ON READING JUSTINE LEVY, part 2; or HOW TO MAKE WINE FROM SOUR GRAPES, maybe

this post was planned, in the sense that i had planned to read nothing serious the day after i read the rendezvous; but i had also planned, after reading levy's debut, to unequivocally like her second translated work, which i say only because i hadn't planned to review nothing serious simply on the basis of contrast or of being basely contrary. things sometimes don't go according to plan. there. exonerated.

nothing serious, like the rendezvous, was a sensation. it even managed to knock the di vinci code from european bestseller lists. unfortunately, that was likely more for its media palatability than purely for its literary merit. nothing serious is, again like the rendezvous, strongly autobiographical. louise does end up with adrien, and nothing serious narrates louise's life after adrien has left her. left her for paula, his stepmother and a thinly veiled mask for carla bruni, the actress/model for whom justine levy's husband did in fact leave her (and who later married french president nicolas sarkozy). and that sells books.

nothing serious is styled very much in the frenzied, infrequently punctuated, out-of-time manner of levy's first novel. but despite the virtuosity of her prose (which is, granted, reason enough to give levy's work a read), surely levy the editor ("there's too much published everyone's saying so," she/louise says herself) can't expect her readers to be won by just clever words. and neither should her readers let nothing serious make its case as a novel on dazzling writing alone.

but louise's second story starts like a pretty commonplace narrative of contemporary anxiety. it goes on like that too. and it's all the more self-indulgent for knowing that louise and levy aren't separated by a very wide stretch. the same poetry that breathed magic into louise in the rendezvous does little for her as an "ex-woman." she "want[s] to be alone, to wait for nothing, hope for nothing." maybe, sure, the distinction is only one of taste in plot. but i adore crazy women. and where's the novel in what we can't assume isn't just creative recounting of facts? memoirs of addiction and depression (and addiction and depression) weren't at all uncommon in the last decade. sally brampton for example, also an editor (and the founder of elle, in fact, a favorite of louise's), didn't seem to want to masquerade her story as a fiction. (i didn't finish it, actually, but then again.)

a shame, i thought, because i've loved every other work in translation i've read from melville house. then, i thought, not so much (a shame, that is). although louise's story doesn't exactly turn around, it does -- after the drugs and most of the depression -- grow into itself. . . . though now i can't find a single passage at any of the page numbers i noted to justify that. as much as i'd like to see it redeemed, nothing serious was just that. that's the point, i guess. but my sense of disappointment is renewed as i realize that i noted more pages the more time i spent at the bar. though i absolutely loved that levy referenced coin locker babies in her last chapter.

so it comes down to little bits of sympathy, then, with another heavy dose of resignation. louise has to grow up. adrien's gone, but now there's pablo. there were amphetamines and xanax in between. and an abortion. and crying. it's my mood, and the rain maybe, that keeps me from liking nothing serious more. ironic, because it ends by spelling out the sentiment that so charmed me in the rendezvous:

"life is a rough draft, in the end. every story is the rough draft of the next one, you cross out, you cross out, and when it's almost right and without any misprints, it's over, all that's left is to leave."

so, ms. levy, don't leave yet.

begrudgingly, i'll take that as advice as well.

ON READING JUSTINE LEVY, part 1; or HOW TO ENDURE THE EXCRUCIATING JOY OF WAITING

the nature of aspiration never lets it give up hope. though that's certainly not to mean that some things aren't hopeless. but rather that even when a conclusion is foregone, and the aspirant understands the impossibility of any one something, there are always the possibilities of different successes, bright other futures that seem no less foregone than the initial defeat. resignation (even) to hopelessness as a universal has never been cause enough to completely stop hoping.

to restate, while diverging slightly, we can always give breadth to our potential for replicating the accomplishments (or avoiding the failures) of the people who preceded us. when i was twelve, i was sure that i could become a world class gymnast by sixteen. at nineteen, a diplomat in paris by twenty-five (think flaubert). i'm convinced now that i can make it as a dancer by thirty-five. or a novelist -- despite my never having written a pure work of fiction. (but you can't ever get too old for that one.)

at the same time, that same process seen in reverse can be equally anti-inspirational. nothing tarnishes the silver lining of untapped potential like seeing an aspiration eclipsed by the success of someone younger. regret, you might say, is hope seen in retrospect. when justine levy wrote the rendezvous, she was roughly the age i was when the book was published in english. and while i might still be bolstered by news of a first time someone finding success in his thirties, i will never write an acclaimed first novel at age nineteen.

but while that is a source of regret, it's also a sadly perfect place from which to engage levy in the rendezvous. louise will wait all day at the cafe for her mother, mama, alice. and strangely, even as readers come to understand that the novel is about the waiting and that alice wouldn't be as effective a character were she to show, we hope against hope for her arrival.

things happen in the meantime. there are other arrivals, and things drank and eaten, throughout which action louise, in the absence of her mother, recounts life with an absent mother. in other words, living happens in the meantime, but a life coalesces around louise only through the action of memory, her decisions to see some things as successes, others as failures, and the impression of significance on some events, and the dismissal of others, everything, though, done with an acquiescence to inevitability. alice isn't coming. but if we weren't interested in waiting for her, we wouldn't have louise, and levy wouldn't have her book.

a rendezvous and the rendezvous are about the wait, the desires that move us from one happening to the next even as we expect them to remain unfulfilled. fulfillment, of course, can still come when bidden, but is just as often the result of happenstance. living then is just the simple act of participating in what's happening, and we make our lives in memory in the interstices.

not surprisingly for those themes, louise narrates as in a maniac's retelling of la recherche (yes, people, EVERYTHING FROM FRANCE has to do with proust). levy distinguishes herself from the past, though, in her frenzy, both syntactically and through louise's acceptance that times have changed since alice's golden age as a model. the past can be romantically recounted, but there is no longer time for grand romance. we hurry. we are impatient. but we wait (impatiently and hurriedly). romance might come in the meantime.

and it seems like it might, too, for louise; although (necessarily, maybe, for levy) as an afterthought. maybe that's why i come to type at the cafe, to wait for something like my own adrien, even though i'm expecting someone else and my day has other plans. and so, perhaps, we keep amassing regrets, but can't help also re-setting our sights. in the meantime, we wait. que sera.

UNCHARTED TERRITORY

In a world of technology so far advanced that something should probably wipe my ass the moment it detects human fecal matter, I'm not sure why I was surprised at the accuracy of my latest application for 'The Precious' (my iPhone). This application displays on The Precious as a pink flower inside a little white box with the title “P Tracker” below it. It reminds me of the bedroom of a girl in her preteens, which is long before she would ever need a P Tracker of her own.

So this app, when selected, after prompting for a security code to be entered (THANK GOD!) shows a colorful screen that usually says something like “9 Days Left”: the dreaded countdown to my period. After selecting the calender I can make notes about my daily symptoms -- bloating, represented by a cupcake; tender breasts, represented by a fork (?); cramps, acne, body aches, etc. Another category lets me document moods: angry, calm, depressed, flirty, I might kill every man who looks at me today, and so on. . . There's also an option to admit to The Precious whether or not I've been intimate today, which will then place a little heart on my calender (and let's just say my calender isn't exactly looking like Valentines Day if you know what I'm saying).

So after three months of tracking my P, I have realized that the shit is like clockwork. Every month, exactly ten days before my period, I swell up like a pig, I feel fat and disgusting but still insist on wearing tight clothes because loose ones will only make me look fatter (NOT a real thing, by the way). The bloating goes away about a week before my period, and two days later comes a sadness that builds for three days, and by the third day (which is 3 days before my period) I have a complete crazy-woman-leaving-Alice-in-Wonderland-sobbing-insisting-on-walking-home-in-the-rain-because-my-ex-boyfriend-rides-his-bike-too-far-ahead-of-me-and-girls-hate-me style meltdown. (That's just a hypothetical random made up example. No one thinks like that.) The meltdown is followed by cramps, more bloating, cramps, huge boobs, cramps and exhaustion until the release! Then once I start my period everything is chill, and I don't even know who that crazy bitch was who took over my body for the previous ten days.

I'm now into the third month of tracking. I still fall victim to the period monster, but I'm better equipped to brace myself for (and protect others from) the roller coaster ride we're about to take.

Until now, the P Tracker has really just validated my crazies, but this week it gave me a new one. I realize that my dog/the love of my life dying last week has messed with my body -- I mean, diet alone, I can't eat anything without crying, and everything I do manage to eat immediately begs to leave my body. So in response to this documented stress on my body, the P Tracker has changed it's greeting screen from “9 Days Left” to “4 Days Late.” That fucking asshole betraying bitch ass P Tracker is trying to kill me. It's bad enough I'm swimming in uncharted territory. I mean, by now I should have started so I don't know what is supposed to be happening now other than period. Whatever is happening is just unvalidated crazies.

I spent the better part of yesterday sobbing in my bed. I haven't showered in 5 days. I understand I'm still grieving, but which part of this is grief and which part is that crazy period bitch? Dear P Tracker, I have no one else to take my frustration out on but you, so for the moment I am going to hate you in your stupid, cute pink flowered face!

HOW TO STAY POSITIVE

eliot spitzer's call girl can't get a book deal. (or she can't hold on to one, anyway.) but ashley dupre isn't going to let the sidelining of her memoir (like i said, it's just such an up and down genre) get her down: she recently posed for playboy and plans on "doing the whole club/underground scene" to further her career as a pop starlet. [quote taken only slightly out of context.]

some people don't take her seriously, but she's keeping her head up. and it's hard to get published by a major house. at least we know now not to use any of ashley's agents.

it was only by force of that inspiration that i didn't lose hope when i found out the "preppy whale" had supplanted the unicorn as the symbol of portland's sexuality-ironic cool. here's a front shot for anyone who wants to check out those goods, too. now team unicorn pony -- "the bester looking team at the races" -- can go whole hog on its kit without fearing reprisal from the lovers. i'm thinking all white skin suits with rainbow laser arrays. everything has a silver lining. thanks, ashley.

fact or fiction, ladies and gentlemen? don't ask me.

KEEPING PORTLAND SANCTIMONIOUS

this blog is about culture. and entertainment. and culture and entertainment in portland, ore. but less the latter than the first two, if only because portland hasn't yet been mentioned in these (very soon to be storied) annals. but we felt it necessary to lend the perspective of our by now (it's been nearly two weeks, after all) cemented authority on this article from the economist on portland and its elite status among american cities.

granted, the economist isn't really a culture magazine. and granted, the tone of the article isn't far from the one that this guy uses to lambaste portland's bike scene on a regular basis. but, since the economist's article is dated a full two weeks after april fool's day, the editors of this blog have chosen to accept it as a serious piece that is justified in being treated here (while also wondering why the economist couldn't come up with some humdrum tax day human interest story to run in place of the humdrum thing it ran on portland).

portland does like to care about the environment. and it definitely likes bikes. it also likes craft beer and little coffees, which, along with the bikes, seem to be the only explicable reasons for people here always insisting that it's so much like cities in europe. we'd say it's also maybe because portland is so white; but we'd also venture that we're beaten in diversity by most european cities of the same size. maybe not that freiberg place, but it's significantly smaller. (this blog doesn't plan to regularly investigate quantitative statistics, so you'll have to take us at our instinct.)

but mr. mayor, "most comparable [to] Vancouver in Canada?" vancouver's far superior shopping aside, it's somewhere you can actually hear languages other than english spoken on the streets, and it hasn't razed its chinatown to make way for asian themed bistros and nightclubs (it just lets its residents choose between chinatown and the west end). in fact, a comparison done by a seattle writer for the tyee in vancouver seems to demonstrate that portland's edge in livability mostly applies to the young, creative and underemployed, which, as the the economist acknowledges, essentially means white and moneyed.

we personally don't want this model replicated. . .or even perpetuated much longer here. not speaking for much money ourselves (until the book deal, that is), it's not unfrigthening to think that young-er people might come and price or create us out. to restate: we won't deny our own elitism, but until we acutally make it as elites we'd prefer that portland not leave us behind. we'd also prefer that the city never date us and that the population just age from this point on. young people: please go to boston or s.f.

there probably isn't any cause for fear, though, if populations are actually tending toward concentration in mega regions, in which case experience with suburban models is going to be more effective in addressing environmental crises and social inequalities than the experience of a second-tier u.s. city known for urban concentration, its foodie scene and indie rock.

but visibility has, if nothing else, meant the ascendance of portland's brand of hipster. mayor adam's would surely agree to its equal replicability. rainy timber culture plus indie rock (that western "grit" mentioned by the economist) equals well designed plaids. and beards (gold teeth if you're a lady). we have it on good authority that brooklyn hipsters want nothing more than to pose as well as we do in the northwest. (on a recent trip to l.a., two of us got happy on sunset and joked about all the 'just add water' styles carousing the boulevard. then someone sidled up to us in line outside a bar and asked, as if he were tipping us off to a bad drug deal, "you looking for a hipster bar? 'cause this isn't it." . . .who's the joke on now, l.a.?)

in general, though, we agree with the economist on its take on portland, if not on its projections for the rose city's future influence. indeed, "it is a sophisticated and forward-looking place." we're supposed to have an h&m by the end of the year.

ON WATCHING BRIDESHEAD REVISITED, i.e. HOW TO LOOK GOOD IN PANTS

jeremy iron's moustache in the opening scenes of episode one was more than enough to warrant my watching the entire series. -- and then there's how sweetly and embarrassedly iron's charles ryder smiles at sebastian flyte. and that 'jejune' made its way from the book into the teleplay. and the brandy alexanders. and i've ten episodes to go. but still, i doubt i'll ever want to watch the remake. in fact, despite a friend recently insisting that i sample evelyn waugh, i don't see brideshead ever joining my reading pile. plus, the whole thing was just the result of the second season of gossip girl being out.

but i'll know it appreciably regardless. i likely knew it well enough to discuss it competently before even watching this first hour. because, although i'll likely never read this either, i remember reading a review and thinking that i needn't pay for a new hardcover when i was already practiced in its subject. (that should seem very clever. i definitely thought so after i read the review.) after all, isn't one of the delights of reading becoming versed indirectly in all of the books we'll never read? -- and then relishing accusations of snobbery from the people who can't seem to imagine their ways through our nearly imaginary conversations. and the same goes for most other subjects; "most" standing in for "every" only because i won't allow that there isn't some subject that breaks the rule, though i'll allow that that subject doesn't make for good conversation.

in other words, a well and widely received series on young men drinking in good outfits ("charles drinks champagne at all hours!") couldn't not have somehow made itself known to me by now. and that without ever watching it. i'd be surprised if there weren't pornos titled after the title of every episode.

especially now we're about the internet. i'm just miffed to have found out that someone else's blog is named even better than mine.

HOW TO DISTRACT YOURSELF WITH TRIVIALITY

there was something else i should have written today (a for real, honest, productive something), but we just finished the chicken run and thought that corrugated plastic would be a fine roof for the thing (we just have to clamp it to the chicken-wired slatted wood walls for easy feeding access or to sun the hens), but the weather thought otherwise.

maybe the clamps weren't strong enough; or. . .but, the plastic buckled under the water weight from one of those squalls we've been having, and, well, it really wasn't the disaster we needed this week: five hens stuck under that six foot corrugated sheet like cars on the bottom tier of a highway bridge post-earthquake.

i thought it was cute when asshole (one of our speckled hens) was laying on one wing stretching one leg out behind her while we were gardening, but seeing that same leg -- or maybe it was the other one -- stuck out from under the plastic with all of them squawking was something else. thank whoever that there wasn't any blood, because i faint. i used to LOVE horror films, but lately i can't even see obvious red stage makeup on that girl's legs in "the red shoes" without peeking through my fingers.

boots and mamasita weren't happy at all when we lifted the sheet off of them, and we've already been having trouble trying to get them to figure out how to find their way back into the coop from the run. we were hoping for eggs by the beginning of june, but i'll understand now when we still haven't gotten anything well into the summer.

that's the scenario i came up with when i left the house this morning for the coffee shop. i was pissed off that it was raining and i couldn't take my purse. and i didn't want to do any more work than i absolutely had to when i got there.

really though, i'm a good father.

BUY MY BOOK

in a year or so, after our contributors have delivered dozens of compelling, savvy, *uniquely* (and please, interpret that widely) entertaining posts, the title of this first entry wont seem to be the excess of hubris that it seems now. rather, i should think, it's best to go ahead and plug the book now -- knowing that the deal is inevitable since this (very justifiably), this (encouragingly?) and this (wtf) have already happened -- and save ourselves the necessary defense of our integrity later. (or do people even take accusations of selling out seriously anymore?)

in any case, you should. buy my book, that is. sure, you can get most of the content here for free, but the publisher may choose to highlight just one aspect of this thing, or maybe all of them separately, and the art and layout of each edition will, of course, be different and special (i.e. pointedly marketed). then you can buy looking good in pants the stories, looking good in pants the coffee table book and looking good in pants the urban farmer's almanac. (looking good in pants: the how-to autobiography of christopher merkel is going to be a while, i think. i still have a few interesting years left. and anyway, the memoir is so in and out of vogue that it's hard to say if anyone, publishers or readers, will pick one up when mine is finished.)

thanks for coming to my party.

christopher

p.s. i would appreciate comments on whether "excess of hubris" is an acceptable turn of phrase or just redundant.