Recently I reviewed Seth Kaufman’s “reality TV novel” The King of Pain over on CCLaP. We discuss literature, TV, reading, and The Jersey Shore’s responsibility for the cultural apocalypse.
What inspired you to writeThe King of Pain? Why did you write it in the format you did? (Novel chapters alternating with short stories)
Two of the central ideas to the book–a Hollywood guy stuck under his home entertainment system who is somehow involved with a book called “A History of Prisons”—came to me over twenty years ago. The image of a man pinned by his TV seemed like a good comic metaphor for a nation that is consumed by entertainment culture. As for the book title, that sprang out of me interviewing my grandfather about the 8 years he spent as a political prisoner between the wars in Poland. Only three of his anecdotes made it into The King of Pain, but the idea of imprisonment and all that comes with it–the horror of torture, of absence, of boredom, of hunger–and tricks and triumphs of surviving such conditions really stayed with me.
Years later, when Reality TV had really blown up and Dick Cheney described waterboarding as “a no-brainer,” I finally had an “Aha!” moment. I knew who the man stuck under the entertainment system was and what he did and how he got there. So I guess I should thank Dick Cheney for being such a misguided, callous jerk and for Survivor for introducing “torture-lite” TV. I began to think about torture, imprisonment and reality TV as sort of feeding off each other.
As for the alternating stories, I had this idea it would be fun. That the stories would resonate off Rick Salter’s stories about the show. And truly, stories are how we survive. They save us all. My grandfather used to tell me that he could never be bored in life because he could always close his eyes and tell himself stories. Then the idea of having a character read the stories critically seemed not only funny, but a good way to examine how we read, absorb, enjoy and even miss the point of the stories we read.
How did your background in TV journalism inform your writing process?
I think it helped me establish credibility and color with regard to Rick Salter. The fact that I can talk about some of the machinations of TV makes the whole premise of the show more believable. Mentioning insider stuff like TV Up Fronts or the annual press tour in Pasadena or the fact that these shows make contestants indemnify the producers for everything from personal injury to getting a venereal disease, helped me establish Rick as a TV executive.
Why are people simultaneously attracted to and repelled by reality shows?
Who was it that said: “To stare at train wrecks is to be human?” Oh, I guess it was me.
It is a common saw to see TV as the enemy when it comes to this nation’s literacy standards. Is there any truth to that? Or is TV an easy scape-goat, while other culprits go unnoticed?
Ultimately, I think it’s a scape-goat. It’s everywhere and can be consumed with zero effort, so passive TV watching seems dangerous, or if not dangerous, at least a massive time suck. But I think reading and literacy are honed at home. Reading is a solitary, habit-forming pursuit that is best learned from those around you: parents, brothers and sisters, cousins, friends, and of course, teachers.
Is placing certain media forms (TV, movies, radio, books, live theater, etc.) in a pre-determined hierarchy a smart and/or logical thing?
In the beginning was the word. All of those mediums start with the word. So writing and reading reign supreme in my estimation. But after that, it’s all storytelling. Although I’m not quite sure how fine arts fit into that statement.
Do you have any other projects in the works?
I have a picture book for adults coming out in February called If You Give an Architect a Contract. It’s a parody of the million selling kids book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. But it is really an examination of all the crap that can and usually does happen when you renovate anything. It is based on the collective misery of everyone I’ve ever met that has done anything to their house or apartment.
But more seriously, my next novel, which is about gambling, wealth and a fictional island in the Caribbean, is this close to being “finished.” And I have two other books in the works. I also play in a band: The Fancy Shapes. And we are supposed to record another album this year.
Who are some of your favorite authors?
So many great writers, so little time. For humor, Cervantes, A.A. Milne, Twain, Nabokov and Kyril Bonfiglioli. As for serious and not-so-serious pleasures: John Le Carre, Nicholson Baker, J. M. Coetzee, John P Marquand, Donald Westlake, Ed McBain, Graham Greene, Dorothy L. Sayers, Kate Atkinson, and Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies series, which I think owe a huge debit to Barbara Pym. I’m sure I’m leaving many, many out.
What are some of your favorite TV shows and movies?
TV: The Simpsons, Seinfeld, SpongeBob SquarePants and Sesame Street. And the brilliant britcom, The Vicar of Dibley.
Movies: His Girl Friday, Breathless, Picnic at Hanging Rock, This Is Spinal Tap, Singing in the Rain, Philadelphia Story, It Happened One Night, Team America, and everything Chaplin, Marx Brothers and Keaton. Clearly, I need to get out more.
IsThe Jersey Shorethe sign of Western culture’s imminent collapse? Or am I being alarmist?
Ha! Jersey Shore has been canceled, so Western culture will live another day. From where I sit, Snooki and the Situation are harmless compared to everything else looming over us.
Karl Wolff begins 2013 reviewing Seth Kaufman’s novel “The King of Pain,” about a reality TV producer lodged beneath his giant home entertainment system, his predicament complicated by reading a short story collection about prisons written by someone named Seth Kaufman.
A limited-run series where I review three books about the Supreme Court of the United States, exploring its historical and ideological conflicts, and the transformations it wrought upon law and society.
the body of doctrine or thought that guides an individual, social movement, institution, or group.
such a body forming a political or social program, along with the devices for putting it into operation.
theorizing of a visionary or impractical nature.
the study of the nature and origin of ideas.Category: Philosphy
a philosophical system that derives ideas exclusively from sensation.Category: Philosphy
Origin of ideology: 1790–1800; cf. F idéologie
Random House Webster’s College Dictionary
The Federalist Society: the Resurgence of the Judicial Conservatism
In the long and storied history of the United States, conservatism suffered two major blows in modern times. The first was the Great Depression and President Herbert Hoover’s intransigence. The Republican president believing that the market would right itself without heavy-handed government meddling. Hoover’s miscalculation created the groundswell for the Democratic Party’s decades long domination of the executive and legislative branches. The second major blow was the constellation of scandals known as Watergate. Whereas Hoover’s failure to act discredited the economic foundation of conservatism (laissez faire capitalism), Watergate exposed a corruption and moral sickness at the epicenter of the executive branch. The constitutional crisis and Nixon’s authoritarian paranoia made the party of Law and Order seem comically hypocritical. (Understandably, there are multiple causes and multiple interpretations one can find in explaining both the Great Depression and Watergate. But the point of this essay is to underscore how the ordinary American citizen comprehended these crises.) Jeffrey Toobin’s The Nine highlights the conservative comeback and how a grassroots movement worked towards creating a comprehensive plan to take back the judiciary. In addition, the conservative comeback can be further understood by the in-depth investigation of the Burger Court and its ideological turf battles as chronicled in The Brethren.
The groundwork for the conservative comeback occurred with the Federalist Society, a conservative and libertarian think tank devoted to judicial issues. Toobin illustrates the agendas of the Right and Left in very practical terms. In 1982 the Federalist Society galvanized young conservatives into action, while the Left became preoccupied with Comparative Legal Studies. The difference is striking. Reeling from the double-punch of a discredited economic system and the morally questionable actions of President Nixon, conservatives sought one thing: power. As opposed to the armchair discussions and morally self-righteous complacency of Comparative Legal Studies, the Right is to be commended for its program and its call to action. Like it or not, results only occur when power is attained, be in the legislature, the Oval Office, or the judge’s bench. One can have a comprehensive ideological outlook and sensible solutions to social problems, but if one isn’t connected to those with power, then it is rather pointless. One can have demonstrations and petitions and eloquent public speeches, but if one can’t change the laws one is protesting, what are you doing out there?
The clarion call of overturning Roe and the Federalist Society’s agenda of limited government created a formidable opposition to the entrenched Democratic establishment. Following the disastrous presidency of Jimmy Carter, the Age of Reagan allowed for a full-on assault of political liberalism in both economic and social spheres. In terms of the public’s imagination, Reagan pushed back against the onslaught of FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society. “Ask not what your country can do for you,” turned into “Government is the problem not the solution.”
The Brethren sums up the conservative position in this brief description of Justice Rehnquist:
And they [the liberals on the Court] when Rehnquist began promptly to live up to his advance billing as a solid conservative vote, siding invariably with the prosecution in criminal cases, with businesses in antitrust cases, with employers in labor cases and with the government in speech cases.
Through Nixon, Ford, and Reagan presidencies, the Right had created a political atmosphere conducive to nominating conservatives to the judiciary. Once ensconced on these benches, it provided future opportunities for nominations and promotions. The Federal judiciary became a minefield for any case involving liberal causes.
MARTIN: It’s a revolution in Washington, Joe. We have a new agenda and finally a real leader. They got back the Senate but we have the courts. By the nineties the Supreme Court will be block-solid Republican appointees, and the Federal bench – Republican judges like land mines, everywhere, everywhere they turn. Affirmative action? Take it to court. Boom! Land mine. And we’ll get our way on just about everything: abortion, defense, Central America, family values, a live investment culture. We have the White House locked till the year 2000. And beyond. A permanent fix on the Oval Office? It’s possible. By ’92 we’ll have the Senate back, and in ten years the South is going to give us the House. It’s really the end of Liberalism. The end of New Deal Socialism. The end of ipso facto secular humanism. The dawning of a genuine American political personality. Modeled on Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Angels in America: Millennium Approaches Tony Kushner
And the key to landing conservative justices in these positions was the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Dune Buggy Driver: Where’s the damn race? Duke: Beats me. We’re just good patriotic Americans like yourself. Dune Buggy Driver: What outfit you guys with? Duke: The sporting press. We’re friendlies. Hired geeks.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998, Terry Gilliam)
The Senate Judiciary Committee: Fulcrum of Democracy
There are few places in our government where all three branches converge. One of them is the Senate Judiciary Committee. It’s importance cannot be underestimated. The committee plays the role of advise and consent on the President’s nominees for judicial posts, most importantly those of the Supreme Court. It is the greatest manifestation of checks and balances between branches. The importance can be seen in what is at stake for all involved. For the President, successfully nominating a candidate for Supreme Court will allow the President to have influence when his or her term or terms is up. (One can see this is the liberal legacy of FDR’s appointees.) For the Senate, it is a chance to wield its power. They are a guaranteed stopgap against executive overreach. The Senate fought back when FDR pursued his ill-fated Court Packing scheme. Added to this political calculus is the nature of the Supreme Court position itself. First, these are lifetime appointments. (Unlike, say, the Federal Reserve Chairman who needs to be appointed and re-elected to the position.) The lifetime appointment is coupled with the microscopic nature of the Supreme Court. Unlike the 535 Representatives in Congress and the 100 in the Senate, there are only nine Supreme Court justices. Congressional appearance fluctuates with the attitude of the electorate. The Supreme Court is (allegedly) immune from the winds of public opinion and popular electioneering. The Nine chronicles the longest period without a change in the Supreme Court’s make-up (1994 – 2005).
In recent years, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearings for Supreme Court nominees have been televised, turning the TV-watching populace into amateur Court watchers. Newspapers, magazines, and more recently the Internet become abuzz with speculation, hysteria, and analysis. Nominees are confirmed, others denied. Over the past decades, the hearings have taken on a different pallor. Instead of denying nominees for being too conservative, nominees have been denied for not being conservative enough. Hence, the Senate Judiciary Committee becomes a kind of ideological litmus test. The slow transition from a liberal-leaning Supreme Court to a more conservative-leaning Supreme Court has taken decades. This has also changed the mindset of the electorate, the Congress, and politicians. The events of 9/11 cemented a rightward tilt in the populace, at least until the economic meltdown of 2009, again putting the free market fundamentalists on notice.
Toobin, to his credit, illustrates the importance of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the rightward tilt of the judiciary throughout the Seventies and Eighties. But he seems to put to much emphasis on ideology alone. Because the Supreme Court is such a small government body, demographics also plays a key role. The Supreme Court will always be a body given to firsts. Amidst the recently confirmed nominees, the Supreme Court has seen its first female Hispanic justice. And now the Supreme Court has a majority of Catholic justices. Now there are six, instead of three. This has given the secular-minded pause. Alas, anti-Catholic hysteria has followed these nominations, especially in more extremist circles.
The Court’s nominal Catholicism should not be caricatured. While it is too early to tell what the judicial philosophy of the newer Catholic appointees will be like, one shouldn’t characterize the Catholic justices as a religious monolith. There are left-leaning Catholics (Sotomayor) and right-leaning (Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts, Kennedy). So let’s play the demographics game: Scalia, Thomas, and Alito form a solid conservative bloc. Sotomayor, Kagan, and Ginsburg are women. Kagan, Ginsburg, and Breyer are Jewish. And Kennedy, Breyer, and Souter are reliable swing votes. The best way to comprehend the votes of the Court is to consider not just ideology, but the race, sex, and religion of the nine justices.
Affirmative action was designed to keep women and minorities in competition with each other to distract us while white dudes inject AIDS into our chicken nuggets.
Tracy Jordan, 30 Rock (Pilot episode)
The Trouble with Clarence Thomas: the Contradictions of Modern Conservatism
Like it or not, Justice Clarence Thomas may be the most fascinating personality on the Court. Catholic, African-American, Southern, ultraconservative, and a bit of a porn aficionado. His complex profile is on par with the late Reverend Peter J. Gomes, a gay black Republican Baptist who was Harvard’s Dean of Divinity. Gomes and Thomas represent challenging personalities, one not easy to wrap the mind around. Thomas is erudite, passionate, an ideological firebrand, an extremist, and, most recently, totally silent on the bench.
Nominated by President George H. W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate to replace the vacant seat of Justice Thurgood Marshall, Thomas appeared as the polar opposite of Marshall. Ironically, it is these ultraconservative values that make him such a contradictory figure. Thomas adamantly opposes affirmative action, yet his entire career has been based on its tenets. A devout Roman Catholic and crusader for family values, his nomination was one of the most controversial in decades. Amidst allegations of sexual harassment and of renting porn videos, his nomination was confirmed. Added to this rather curious interpretation and practice of Catholicism, he is a die-hard advocate of free market capitalism. In addition, in speaking engagements, Thomas has repeatedly mentioned his disgust at “the elites,” the wonderful catch-all term beloved to Right and Left. It is ironic, since Thomas, a Supreme Court Justice, is a member of one of the most elite institutions in the United States government. It seems his high position and ideological extremism has made him immune to such obvious ironies. Toobin pointed out how Thomas would have his clerks watch The Fountainhead, the film based on the “philosophy” of atheist Ayn Rand.
While Thomas and Scalia are darlings to the Right, their ideological extremism makes them only so useful in the decision-making process of the Court. In the operations of the Court, strong decisions happen when there is a consensus (Brown v Board, Nixon v U.S.). Divided opinions are more contentious (Roe v Wade, Bush v Gore). In the end, an agenda must be taken: remain faithful to one’s ideological base or get things done. Chief Justice Roberts has now received the ire of the Tea Party because of his consensus-building activities on the bench. But in the end, the Supreme Court, like all political entities, derives its prestige not from passing arbitrary ideological purity tests, but from getting results. The words of the fictionalized Roy Cohn seem apt, “You want to be Nice, or you want to be Effective? Make the law, or subject to it. Choose.”
Ideology provides a comprehensive philosophical framework for political action and social change, but without those in power getting their hands dirty it remains useless, a bauble, a hobby, a passing fancy.
Espresso-sized book reviews for readers on the go.
Deconstructing Organized Crime: a historical and theoretical study, by Joseph L. Albini and Jeffrey Scott McIllwain offers a fascinating look into how organized crime is prosecuted and defined in a post-9/11 world. Despite being an academic text aimed at those in law enforcement studies, the book is highly readable. Deconstructing opens with an in-depth analysis of what it terms “the Mafia Mystique,” a cultural construct created by the media and politicians to characterize Italian-American organized crime as a massive, nationwide, all-powerful, and secretive cabal. Two Congressional committees were instrumental in creating the Mafia Mystique, the Kefauver Committee (1950-51) and the McClellan Committee (1963). By contrast, Albini and McIllwain depict Italian and Italian-American organized crime as more dependent on patron-client relationships than a secretive heirarchy.
The book also lays out how organized crime operates on a day-to-day basis. It describes the operations of numbers, book making, and illegal gambling. This lays the foundation for their comparative study of law enforcement practices in Russia and Las Vegas. In the latter, since gambling was legalized, organized crime transitioned from gambling to skimming casino earnings. The authors also criticize the heavy-handed tactics of the Las Vegas Black Book strategy. With the public ceremonies originally intended to deter organized criminals, it came off as a sensationalized means to stereotype Italian-Americans as members of a criminal element.
The readability gets temporarily derailed in Albini and McIllwain’s investigation of globalization’s impact on organized crime, the challenge being how to properly describe the process of globalization, since it is a process still in development. After some theoretical groundwork, they proceed into important discussions on organized crime’s links with human trafficking and international terrorism. The latter feeds into their innovative discussion of the “organized crime continuum.” They lay out four broad, occasionally overlapping, categories of organized crime: political-social, mercenary, in-group, and syndicated organized crime.
In the end, the book proves useful for those searching for a more intellectually rigorous approach to organized crime. Make no mistake, this book has a catch-all approach that covers many topics and lacks depth in specific areas. It covers areas like Colombia, the former Soviet Union, and the United States, but can be a handy resource when reading about Sri Lanka’s battle with the Tamil Tigers, an organization that encompassed both political and criminal elements. The book succeeds, not in denying that organized crime exists, but in how one perceives criminal behavior.
Because I read a many books here at the Driftless Area Review, I can’t hope to give them all a thorough long-form review. Reviews in Brief are short-form reviews that offer a concentrated dose of information.
One doesn’t have to walk very far to see the impact of the shapeshifter on popular culture. As the last installment of the Twilight movie series lumbers through cinemas nationwide, it is important to take a step back from the marketing onslaught and Robert Pattison-induced hysterics. Werewolves and Other Shapeshifters in Popular Culture, by Kimberley McMahon-Coleman and Roslyn Weaver, approach the material through thematic analyses. The pair of Australian academics investigate how things like marriage, sexuality, disability, addiction, gender, and spirituality come to play within the novels and films.
The material covered is vast, including the Being Human TV series (UK and US versions), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV series and comics), True Blood (books and TV series), Twilight (films and books), and the Vampire Diaries (TV series and books), among others. Included in the analyses are more obscure Australian novels like Jatta by Jenny Hale. For those oversaturated on the Twilight phenomenon, the “Works Cited” list offers some fascinating recommendations.
Werewolves proves its usefulness in its good timing. Coleman and Weaver investigate the numerous pop cultural pieces here, analyzing how specific treatments reflect attitudes of society at large. For those curious as to why Twilight is so huge with teens these days will find the thematic analyses illuminating. Make no mistake, not every TV series, film, or book covered here would fit into the Great Literature category, but it is a wonderful addition to the growing field of reader reception theory. (Similar reader reception studies have been done with romance novel readership.) The book is a handy resource for those interested in understanding pop cultural trends, but who have neither the time nor inclination to read through the primary source material.
The thematic analysis is an advantage but also a liability in Werewolves. The various rubrics (addiction, gender, etc.) put the primary source material through various lenses, all thought provoking. Conversely, the numerous lenses make the analyses thin and superficial. As a theoretical starting point in exploring shapeshifters in popular culture, the approach delivers. Unfortunately, the weakness shows itself most in the section on spirituality, itself a soft, mushy term acting as a catchall for ritual, religion, and cultic social behaviors. This is seen when McMahon-Coleman and Weaver apply Christian symbolism to the Twilight series. While spiritual and ethical issues like sacrifice, eternity, and morality get explored sufficiently, the analysis of spirituality in Twilight would have benefited immensely from a specific reading attuned to the uniqueness of the Mormon faith. The Mormon concept of blood atonement in a vampire novel series would have proved fascinating, along with the Mormon’s specific understanding of links between Native American and Jewish groups. In Mormon theology, Native Americans are descended from the ancient Jewish population. What does this mean in light of Twilight’s Native American shapeshifter characters, especially since those shapeshifters pass on their powers via hereditary transmission?
Werewolves is a great starting point for those interested in the significance of the shapeshifter in popular culture and how it reflects modern mores.
A series dedicated to literature in translation whether classic or contemporary.
Originally published as Les Beinveillantes.
Translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell
HarperCollins (2009)
NB:These remarks will be classified in The Critic’s Notebook. Unlike a more tightly constructed and formal book review, these notes will possess a larval nature: impressionistic, half-formed, spontaneous. It stands as a record of my first impressions as well as operate as raw material I will mine when I prepare a more in-depth critical analysis. This later analysis will also cover William T. Vollmann’s Europe Central (2005), Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate (1959), and William Gass’s The Tunnel (1995).
First Impressions:
1. An overall assessment has me borrowing Nathan Rabin’sMy Year of Flops terminology. In this specific case: Fiasco.
2. Other categories for the Kindly Ones:
a. Difficult
b. Controversial
c. Problematic
3. Difficult:
a. European-style paragraphing (no paragraph breaks for dialogue).
b. Epic size. Does scale mean an inherent value or profundity? Cf. volumes from The Song of Ice and Fire, Atlas Shrugged, The Bible, and so on.
c. Untranslated German military ranks.
d. Numerous characters to keep track of.
4. Controversial:
a. Prize-winning. It won the Prix Goncourt in 2006, putting it in heady company, including Michel Houellebecq, Marguerite Duras, and Marcel Proust.
b. The sexuality of Dr. Maximilien von Aue. Reviewers have categorized Aue’s sexuality as “deviant.” (The construction of Aue’s sexuality will be further explored in the last category, since it is highly problematic.)
c. Aue’s sexuality has a certain grindhouse quality to it, giving the novel a sensationalist and exploitative gloss. One thinks of Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, the Night Porter, and the Damned.
5. Problematic:
a. The narrative is at war with itself.
b. What is it? At once a realistic historical novel and a mashup of the Orestia.
c. The novel starts strong, but ends weak.
d. Two major narrative demerits:
i. Aue’s head wound suffered in Stalingrad.
ii. Murder of parents (but with no memory of committing the act).
e. These major plot devices get built upon until it becomes implausibility heaped on implausibility. (Aue’s advancements in rank and the police investigation. The investigation begins as a real threat to Aue’s life and prestige, and then it devolves into a ridiculous farce.)
6. While the novel is loaded with excessive violence and explicit sex, these things aren’t inherently bad (Cf. Gravity’s Rainbow and Funeral Rites).
7. Do narrative fiascos have their own value to readers and critics? What can critics extract from works that fail?
a. What do we mean by fail? Not move units off the bookshelf? (The Nathan Rabin-esque flop.) Baffled/horrified/negative critical reception? (Fiasco and/or Secret Success.)
8. Father & Son:
a. Jonathan Littell is the son of American espionage writer Robert Littell. The Littell the Elder author of The Company, a multigenerational epic about the CIA.
b. With The Company and his other works, R. Littell tells the history of the US intelligence community via the “Jewishness” of the characters (Cf. Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, etc.).
c. Jonathan Littell’s grandparents were Russian Jews who fled Russia and settled in the United States.
d. Both Jonathan and Robert reside in France.
e. Jonathan Littell reframes his Jewish heritage with a narrator who is an SS jurist (i.e. an elite within Nazi German society).
i. Littell further complicates this with Aue’s sexuality (see below) and Aue’s Alsatian heritage. Alsace-Lorraine was German territory from 1871 to 1918 and re-annexed by Germany after the fall of France in 1940, then returning to France in 1945. Alsace is a border province, lacking the historical credentials of a province within the German Altreich. The sexuality and Alsatian heritage make Aue a luminal character, existing on the boundaries of society.
9. Aue’s Sexuality:
a. Max had incestuous relations with his sister, Una, when they were children.
b. Max and Una are twins.
c. Lacking the presence of Una, Max can only become sexually aroused via anal sex.
d. Does this make Max a gay character? To this reader, a resounding no. But this requires further explanation, since this shouldn’t be confused with “Homosexuality is a choice” parroted by the deranged, hypocritical, and ignorant of the Modern Theocratic Right.
e. Can “gayness” even operate as an accurate label for a scenario this contrived?
f. The contrivance is created for the purposes of the narrative fitting into the Orestia, since the play cycle has its fair share of demented sex and violence.
g. This contrived sexuality is odd given the very real history of Germany’s many thriving gay subcultures (the Prussian military, Weimar Berlin, and the SA).
The novel draws upon the darker thread of French literary history, especially DAF Sade and Ferdinand Celine with its violence, depravity, gratuitous sex, and severe, albeit alien, morality.
Unlike the novel Shadows Walking, which is written from a more realistic Balzackian tradition, depicting a “slice of life” of German Nazi-era society.
This week in the CCLaP series “On Being Human,” I analyse Samuel Beckett’s groundbreaking “Trilogy,” where the famed avant-garde writer sought the essence of what it is to be human by stripping away the setting, plot, and characters of three small novels in a row.
After you’ve read the essay, check out this broadcast featuring Harold Pinter reading the final pages of the Unnamable.
For those of you following the CCLaP Podcast Dreadful series, there was a live reading at Quimby’s Bookstore in Wicker Park, Chicago, Illinois. Here are the video clips of the event. Enjoy!
Drugs are bad. Over at CCLaP, I review The Heroin Chronicles, edited by Jerry Stahl.
