missed it the first time: The Hipster Handbook by Robert Lanham

Gawker christened "fauxhemians" as the new word for "hipsters." I agree with the decision; I voted for that word twice.

But the past without introspection is just...boring. So a few weeks ago, I was reminded of a nice little "hipster" gem: The Hipster Handbook by Robert Lanham (Anchor Books, 2003) which I plucked from the cheap confines of Paperback Swap.

First things first: I shouldn't tread to try and criticize this thing. Not according to the haughty reviews such as this one: "The Hipster Handbook is so comprehensive and so well-done that only a poseur could criticize it without tongue in cheek."

Oh dang. It warded off critics before any critics dared to open the book.



The book is only 7 years ago, but that's at least a decade in faux-hipster-hemian terms. The cover is adorned with a shadow with a faux-hawk. And speaking of hair, the book uses the word "mulletude" with all seriousness.

Otherwise, at an attempt to be sarcastic or to deflect criticism, the book tries to institute two new words---"deck" and "fin."



Astute readers will notice one of those words in the title of my blog, so here's the truth: my blog name is partially derived from this book.

HCD first heard of this book, back when we were in "college" and and learned of Mr. Lanham's continuous "deck" ("cutting edge") vs. "fin" ("similar to outdated terms like 'wack' and 'lame'") debate that runs in the most annoying way possible across the book.

In an attempt to become Williamsburg-cool, HCD would evoke the word "deck" to deride specific corporate attempts to engage him i.e. his money: "This commercial is so deck," HCD would say, while watching a Honda Element commercial. "They are trying to appeal to me. I wish I could buy one right now!"

Hence: DECK-FIGHT (that means I don't like the word "deck" in Lanham's context).

I'm sure Mr. Lanham meant for the word to be mocked (can't everyone tell I'm joking??? he would say) while secretly hoping it would catch on. Here's the final verdict, Mr. Lanham--it did not catch on.

And I'm serious about this deck and fin thing. He uses it almost every page. EVERY PAGE, as if he is afraid "deck" and "fin" and "hipsters" will go out of style...oh wait.

As a history book, then Mr. Lanham's book cannot be fully trusted. Very often, his terms are way-off, but he does find accurate portrayals of SOME type of boho-hipsters. Like fake cowboys and girls in long black skirts with messenger bags on bikes.

But look at this guy:



Yes, that says "bipster." According to accurate Google search results, "bipster" usually refers to a style of UGG boots. Only other self-aware hipster outlets like Urban Dictionary use the word with Lanham's intention.

Lanham also tries to rank past celebrities into hipsters and non-hipsters, using the word "deck" in reference to Amelia Earhart, e.e. cummings and Sitting Bull and Yul Brynner. Those disapproved are Clark Gable, Raymond Chandler and John The Baptist.

I like Raymond Chandler and John The Baptist alright.

Beyond the penchant for bad lingo, Lanham does get a few things right. The hipster literature section hit too close to home. Besides the usual suspects (Dennis Cooper, David Foster Wallace), there's also Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me, which I just read for the first time last year and named it the best book I read last year. Guilty as charged.

Surprisingly he named Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon ahead of Gravity's Rainbow...hmmmm, think the hipster prefer the latter...

He also lists Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back as the third fave hipster album of the 80s and that's definitely held true for all the non-hipsters in the past 7 years.

Some of the social rules are also accurate, like a section on a hipster dating a non-hipster. "Hipster men often find the forbidden fruit of a sorority girl or a personal trainer to be the sweetest of all" and "[Hipsters] can also find pleasure in being considered the most outrageous person at the party when mingling with their lover's non-Hipster friends."

But now I have a new problem. What do I do with this book now? What are the rules for that?

Bottom line: Am I deck or fin if I use this book to light my grill while drinking a PBR? More after the jump...

missed it the first time: Most Likely You'll Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine by Ben Tanzer

Most Likely You'll Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine
By Ben Tanzer
Orange Alert, 2008
Review by Josh S.

I approach most of the reviews on Deckfight divided. My mind is rarely made up before I sit down. I write and somehow make up my mind. Like most writers (I think), the writing process is a process of decision making. It is through this act I make up my mind, not before I write.

So it goes with Ben Tanzer’s Most Likely. A book I was sure I was going to love, only to find that I admired its craft far more than its actual story; that’s the most backhanded compliment I’ve ever given, (perhaps I hit it out of bounds?). This is a story of one couple (two maybe), Jen and Geoff. Jen and Geoff are overly anxious about one another, somewhat repelled by each other, but enthralled enough to start breaking the manufactured dating rules, enthralled enough to wonder if after only a couple dates if this relationship is THE relationship, enthralled that this relationship in being THE relationship may be the relationship that breaks all the rules that their single friends and acquaintances still follow.

Think Annie Hall, or more recently 500 Days of Summer with a lot of dialogue and self-analysis and that’s Most Likely. The story is set in the early months of this decade, a key fact for understanding their position in life and their use of landline phones. In some ways, this is also the trusty buddy comedy, the most interesting lines and advice and scenes come from the repeated office-advice scenarios, something familiar for anyone with a girlfriend/boyfriend that the office knows about. No advice is solicited, but relationships are the one topic where everyone has advice.


Ben Tanzer!

Repetition is important here, so important that I didn’t realize that it was central to Ben’s writing strategy, which initially made me loathe it a bit. At first, I didn’t get the threads like “Geoff finds Paul and asks him if he wants to spark one in the alley behind the office. They spark one.” Ben was being kind of glib and stupid in an effort to be too ironic and too flat, but the humor came to me and by the end of the book, I got the trope and looked forward to it, especially advice from Descartes the management guru.

And then I got it or think I got it. The office scenes were routine and everyday in light of a possible, life-altering, non-routine relationship. What was thought initially to be routine eventually became something beyond the routine, but it all started in the routine. And that routine expanded beyond just simple office scenarios, but also into how Geoff and Jen date, their old routines influenced by habit and family and friends. Everyone has dirty laundry and it must be sorted through. Speaking of rules and dirty laundry, I’ll be honest, I was surprised at the frankness of sex in this book. I thought there would be more conversations about condoms and diseases and other contraceptives, especially since so much is exchanged not with friends but complete strangers--maybe there’s a stereotype, maybe it’s real-life, maybe it’s too real to make a point, or at least that worked with the rebound girl Claudia, so I think I talked myself around to understanding it---so it makes sense then with Geoff and Jen because it didn’t make sense for Geoff and Claudia. I got it now, I guess.

Written in short bursts (84 chapters in about 175 pages) and mostly in dialogue, Most Likely flies and every word that the characters speak is casual, but important. The use of dialogue was a highlight for me, I too am really intrigued by fiction just told in conversations between characters with little narration--I think the technique is under-appreciated, under-taught and under-utilized. And Ben has such an ear for it, a great mimicker of natural rhythms and conversations that each character is easily defined by their conversations, a task that as people we do all the time, though in writing is so much harder to nail down. So way to go Ben! (that was a forehanded compliment).

Buy Most Likely You'll Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine at Orange Alert.
Visit Ben's blog here. Read Ben's Friday Five.
More after the jump...

missed it the first time, hard-boiled edition: Pick-Up by Charles Willeford

For a nice a summer reading experiment, every Thursday in July, we've looked at a hard-boiled or crime noir story. This is the last one in the series--crime noir in the widest sense, as the only crimes are the ones the characters perpetuate against themselves.

And later this afternoon, an interview with an author of a modern, kind-of crime noir story.

Previous entries:
Double Indemnity by James Cain
Dashiell Hammett/Raymond Chandler Double
The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
Down There by David Goodis

Pick-Up by Charles Willeford
Beacon Books, 1955
Charles Willeford on Wikipedia

This is that slippery slope. When there's a place, you're in it and there's no way to know how you got there and when you got there and everything looks the same. Charles Willeford creates that effect wonderfully, where every action is rationalized, makes sense, maybe not the perfect sense.

And that's the place that Harry finds himself. A few innocent drinks leads to a nice one night one stand with Helen. Harry is quickly smitten and when she re-appears the next night, he quickly throws his apron aside from his back counter restaurant job and goes drinking with Helen. And so it goes. Willeford never gives more background than necessary, so Helen and Harry wander through a few week binge of long nights, long dinners and longer drinks. A few touching moments occur in their crazy binge--Helen encourages Harry to take on painting again, his portrait of her comes out fine and flattering, his perspective of her colored through the rosiest glasses imaginable. When they hit a bottom of sorts, Harry suggests going to a hospital for free care. The questions by the doctor almost causes a double take by the reader, they are unnerving, uncommon, unimaginable in their current narrative form. It is not that Harry is the classic 'unreliable narrator,' he is more like an uninformed narrator, or a withheld narrator--details important to the story aren't important from Harry's perspective.

Pick-Up is an early look at co-dependency, a portrayal of the symbiosis needed to continue to binge, to continue to overindulge...Harry and Helen are not both alcoholics, but they need each other to convince the other one that everything will be alright.

This is also the darker side of the perceived boho lifestyle, money runs out quick, Harry does not discover an audience for his art until he becomes sensationalized through his actions, everyone wants his story, his craziness. Except we never get the impression that he's crazy, maybe a little misguided, a little uncaring, a little loose with his cash.

But the wallop that Willeford hits with in the last sentence, a whopper for 1955 shows how skilled Willeford is and everything is thrown into play again. It is in the best tradition of the classic stinger, the one punch that no one saw coming but makes all the sense in the end. How to pull it off today in a similar story is too hard, too difficult, our taboos almost fully disperse to no meaning.

This is definitely not "hard-boiled" per se and comes into the "crime noir" side of things--a stab into the deep stumble through the dark. Continually Harry fails at failing,can't even be the right kind of criminal. There's no sadness for Harry in his sorry descent, we're sad that he can't descend further, because that's all he really wants.
More after the jump...

missed it the first time, hard-boiled edition: Down There by David Goodis

Every Thursday in July we crank out a remembrance of hard-boiled crime noir story or detective story. This week it's Down There, a crime noir story by David Goodis about a down on his luck piano player named Eddie Lynn. It was renamed as Shoot The Piano Player, and was made into a movie with that name.

Previous entries:
Double Indemnity by James Cain
Dashiell Hammett/Raymond Chandler Double
The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson

Down There
by David Goodis
Gold Medal Books, 1956

What are you doing here? Of course you play the piano well, but here of all places? The girl, yes, the girl! Smart, street-smart even, the best stories out of her. You didn't mean to kill him right? The bread knife...was a mistake? Sure, he rolled towards you, and his arm moved...no fault of yours, only his. No one knew you had that in you until now. Until they realized that you did, and that you might have a chance, that might be able to beat him, overwhelm him, resist him, kill him even. And you did. You did kill him. The gamblers. The gamblers will corroborate the murder story. How did you end up back here, back like this Eddie Lynn? You rejected the life of your brothers, life in the criminal corporation of extortion. They know you should have it better. It's in Turley's eyes. Maybe Clifton knows it somewhere. But really, you're torn, Eddie, you're torn. Such immense physical and artistic gifts. Punching old boxers with hardened power, or stroking ivory keys with the best of Carnegie Hall. The in-between. Like mishandled dough, you don't know if you want to be a flat cake or a seven layer. There are the whispers. The potential, the lost potential. How you flew off the handle after your first wife's death. The cheating, the lying.

But Eddie where are you now in this fix? Why didn't you kiss the waitress girl, the smart savvy one who obviously loves you. Forget South Jersey. Embrace Philadelphia. Forget your brothers and kiss her, Eddie, kiss her. Why didn't you fire earlier, when you had the chance? Feather and Morris staring down the cabin, and there was the pistol, in your hands. Fire, dang it, fire away. Don't dawdle, don't...fire your warning shots, or you'll end up getting...hurt. They deserved it, she didn't. And you didn't, Eddie, you didn't either.

More after the jump...

missed it the first time, hard-boiled edition: The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson

For Thursdays in July, we've been profiling some classic detective/hard-boiled crime noir stories. Previous missed it the first time, hard-boiled editions:
Double Indemnity by James Cain
Chandler/Hammett stories

The Killer Inside Me, by Jim Thompson
Original publication: Lion Books, 1952

"A weed is a plant out of place."--Billy Boy Walker

This book will get a lot more pub in the coming months as it's about to spring (again) as a movie starring Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson and Jessica Alba. It was a film in 1976, but I think Thompson was disappointed. I think Affleck will be able to pull of the role of Lou Ford, his work in Jesse James and Gone Baby Gone holds promise. But it will be a memorable role to play, because of the intellect and "rational" nature of Ford. The Central City, TX deputy sheriff turned killer never has a rampage per se, but instead closely justifies each and every murder, even developing "reasonable" alibis.

The first scene is a restaurant diner where Lou bores to the owner to death with a series of silly cliches about the weather and hard work. This is the personality that Ford has in the town, that of an unassuming likable oaf. But that he has a secret desire or ability for that matter is not a far stretch--those attracted to defending the law becoming breakers of it is pretty common. Thompson could very well have settled for an easy storyline, but instead he gives Lou a complex mind that no one in the small West Texas town possesses. Ford does calculus problems for fun. He reads medical books in four languages. He questions a visitor posing as a doctor about gerontology theories.

In Lou's constant monologue to the reader, we are put in doubt about whether Lou is insane or in full capacity of his thoughts. He may know he has "the sickness," but self-diagnoses himself to the point where believing he is insane is laughable. Lou is fully in control of his actions , can come up with full alibis and allows nothing to break him.

But the (other) local authorities think there has to be the breaking point for Lou, the reason for his actions. But as Ford says no one knows if there is a reason:

"We might have the disease, the condition; or we might just be cold-blooded and smart as hell; or we might be innocent of what we're suppoed to have done. We might be any one of those three things, becasue the symptoms we show would fit any one of the three."

Thompson works around this by creating a complex confluence of events (like every good novelist should) around a certain point in time to create a circumstantial reason. Ford is trying to avenge his brother's death, and finds an opening with a prostitute, Joyce. What falls in the wake of Ford's killings is not just those who may have offended him in some way--he also begins to kill those he love. So he frames and then kills the only friend that admires him, then kills his girlfriend Amy as well. Ford is not scared of killing, he is afraid of not wanting to kill any longer. Afraid of satisfaction, of actual love. And he can't stop it, even in the final scene after he supposedly learns from Billy Boy Walker. Like many noir characters, he thrives on perceived entrapment and paranoia. Every person is to blame for his victimhood.

What's compelling and maddening at the same time is Lou's quick decision-making process--it is abundantly clear that he has no problem killing and wants to kill those that do not possess such a quick trigger finger (see the bum). Lou has a reason to kill everyone then--he kills those that offend him, then those that don't have the guts to offend him. He has "the sickness," knows he has it. It's comforting to say Lou is insane, it's frightening to think that he's not--that he's of his right mind.
More after the jump...

missed it the first time, hard-boiled edition: Dashiell Hammett/Raymond Chandler

Every Thursday in July, we'll look at some type of hard-boiled, pulp fiction story. Last week: Double Indemnity by James Cain (read it here). This week: Dashiell Hammett/Raymond Chandler

Putting Hammett and Chandler is a disservice to both of them and probably an honor at the same time. But the similarities between the two are hard to ignore, if not just for story purposes. Their stories or at least the ones I have recently become familiar with are different than the crime-noir stuff that comes after--these detectives are just straight-up about finding the facts and winding the tightest knots around those facts. The central characters, Hammett's nameless Continental Op and Chandler's Philip Marlowe are not really death and despair nihilistic guys, rarely asking, "What is the meaning of life?" or "Woe is me" or "Fate has really got me down now." We don't know really know their personalities of the detectives, that's revealed through action over a multitude of stories. Hammett and Chandler don't give us too many physical details, that's usually embedded in the story as well, such as when the Continental Op is trying to squeeze through a small hallway and he makes a reference to his heftiness. Instead, the detectives serve as a weird form of voyeur--a window into the seedy world of where they find themselves, which is of course California. [More after the jump...]


Dashiell Hammett

In the two Hammett stories I read, "The Girl with the Silver Eyes" and "The Scorched Face" both stories were written in the 1920s, so there's not naivete, but there is some shock value. "The Scorched Face" is about two missing daughters who find themselves in some sort of sex cult. In Chandler's "Killer in the Rain," Marlowe finds himself confronted with a similar sexually exploited situation. There is some give and take with the subject matter, for sure--it's titillating, but the establishment of facts and the unwinding of the long coil of relationships is indicative of a time that barely exists any longer--no one is foolish enough to do all their criminal activity in one central locale, surely. It almost seems ridiculous to have one detective figure all of this stuff out--our movies and books these days need teams of collaborators at the highest levels of government.


Raymond Chandler

Perhaps the most frustrating thing in these stories, especially in the second Chandler story I read, "Red Wind," is just how damn lucky Philip Marlowe is. All kinds of characters show up at his door, and he finds the right closet to hide the witnesses and they jump out at the right time. Plus, everyone assumes a different name, so you have to have a notepad nearby just to read it for fun. And for a guy usually stuck in literary fiction, this is a different way of thinking about the world--the story really is a puzzle, it's full of stereotypes, okay, but this is where the stereotypes were made, so it's kind of fresh and new and not really so much of a stereotype anymore. Yeah, there are the loners who populate our pop culture (Jack vs. Sawyer vs. Locke for Lost fans), but it's rare to find a character that just doesn't depend on us liking or trusting them, but they actually do something. It's also funny to see how very sensualized all of this is, how the girls try to get the good detectives to crack. In "The Girl with the Silver Eyes," Elvira/Jeanne tries to play mind games with the Continental Op, forcefully declaring that she's not playing any games with him, that she really loves him just so he won't take her to jail. And more so than in a movie, we really get an idea of the sexual frustration of the Op, his devotion between justice and the physical attraction in a long bit of dialogue that most contemporary writers do not allow anymore. The Op of course throws her against the metal door of the car all the while yelling, "You're pretty as hell" and taking her straight to jail. It's an honesty and dedication to justice that needs to make a comeback. The stereotype has swung the other way--because now it's a cliche that everyone will end up having sex at some point.
Maybe to recant a bit of an earlier statement, it is fun to have all of these crimes happen so local. It makes the reader suspicious of everyone, everything, and empowers us--"Dang it, we can all be detectives if we try hard enough--we don't need a freakin' CIA, what we need is a good roadster, a good highball, and some lucky tips." Not that that's how Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys did it, but they never faced any moral ambiguity. What Chandler and Hammett makes us realize is that there is all sort of seediness going on in our backyard, we just have to do a bit of gardening to find it.
More after the jump...

missed it the first time, hard-boiled edition: Double Indemnity

For some summer reading, Thursdays in July will be devoted to old-school pulp-fiction crime noir stories from the 30s, 40s and 50s. Haven't read any of this stuff before, so it's high-time for a foray into the bowels of hard-boiled. The first one--Double Indemnity by James Cain.



This is essentially the classic L.A. crime story. Murder, betrayal, greed with lust--but all of those things are supposed to be in a hard-boiled crime noir story. But in Double Indemnity, Cain takes the bore out of insurance and turns it into a captivating murder plot. (Don't worry, that doesn't spoil anything). The most refreshing thing about Cain is his pace, everything is so fast. Within the first five pages, insurance man Walter Huff knows that Phyllis Nirdlinger may be up to no good, yet he can't help himself to help her. When a nifty proposal comes to rid Phyllis of her husband (still no spoiler...), Huff has a fleeting moment of crisis, told with classic Cain panache:

"So I ran away from the edge, didn't I, and socked it into her so she knew what I meant, and left it so we could never go back to it again? I did not."

Huff is a moral man when it's convenient. Though the story is told through his eyes, it's Phyllis that's Cain's greatest creation. Cain reveals her backstory, but her intentions and desire are always kept coyly hidden. She is a femme fatale, with a scheme up each sleeve. She gives Huff control for most of the novel...until...until, well she doesn't and Cain gifts us with one of his enviable twists, something that seems so forthcoming, yet still surprising.

And what about the railroad tracks? As the above book cover shows (so it's not a spoiler either...), Huff and Phyllis commit their act on the tracks with some nifty sleight of hand and tricky alibis that only an insurance man who deals with actuarial tables on a regular basis could figure. But even with their crime taken care of--it deflates the suspense in the relationship of Phyllis and Huff, allowing Cain to send them and on us on a whole other ride.

Instead of the stubborn detective, Cain gives us Keyes, an insurance supervisor who makes logic seem too eerie. Being on Huff's back from the get-go would be too easy for Cain, instead he weaves in the nuances of the insurance profession to peg Huff. The police can't figure their murder out, only a fellow insurance junkie. But Keyes punishes Huff in a cruel, but ultimately efficient way--Keyes is devoted to the system that Huff tries to buck and so Keyes' resolution to his Huff problem is best for the company and the worst possible for Huff.

Cain's style is always quick and always fleet of foot, so this is a real story, one with plot, one with characters who move, not ruminate. Yet, it brings up every ethical question under the sun. Double Indemnity is worth reading for what it is, a master original that is the source for all those copycats.

Next week: Raymond Chandler/ Dashiell Hammett shorts
Earlier editions of Missed it The First Time.

More after the jump...

missed it the first time: Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch

I'm tempted to just list quotes in a review of this book:

"He always spoke about death when he was talking about life."

"The absurd thing is to believe that we can grasp the totality of what constitutes us in this moment or in any moment and senses it as something coherent, something acceptable if you want."

"The truth is I don't want to understand anything, if by understanding one must accpet what we used to call mistakes."

And the list could go on and on. Then there's the problem, no, opportunity of the non-chronological chapters. Sure, they're numbered in order but that doesn't mean they're read in order. The spastic order and those that continue on without a "clean conscience" will still read that story, just with extra asides thrown in from various chapters. Some of those chapters (read in a non-chronological order) contain various news reports and introductions of additional character such as the mysterious Morelli, Cortazar's own narratee on authorship and mediation.

But the central figure is Horacio Oliveira, a drifter, a lover and for sure a philosopher living in Paris. The book centers around his on-again and off-again relationship with La Maga and his group superiority is challenged by Gregorovius who confronts him about his doom philosophies and is also in love with La Maga.

As conventional as all of this sounds, it is not and is almost impossible to comprehend into the mind of Horacio and Gregorovius, especially as Horacio is constantly aware of La Maga's relationship with Gregorovius. But Horacio has an almost passive response to the death of La Maga's child, Rocamadour and doesn't attend the funeral--alienating him farther from her.
At this point, Horacio is described as "a spectator on the edge of a spectacle"--always an observer, never a participant.

Horacio further evolves once he returns to his native Argentina and joins a circus then becomes part of the staff of the insane asylum. He continues his metaphysical musings with his friend, Traveler and equates Traveler's wife Talita with La Maga. Love always unquenched, except for the love himself or the love of creating the spectacle and still remaining outside of it.



So why the heck read this? Its complicated, complex and is full of reader activity--flipping pages in a chapter order that makes no obvious sense, all the while contemplating the purpose of this activity (just put the chapters in order...) along with Horacio's misguided musings. And that is the purpose, those exercises into readerliness--self-awareness of the process (reader-response theory, I believe). And this isn't meant to be academic, but a book constructed on that premise can almost stand on its own, and the only reason it does, the only reason that I might consider reading it again is to find gems like these again because I'm sure there's more (is it like the Bible, then?)

"He knew that without faith nothing that should happen would happen and with faith almost never either."

"The novel that interests us is not one that places characters in a situation, but rather one that puts the situation in the chartactes."

Yes, it's a metaphysical meditation on the act of reading, which then makes the reader feel eerie for reading it in the first place and even more eerie to want to read it again, like it's a duty to crack it, because you're not sure if Cortazar cracked it himself, like it wrote itself.

Or one may perceive as stated on page 440 of my dog-eared copy from the mid 70's: "one would have to recognize that his book was before anything else a literary undertaking, precisely because it waas set forth as the destruction of literary forms."

Oh my. More after the jump...

missed it the first time: Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler

An occasional series to review books that are several years old and Deckfight has never read before



To describe Italo Calvino’s classic If on a winter’s night a traveler as difficult is the same as saying that dog barks or babies cry. It's that obvious and sometimes the difficulty of it is that annoying. To approach the book without that mindset will cause all to fail. It demands patience, it demands long attention. In some ways it may be the best literary theory book ever written (not the ‘theory’ word), because of his knack for illustrating tough concepts into imaginable situations. That he does all of this with the second-person (choose-your-own-adventure style) is both confounding and genius. He challenges the notion of reading, the concept of books, and the idea of authors and readers at every turn while somehow also concluding it.
The conceit is that Calvino writes ten different beginnings to story, each with a portion of a title that then makes a longer sentence. The plot is that a character named “you,” indicated as the reader is on a quest to find and connect these stories together, each time running into a new story and more difficulty. Along the way, you meet several different readers and people who each approach books and the concept of books differently. There is the person who derives meaning from books by the frequency of how many times a certain word is used. There is the sculptor who uses books as his material. There are the scholars who argue constantly over proper translations. Like the best soapbox prophet, he is still somewhat of a pariah. Unfortunately all of his ideas presented here still seem new and fresh even though it’s thirty years old. The literary world still hasn’t caught up with him. Calvino manipulates, warns and challenges us without few ever fully engaging him. He is either one of the best ever or the craziest ever. Or both. More after the jump...