Stuff. Blended. A blog for the age(s).
July 31, 2009 • Headline, Moi, Short Story • Comments
Got a hot new piece of fiction here that I worked on during one of my many Goodwill donation center shifts this summer. This one is heavily influenced by Jay McInerney and my own childhood. I’m still not sure why I love writing about time periods I was not alive during.
Direct link: Poolside [PDF]
July 22, 2009 • Book Review, Books • Comments
“You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge. All might come clear if you could just slip into the bathroom and do a little more Bolivian Marching Powder. Then again, it might not. A small voice inside you insists that this epidemic lack of clarity is a result of too much of that already.”
Let me say this first – Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City was not what I was expecting. That’s not to say it was bad. It turned out that my initial understanding was wrong and the result was a better novel than I went in thinking it would be.
Critics label McInerney as a member of the 1980’s “Literary Brat Pack,” but he is so much more versatile than that. Bright Lights, Big City is noted for its use of the second person to describe the New York City cocaine culture of the electric eighties. Strikingly, this gimmick does not detract from the humanity found within the protagonist. Unlike fellow “Brat Packer” Bret Easton Ellis, McInerney doesn’t write post-modern from a nihilistic perspective. His characters have flaws, but they also have regrets and desires to become a better people.
Bright Lights, Big City follows the narrator through his job as a fact-checker for a literary magazine. The story borrows heavily from McInerney’s own time as a fact-checker at the New Yorker. At night, he goes out to clubs and does cocaine with his best friend. He has his dreams as a writer, but the rejection of his submissions to the magazine’s fiction department coupled with the recent separation from his model wife, Amanda, drives him further into his hedonistic lifestyle. At first, the country girl Amanda did not take New York City’s nightlife or the modeling career seriously, but the face of the city slowly creeps over and changes both.
Bright Lights, Big City is a quick read. At 180 pages, you can race through it. Over the course of the book, you are going to actually feel for the protagonist or at least acknowledge his inadequacies. While the novel is not what I was initially expecting, I do want to read more by Raymond Carver’s understudy, particularly, Brightness Falls and Story of My Life, which is based on the life of Rielle Hunter, with whom Jay McInerney had a brief relationship and would later go on to have an affair with 2008 presidential candidate John Edwards.
Oddly enough, this book is getting remade into a film in 2010 according to IMDB. The novel was inspiration for the film of the same name in 1988 that starred Michael J. Fox, Keifer Sutherland, and Pheobe Cates. It was crazy enough to attempt to make Bret Easton Ellis’ short story vignette collection, The Outsiders, earlier this year. I’ll hold my opinion, but I don’t have huge expectations.
Rating: 
June 4, 2009 • Linked Goodness, Moi • Comments
So it’s weird and kinda sensual. The prospect that I’m a man but I have returned home for a summer before (hopefully, fingers crossed) moving on to bigger and better things. I have a lot to thank my parents for but at the same time I can’t help shake the feeling that I should be in New York high fiving some British executives at a posh studio apartment party while wearing a tie around my head (and doing some funky moves on the dance floor without spilling my beverage [vodka tonic]).
Instead, I’m in Winston-Salem doing close to nothing and not really regretting it. I have the company of Conan O’Brien with me and a few good novels. I’m also in the process of selling off half of my soul on eBay but it feels good. I just hope that the cheers stay as he continues into week two. I am not sure when I am ever going to get around to reading the like 300 paleontology/dinosaur-related books I own. You think I am kidding. Ha. I have an entire bookshelf that would have made Michael Crichton run away in a blind panic over the sheer metric volume of fact found within.
So I gave blood today – first time since January. It was pretty rough. I started back jogging after a week and a half of daily walking for at least 45 minutes. I found out that I am dehydrated, and that I would not be the best heroin addict during summer months. We started with my left arm and the vein’s wall denied the needle any blood, and so I am left with an ugly bruise on my inner arm. My right arm was more successful until three quarters of the way through when it decided to dry up. They had to shift the needle while it was still in my vein. Fun stuff. I passed out this afternoon as I was fully exhausted from the two hour process along with my afternoon errands. The good news is I found out that I am O+ (the most common blood type out there).
I’m currently reading William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies. It’s taking such a long time because every time I read a chapter in it I want to read more of J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories or Raymond Carver’s Cathedrals. Next book in the cue is Jay McInerney’s first novel, Big City, Bright Lights.
Speaking of 1980s authors, has anyone noticed how we are fully in the retro mode this week with the public unveiling of a Ronald Reagan statue in the Capitol Rotunda. The seven-foot-tall statue could easily join the Orlando Magic tonight and help them win on the road versus the Lakers.
Nancy Reagan at the public unveiling of the Ronald Reagan statue in the Capitol Rotunda in D.C.
Tonight I drive out to Raleigh to see The Decemberists in concert at the Raleigh Memorial Auditorium. I was about to see them my junior year when the concert was cancelled when one of the band members fell deathly ill. I am hoping the two year wait proves to be worth it (it will).
A new short story and poem should be up soon so keep your eyes open or just subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, everyone do yourself a favor and see The Hangover this weekend. Raleigh/NCState alum Zach Galifanakis and Bradley Cooper (Wedding Crashers) prove just how spot on those Vegas commercials are.
