Month / October 2008

by Edward Champion

Stephen King and “Literary” Aspirations

Salon’s John Marks recently talked with Stephen King on the occasion of The Stand‘s 30th anniversary, where King has revealed that he has written “a very long book” called Under the Dome that deals with themes similar to his 1978 opus.

The Q&A has led Splice Today‘s John Lingan to likewise reconsider King’s place. Lingan points out that King has a distinctly American “avoidance of bullshit at all costs” and that he writes “purely for the visceral thrill of storytelling.” But this assessment fails to take into account King’s undeniable literary aspirations, seen in Lisey’s Story and some of his New Yorker stories, which have detracted from his knack for writing can’t-put-down novels for the average Joe. (This tendency was, in part, why I recently stopped reading Just After Sunrise, a muddled collection of tedious short stories that had me pining for the visceral energy within Night Shift and Skeleton Crew.)

It is indeed King’s high concepts and straightforward storytelling quality — Richard Matheson’s unshakable influence — that has made him a compelling writer. But when he strays from his “country don’t mean dumb” philosophy, he’s nowhere near as enthralling. I suppose the last three volumes of The Dark Tower didn’t sit as well with me because these books were written more with the rabid fan base in mind. I’ve remained long convinced that King has a satirical novel in him — and argued this in my review of Blaze. And it’s worth noting that King’s aborted Web serial, The Plant, revealed the roots of this juicy promise. When King stops listening to what the fans want and stops striving for a “literary” territory that, by his own confession, he can’t hack, he’ll evolve naturally and organically as a novelist. Perhaps in ways that none can portend.

by Edward Champion

Fart

I am pleased to report that I farted at 3:46 PM this afternoon. The fart’s intensity was somewhere between one of those silent stinkers that people are often in denial about and one of those noisy rattlers, reminiscent of a distant motorboat, that can be heard in an adjacent room. In volume, it was perhaps a few decibels; in odor, it lingered around long enough to require a slight crack of the window. (From one crack comes another.) I presume that this afternoon’s lunch — with its plentiful egg and rice — was one of the reasons for this fart. But one does not always look for direct cause when flatulating. The ideal way to undergo this quite normal biological process is when there is nobody around. As I’ve insinuated here, this was neither the worst fart I’ve ever emitted, nor the best fart. I’m pleased to report that the fart harmed no one. It was a fart somewhere on the left of middle C, although I wasn’t paying too much attention to the precise frequency. If the fart were political, and the middle C represented a centrist way of thinking, then I’d probably style this fart as soft left. Probably the kind of fart you’d see attending a few rallies, but not hard-core enough to become a full-blown Marxist.

by Edward Champion

Good Greif

In a predictable piece of contrarianism, n+1 manboy Mark Greif completely misses the point of Mad Men. Calling the famed television show “an unpleasant little entry in the genre of Now We Know Better,” Greif dismisses the idea that television should depict unpleasant human realities such as sexism, racism, and other assorted human weaknesses. Greif has neither the balls nor the acumen to understand that Don Draper likewise possesses a throwback masculinity that is the key to his apparent success and his command at the ad agency. Jon Hamm plays his character with a certain insecurity because the show is about, among other things, the loss of confidence and individualism in American society, and the overlooked qualities which sustained this. While it is true that one can appreciate Mad Men from the more civilized comforts of the present age — parsing it as a depiction of uncivilized human behavior run amuck — the show’s more intriguing thematic involves how Draper’s masculinity is the key to how he, and American society, operates.

Greif appears more enamored with Mad Men‘s handsome production design and is more interested in quibbling over needless details than he is with the show’s more interesting depiction of human behavior, and this says more about Greif’s inability to comprehend a television show that goes out of its way to depict uncomfortable truths. Decades ago, women were stifled (and still remain so to a lesser degree today). Men were expected to keep the household together with steely fortitude. But despite these atavistic realities, this is, nevertheless, what made America such an innovative nation. Mad Men works, because it does not present us with a dichotomy. It gives us the troublingly cohesive whole. If you were a smart and successful woman during that time, you had few options and were inclined to give into this patriarchal bullshit. But the patriarchal bullshit, as abject as it was, did galvanize people to make active decisions. This is a daring and much needed representation in our age of schlumpy protagonists in Judd Apatow films and Worst Week. Mad Men doesn’t just ask us to revisit this human quality. It asks us to consider the good things that we may have lost with the ugliness.

Mad Men is indeed a “smart” show. But then you have to have an interest in people in order to fully appreciate it.

by Edward Champion

Crave

The economic downturn is shaking up the rabble just south of Times Square. I was walking along Eighth Avenue, and a man leaped at me some fifteen feet from the edge of the sidewalk, grabbing my forearm. There had been a guy who almost tore the lapel off my wool coat last winter. But somehow the man today was more desperate. More determined to seize another’s attention. More compelled to invade personal space. Wanting to survive, needing to matter, bowling alone.

I chatted with a thin woman bundled in a dark pockmarked coat just outside Penn Station who said she needed $12 to get home. She was situated under one of those ramshackle walkways intended to steer pedestrian traffic away from the main sidewalk while some construction rattles on, but that almost always serves as an impromptu shelter in the winter. She told me that I was the only one who talked with her in two hours. Whether her story was true or not, she was pretty hard to miss. Her large cardboard sign had the word STRANDED! in big blocky letters, a kind of Bic-imbued pointillism. The details in her story didn’t add up, but I gave her a dollar that I didn’t really have. There was the man I saw begging for a cigarette just outside a diner. A woman stood with a smile on her face, smoking three cigarettes in a row. The man wouldn’t go away. He was persistent. She didn’t budge. He dived for one of the butts she had dropped on the sidewalk and then asked her for a light. She refused. I had no cigarettes or matches on me. It would have made some difference.

Someone told me yesterday that she had been given $40 and a box to collect her possessions upon submitting her resignation notice. No pay for the last two weeks. The White Castle on Eighth Avenue announces that it’s hiring. Benefits are the big selling point. And it can’t be an accident that a bundle of comfort burgers over there is called a Crave.

Everyone craves a little security these days. More than a White Castle burger, which you have twenty minutes to sit around and eat until they kick you out. If you’re not let go just because, then you’re certainly craven, hoping to keep whatever job you have. Whether it has become necessary to sacrifice a little liberty and empathy to pay the rent is a question I can’t possibly answer. But you can feel the bristling fear in the streets.