It seems fitting that the narrator of this book never bothers to share his name. Perhaps it is an effort to portray him as a everyman in his early 20's. During the period when I read the bulk of the book, I was visiting my brother and delivering to him a copy of the The Big Lebowski by Joel Cohen. Both Chris and the Dude share a seemingly fate based view of the the evolution of one's life. Decisions can be made in the moment, but the circumstances that bring about that moment and generally the results of those decisions made in the moment are completely out of the believer's control.
The life which results from such a belief system cab be tempting. Depending on the stringent-ness of one's morality and a ever adjusting base level physical and emotional necessity, these Fatalists will find themselves occasionally in very comfortable circumstances. Unfortunately, as the unnamed narrator, Arthur Nersesian's fuck-up, discovers he who has no real hand in achieving good fortune has no way of ensuring its continuance. Sadly, Nersesian seems more of an Anglo-Saxon than Cohen or Curtis in his particular take on fate. The fuck-up is doomed to suffer the Wyrd of life. When he drifts loose in the world, things generally take a turn for the worse.
The narrator eventually settles on a life which would have been viewed as confining at the novel's beginnings, but the view from the hardest of rock bottom holes can make the mediocre seem acceptable, even satisfying.
The story was well written, and I read it with interest, but did not find nearly as much amusement in the fuck-up's suffering as I believe that the author had intended. Yet perhaps this was the intervention of my own fears. Identifying with or recognizing the fuck-up in one's own life is its most satisfying when one's own fuck-up has either emerged from this ideology or been a friend of karma. Otherwise, visualising a grown man getting deservedly beaten with bats by a junior high school baseball team isn't as much amusing as it is sad.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Friday, March 30, 2007
Ragtime: and here I thought it was a crappy musical
I got into the writing of E.L. Doctorow two summers ago when I saw a three volume book on my friend's shelf. As it turns out I was incorrectly intrigued. I had read the man's name as the suave, and very clearly Spanish, El Doctorow. Amusingly, a similar misconception kept me from reading Ragtime even though I had enjoyed the mafioso adventures of Billy Bathgate, which had been my introduction to the author. All I knew of Ragtime was that it was a musical, and I am, possibly quite pigheadedly, no great fan of musicals in general.
The story of Ragtime is an historical fiction. Now, though I believe that I have only read a few of these types of fictions before, all have generally been enjoyed and one in particular, Little Big Man by Thomas Berger, was a favorite of mine for a long time in high school. Ragtime drew me in particularly quick, due in part to it choice of historical figures to include: Houdini, a beleaguered showman who worked always on the edge of death, frequently walked the line of high entertainer and lower class entertainment. Anarchist Emma Goldman, was also intermittently present throughout the story, ironical acted as one of the most stable figures in this story of the early part of America's twentieth century. She more than any of the other characters realized the size and and stink of the bullshit that was the American dream at this time.
That is what Ragtime represented to me, what has come to be the omni-present reality of America: purported opportunity for all, as long as it advances or does not hinder the rollicking ambitions of America's upper echelon. The were characters who saw the dream realized, who climbed from the stink of NY slum tenements to find an America where one could transform themselves into mysterious European Baron. After all, no one questions the claims of the wealthy and successful.
Yet, a character, such the as fictitious jazz musician Coalhouse Porter would find the world of Ragtime to be a place when you could only climb as far as a community's prejudice would allow. Yet, one could not live in this time, rise a little way, and not expect a system of justice and even-mindedness to rule in your favor. The failure of the system to do satisfy, the realization of what Goldman knew all along, that the American Dream is no more than a cardboard, Hollywood set piece, is a devastating blow for those who aren't cynical enough to see it coming.
What is to be done when a entire belief system is ripped away? Some, like the father of the family at the center of the novel, waste away, while others, like Coalhouse, reveal the true, unfathomable cost to an arrogant system when it believes that all men will go so quietly.
Where, on this sad spectrum, would your reaction would fall if you were faced with a similar collapse of all in which you once held faith? If you can, drop me a line when we get there, I, for my part, will try to do the same.
The story of Ragtime is an historical fiction. Now, though I believe that I have only read a few of these types of fictions before, all have generally been enjoyed and one in particular, Little Big Man by Thomas Berger, was a favorite of mine for a long time in high school. Ragtime drew me in particularly quick, due in part to it choice of historical figures to include: Houdini, a beleaguered showman who worked always on the edge of death, frequently walked the line of high entertainer and lower class entertainment. Anarchist Emma Goldman, was also intermittently present throughout the story, ironical acted as one of the most stable figures in this story of the early part of America's twentieth century. She more than any of the other characters realized the size and and stink of the bullshit that was the American dream at this time.
That is what Ragtime represented to me, what has come to be the omni-present reality of America: purported opportunity for all, as long as it advances or does not hinder the rollicking ambitions of America's upper echelon. The were characters who saw the dream realized, who climbed from the stink of NY slum tenements to find an America where one could transform themselves into mysterious European Baron. After all, no one questions the claims of the wealthy and successful.
Yet, a character, such the as fictitious jazz musician Coalhouse Porter would find the world of Ragtime to be a place when you could only climb as far as a community's prejudice would allow. Yet, one could not live in this time, rise a little way, and not expect a system of justice and even-mindedness to rule in your favor. The failure of the system to do satisfy, the realization of what Goldman knew all along, that the American Dream is no more than a cardboard, Hollywood set piece, is a devastating blow for those who aren't cynical enough to see it coming.
What is to be done when a entire belief system is ripped away? Some, like the father of the family at the center of the novel, waste away, while others, like Coalhouse, reveal the true, unfathomable cost to an arrogant system when it believes that all men will go so quietly.
Where, on this sad spectrum, would your reaction would fall if you were faced with a similar collapse of all in which you once held faith? If you can, drop me a line when we get there, I, for my part, will try to do the same.
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