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The Drunken Odyssey

~ A Podcast About the Writing Life

The Drunken Odyssey

Monthly Archives: January 2017

Buzzed Books #49: Paper Girls

31 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Buzzed Books

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Buzzed Books #49 by Whitney Hamrick

Paper Girls by Brian K. Vaughn and Cliff Chiang

Paper Girls is an Eisner and Harvey Award-winning “Best New Series,” written by Brian K. Vaughn, famed author of fan favorites Y: The Last Man and Saga, and artist Cliff Chiang, of New 52’s Wonder Woman glory, who present a story often described as War of the Worlds meets Stand By Me or the natural inheritor of Stranger Things enthusiasts. Think Goonies or Monster Squad replacing all the wacky tropes with four solid gender-neutral characters.

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Picture the suburbs, 1988, in the early morning hours after Halloween. Four 12-year-old girls deliver newspapers on their bicycles. On newbie Erin’s first day a group of teenage boys attempt to bully her until a small band of delivery veterans come to the rescue: smoking tough girl, Mac; loyal friend, KJ; and voice of reason, Tiffany.

The girls soon find themselves thrown into the impossible: parents and siblings, gone; neighbors, gone; symbol-speaking humanoids appear in metal armor zapping costumed kids to smithereens; teenage mutant space boys; war-horse dinosaurs: Quetzalcoatlus northropi take flight in an alien sky; and Kaiju-sized Tardigrades follow them through wormholes, which lead to the future and to an alternate reality. It’s the last day of life as they know it and they’re not going to take crap from anyone as they stumble through space and time as best they can.

paper-girls-detail

Action, suspense, cliffhangers, and surprise encounters: every issue is unexpected, especial when uncomfortable reminders of the 80s occur. The girls are not sugarcoated and they are not seeking romance. They are people, in some areas flawed, and I love them for it.

I wish I could have been one of these girls, when I was child. I wish I could do boy things and not feel like a disappointment or a cheap imitation.

I wish I could be tough and smart and confident, but when I was their age, I was not.

I was scared. I was made scared by the caution taught to me about my gender. I could be either passive and obedient or unattractive and unladylike.

I was compared and measured against other girls and there was always someone cuter, smarter, funnier, and better than me.

I grew up angry, defeated, and bitter.

It’s so hard to be a young girl. Hopefully, if you’re lucky, something clicks and you know who you are.

If you’re lucky, your parents walk with you at your pace.

If you’re lucky, you were born tough enough to brave the world as you are or want to be.

If you’re lucky, your outside matches who you are on the inside.

If you’re lucky, you’re outside isn’t less valued than someone else’s outside.

The opposition to simply existing, which so many girls, young women, and grown women feel, is our reality and only those who squeeze correctly through the societal sieve can ignore the pain of others.

For this reason, Paper Girls makes me hopeful I can reimagine my emotional past.

I want to be friends with these girls, but I think I’d have been intimidated by them at the age of twelve.

I wish I were one of them. Reading the series, issue by issue, allows me the chance to experience positive female relationships as though I can rub a Microsoft Paint eraser over the parts of my life that hurt.

These girls are battle-tested bad asses. They run like girls, fight like girls, protect each other like girls, and do so without giving in to fear. The first criticism I expect for my interpretation: why do I insist on self-actualized girl representation being a marvel; and my reply will be: I’m so happy that these girls exist on the page. I am so happy I get to hang out with them and that girls of any age can join in the fun, too.

My favorite arch thus far begins in Issue #6 when Erin encounter her future self. Future Erin takes Xanax, she works as a reporter for the newspaper that she once delivered, she’s 40 years old, and she’s worried she doesn’t meet her younger self’s expectations of adulthood. While on an adventure together, the future grateful hugs her past and they both have the perfect facial expression for where they are in life at that moment. I felt like I was hugging 12-year-old me when I read it.

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More than the beautiful art and the compelling writing, I fell in love with the work of Colorist Matt Wilson. The pinks are passionate, the grays are bold and moody, and the blues fade steadily lighter in the same breath. It feels like it’s living and more than just representation of sky, houses,  trees, clothing, and bicycles. The background has its’ own personality, but the main players look like old painted animation stills as they almost pop off the page. Wilson’s sense of lighting gives so much depth to every scene and a part of me imagines I could taste the story; I have yet to give into the impulse.

I will also posit that it is refreshing to see a man I trust with female characters continue to make me proud as his fan.

Let’s ride bikes. Let’s make 80s sci-fi references. And most importantly, let’s be girls. Let’s fight like girls for girls.

Issue #11 comes out on February 1, 2017.

_______

twbw-whitney

Whitney Hamrick (Episode 235) earned a college degree in something she doesn’t do professionally. She has participated in the LitLando community since her first reading at There Will Be Words in 2011. Since then she has received two Best of There Will Be Words nominations, her work can be seen in Ghost Parachute, and she can be found on twitter: @karmafishwrap.

Episode 244: Lily Brooks-Dalton!

28 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode

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Episode 244 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I talk to the novelist and memoirist Lily Brooks-Dalton.

lily-brooks-dalton

TEXTS DISCUSSED

good-morning-midnightmotorcycles-ive-lovedgood-morning-midnight-rhyswide-sargasso-sea

NOTES

According to Buzzfeed, Roxanne Gay has pulled her forthcoming book, How to Be Heard, from Simon and Shuster.


Episode 244 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

The Curator of Schlock #169: Alice, Sweet Alice

27 Friday Jan 2017

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #169 by Jeff Shuster

Alice, Sweet Alice 

Not all that sweet if you ask me. 

 I might as well go for broke and review one more slasher movie. And like last week’s entry, this is another flick from the 70s.

The 70s were a messed up decade. Look at the movies it gave us. Deliverance. The Deer Hunter. Straw Dogs. And those were rated G.

People were made out of sterner stuff back then. Nowadays, a movie about a talking fish with amnesia gets a PG. We are raising a nation of namby-pambies. Next time your kids want to watch Frozen, stick in Taxi Driver in the Blu-ray player instead. Let Travis Bickle show them the ways of the world. 

alice-sweet-alice

Today’s entry is 1978s Alice, Sweet Alice from director Alfred Sole (whose favorite dish happens to be filet of sole. Coincidence? You decide). Right of the bat, this movie is creeping me out. You’ve got this little girl in a Communion dress holding a candle while marathoning Hail Marys. She lifts up the candle revealing a sharp knife fixed at the bottom. Yikes! So you’re probably wondering who Alice (Paula Sheppard) is at this point. Well, she’s this obnoxious little brat who everyone hates except for her older sister, Karen (Brooke Shields), who is terrified of her.

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Karen has good reason to be terrified of her sister. Alice likes to wear these creepy doll masks along with her yellow, hooded raincoat. That’s not a good look for anyone. That outfit spells creeper.

Alice is jealous of her older sister Karen because she’s about to receive the Holy Sacrament of Communion. During Karen’s First Communion, someone wearing a yellow raincoat and a creepy doll mask strangles Karen to death. The murderer then dumps Karen’s body in cedar chest in the back of the church, setting the body on fire before closing the lid. The next thing we see is Alice sitting in her sister’s spot, ready to receive the Eucharist.

alice-4

Hmmmm. I wonder who the killer could be?

A nun discovers the flaming body of Karen. She screams and screams and screams. More members of the congregation gather to see what’s going on. They scream and scream and scream. Karen’s mother shows up and upon seeing the charred remains of her daughter, she cries and cries and cries. Meanwhile, Alice seems relatively unaffected by the gruesome scene.

At this point in the movie, I’m getting little uncomfortable. I mean killing someone in a church is one thing. Killing a little girl in a church during her First Communion is another. Killing a little girl in a church during her First Communion and then setting the body on fire. What kind of sick individual does such a thing? Alice, that’s who.

Oh, her mom and dad protest her innocence, but give me a break. Everyone else hates Alice. Their morbidly obese landlord hates Alice because she’s not as pretty as her sister.

alice2

Ew. Uh. Alice’s aunt hates her because Alice is a brat. That and the fact that someone dressed in a yellow raincoat and a creepy doll mask tried stabbing her to death, even managed to get a few good cuts in. They send Alice over to a some shrink doctors to find out what’s wrong with her.

She’s a killer! That’s what’s wrong with her!

Oh. While Alice is locked away, someone dressed in a yellow raincoat with a creepy doll mask kills someone else. I guess Alice was innocent after all.

I guess I shouldn’t jump to conclusions.

_______

Jeffrey Shuster 1

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, and episode 131) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Pensive Prowler #3: Shut Up and Write!

23 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Pensive Prowler

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Pensive Prowler #3 by Dmetri Kakmi

Shut Up and Write! 

I’m sick of the professional writing industry and, by extension, the role a writer is expected to play in society.

On the one hand professional writing courses churn out automata without individual style, and on the other hand celebrated names are trotted out to utter trite phrases best left to high school students and self-help groups.

Here’s an example from a contemporary. ‘We should always be evolving and searching for ways to keep opening our sense of literary possibility. The hope is that we will find expression of the full scope of our lives in fiction.’

There’s two sentences too many in that earth-shattering pronouncement. Whoever it was that said, ‘If it’s worth saying it’s worth saying briefly’ obviously didn’t shout loud enough for this fount of wisdom. We might add that if you have nothing to say, remain silent. Don’t blather. Leave room for solitary contemplation, a writer’s true luxury in these distracted times.

The problem is that platitudes like the above are flung at regular intervals before starry eyed hopefuls like fodder to sheep. They in turn rush to join writing classes, convinced of their inalienable right to express themselves and to be heard. There to create more vapidity. And on it goes in a never-ending cycle.

Harsh, I know. But I speak from experience. I’ve been at the coal face of writing and publishing for most of my life. As such, I can tell you that most people who seek the aid of an editor or a manuscript assessor don’t need an editor or a manuscript assessment. They need to learn how to write. They need to learn how to construct a sentence; they need to learn how words chime when placed next to each other; they need to learn about punctuation; and they need to learn how to present a manuscript.

If all this sounds trivial, a handmaiden to all-important story, think again. A display of these crucial elements puts out a clear signal. It tells a publisher how serious you are as a writer. How seriously you take yourself as a professional who shows pride in your craft; and, more importantly, if a manuscript shows promise but doesn’t yet come up to scratch, you have the wherewithal to work with an editor to make it work.

Most people who submit manuscripts for assessment don’t even know how story works. They don’t know how to construct scenes that move the narrative forward; they don’t know how to introduce characters and how to develop them; they don’t know how to write concise dialogue, or how chapters operate as individual units and how chapters function within the overall framework. I won’t even mention having an individual voice or style. And yet they’ve written a 1120 page magnum opus that has the loopy logic and halting flow of a Donald Trump speech.

It makes me wonder what they learn at all those amazing writing courses they attend. If they’ve attended one. A number people I’ve worked with don’t even read. Why? Because there’s nothing out there that appeals. How do they know if they don’t read?

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One student told me his novel will be better than ‘anything Nabokov ever wrote.’ And he hadn’t written anything yet. When pressed on the question of the great Russian, the champ admitted never having read Nabokov because ‘Lolita is child porn.’

Speechless.

One can only despair because, ultimately, you learn to write by reading. Lots. And then you augment that by writing. Lots.

It’s rare for new writing to hit you between the eyes, to leave you breathless and to make you feel as if you’ve been shot out of a cannon. It’s even more uncommon for that writer to have the nous to keep silent and let the book do the talking. That is after all what writing is about. Writing is communication. If the writer has to explain and answer at gab fests, the book has failed. And if the book hasn’t failed, everything else is sound and fury. It’s marketing.

Nowadays it’s not enough to write. A writer must be an intellectual, a stand-up comic, a sparkling personality. A book is no longer a book. It’s a ‘product’ that must move X number of units to justify existence. An author must have a ‘brand’. I tell you if I hear one more writer say they’re going to see their publisher about developing their ‘brand’, I will run screaming for hills that have pick axes in their eyes.

Oh, for the silence of the writer!

So few understand that the art of shutting up is paramount. Withdrawal to the mind’s private citadel affords the greatest luxury a writer can hope for: calm, peace of mind to work on the next novel, short story, poem or essay. The work that comes out of deepest self and not from Twitter.

That’s why I love Australian author Gerald Murnane. He’s written twelve novels in forty years.

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Readership is as low as acclaim is high. Public sightings are as rare as truffles on a Detroit kitchen table, and he does not travel outside his home state. He rarely appears at gab fests, he is not a social media sensation and the only time he makes a controversial statement is very likely when he judges the local yabby competition in the town of Goroke, where he lives. Perfect!

Murnane, I feel sure, has taken very much to heart Dorothy Parker’s dictum: ‘Hold your pen and save your voice.’

For me the ideal writer should not speak. He or she should be a silent watcher, lingering at the edges, like Nosferatu, and giving everyone the shivers. Not one word ought to come out of the mouth. Rather every thought ought to be put on paper and transmitted to the world, without once emerging through the natural vocal facilities. Because to understand silence is to understand how words work.

_______

dmetri-kakmi

Dmetri Kakmi (Episode 158) is a writer and editor based in Melbourne, Australia. The memoir Mother Land was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia; and is published in England and Turkey. His essays and short stories appear in anthologies and journals. You can find out more about him here.

Episode 243: Joy Harjo, Kim Addonizio, and Paul Lisicky!

21 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, Memoir, Poetry

≈ 4 Comments

Episode 243 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I talk to the poet Joy Harjo,

joy-harjo

the poet and fiction and creative nonfiction writer Kim Addonizio,

kim-addonizio-portrait

and the memoirist Paul Lisicky.

pauyl-lisicky

TEXTS DISCUSSED

conflict-resolution-for-holy-beings
9780143128465_BukowskiInAS_CVF.indd
Mortal Trash approved.inddthe-narrow-door

NOTES

erotic-poetry-night-5

On Sunday, February 5th, The Drunken Odyssey will be hosting its annual erotic poetry night at Vinyl Arts Bar in Orlando, Florida. 7 PM.


Episode 243 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

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The Curator of Schlock #168:The Town That Dreaded Sundown

20 Friday Jan 2017

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #168 by Jeff Shuster

The Town That Dreaded Sundown

Beware of men who wear burlap sacks on their heads. 

I figured I’d do another slasher movie this week, not because I’m a particular fan of the genre, but because I know how some people get into a tizzy over slasher movies. We aim to make you uncomfortable her at The Museum of Schlock and can think of no better way than showcasing cinema featuring mask killers carving up victims in unusual ways. Here’s one that TCM must have aired during the wee hours of the morning back in October: 1976’s The Town That Dreaded Sundown, from director Charles B. Pierce.

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The movie starts out with a super serious narrator declaring that the following story is true. This makes me uneasy. How am I supposed to enjoy the fake massacre if I know it’s real people? That’s just perverted. Anyway, this true story takes place in 1946 in the town of Texarkana, Arkansas. There’s a killer on the loose targeting couples parked in lovers’ lane hotspots.  He’s known as The Phantom, but really he’s just a husky guy in overalls with a burlap sack covering his head. Not much of an imagination, buddy. 

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So The Phantom goes around murdering couples in parked cars. The local police take notice and try to stop the masked madman. Deputy Norman Ramsey (Andrew Prine) is lead on the case, but when he fails to catch The Phantom a second time, Texarkana PD calls on the expertise of Texas Ranger, M. T. “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas (Ben Johnson).

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They’re joined by Patrolman A.C. “Sparkplug” Benton, a goofball character that Wikipedia claims is fictional and stuck in the movie for comic relief. Sparkplug is played by Charles B. Pierce, who happens to also be the director of this motion picture. 

This movie is rather bizarre. It tries for humor by having Sparkplug drive a police car into a swamp or by having him dress up as a woman in order to lure the killer out. Then we’re treated to scenes of the killer doing grisly things to his victims. He murders one girl by attaching a knife to the end of a tuba and…well…you don’t want to know the rest.

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Texas Ranger Gonzaullas and Deputy Ramsey have a final shootout with the killer, firing at him through a moving train. The Phantom is on the other side, you see. Gonzaullas wounds The Phantom in the leg, but the killer disappears before they can get to him. And that’s it. The killer is never seen again. The case goes unsolved.

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 The whole movie reminds me of a really long Unsolved Mysteries segment. Remember that show from the 80s, the one hosted by Robert Stack. They used to do segments on ghosts, UFOs, lost loves, etc. My favorite segments were always the unsolved crimes. I remember one about this mean old man who called up nephew one night, informing the nephew that he would be committing suicide in the woods. As the segment progresses, we come to find out that this mean’ old man had murdered his wife, burying her while pretending to dig a garden in the middle of autumn. The police hounds found no trace of his body anywhere near the property. On a Lifetime Channel repeat of this episode, it was revealed that the dogs hadn’t gone far enough into the woods. Than old man’s decomposing body was there. Mystery solved!

Kind of anticlimactic if you ask me.

That’s real life for you.

_______

Jeffrey Shuster 3

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, and episode 131) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Episode 242: Ann Hood and Art Spiegelman!

14 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode

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Episode 242 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I talk to fiction writer Ann Hood,

ann-hood

and the graphic novelist Art Spiegelman.

art-spiegleman

TEXTS DISCUSSED

book-that-matters-most
an-italian-wife si-lewens-parade Maus.jpgFilm Music and Other Scores

NOTES

Monica Crowley, Donald Trump’s choice for senior director of communications for the National Security Council, is a plagiarist. 

Erotic Poetry Night 5.png

On Sunday, February 5th, The Drunken Odyssey will be hosting its annual erotic poetry night at Vinyl Arts Bar in Orlando, Florida. 7 PM.


Episode 242 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

Save

The Curator of Schlock #167: Friday the 13th Part 3

13 Friday Jan 2017

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The Curator of Scholck #167 by Jeff Shuster

Friday the 13th Part 3

I didn’t watch it in 3D. 3D is stupid.

fridaythe13thpart3_poster

I have the strangest sense of déjà vu. I feel like I’ve tried reviewing this movie before. What movie? 1982’s Friday the 13th Part III from director Steve Miner. Since today is Friday the 13th, it behooves me to cover yet another chapter in the saga of Jason Voorhees. I think the last time I tried reviewing this movie, I got an intense headache and took the week off .

Truth is, this is not a good movie, but it does mark the first time we see Mr. Voorhees don the titular hockey mask.

part3b

Frankly, I think the burlap sack was a better choice.

Where do I begin? The movie starts out showing us the last ten minutes of Friday the 13th Part II (in case we’d forgotten). That’s the part where our heroine, Ginny (Amy Steel), tricks Jason by pretending to be his dead mother, Mrs. Voorhees, by wearing his mother’s sweater and speaking assertively Jason falls for it and she hacks at him with a machete, but he gets right back up after she makes her escape.

The next day, we’re introduced to the owners of own some kind of convenience store/rabbit farm. The husband is a bit of a schlub. The wife is a bit of a nag. He eats too much junk food. She has curlers in her hair. He drinks beer while pooping on the toilet.

Jason murders him.

part4d

Jason murders her.

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I don’t care about either of them. I would like one of those chocolate donuts the husband was eating. Mmmmmmmmm. Chocolate.

We’re then introduced to a third set of characters. There’s Chris (Dana Kimmel) and her boyfriend named Rick (Paul Kratka). They’re joined by their friends, Debbie (Tracie Savage) a young woman who happens to be pregnant along with her boyfriend, Andy (Jeffrey Rodgers). There’s also a couple of pot smoking hippies named Chuck (David Katims) and Chili (Rachel Howard), a prankster named Shelly (Larry Zerner), and Shelly’s blind date, Vera (Catherine Parks).

part3c

Let’s talk about Shelly and Vera. I haven’t witnessed a love story so depressing since The Last American Virgin. There’s no delicate way to say this: Shelly is lacking in the looks department. Vera is played a Miss America runner up. Will she look past his looks and find the real beauty within? No. Why? Because Shelly is an obnoxious loser. He’s the Ducky of horror cinema.

part4e

Shelly is insecure so he pulls pranks like playing dead with a rubber hatchet and fake blood dribbling down his forehead. Everyone thinks he’s been murdered until Andy tickles him revealing a Shelly that’s very much alive. The group hates him now. They don’t find his jokes very funny. He tags along with Vera over to a local convenience store, peruses some dirty magazine until Vera demands that Shelly pays for her stuff at checkout. Some gang members who look like they stepped right out of Death Wish 3 accost them. Shelly manages to run over their motorcycles with Rick’s car.

 This doesn’t win Vera over as she flat out rejects him later that evening. Shelly wears a wetsuit and hockey mask in an attempt to scare her. He doesn’t understand why she doesn’t like him, why she can’t look past his looks. He leaves in a huff. Vera feels bad, but is angered when Shelly returns wearing that hockey mask and pointing a harpoon gun at her. She realizes that isn’t Shelly under that hockey mask. It’s Jason Voorhees. The harpoon shoots out toward Vera. A horror legend is born.

_______

Jeffrey Shuster 1

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, and episode 131) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Aesthetic Drift #14: I Read Ethan Frome Every January

12 Thursday Jan 2017

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Aesthetic Drift, Blog Post

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Scott Hoffman

Aesthetic Drift #14 by Scott Hoffman

I Read Ethan Frome Every January

For the past decade or so, I’ve read Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome every January. I’m still trying to figure out why.

ethan-frome

The story is simple. (I suppose I should announce “spoilers alert!” here, but we’re all adults.) Ethan is a hard-scrabble farmer trapped in a loveless marriage. His wife Zeena is a hypochondriac who bitterly questions and criticizes his every move. Her obsession with her health slowly drains the couple’s resources as the farm falls deeper and deeper into disrepair. They live among the granite outcroppings of Western Massachusetts in an isolated village aptly named Starkfield, where it always seems to be winter but never Christmas. Into this tense, claustrophobic situation enters Mattie, Zeena’s orphaned cousin, an attractive, sunny young lady left alone and impoverished by her parents’ death. With nowhere else to stay she becomes the couple’s “girl,” but she doesn’t know much about farm life and is little help. Zeena despises her. Ethan is smitten. So is Mattie. The story tracks the final days of their furtive, cautious relationship as Zeena maneuvers to send her rival away into a life of poverty and desperation. Ethan tries to escape with Mattie, but finds himself trapped by poverty, the past, and a tattered sense of loyalty to his wife. The two desperately attempt suicide only to survive, their bodies mangled, still trapped in Starkfield. The story is told by a visitor who, decades later, finds the three on the farm barely scraping by. Little trace of the love once shared by Ethan and Mattie lingers, just bitterness and poverty.

Bleak. Yet, I read Ethan Frome every January. I’ve even developed a ritual around it. At one point in the story, a cat shatters a red pickle dish deeply prized by Zeena, but used surreptitiously by Mattie when eating supper alone with Ethan. It marks the beginning of the downhill slide to the lovers’ doom. As soon as I finish reading that passage, I text one of my best friends in Boston, excoriating the damn cat for breaking the damnable dish. She waits for the text every year, noting that I get to that point quicker each time.

I read Ethan Frome each January. I am somehow drawn to relive that bitter winter in Starkfield. Perhaps it’s the environment. Wharton makes palpable the snow-bound oppressiveness of Starkfield, the chipped, threadbare poverty of the Frome farm, and the brilliant flashes of red that relieve the gloomy whiteness whenever Mattie appears wearing that color of joy and lust. Often, when reading the book, I’m startled to see that the sun is shining through my window. Or perhaps it’s the characters that Wharton draws. Ethan Frome could be read as a fairy tale among the Berkshires: a hero, a heroine, and a witch. But Ethan and Mattie and Zeena have more depth than that. Living in a land where silence reigns, each reveals their desperation quietly. Wharton’s characters express more in a simple glance than pages of dialogue.

I’m most drawn to Ethan himself. Not the young Ethan of some twenty years earlier, that desperate, trapped Ethan who cannot find it within himself to really assert himself before Zeena and who thinks death is the only way out. Instead, I find myself admiring Ethan in his later years when the visiting Narrator first encounters him at the village post office. This Ethan bears the hideous scars of his “smash-up” with Mattie, when they tried to take their lives. One side of his body is a mangled, tortured mess. Mattie’s scarf and Zeena’s dish have become a red scar across his forehead. Ethan’s “A” perhaps. He limps painfully from his wagon to the mail and back again. All of Starkfield views him with pity, an emotion that New England reticence cannot allow them to express, except perhaps when gossiping behind drawn curtains. Yet the Narrator describes him as “striking,” with “a careless, powerful look.” Soon the Narrator hires Ethan to drive him to the nearby train station, a regular assignment, which the farmer takes pragmatically because he clearly needs the cash. But Ethan quickly proves to be as curious of this outsider as the Narrator is of him. Perhaps he is the first outsider that he’s encountered in Starkfield for years. They share an interest in engineering, which Ethan had studied in his youth, never completing his degree. As a driver he proves to be faithful, showing up at exactly the time he is needed and delivering his passenger right on time. Perhaps the Puritan work ethic and the need for a dollar makes him so punctual, but I suspect his curiosity and possibly a sense of friendship with the stranger drives such dedication. When a winter storm blocks their path one afternoon, Ethan generously offers the Narrator his home and a share in his meager supper until the storm blows over. And in crossing the threshold into the Fromes’ battered kitchen the Narrator puts together the clues he has learned about Ethan into a vision of his life.

I suppose we could debate the causes of Ethan’s tragedy. Does it lie in his character flaws? His inability to defend himself against the domineering, harping Zeena? His romantic vision of love that somehow escaping with Mattie will solve all his problems? Or in the empty circumstances of his life? The harsh social order and poverty of Starkfield that prevents him from escaping anyway. Either or both lead him to end the pain in his life by ending his life altogether. Wharton does not allow him such escape. Rather he must endure crippling pain in a mangled body and the pity and whispers of the village. But I find hope in Ethan’s response to the aftermath of the smash-up. When the Narrator enters the Fromes’ kitchen he finds Zeena and Mattie there. Zeena doesn’t greet the visitor, but silently goes about preparing supper with “pale, opaque eyes that revealed nothing and reflected nothing.” The mild surprise that she registers suggests that later she might berate Ethan for violating their privacy. Earlier we learned that Ethan still picks up patent medicines for her at the post office, indicating that she still suffers hypochondria. It seems that Zeena has changed only little. Mattie on the other hand has changed the most. The girl who once reveled in red is now “bloodless and shriveled,” with a “witch-like stare that disease of the spine sometimes gives.” Ethan and his visitor walk in on her in mid-rant, complaining about Zeena in a “high thin voice.” Her charm and warmth are long gone, understandably so. Clearly Zeena spends her days caring for Mattie, but the animosity that was once hidden between them is fully in the open now, catching Ethan in the middle. He himself however has a different response. He does not remain relatively unchanged, like Zeena, nor does he succumb to bitterness like his one-time love, Mattie. Ethan endures. His is one of those everyday Americans who rises each day to the tasks at hand and, despite pain and disappointment, puts his hand to them. He continues to scratch out a living among the granite outcroppings of the Berkshires in the face of great hardship. Perhaps this is simply his New England pragmatism, but I see something heroic in his quiet refusal to simply quit. He once tried to escape the pain of his life through death, now his body bears that pain, no doubt it reminds him of it each morning, but now he does not quit. He continues. He endures. How many of us in our comfortable first-world lives would have the strength, the fortitude to do that?

Yet Ethan does more than simply endure. When he encounters the Narrator, he could easily take the stranger’s money and drive him to the train station and back with only the most necessary of words. It takes a certain remarkable decency for someone who has so little to offer what little he has. It also takes a certain strength. Despite his despair, his pain, the smash-up has brought out that core of decency and fortitude that exists inside Ethan. To me, that is perhaps the best response to disappointment and tragedy in our lives.

I read Ethan Frome every January. But this January, January 2017, I am of two minds about reading it again. We’re living in a world that seems much starker, colder, and more unjust than Starkfield. That feeling of being trapped and desperate is all too palpable. Or, with my hand lingering over the red-bound volume on my bookshelf, I might just read it again and go on to bear life’s scars, like Ethan, like all of us, to endure another winter and rise each day to try to work a little more good in the world. We could all try that. It is the decent thing to do.

_______

 

Scott Hoffman

Scott Hoffman (Episode 66, 241) is an independent scholar and native Austinite living and working in his hometown. He earned his Ph.D. in American Studies from Purdue University in 2005 and is currently revising his manuscript Haloed by the Nation: Popular Martyrdom in Contemporary America. In 2008, he was nominated for a Lone Star Emmy for researching and writing The World, the War and Texas, a public television documentary about Texans during the Second World War. His publications include “How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria? St. Maria Goretti in the Post-Counter-Cultural World” in The CRITIC and “Holy Martin: The Overlooked Canonization of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” and “‘Last Night I Prayed to Matthew:’ Matthew Shepard, Homosexuality and Popular Martyrdom in Contemporary America,” both in Religion and American Culture. This year he completed compiling an LBGT Resource Guide for the Austin History Center. In his spare time Scott likes to sing like nobody’s listenin’ and dance like nobody’s watchin’, which means he tends to wail and flail his arms a lot…

Buzzed Books #48: Vu Tran’s Dragonfish

10 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Buzzed Books

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Buzzed Books #48 by Shawn McKee

Vu Tran’s Dragonfish

Dragonfish

Vu Tran’s debut novel, Dragonfish (2015), reads like a neo-noir, existential thriller. The characters are calculating, the dialogue sharp, and the narrative immersive and intriguing. Tran gives these characters a sense of displacement and a yearning to connect with the past, despite the traumas awaiting such nostalgic endeavors. This is a novel of fragile emotional reconciliation where resolution is as foreign a concept as transformative redemption. Here, the search for answers is an endless venture not relegated to conventional standards.

Robert Ruen, or “Bob,” is a middle-aged Oakland police officer. He is enlisted to aid in a most unusual task by the very man his wife married after leaving him. Robert’s narrative voice is spoken with isolated cynicism, resembling the reluctant anti-heroes who permeate modern-day noir. But this isn’t only his story. His estranged ex-wife, Suzy, a Vietnamese refugee, dominates nearly every page, from jarring flashbacks to first-person italic-laden entries to her equally estranged daughter, Mai.

In hauntingly lyrical fashion, Suzy represents the object of psychological desire for most of the characters. Robert struggles with the reasons why she left him eight years prior and into the arms of a Vietnamese smuggler and gambler named Sonny Nguyen who lives in Las Vegas. Memories of his volatile relationship with Suzy fill Robert with guilt over his failings as a husband and the verbal and physical violence that often brewed to the surface between them. That was all in the past, until Sonny’s henchmen arrive at Robert’s apartment, holding him at gunpoint for answers. Suzy has disappeared, and Sonny wants Robert’s help in finding her. Playing detective for a dangerous, unpredictable man of wealth and with no shortage of hired thugs on his payroll is a risky move for sure, but Robert discovers that he is every bit as concerned for Suzy’s whereabouts as is his nemesis.

And so begins a dysfunctional effort between two foes who soon discover that they may have more in common than they initially believed or ever wanted to consider. Robert’s journey through the seedy underbelly of Las Vegas brings him to several disturbing realizations about the past, and the threat of violence from Sonny or his thugs, if he should fail, is always prevalent. Perhaps the most troubling self-discovery Robert arrives at after days of frequenting pitiless casinos and shady clubs is that his marriage from Suzy was doomed from the start. She was and always would be an enigma:

“We were always going to fail,” he says. “On our honeymoon, I knew it. There was some denial there, but really I knew it was just a matter of time.”

Suzy’s story is delicately intertwined within the mystery narrative in the form of letters to the daughter she abandoned. Presented as whole chapters, Suzy’s words reveal a tragic upbringing in her Vietnamese homeland. She met her first husband, a captain in the air force, at seventeen. After she become pregnant with her daughter, her husband was ordered to Communist re-education camps, eventually never to return. Suzy’s given name, Hong, travels with her to a Malaysian refugee camp, following the fall of Saigon. It is there, we learn, where she first met Sonny Nguyen and his young son. Her letters reveal a conflicted soul, driven to near madness, but strong and determined to find a better life for her daughter. Persistence is a virtue evident in Hong’s Vietnamese culture, and the refugees who surround her share similar desires in finding a new and better life abroad:

“But that is another story,” she writes her daughter. “I have twenty years’ worth of stories I can tell you, each one inevitably a shadow of the other. Which ones do I tell you now?”

Divided into five parts, just under three hundred pages, Vu Tran’s Dragonfish, is clearly as fixated on Suzy/Hong Thi Pham as the male characters driven to find her. We never get much in ways of Robert’s background beyond his all-American cop persona. Much of that, however, is the point of a novel that presents noir from an immigrant point of view. The challenge of assimilation is a consistent theme as is the search for one’s identity. Transcending classic noir trappings, most of the characters play against type.

Robert lacks a definitive character arc, which seems intentional, considering that his detective skills are not the main force behind the narrative. Sonny and his son, Jonathan, or Sonny Jr., are menacing as they partake in their own corrupt version of the American dream, but they are far from criminal masterminds and can be quite sympathetic at times, despite their impulses.

Suzy’s daughter, Mai, is strong-willed and independent, unshackled by American or Vietnamese culture. She plays neither Femme Fatale or damsel in distress. Victor, a henchman who defects against Sonny, and Happy, a close friend of Suzy’s who possesses her most intimate secrets, are both major players of the story who inadvertently provide Robert with some crucial answers throughout his serpentine quest, though he consistently remains an outsider, pleading, at one point, for both Happy and Mai to speak English during a heated conversation between the two.

The femme fatale, vengeful husband, and suitcase stuffed with stolen cash motifs are given a fresh, unique spin of dual narratives, redemptive and utterly soul-searching. When Robert attempts to understand the motivations behind Sonny’s search, Sonny Jr. cynically argues that Suzy was never Robert’s in the first place. Suzy/Hong, he explains, will always belong to them.

“America, Mr. Robert, is not the melting pot you Americans like to say it is. It’s oil and water. Things get stirred, sure, but they eventually separate and settle, and the like things always go back to each other.”

The frank refusal of integration and embrace of sameness speaks volumes of America today. Robert’s own bitterness about the cultural divide between him and Suzy erupts:

“You know why she married me? I was safe. I was a dumb American who would take care of her. Do shit for her. Protect her from whatever.”

In his debut novel, Tran plays the role of crime novelist well. His work echoes Walter Mosley, Mickey Spillane, and Sue Grafton, but it’s decidedly all his own. Such passages display his flawless establishment of mood, which is perhaps the story’s greatest strength: “As I tried to keep pace with Mai, a shiver of claustrophobia—of sudden loneliness—ran through me. Driving up into these casino garages, with their stark fluorescence and low ceilings, their serpentine corridors, felt more like a descent, a submersion into something airless.”

Dragonfish is a taut, poignant mystery that feels classic while transcending its genre conventions. Through its haunted visions, the world we know feels more vivid and real.

_______

Shawn McKee

Shawn McKee (Episodes 179, 184, 211, 229, and 230) is doing just fine.

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