I keep thinking about this bit in Dave Eggers' The Every where the main search engine and the main online commerce place have merged and everything is controlled and curated by them--- and halfway through the book it is explained that people in this world quit reading and the skill just went away. The only people around who could still do it were people on the legal teams, because those organizations actually required literacy and comprehension, but nothing else did. No one else gave a shit so there wasn't a need for books anymore and they all just went away. (This gives a little of two different Twilight Zones, both starring Burgess Meredith, and it's upsetting just how correctly Rod Serling had humanity, even 60 years ago)
I'm not bringing this up because I'm afraid of not being able to read again (I have enough books to last me the rest of my life, no repeats, and I have lots of glasses in case mine break), but it's sad and horrible, thinking about this BRAWNDO HAS ELECTROLYTES world we live in and the direct consequences of an unthinking, unable-to-empathize populace who doesn't care to read.
Anyway, here's what I read over the last month, I call this stack DARKNESS. The first 3 of them were re-reads, because I'm obsessive and I never get over anything.
1. Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales, by Stephen KingI looked back on other blogs I wrote on this and I guess this is the third time I've read the whole book, although I have read "1408" and the title story a few more times, still. Again, I always read things multiple times, dating back to age 2 when my mother used to read me The Story of Ferdinand or Goodnight Moon when she put me to bed. When she left I would just start it over and recite whatever story to myself, again.
This time I loved: Illustrating the severity of Jack Hamilton's gunshot wound first by having the smoke from the Lucky he inhaled exit out the back of his lung where the bullet hole was (Like Juno in Beetlejuice but less funny and more yikes) and then ongoing, by the various stages of pus and Jack's energy. With a title like "The Death of Jack Hamilton," you obviously expect the guy to die, but these were still nice details. There was a lot of visceral medical stuff in this one I never really noticed before. Infection is no joke, kids. You can't just shrug that shit off.
Also all descriptions of the insane maitre d in "Lunch at the Gotham Cafe", and always with this vibe of very dark humor with the hindsight. Like, who would come up with these metaphors when telling the story of getting randomly chased around with a butcher knife? ". . . bent forward slightly from the waist as he was, he made me think of a drawing in my sixth-grade literature book, an illustration of Washington Irving's unfortunate schoolteacher, Ichabod Crane." Steve Davis (main character) was clearly over it all before he even walked into that cafe, and often it's these out-of-fucks kind of people that tell the best stories about whatever bullshit they encounter.
And in "1408," still my favorite in this collection, and I maintain, the scariest: "Whatever there is in that room, it's not shy." NO SHIT. It's a small thing, but why is there always a changing painting in so many of these stories? Evil coming out of neutral decorative objects: fruit to rot; regular teeth to fangs; even the floor changes after everything gets going to include "smooching noises" when Enslin walks on it. Stop it. I'da been long gone at the first hint of motion sickness when the goddamned doors started tilting and shifting right off the elevator. Not to mention how everything is orange--- there's something seriously wrong with this entire setup.
Reading these all over again helped me laugh a little and appreciate creepy characters and cleverness in storytelling (although I still refuse to read "1408" at night). That settles it. I think I always need to be reading a Stephen King book.
2. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
I am a very different person now than I was when I first read this. This time, knowing what the deal was from the beginning, I started keeping track of who was the bigger liar, and how early this started coming out (Nick's secret cell phone, which details from Amy's diary were somewhat true versus flat out lies, etc.). What I started noticing more was the difference between how Nick's lies and character flaws are peppered here and there throughout the story beginning early on and the truth about Amy's disordered personality is withheld until she explains how has framed Nick for her murder. I think the end goal was to be as if Nick's version he wrote (in the book, that Amy made him destroy) was actually this book, his chapters of Gone Girl, combined with Amy's true account of all the events as she experienced them (first part the diary that she partially reported truthfully and partially made up, second part the truth of everything that happened to her after she abducted herself), and this just really highlights the differences between them: Nick is an asshole; Amy is pathologically disturbed. We receive the negatives about Nick early and consistently; the disturbing problems with Amy's character emerge slowly at first, and then erupt. And because she is the narrator of her chapters of the story, and she's been proven to be a liar and a manipulator, we can never really be certain she's telling the whole truth.
Could she have genuinely been diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder (psychopathy)? There are hazy details missing from her childhood above and beyond her parents not relating to her or treating her like her own person (although was that even real? she could have made that up, too). She would have needed to meet criteria for conduct disorder in childhood or adolescence in order for APD to apply; it seems odd that this would have escaped both her psychologist parents, but a very smart person with beauty, talent, and resources would have likely found ways to perform the role of a psychologically typical daughter. The moments when Amy criticizes people who are trying to help her--- Boney, the cop ("I find ugly women are usually overly deferential or incredibly rude") Desi, or even her parents--- show her as cold and unfeeling, with no desire to relate with any real humanity. Can she relate to people on this level? Yes. She charms many. But she also uses and frames countless people in her life, and kills Desi with no remorse---like everyone else, he is nothing more than a means to an end. She chooses who gets her painted-on humanity, just as she chooses to disclose certain details in the telling of her story and not others. Amy Elliot probably wouldn't find anything wrong with her actions, nor would she be able to reflect more deeply into why she does what she does. Nick at least knows he's an asshole and could probably pinpoint all the ways and reasons why he is one.
The experience of reading this again was unpleasant, but I have a feeling personality disorders will be making a nation-wide comeback very soon. I thought it would be useful prep. Also I re-watched the film and thought there were several missed opportunities in Fincher's choice not to include the numerous friends from Amy's past who she screwed over. One final thought: I found a scholarly article on apapsychinfo that used popular film characters as a way of discussing the etiology of personality disorders. The authors actually started back with Fatal Attraction's Alex Forest (Borderline Personality Disorder), changed the ending a bit to allow Dan and Beth Gallagher's daughter Ellen to become an orphan in foster care, and suggested that these negative experiences could set the stage for young Ellen to be adopted by two childless psychologists (The Elliots), and subsequently develop conduct disorder and then Antisocial Personality Disorder as Amy Elliot in Gone Girl.
Talk about darkness. What upsets me about reading this now is how it relates so completely with how some people, some who think ectopic pregnancies can be re-implanted or that cameras can be swallowed to record data on fetuses, want to use our government to control women. I used to think it was a fringe element, no more than 40% in the heyday and far less than 20% after the real crazy came out. Turns out it doesn't matter. People still aren't listening, or they're actively siding with Gilead's boys.
"You wait, she said. They've been building up to this. It's you and me up against the wall, baby. She was quoting an expression of my mother's, but she wasn't intending to be funny."
I gotta go with the show over the book on this one; there's at least some revenge happening there.
4. Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'ConnorYes, well. Bouncing back to personality, there were several issues with every character in every one of these stories. Everyone is very racist, and the characters who don't believe they are racist, or who believe they are less racist than other people in the story with them are usually the most racist of all. There are class issues, too, farm money, education, religion, etc., but mostly everyone is just really unpleasant. That said, there is an element of inevitable train wreck that comes in reading each of these; the situations themselves that these people are in are actually interesting enough to keep you locked in. As in, what is the guy going to do to purposely embarrass his mother on the bus? Is that little girl going to side with her grandfather or the father that beats her? What is the religious wife going to say about the latest tattoo? Then add to each answer, "and how will this fuck things up worse than they already are?"
I read "A Good Man is Hard to Find" (very small town, In Cold Blood murder-y) in an English short story class at MCTC in 2000, and as much as I was disturbed by it, these were somehow worse, darkness-wise. O'Connor's feelings about religion are actually kind of valid---something like "the world is so horrible and violent that only God can save us . . ." I wonder what she'd think of organized religion, today.
5. The Splendid Ticket by Bill Cotter The darkness in this book is embodied by the character of Dean Lee, who wasn't even that terrible of a human, just made bad choices. Gambling addiction and guns. Bad combo. I had a professor who described a large percentage of her female clients' problems as needing either a winning lottery ticket or a husband-ectomy. Angie needed both.
I hated knowing all along how this was going to end.
