Author / Edward Champion

Posts by Edward Champion

Edward Champion is the Managing Editor of Reluctant Habits.
by Edward Champion

Untapped Currency

Headspace hijacked by entirely unanticipated events. A slight reconfiguration of the brain, a sudden impulse to stop here and start there. Whittling down distractions. The very thing keeping so many others mired in pathetic fixations and unhealthy obsessions and desperate gropes at credibility as the whole operation burns into oblivion, with the remaining gaunt wolves sniping about at the remaining scraps. One need not be a depressive to survive, although miserable people sure do love their company. They are already starting to turn on each other, and it’s sad to watch. Particularly when one isn’t involved and one is powerless to intercede. One need not surrender to fear and complacency. It is reality which one must face. Not dwelling on a job you hate. Or the constant mining of personal experience and invading other people’s existences in lieu of therapy. Or the childish failure to be yourself. Or the reliance upon a fabricated identity you can’t believe in. Or the inability to be true.

No, I’m not writing about me. I’m writing to you. Not you, that guy who has his shit together. Yeah, keep it up and give me a high five. Let me buy you a beer when I have some money and you’re next in New York. And not you, the guy who gets what’s going on here. And not you, the dude who doesn’t quite grok, but isn’t afraid to flaunt it. Process of elimination. Yeah, that pack. See them? Yeah. They’re fucking terrified. I know. Man, I wish I had a job or some happiness to give them, but you know the old proverb about horses and water.

Well, where does that leave us, kiddo? I mean, we’re all busy fighting our own wars to stay alive. But can we spare a few minutes? We may not have dimes, brother, but when they take away your job, the new commodity is time. And that’s a unit you can budget. So how bout paying some of it forward? Nothing public, mind you. Off the radar. Collective savings. An invisible Federal Reserve trading in an untapped currency.

by Edward Champion

Reminder: Live Conversation with Sarah Hall on Tuesday!

sarahhall2This is a quick reminder that Sarah Hall and I will be in conversation tomorrow night (i.e., the evening of the week commonly referred to as Tuesday) at McNally Jackson at 7:00 PM. Since there is a good deal of weather within Hall’s most recent novel and weather forms the bedrock of all good small talk, it is very likely that we will be introducing meteorological patterns, either literally or figuratively, into the conversation at some point.

Hall’s fourth novel, How to Paint a Dead Man, was the subject of a roundtable discussion on these pages. And I should point out that this conversation will not be recorded or released as a future Segundo show. This is a “one night only” performance.

For background information on Hall, you can listen to my previous conversation with her from last year. I also wrote about Sarah Hall’s first three novels for the Barnes & Noble Review.

by Edward Champion

Five Three Oh

530

At 5:30 AM, you know who is truly fearless. Early birds shuffle into the guarded lobbies of fitness centers, jutting their chins and sticking their hands into hoodies not for warmth, but for protection against the unpredictable aperture between the end of night and the promising onset of the sun. A man rattles the locked door outside Starbucks, wanting his quick fix as the workers unpack big metal bins from the fridge and talk shop before putting on a customer-friendly face. A more subtle addict stands outside a diner with a Voice stuffed with bills and hands it over to his seller, who then hands a shopping bag filled with illegal merch, and proceeds to breakfast. Inside the diner, you can just grab the first batch of home fries and catch several snippets of the manager ordering this week’s supplies. The manager’s conversation is in Spanish and the numbers rattled into the phone reveal how his business is doing (not well). Delivery trucks rattle and stop, followed by taxi cabs, a few buses, and the odd automobile or two. Stacks of newspapers form outside newsstands and stores. Security guards are permitted to yawn. Mysterious vans pick up less secure workers at corners, where a few huddled souls begin a long day in Queens or Jersey with payments guaranteed out-of-pocket.

5:30 AM unleashes strange truths. A Duane Reade manager — a middle-aged man with an untrimmed moustache — shouts loudly about how much he enjoys hurting people just after welcoming you through the doors. It’s all about Modern Warfare 2, the latest twitch game making the rounds. He smiles as he talks of gunning down civilians and using bounce grenades to kill a crowd. Urination is more publicly practiced, but the rats are too tired to gnaw on the trash. Temporal minority groups welcome each other. The lonely chat with strangers: some demanding a response to “Good morning” and some looking for a two-minute friend. Social cues are more awkward at this hour. The lonely feel compelled to force intimate questions upon strangers in less than a minute. Requests for change carry a slight delay. No one quite knows the timing because you can’t always tell if someone’s just risen out of bed or about to head to dreamland. You can’t sit on a stoop, but you can bunch your frame near a door. In fact, it’s better that you do. The last thing you need is a property manager jostled before his alarm.

A man sans yarmulke sways in the wayward wind, singing a Jewish hymn. The smell of fresh bread careens from bakeries. The hardcore dog walking crowd, friendlier than the vigilant fitness freaks, conclude their constitutionals. A man takes his shirt off and hangs it over his head just because he can. And the normal sounds are preternaturally minimalist. Thin metal struts squeak in the breeze. The bright bus shelter signs are most visible at this hour. The signs advertise ghastly financial products and mirthless talk show hosts with rum, oversize jaws, but the messages won’t reach the people stirred up at this golden hour. Because this is the time when things are real. At no other time is the city so half-awake yet alive.

by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Marjorie Rosen

Marjorie Rosen recently appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #311.

Marjorie Rosen is most recently the author of Boom Town: How Wal-Mart Transformed an All-American Town Into an International Community.

segundo311

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Kicked out of bed.

Author: Marjorie Rosen

Subjects Discussed: The white and non-Hispanic white majority in Bentonville, Arkansas, numerous houses of worship, multiculturalism, the largest population of Marshall Island immigrants in the United States, work for unskilled laborers, exploitation at Tyson and Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart’s $319 billion annual profit and its failure to offer proper healthcare, sentiments from former Bentonville mayor Terry Black Coberly, whether or not Wal-Mart is good for Bentonville, The Whistler Group, Wal-Mart, Christian-based merchandise, and staying in denial about being a “Christian company,” mandatory Saturday morning meetings, “diversity groups,” the conflict between Saturday morning meetings and shabbat, St. Paul Wal-Mart worker Abdi Abdi fired for praying on work breaks, the difficulties of integrating with a white community, trying to get Wal-Mart middle managers to disclose salaries, relative salaries and Bentonville’s relative economy, Bentonville housing, the abuses of the Bentonville and the Rogers Police Departments, the culture of fear spawned by Section 287(g), Rogers Mayor Steve Womack’s racist sentiments, Sheriff Joe Arpaio and white privilege, and the reasonable unification of culture.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

marjorierosenCorrespondent: Ajaydev Naliur said to you that the most difficult part of integrating into the larger white community was “not being able to socialize with them like we do with the Indian families. The people at work never say, ‘A.J., come to my house for dinner, come to my home.'” Now if Naliur has only a professional relationship with the Americans and he fears bringing Indian food even to the Walmart food day potlucks, then surely there’s a multiculturalism problem here. And I’m curious about why there’s this lack of integration.

Rosen: No, it’s interesting that you choose A.J. I think it was his problem.

Correspondent: Yeah?

Rosen: Yeah. Because he was so timid about everything. About sharing Indian food. You know, there are Mexican restaurants. There are Chinese restaurants. There are all sorts of restaurants in the area now. Not an Indian restaurant yet. But he was so timid about it. And yet there were other Indian families. Like the Kulkarnis, who were not at all. Who said to me, “Many American friends, we invite them to dinner.” And I kept wishing they’d invite me for dinner. You know, because I love Indian food.

Correspondent: Yeah.

Rosen: But when push came to shove, A.J. said that he was hesitant to embrace American values. Mostly because of his daughters. He has two teenage daughters. And he was very, very afraid that they would become too Americanized. And then he would lose control of them, in terms of boyfriends and in terms of setting up arranged marriages. And it’s definitely in the picture for him. And he wants to keep his girls under his wing.

Correspondent: But A.J. likewise wants to hold onto his job. And maybe the timidity comes from the fact that if he brings in the Indian food, by his standpoint, he could risk raising ire and possibly having people make fun of him. Or, I suppose, putting a red flag on the cultural divide. So is it really fair point to A.J. and say, “Hey, it’s your problem.” Because he is, in fact, the guy who is bringing sodas and pretzels and potato chips and the like. Basically conforming to American society.

Rosen: He said it was his problem.

Correspondent: He said it was his problem?

Rosen: He said it was his problem when I spoke to him about it. I said, “Gosh, people love to share.” Especially in terms of food. People are very open to that kind of thing. He said it was his problem and his timidity. It’s funny. His wife, it’s been harder for her because it’s taken her a longer time to learn English. Now that she’s learning English, she works at a day care center. She’s having a great time going to weddings of friends without him. Because she’s much more willing to socialize with Americans somehow. Now that she’s learned English, it’s easier for her.

Correspondent: Well, if she’s the social butterfly, has she brought Americans to her place? Or anything like that?

Rosen: Not yet. She’s still fairly submissive. A fairly submissive wife. On and off for the first two years that I spoke with them, I would visit them when I’d come into town. And I’d ask what he thought about something. And then I’d ask what she thought. And she’d say, with no irony, “I think what he thinks.”

Correspondent: Interesting.

Rosen: But now that she’s learning English, and she’s more comfortable in her own community and basically in her own skin, I really have detected a change in her. It’s really lovely to see that.

Correspondent: By comfortable in her own skin, do you mean as she’s learned English? What do you mean by that?

Rosen: As she’s learned English. She’s been able to take a job and hold a job by herself. And I think that’s given her a little bit of freedom. Not, I would say, a lot. But a little bit of freedom.

Correspondent: Freedom to further integrate with American culture?

Rosen: Yes.

Correspondent: Or…because it seems to me that we’re getting a one way signal here. I mean, shouldn’t multiculturalism work where everybody integrates together? And everybody goes, “Hey, Indian food. Hey, American food,” and that kind of thing?

Rosen: Well, I think it’s nice that she has American friends from the day care center where she works who invite her to their wedding. Which entails a whole day of traveling and celebrating. I mean, to me, that’s a gesture in a community that maybe ten years ago would not have made that gesture. And she would have been too timid to go without him.

BSS #311: Marjorie Rosen (Download MP3)

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by Edward Champion

When Parody Replaces Opportunity

I don’t know if the world really needed a parody of the Twilight books. Stephenie Meyer’s acolytes, as cultural observers have opined, are quite fixed in their passions. I’ve always subscribed to the middle ground version of the “gateway drug” theory. You may not get the kids hooked on Ulysses or ensnare them within the apparent stomach-churning fallow of fan fiction. But you can listen to them instead of dismissing them, and, with enough patience, maybe get them started on Lovecraft or Poe.

nightlightThe Harvard Lampoon‘s Nightlight clearly doesn’t appreciate the source (the first rule of parody) and it reads like a funny idea best confined to a few thousand words. But the first chapter does offer some wonderfully awful sentences. “I had a dejected, brooding expression on my face, and I could tell from the reflection in the window that it was an intriguing expression,” declares Belle. Why are there two contradictory expressions in the same sentence? And why should any reader tolerate this? How can any serious writer forget about a pivotal detail established in an earlier clause?

Later, we get this exquisitely extraneous description: “So when I closed the door to my room, unpacked, cried uncontrollably, slammed the door, and threw my clothes around my room in a fit of dejected rage, he didn’t notice.” Aside from the discombobulated verb clauses, we have a door that is closed twice. (It’s also quite amusing that the mysterious Harvard Lampoon writer managed to slip “dejected” into these inconsistencies.)

Nightlight also declares war on silly similes. A finger is “squeezed through a diamond ring like a sausage through a slipknot.” We learn of a girl with “brown bushy hair in a ponytail that was more like a suirrel tail in the context of her beady squirrel eyes.” There’s even one sentence that reads: “He was muscular, like a man who could pin you up against the wall as easily as a poster, yet lean, like a man who would rather cradle you in his arms.”

The question isn’t why the Twihards are enraptured by vampires. That’s an understandable sentiment for any teenager seeking an engaging fantasy. The greater dilemma is why these fans continue to revere prose that’s written like a man with a high BAC level trying to ride a unicycle.

The fan base, however, isn’t without its skeptics. There was the campaign led by one fan to return Breaking Dawn for its inadequacies. Then there was the Midnight Sun leak, which was so riddled with gaffes that Meyer was forced to close up shop.

The discarded draft still exists (PDF) on Meyer’s site. And it turns out that the Harvard Lampoon wasn’t entirely off the mark. On page 9: “Her scent hit me like wrecking ball [sic], like a battering ram.” On page 15: “A spur of the forest reached out like a finger to touch the back corner of the parking lot.” On page 74, anger is “[l]ike a furious kitten, soft and harmless, and so unaware of her own vulnerability.” On page 109: “My body had turned into something more like rock than flesh, enduring and unchanging.” (Thanks for the specificity, Stephenie.) On page 145: “dark hair thick and wild and twisted like seaweed across the pillow.” (I guess some people slumber in morasses.)

I understand that young people are often drawn to associations, but how are any of the above similes worthwhile? Is there a way to get the Twilight fans more jazzed up about precision? I think so. One young fan named “Hot Diggity Dogs!,” responding to a review of Eclipse, wants to know:

what are some of the powerful similes that Stephenie Meyers uses in Eclipse? I can’t find that many, and i NEED some for school! please help, thanks!!

“Hot Diggity Dogs!” may be trying to cram a paper in at the last minute, but I’m wondering why she couldn’t ask this question of her teacher. Is it because the teacher condemns the main source of interest?

And there’s this Amazon discussion of Laurell K. Hamilton’s similes and metaphors in which several Hamilton fans try to come to terms with the clumsy language:

If she’d said “just before a devastating storm” it would make sense, but the sky doesn’t generally fall down. And it would be hard-pressed to destroy everything you own….I know what she’s trying to convey, but she really bites at these things. If she isn’t nonsensical, then she’s outright bizarre.

The takeaway here is that these books, whether authored by Meyer or Hamilton, clearly offer something compelling to these readers. And while those possessing literary standards can pooh-pooh “lesser” literature (as I have just done), I can remember when an English teacher ridiculed me in seventh grade for expressing enthusiasm about Stephen King. Now Stephen King may not be the greatest writer in the world, but he did manage to suck me in at an early age. And every now and then, he still does. But I certainly haven’t forgotten his role in leading me to a world of books. And I suspect that many Meyer fans will feel the same way in about a decade or two. While there’s certainly good cause to condemn Meyer, it’s something of an irony that King’s remarks about Meyer earlier this year initiated something of a jihad. But what the Twihards missed within King’s comments was his praise for Meyer’s compelling storytelling.

Nightlight might have functioned with this same duality in mind. But after the first chapter, the writers stopped mimicking Meyer’s faulty sentences and tried to sabotage the storytelling with lame jokes. I got bored, but the book was so short (and the subway ride so long) that I made it to the end. But what if the writers had designed the parody so that young readers could understand why adults sneered down at a “lower” art form? Not only might they have managed to get through to the Meyer fan base, but they might have kickstarted a internal debate about what was so troubling about the source. Some sensible advice about parody, which is particularly applicable to Nightlight‘s shortcomings and Meyer’s fans, arrives from a gentleman going by the name of “La Touche Hancock” in 1920:

To the parodist, then, I say: Make your parody such that the poet himself will laugh over it, and wish to make your acquaintance. Finally, remember that humor of the truest quality rests on the foundation of belief in something better than it seems, and its laugh is a sad laugh at the awkward contrast between man as he is and man as he might be.