SOMEWHERE APART: SELECTED LYRICS 1977-1997 by Robyn Hitchcock [illustrated by the author]

a review by Ross Taylor

Listen

And you can hear the dripping of the clocks, the reaping of the sun

The vengeance of the hammer and

The squeamish tight explosion of the liar

Ever since John Lennon mentioned marmalade skies (or since Robert Johnson said a woman is like a dresser) songwriters have embraced modernist jive. Robyn Hitchcock hasn’t chased the spotlight as much as some, but he has been a serious and hilarious practitioner of said jive since before punks walked the earth. His lyrics have always had the violent density of poets like Russell Edson, but have always gotten across in performance too. His collection Somewhere Apart is a beautiful fine press artifact. He has selected lyrics that actually work printed on the page, that can even briefly make you forget the music (music that is good and hard to forget). He has interspersed them with surreal line drawings, more complicated than cartoons, that often include faces, or at least eyes, you feel you know. There are several full page drawings, but smaller images often pop up near the text like medieval marginalia.

I grew up with Alan Aldridge’s Beatles Illustrated Lyrics. (Actually my mother bought it then hid it, but I found it anyway.) It was part of the multi-media world breaking out of the arthouse. There were more nuanced blendings, such as Dylan going verbal in Tarantula, narrative underground comics, perhaps ending with the formula of MTV. Hitchcock digs back to the old “anybody can do everything” spirit of the 60s without seeming retro. Yes, sometimes you get a stack of repeated chorus lines, i.e. “DOG DIG A DOG DIG A DOG DOG” (4x). But they are reminders that these things have come from somewhere else, the world of song.

I’ll reach your lungs

Like smoke in the orchard

Scattered in bushes

The firemen laughing

I’ll wrap your hands

In personal signals

Don’t come to me later

Come to me now

— Cynthia Mask by Robyn Hitchcock

More information on Somewhere Apart can be found here.

(Top photo c/o Robyn Hitchcock site. Bottom photo c/o Ross Taylor.)

Love Like That by Emma Duffy-Comparone

EXCELLENT STORIES, NOT POP

a book review by New Pop Lit

If she got the job, Ruth would have to sign a waiver agreeing to be quarantined if something serious broke out in the ward . . . “You could be quarantined for several months.”

“Sure,” she said. “Fine.”

DIRTY REALISM was a term used to describe a style of American short story writing of the mid-1980s, popularized by Raymond Carver and Joy Williams, among others. Hemingway-and-Chekhov inspired, the style is characterized by deadpan prose and a matter-of-fact attitude. Realistic? To the max. The characters are working class, resigned to their fate, with not even the possibility of change. There’s emotion– sometimes a lot of it– but it’s invariably off-stage or between the lines.

This is the writing style Emma Duffy-Comparone follows in her new collection of stories, Love Like That. Nine Stories of people working jobs or looking for jobs; children, teens or adults seeking refuge or answers. The stories contain drama but it’s understated drama, even when the occurrences are anything but. They’re not without humor– a kind of self-mocking dry humor. The tales ostensibly aren’t about the pandemic and American life over the past year, but they may as well be. They convey a beaten-down pandemic mood.

As with any short story collection, not every story is a masterwork, but a few of them are. Duffy-Comparone is like an opera singer attempting to hit a high note in an aria. With at least three of the stories, she nails it.

“Marvel Sands” is about a fifteen year-old girl who gets a job at a state park.

At six that night, I hosed down the showers, changing rooms, and foyer, steering the sand into the steel traps in the middle of the floor and out the doors. The work was surprisingly physical. At one point I looked at myself in a mirror. My neck and throat were red. My hair was frizzed. I bent over and soaked my head with the hose. Within minutes my scalp felt hot again.

Lurking in the story are two mature males of ominous presence, one her mother’s boyfriend, the other her boss.

With this story as in all the stories there’s no editorializing. Just laying out the reality– the facts– and sometimes not all the facts. Enough vibrates nearby for the reader to know what’s happened.

“Sure, Fine,” is the most powerful story of the nine, yet at the same time the most positive– if anything about these bleak tales can remotely be considered positive. An accident occurs during a shift at a very crummy job– by the end, as brutal as life is– as it’s shown to be– there’s a quiet, unspoken triumph simply at having survived it.

The best story, maybe because it’s more complex, runs deeper, is “Exuma.” In its way, a contorted love story. Nothing is resolved plotwise, yet at the same time by the end maybe something is resolved– a step toward resolution and healing for a damaged human being. What am I talking about? To know, you’ll have to read the story.

>>>><<<<

This collection and its author face a dilemma. Like the original tales of dirty realism, these stories will not be immediately accessible to the ordinary reader. Even Raymond Carver was more popular with writers than with the general reading public. Unlike Ernest Hemingway, he didn’t opt for glamorous people and exotic locations. All glamor was stripped away. For many readers, it was their shitty lives staring back at them.

Beyond this, Emma Duffy-Comparone is in a situation analogous to that of a current-day rock guitarist, who might be able to play better than Eric Clapton or Eddie Van Halen ever could, but few people care, because guitar stars are already in their pantheon and unless someone completely reinvents the form there’s no room for more.

Duffy-Comparone is every bit the story writer Raymond Carver was, but isn’t a familiar name even among writers.

Maybe this will change.

<<<<>>>>

LOVE LIKE THAT is available from Henry Holt.

Photo of Emma Duffy-Comparone by Dave Brainard.

The Revelation of Chester Fortunberry by Don Waitt

a review by Karl Wenclas

Sometime later, a man named Theodore would be able to verify how surprised Chester was by the events of that day. He would know this for a fact because Chester told him so.

While Chester was being held captive in Theodore’s basement.

Are you a fan of unusual novels? Those unlike anything you’ve ever read? 

THE REVELATION OF CHESTER FORTUNBERRY by Don Waitt is an unusual novel, focused on questions, ideas and arguments more than plot– though there is a plot, one centered upon the question, “What’s really happening?”

A philosophical discussion in the form of a novel, the protagonist, Chester Fortunberry, is in dialogue with his mind, as well as with several characters who may or may not be reflections of his mind. They’re debating the proposition, “Is everything a figment of our imagination?” The discussion explores three areas: “1. Time. 2. The mind. 3. The universe.”

At the same time the book is a mystery story. 

Why is Chester Fortunberry being held prisoner in a basement? Who is the man feeding him? Who are those behind the man– including the two men in a shiny black Cadillac who’ve been following his every move? What is it all really about?

The novel is thought-provoking. At one point it even touches on fine-tuned universe theory–

“Yes, billions of things had to align in just the right way at just the right time for us to exist. For you and I to be sitting on this beach. We are the result of a quantity of variables our minds can’t even fathom. An extra atom here or there, a few degrees hotter or colder, and we would not exist.”

— which surprised me. (A theory I read about in a book by Stephen Hawking.)

Some of the discussion then is heavyweight stuff, but presented in a crystal-clear style which anyone can follow– proving what I’ve always believed, that clarity of writing reflects clarity of thought. 

If you want to read a well-written discussion of who and why we are (with a plot puzzle or two thrown in)– like sitting in a room exchanging challenging thoughts with a highly intelligent person– then The Revelation of Chester Fortunberry is for you.

The book can be purchased at Lulu and at Amazon.
*******

(Photo of Don Waitt.)

The Promised End by Ron Singer

A Review by New Pop Lit

I had trailed him for two blocks now, long enough to decide that theft was the better option. Why? He looked like a guy who wanted his old, good jacket more than money he didn’t need.

There are two kinds of short stories.

One is the kind of story written to impress a creative writing instructor, full of wordy flourishes of what I call sentence fetish, with the story itself a secondary consideration. As often as not there is no story, only the flourishes.

The other kind is a story– a tale to be told– related in the simplest but most interesting way possible. These stories are written not for professors or critics but for readers.

THE PROMISED END by Ron Singer is the second kind. A collection of twenty tales, perfect for picking up at the end of a stressful day (there’ve been many stressful days), after dinner, after you’ve fed the cat and want to relax. When you’re ready to escape into intelligent stimulation. To lose yourself in the comfortable pleasures of well-constructed narrative.

A few of the locations in the collection are exotic. All of the stories carry the personality of the narrator, a genial New Yorker. Like a good television series, not every one of the entries is classic– but several are, with the others never less than absorbing.

Two of the stories are masterful.

“A Nose for a Jacket” is about a man considering stealing a rare jacket. Is he out-thinking himself? Tension mounts as he considers precisely how to make the grab, the challenges and possible consequences. It’s an examination into the mind of every one of us. By the end the character– and ourselves– are wiser. What happens next? This is always the essence of fiction writing.

***

In addition to the two addresses, the box bore the frightening official stamp of the Milli Istihbarat Teskilati, or MIT, the Turkish National Intelligence Organization, which is the principal arm of the country’s elaborate security apparatus, sometimes referred to as “the deep state”. The box had been opened and re-taped shut. This stamped and re-sealed box spelled potential disaster.

“The Key” is the longest and best story in the volume– on the surface a simple story with a simple complication involving a couple returning from vacation in Turkey and realizing they didn’t return their hotel key. They soon discover that in another country– and in their own– nothing is ever simple.

Entertainment and wisdom? For the avid reader, The Promised End provides exactly that.

(The book also has a striking cover containing an artwork by Elizabeth Yamin.)

Purchase The Promised End here.

*******

(Photo of Ron Singer)

Pop Quiz: Fran-Claire Kenney

A NEW POP LIT Q & A WITH A MULTI-TALENTED YOUNG WRITER

TODAY’S POP QUIZ IS WITH UP-AND-COMING WRITER FRAN-CLAIRE KENNEY.

1.)  What characterizes the perfect short story?

FK:  I’m tempted to just say that the perfect short story is as short as possible, but that leaves little room for character development; it really depends on why you’re reading in general at that point–do you want an exhilarating experience or a meditative one, or maybe both? The thing that works in any scenario, though, and that keeps a reader engaged, is strong imagery and lines of symbolism that jump out at the reader, because those are the things that stick as quotes which will recur into the reader’s consciousness for a long time. It’s also great (but by no means a necessity–nothing is really a necessity in literature except words) when a short story has a fable-like mood or structure, because those stories stick like the pieces of imagery and function almost like bedtime or cocktail stories to the reader who stumbles back into reality.

2.)  What style of short fiction would attract masses of young readers to the art?

FK:  I think that for GenZ folks, who have come of age during a time of sociopolitical conflict, dystopia and sci-fi are very promising. Everything around the world has been happening so fast in the last decade–political power shifts, technological innovations, social movements–that many young people don’t know what to expect, yet have grown accustomed to abrupt change. It’s intriguing to contemplate the relationship between humans and rebelling AI or life in an everlasting cyclone because these things are becoming more and more plausible, and reading about them in short stories allows so much room for speculation and, dare I say it, preparation. (Plus, there’s plenty of room for gore and horror, which everybody loves at least a little too much.)

3.)  How do you see your future as a writer?

FK:  The short answer: varied. I will always write poetry as a means of self-expression and catharsis–and with an abundance of clever and diverse literary magazines out there, I will always edit those catharsis parties into something thoughtful and even publishable. I’d like to be an editor as well, to work directly with fellow writers to improve the delivery of their messages. I’m also entering the world of film in college–not just screenwriting, but also directing, cinematography, production design–there are endless opportunities. Having goals as a literary writer-editor and as a film writer-director may seem like a conflict of interest, but I truly believe that some stories are meant to be told on paper, while others are meant to be told onscreen, and I want to convey both as a writer. Literature and film are a) beautiful, and b) do not have to be at a cultural war with each other–I seek to live that truth in my future.

*** 

NOW listen to two NPL recordings of Ms. Kenney reading her work, here and here.

The Gimmick by Vern Smith

Reviewed by New Pop Lit

“I like this gimmick. The gimmick’s good.”

“Cops are smarter than you think. Get in, get out. That’s what dad always says, and he never got pinched once.”

-from “The Gimmick”

***

THE GIMMICK— novelettes, stories, and sketches by Canadian-born writer Vern Smith— starts slowly. The first story is about two men in a diner, the second about two men in a park. Why open with them? It might be the author’s way of easing the reader into his style of writing. Or he might be misdirecting– sandbagging– setting up the stories to follow.

Third in the collection is the title piece: “The Gimmick.” Top-level detective fiction with a noir feel. Think Walter Mosely. Two police detectives pursue a scam-artist couple who’ve robbed bank customers at ATM machines– including a detective. The robbed detective is eager to get them back.

The characters are fully drawn and completely absorbing. The plot, unpredictable right to the end.

***

Meanwhile, you’re still walking.

The tie is strangling you.

You feel the extra starch they put in your shirt, always too much starch.

Sweat is dripping off your brow.

You are the oldest young man on earth.

-from “You Need Something to Slow You Down”

***

Most of the stories which follow are Kafkaesque. Their protagonists seem to be hanging in the air, upside down, at some shitty job or in some absurd life from which there’s no escape. They stumble through this universe drugged, puzzled, or numb, waiting for their next misstep.

But the best story in the collection, “The Great Salmon Hunt,” is a simple adventure story set aboard a fishing boat chartered by two brothers who hope to win a big salmon fishing contest. The tale contains its own version of absurdities via the personalities of the two brothers– resulting in comedy combined with high excitement. Hemingway would love it. 

***

More discord than harmony, it was music without a message, music without words, music that related to the concept of nothingness.

-from “Natalia Cauzillo’s Last Ride Out”

***

The last short tale, “Natalia Cauzillo’s Last Ride Out,” is an apt coda to the collection– a culmination of themes as a sharply drawn young woman deals with her own discontent within another of the insane systems of now. 

Kafka meets Sherwood Anderson: the nonstop parade of quirky characters, like Natalia, are the strong point of Smith’s writing. Linkages in his created world– which appears uncomfortably similar to our own.
***

The Gimmick is available from Run Amok Books, at Barnes and Noble, at Kobo, and other outlets.
***

(Photo of Vern Smith.)

Pop Quiz: John Higgins

A NEW POP LIT Q & A WITH A TALENTED NEW WRITER

Today’s pop quiz is with young Irish short story writer John Higgins.

1.)  Best short story ever written?

JH:  For me, it’s a toss-up between either “Yam Gruel” by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, or Mike McCormack’s “Forensic Songs.”

2.)  Best music to write by?

JH:  Tom Waits sets a great tone for when I need to get work done. Plus, he can fit into a three-minute song what some people take hundreds of pages to say.

3.)  Can writers be pop stars?

JH:  If writing doesn’t work out for me, I’ll let you know…
***

NOW read John’s story about the fast food business, “Hamburger Hill.”

 

Miserable Love Stories by Alex Bernstein

A ST. VALENTINE’S DAY BOOK REVIEW

There was something about Barb– the way she chewed her pens and threw them out before the ink exploded. And then I’d retrieve the pens and chew where she chewed, even if they did explode. And then I’d have blue teeth for weeks. And people would go, Eugh. He’s been chewing Barb’s pens again. Loser!

-from the story “Barb.”

****

THERE’S a story– “Confession”– in Alex Bernstein’s humorous new book in which a character confesses to her mother that she’s attracted to members of the opposite sex. (!)

We have our own confession to make: Alex Bernstein is a pop writer.

Like an Erich Segal (whose classic 1970 best-selling novel Love Story we also examine as part of our 2020 St. Valentine’s Day celebration), Alex Bernstein has a natural clarity of style. This enables him to add subtle emotion to his stories– emotion with greater impact because of the writing style.

Bernstein has several pieces– “Manic Pixie Dream Girl Police” one of them– which read like screenplays. As with Erich Segal, this appears to be an excellent foundation for writing in a pop fashion– a starting point from which all things become possible. 

WHY DO YOU READ?

If you read for entertainment, enjoyment, humanity, you need to read Miserable Love Stories.

Available here from Skyhorse Publishing.

*******

The White Man’s Guide to White Male Writers of the Western Canon by Dana Schwartz

A Review by Karl Wenclas

Ernest Hemingway was a man’s man, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. He was born with a full beard and a cable-knit sweater.

THE WHITE MAN’S GUIDE TO WHITE MALE WRITERS OF THE WESTERN CANON by twitterverse star Dana Schwartz operates on a level of mild satire. The reader isn’t entirely sure what or who is being satirized. Woke Culture? White male writers? Unearned privilege? Guys in MFA programs?

I almost signed up for a gender studies seminar my freshman year, so you could say I’m pretty “woke,” and so I can recognize when guys like Bellow say screwed-up stuff. This is the sort of thing I’ll tweet about so people who follow me recognize how sensitive and worldly I am. My voice needs to be heard on the important issues! Of course I’m actually drafting an op-ed in my head for when that PC stuff goes too far.

This from a chapter on Saul Bellow done in the voice of J.D. Salinger, who has his own chapter.

A schizophrenic project, no question about it. Does Dana Schwartz want to trash this series of white male writers– or celebrate them? They’re significant enough in her eyes to spend an entire book on them. As most readers out there don’t know the Western Canon– few people these days have heard of it– the book serves, believe it or not, as a good introduction to it. (The person off the street won’t recognize the “satire.”)

So even if your freshman-year literature professor at Harvard gives you a D because he doesn’t think you “comprehended, or even actually read” Pride and Prejudice, it doesn’t matter. In fact, it means you’re something like beloved American author Kurt Vonnegut.

Is Schwartz mocking a person who attended Harvard, or a person who didn’t do well there? Or Kurt Vonnegut? Is she satirizing someone who cares what grade a literature professor gave a person? Is the target the narrator, or the writer?

(Dana Schwartz herself was a high school honors student and Presidential Scholar who attended prestigious Brown University. Not quite Harvard, but close.)

Which illustrates the dilemma. Effective satire is written by nasty people. By those who’ve been hurt badly at some point in life and carry a reserve of unflinching vitriol. Of bottled-up rage– which they channel onto the page. There’s little sign from these polite deconstructions that Dana Schwartz qualifies. The book– despite much advance twitter vitriol launched its way– doesn’t live up to its critics’ anger.

It frankly doesn’t matter if Yellow Wallpaper is taught in high schools instead of The Great Gatsby (which is too deep and well-structured a book for high schoolers anyway). Raising the question is asking which texts students will be bored by. While outside the classroom they buy graphic novels about Spiderman.

Art preserved in canons or institutions becomes a force-fed museum piece. It breathes and thrives outside such places, amid the bustle and clash of society and life.

*******

But, the book. The mask of Schwartz’s narrator is flimsy. As in this passage about Charles Dickens:

Some may point out that most of Dickens’s female characters are two-dimensional (if not outright evil), or that leaving his wife for a teenager is a bit unseemly, and to that I say: sure, but Dickens had a reason for being sexist.

Coincidentally, I just finished rereading the Dickens masterpiece Bleak House. Narrator Esther Summerson is not a bit evil. Plot focus Lady Dedlock is very three-dimensional, once Dickens pulls the veil off her character. A powerful and tragic personality. So the question becomes: Is the mistake that of Dana Schwartz? Or an intentional one made by her implied narrator?

The confusion is exemplified by the Bukowski chapter, which admires the grittiness of the writer’s life (the narrator’s mindset) yet puts the man down for his apparent misogyny (Schwartz’s mindset). One could say, “Make up your mind!”

Or it could just be that these men were themselves three-dimensional. That they led fucked-up lives– by today’s standards were bad people– doesn’t alter the undeniable fact of their greatness (some of them anyway) as writers. Which Dana Schwartz acknowledges and doesn’t acknowledge at the same time.
*******

The book is illustrated with drawings by The New Yorker magazine artist Jason Adam Katzenstein. Katzenstein seems to be making a point of his own: that all white male writers look alike! I say this because most of his sketches of canonical writers look alike.

For instance, here’s Raymond Carver and Cormac McCarthy:

Or Norman Mailer and Jack Kerouac:

The caricatures don’t look much like Carver, McCarthy, Mailer, and Kerouac. Which may be the point.
*******

All kidding aside, a blistering no-holds-barred book was there to be written on the Western Canon– on the entire edifice of today’s version of American literature; writers, publishers, and media acolytes alike. Dana Schwartz chose not to write it. This leaves a book which doesn’t live up to the scorched-earth promise of its title. It gives the reader instead an amusing entry to the lives of many of America’s most lauded writers. Which is enough, I guess, for most of today’s literary readers.

ORDER White Man’s Guide etc. here.
*******

(Photo of Dana Schwartz.)

Pop Quiz: Brian Eckert

A NEW POP LIT Q & A WITH A TALENTED WRITER

TODAY’S QUIZ IS WITH ONE OF THE BEST WRITERS NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT, BRIAN ECKERT.

1.)  Favorite writer?

BE:  I’m far too mercurial to have a favorite anything that lasts for very long. I’m currently stanning mountaineering nonfiction and philosophical pessimism, which, I suspect, are deeply related.

2.)  Why did you become a writer?

BE:  About ten years ago, while working on my first novel (which never saw the light of day), I wrote the following, which is as good of an explanation as any: “To not write is to submit without a fight to that external authority which some attribute to the divine, others to the intractable laws of nature. To not write is to live without a voice. It is to live as a ghost.”

3.)  Year the world ends?

BE:  The world ended in 2012. We dropped out of history and nobody noticed.
****

NOW read Brian’s new Featured Fiction with us,  an excerpt from Into the Vortex.