general.)

Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America by Natasha Vargas-Cooper (2010)

Posted on October 8, 2010 by Jess

Like anyone hooked on contemporary television series, which seems to be one of the few mediums that can match the book for complexity, character development and elaborate plots, I’m slightly obsessed with Mad Men. In one of those now familiar “blog gets a book deal” cases, Natasha Vargas-Cooper adapted her Footnotes of Mad Men blog into Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America, which provides some cultural, social and historical context for the show itself. Mad Men, for the uninitiated, is set in the early 1960s and follows the lives of several people working for an advertising firm on Madison Avenue. The show’s historical context allows for a rich exploration of changing (or not) sexual politics, the illusion of advertising and the massive cultural shifts that occurred in America in the 1960s. So, there is obviously a lot of ground to cover in a book like Mad Men Unbuttoned.

Divided in to sections exploring the advertising world, fashion, working women, sex, drinks and drugs, decor, literature, movies and the future, Mad Men Unbuttoned aims to explore the broader context of the 1960s era. This does encourage some understanding, some deeper insight into the show itself, but isn’t at all analytical in the way I anticipated. The wealth of contextual information is presented in short blog post mode, which doesn’t really allow for anything more than a superficial glance at these mostly unspoken aspects of the show. It speaks volumes that the longer essays – in particular on Don and smoking, the ambiguity of Salvatore Romano’s sexuality and the significance of Don reading Frank O’Hara – are the most illuminating, the ones that have the room to set up an argument or position and then explore it. The rest are basic introductions to topics that seem to deserve further exploration.

Don smoked and continued smoking because of two compelling motives: One, he was surely addicted to nicotine. Second are the myriad reasons that, with all the scientific and cultural cues, so many men continue to smoke even today. There are a couple of heady postulations including the idea that despite demonization, smoking has endured. The act of drawing hot smoke into your lungs still retains a touch of manliness, of strength and unspoken prowess. That might as well be a dictionary definition of the words Don Draper.
- Alex Balk in “Always Be Smoking: Why Don Won’t Quit”

For all my frustrated expectations, there are moments where the content elaborates on underlying cultural tensions, and does so in an engaging way. Coming from a program as rich as Mad Men, I ultimately expected Mad Men Unbuttoned to possess the same level of depth. Perhaps it is the intricacies of the characters in the show that lends gravity to the fraught cultural era of the 1960s; we come to understand the changes through the characters rather than through the historical background. What is presented here is a cursory look into the cultural, social and historical context of the early 1960s and Mad Men Unbuttoned works as a handy glossary companion to the series. It must also be said that the book is gorgeously designed with photos from the era. These essays are too short to allow strong analytical connections to be made, but are ideal for a building a basic understanding of the contextual background of the show.

Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian by Avi Steinberg (2010)

Posted on October 6, 2010 by Jess

Frustrated by the direction his life is taking, Avi Steinberg quits his freelance gig writing obituaries and takes a job in the library of a Boston prison. Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian is a refreshing memoir that sheds light on life behind bars whether stuck there by choice or by crime, and on understanding the position of the prison institution in social, cultural and historical terms.

Steinberg, thankfully, recognizes that he is not the main focus of the story, but also knows when it is appropriate to insert himself, his past, his family history into the text, that is, when it illustrates, through the personal stories, a larger issue within the prison walls. These stories stretch from his Orthodox Jewish upbringing, to a mysterious grandmother and teaching a creative writing class to his prisoners. Though Running the Books lacks a strong overarching thesis, it doesn’t suffer from this lack of direction. Instead there are moments of redemption, justice, and yes, even beauty, in the minutiae of the stories Steinberg finds in day to day life in prison. Some of his musings on communication in prison, the power struggles between inmates and staff, and the privilege of names are thought-provoking.

For days I kept imagining the fate of the world’s misplaced letters. I started noticing them everywhere. [...] When I looked around the world, I couldn’t see these letters. But I became aware of their indirect presence. They contained life’s great subtexts, embedded between the lines of cell phone conversations of strangers on the bus, in the hazy motive of a coworker who told me she was taking a “metnal health” day off after receiving a difficult email from her mother. These notes were virtual, folded up, hidden, like letters tucked into books of the prison library. A kite, barely visible in the sky, bound to a person by an almost invisible string. Even the unsent ones are very much present. Especially the unsent ones.

Strangely though, and this could totally just be the effects of watching too many HBO prison shows, Steinberg witnesses very little actual violence within the prison library. His one potentially violent encounter happens on the outside, in the free world, when he is mugged my an ex-con who recognizes him. But the most heinous act of violence that Steinberg reports is an officer letting off fart bombs in the library. I wonder how much of this is self-censorship, respect on behalf of the institution he represented or if he just didn’t witness these things in the prison library. It just struck me as somewhat strange, given how much free reign the prisoners seemed to be given within the library.

Some of the inmate stories are genuinely effecting, though the conclusion of many of them are unrelentingly sad, too often ending in untimely death. The story of a prisoner who connects with Steinberg to create a life plan to host his own cooking show, the female prisoner who wants Avi’s help to reunite her with her long lost son. Steinberg never sees these people as just criminals – though he does have something of a crisis when he discovers the crimes of a prisoner he has been bonding with and ponders the implications of this relationship – but as trapped humans whose only chance at personal redemption can be found within the library.

Diana had said that the library wasn’t complicated, that it was just a place for people to pass time with books. Perhaps that was true back in the old days, when the prison would simply deliver books to inmates in their cells, a practice that had lasted hundreds of years. But the library was different: it was a place, a dynamic social setting where groups gathered, where people were put in relation with others. A space an individual could physically explore on his own.

Like Scott Douglas’ Quiet Please: Dispatches from a Public Librarian, Steinberg recognizes the function of a library as something beyond a repository of knowledge. Instead, these libraries always perform a communal, social function in giving equal footing and access to all those who desire it. Even when the community is made up of the so-called undesirables of society, the opportunity for creating their community and finding their place with in it must be important in such isolation. While Running the Books is not without fault, the lack of cohesive direction does diminish the overall power of the book somewhat, many of the stories held within offer insight and a greater understanding of the incarcerated and those that work with them.

[Disclosure: Review copy provided through publisher through the Shelf Awareness newsletter (some of those galley request adverts do ship internationally it turns out!). Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian is published by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday through Random House, released on 19th October, 2010. ISBN: 978-0-385-52909-9. The New York Times recently published a brief excerpt - "A Prison-Library Reunion."]

The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames and Dean Haspiel (2008)

Posted on October 4, 2010 by Jess

Graphic novel The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames and Dean Haspiel follows Jonathan A, an alcoholic writer coming to terms with his addiction and how it effects his relationships, his behaviour and his overall attitude. While Jonathan A bears more than a passing resemblance to the scribe, I’m not interested here in the blurred line between fiction and non-fiction in The Alcoholic. The story is too compelling, the compassion too strongly felt, and Jonathan A’s failure too obvious. Hiding from police in the sand beneath a boardwalk after being caught in the back seat of a car with a cat-loving midget, Jonathan A looks back over his life – a close friendship in high school with Sal, how he started drinking, a failed romantic relationship with a woman he names after whichever city she happens to be living in and a tender relationship with his great aunt Sadie.

The Alcoholic covers the cycles of addiction, from rehab and jeopardizing career and relationships, to relapse. However, it never seems to knowingly address the element of self-destruction; the sadness of this cycle is evident to the reader, and while Jonathan A never romanticizes his addiction, he never fully condemns it either. This is no easy morality tale, it is the story of a man struggling with substance abuse. The human aspect, the frustrated relationships and the constant lies, lends The Alcoholic a truly touching sentiment. His relationship with his elderly aunt Sadie is sweet, the unrequited affections of Sal hurt. The distinction between these characters and Jonathan seems to be that they are willing to put their feelings on the line, to express themselves to him – whereas he is continually in conflict with himself. So many unanswered or unmade phone calls, the best of intentions never followed through.

For years I had thought that my best friend in the world hated me and in turn I hated myself because of this rejection. I had been telling myself a lie for six years, except I hadn’t known it was a lie.

Dealing with his habit and a neighbour who has lost her husband in the wake of September 11 gives The Alcoholic a stronger socio-political context, and thankfully this is never used by A as an excuse for drinking. It merely makes him aware of a larger reality beyond himself and the bottle. The storytelling, and the self-deprecation, make it difficult to not become involved in Jonathan A’s story. There are some cringe-worthy moments of scatalogical humour which brings the focus away from the melancholic navel-gazing, while at the same time representing the complete lack of control over the addict’s body and its urges.

Haspiel’s artwork is greyscale, maintaining stark realism even during the most comic, and the most touching, moments. Through the shifting timeframe, Haspiel’s artwork is clear enough that we can recognize the characters despite alterations in their appearance over time. This prevents the narrative itself from getting too burdened by the non-linear movement of time, Haspiel’s artwork grounds us with the characters – their story, not the passing of time, is what is important. Haspiel is also really amazing at capturing the inherently comic drama of desperately rushing, and sometimes for Jonathan A, failing, to find a toilet.

But here’s how I would summarize my general world-view: resigned, defeated, and heartbroken. My usual stance is: “I’m wrong and you’re wrong.” I don’t think anybody knows what the hell is going on. It’s all too confusing.

The Alcoholic works against perpetuating the myth of the romantic hard-drinking writer hero. It shows us the considerably less romantic aspects of this life: the desperation, the melancholy, the loneliness, the failure to recover. Yet, as stated, this is more than a simple morality tale. There is real humour here. One page you may be laughing at Jonathan A, the next you are deep in despair alongside him. I’m not going to make an trite comments on how this reflects the rollercoaster emotions of alcoholism, because I’m not qualified to make such a comparison, but The Alcoholic makes the cyclic behaviour more understandable beyond the easy path of righteous indignation.

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