"The New Messiah", Daniel Biskar: From My Godfather

This was a Christmas gift a few years back from my Uncle Dan, who also happens to be this book's author, Daniel Biskar.

Based in the beach cities of Los Angeles during the mid-'70s, The New Messiah follows Neal, the main character, an idealistic poet who conceives a utopian plan to create a messianic movement. He convinces his charismatic friend Andy to play the part of messiah.

A real problem arrives when Andy starts to believe his own story. Fueled by the cynicism and alienation that's been a staple of American youth culture since Watergate, the movement gains a certain level of prominence. It, like many messiah movements, doesn't last too long, and the last we see of Andy is during his recovery period.

Neal, the instigator of the movement and through whose eyes we readers experience everything, has his own issues with love and friends. Since he's the rock of the group, his friends seem to lean on him in their times of need, and he feels an obligation to help them. He also feels a complex mix of guilt for how the movement evolved and how he wasn't able to stop it after it got out of control.

It's been years since I've read it.

Uncle Dan's style is what strikes any reader: it is written entirely in a play-like format. A series of dialogue blocks and stage directions are how the action unfolds throughout. I wasn't quite sure what to make of it at first, but as I got into the story, I started to appreciate the confidence with which his scenes are presented, and I began to learn a specific way tension can be created.

This isn't a critique of The New Messiah, rather, this is simply about a post about a book in my library, how I came to have it, and how it affected me in some way or how it will help me later in some way--basically the reason I still have it. Since the author of this book is literally my godfather, I feel a certain closeness to the work, and don't feel my library blog the proper place to fully critique it, but I haven't done that yet really with any book. Maybe informally, of course...

This book is great for any young aspiring writer. It deals well with dialogue and tension, and extremely well with minimalist scene setting techniques, bringing playwright tools along and incorporating them into a novel. Plus, the story is pretty cool, one about sex, drugs, rock and roll, and reasoned and deliberate false prophets.

"Zap Comix #0", Crumb: From the Streets of the Haight

Changing gears somewhat, I'm putting up a comic that I picked up this past weekend at the Long Beach Comic Convention. I've refrained so far from using comics, as I think that maybe I should start a whole new blog solely for them. This comic is different.

This is a copy of "Zap Comix", #0. It was released after #2 and before #3, but is material written before issue #1 in real time. I found this issue, a fourth printing in "Very Fine (Minus)" condition that I got at half price, and it still cost me nine bucks.

In the sixties, as the return of comic books to a realm that's not quite mainstream media--but still sorta prominent--ensued, certain people began to use the form for stories that were a little more mature and using things like drugs and/or sex as the motivation. They began to be called comix, with the 'X' designating an X-rated subject matter.

Robert Crumb was working in Cleveland as an illustrator in the sixties making greeting cards. He was hating life. Then LSD made the scene in Cleveland, and after making its way to Robert, he was really hating life, because now he was enlightened. One night he met some guys in a bar who were talking about driving off to San Francisco. That sounded good to him, and like so many other heads in the mid to late sixties, he dropped everything and left for the City by the Bay.

And, like so many heads during that time who did that, he found himself on the Haight, just hanging around, twisted, trying to find meaning, and something to do. He started making drawings, and then some comics, and then got a crazy idea.

He decided to write and draw and print and publish his own independent comic books. He and his new wife would walk up and down Haight Ashbury and sell his "Zap Comix" out of a stroller. Eventually they found their way into head shops, and could be purchased that way.

For me, as someone who has read his share of comics, to thumb through an American artifact like this is remarkable: every single pen stroke and mark inside is from one guy, R. Crumb. There are no ads, no editorials (besides the whole thing I guess), and no masthead information. Just a guy doing his thing, an artistic thing he believed in.

It's inspiring.

And, at this time in my life, my connection to comics has entered a more mature phase. "Worth" now is judged more on what it means rather than dollar figures. I've been looking for a copy of Zap #0 for a while, one with the 35 cents price (some really late editions have a 60 cent price), and wasn't completely falling apart. Prices for the very early editions are extremely high. This copy was the best deal I'd found, and it was something I was specifically looking for at the Nerd-Fest. Here's a link to something I wrote about the LB Comic Con.

Comics for me are not investments, and this copy, much like my first paper-back edition Gravity's Rainbow, isn't for sale. This is an artifact, an artifact from an American past that is easily blurred by films, paintings, photos and albums.

Here is a collection of images and "stories" from the time when you could make a living selling a comic on the streets out of a stroller, and it captures the ethos as accurately as you'd expect.

"The Right Stuff", Tom Wolfe: Straddling the Line Between Brave and Reckless

On my shelf this sits next to my copy of Zodiac, well, at least until I return that one to the Cabin. I think I either bought this copy at that huge used bookstore just north of SOHO in Manhattan, or much earlier. It might have been a quarter book, as in it cost just a quarter. I wish I remembered.

About the only thing it shares with Zodiac is the status of non-fiction. Robert Graysmith, the writer of that other book, was a cartoonist and researcher who wrote that book because he had all the data. It kinda reads like that as well.

Tom Wolfe was a ground breaking journalist who showed that the tools of fiction writing could be used to write non-fiction pieces. He led a journalistic revolution that had/has many followers and disciples, and even shoot-offs like Gonzo journalism, a thing that HST reluctantly birthed into existence.

I remember "reading" The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test when I was in 6th grade, and here by "read" I mean "read most of the words on each page", but you might be able to guess what I took from it.

This book though, The Right Stuff, touched something I was really into as a kid: becoming an astronaut.

It covers some of the ballsiest men in American--or any--history: the test pilots. Chuck Yeager being the top guy, we see how their days go. They come to work and get onto a plane that nobody has ever flown, or, even knows if it can fly. Then they try and fly the bastard. Many of these guys died, and only the most fearless and badass stayed alive.

It was from this crop of guys that the first set of astronauts was taken. Only the cream of the crop was desired, but they mandated that the astronauts have a college degree. Once it came out that there was very little piloting going to be going on, most guys looked disparagingly upon the program. Once the mandate that a degree be held by a candidate came out, thereby denying Yeager, generally seen as the top test pilot, the amount of respect for the program dwindled among the ranks of the pilots.

After the gentleman were chosen, and America's reaction to them was discovered, everybody then wanted to be an astronaut. At first, even the word "astronaut" wasn't taken seriously by the pilots, who refused to use it.

The book discussed the invisible ziggurat that pilots climb during their careers, and how easy it is to fall off and fuck their prospects up. It also delves into the concepts of "Single Combat" and ancient Africa to explain the frenzy the American public was whipped into over the space race with the Soviets.

Such is the outlook and direction of Tom Wolfe. Instead of ending the book with an anecdote about some astronaut, like the film does, with the easygoing pilot falling asleep on the launchpad, he ends it with one from the top test pilot of all, the first man to break the sound barrier, Yeager himself.

I remember reading, and re-reading the final scene a few times on the subway, and then boring my coworkers with it because it struck me as so fantastic, so hyperreal, and right in the character of old Chuck, one of America's forgotten wild men.

Okay, here it is (I fought with myself about whether to tell the story or not): Yeager, now an instructor with the Air Force, hears about a new plane arriving at the base, and decides to take it out for a test--without real permission. Who in the tower is going top stop Chuck Yeager? He gets up into the air and notices certain design flaws, and get the plane into an out of control stance hurtling through the air. His only chance it to stall it out, shoot out the back parachute, get it pointed down, then cut the 'chute and try to jump start it in the fall. He gets all that ready, stalled out and hanging on the parachute, pointing down. He drops the chute, but the flaps were stuck and he was back into an uncontrolled spin. He decides that it over, and finally blows the hatch. He and his chair are blown free of the jet, but the explosive fuel that launches the chair during an ejection sprayed all over his helmet.

It burned through his helmet, and then started burning his face. He's falling through the air, his plane will be crashing in a fiery mess in the desert soon, and his face is on fire inside his helmet, which he's struggling to remove. Finally he gets his helmet off, opens his shoot in time, which dissolves mostly from the fuel, but not too much before slowing down enough to survive the impact with the desert floor. his right eye has been blinded, but, as it turns out, only temporarily. He recovers fully, and the scars on his face don't even hold.

It was Yeager who got the other pilots to finally start to respect the would-be astronauts. While there wasn't a whole lot of "piloting" going on, he pointed out, it took a certain kind of man to sit on a tube of explosives and then light the match.

Still an exciting read, I'd recommend it to anyone interested in an isolated section of the late '50s or early '60s that's devoid of popular-culture connections, or about how the creation of NASA affected the military on a personal level.

"The Mysterious Stranger and other Stories", Twain: Feisty Clemens

If you can't read the title of this, it is The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories. I bought it while in high school because of a show I caught on the Discovery Channel or the History Channel, back when they showed engaging documentary-type shows instead of the reality garbage they produce now, and on this show they spoke briefly about Mark Twain's story about the devil coming to a tiny Austrian town and messing with the people there, and about how he wasn't such a bad dude.

Wow, I remember thinking, I'd never heard of this story before. I searched it out and eventually bought this book. By far the longest story in the book is the last, "The Mysterious Stranger", and I can say that at that young age when I purchased the book, its length intimidated me, and for the longest time remained the only story that I hadn't read in the book.

I'd motored through the rest of them at some point before making the transition to pour soi, so they're true power (or occasional lack thereof) wasn't fully grasped by me. In fact, the only one I remember with any real sense is "The L1,000,000 Bank Note" (I'm using "L" to signify the pound-sterling symbol, the UK "dollar sign".). That story follows a poor American who went overboard while at sea, was picked up by some wealthy Britons who are engaged in a secret bet, and set the Yank up with a million-pound bill, like a million dollar bill. What ensues is his arrival in a town with only the soiled clothes on his back and his eventual rise from the ranks without ever spending any money. He tries, but everybody just laughs him off and gives him credit.

I probably read that story again after the pour soi transition...I vaguely remember thinking that would be a eat premise when I read about it in The Atlantic one year.

In any case, I finally read "The Mysterious Stranger" while I was living in Brooklyn, as it was one of the various books I read while doing the subway commute. I remember reading some background notes first, like a little history of the piece, seeing as it was last piece and was finally put together by a friend posthumously.

The background story went that Twain worked the ending a few different times, and was never really satisfied with it, and the ending that we see is really an ending that should be with another story, or the transition is not very good. Well, we can agree that a man of Twain's talents probably wouldn't have settled on the ending as it appears in most editions.

I don't want to give too much away, but Satan is a pretty nice guy who molds clay into living things for the amusement of the kids in a small Austrian village, and some lessons about being led to war and indiscriminate killing and subjugation that are as relevant and prescient today as they were in his time, or, really, anytime. That's the power of a great writer.

The ending does feel like it's slapped on and barely connected, but the power of the piece on the whole is there, and it's Clemens at his feistiest.

Here is a link to probably the creepiest claymation rendition of any story around. It may not be fully accurate to what's on paper, but it bizarre and worth looking at, especially if you're into weird creepy shit.

"Fiskadoro", Denis Johnson: Early Novel from a Great Writer

I purchased this copy of Fiskadoro from an independent bookstore in Brooklyn. I had this habit of finding random indie bookstores on lazy weekend walks and checking out their selections, and, if they had something good enough, and I have enough spending money (rarely), I would buy something. I did this in Sacramento, in my college town of SLO, in Brooklyn, and even in Austin.

Denis Johnson is one of my favorite writers; his collection of short pieces called Jesus' Son is a modern masterpiece of the art form, and he's one of the rare writers hailed in his own time by his peers. Maybe his most famous work is Tree of Smoke, a prestigious National Book Award winner about Vietnam. My father believes it'll go down as probably the novel about Vietnam.

Fiskadoro is an early novel by the writer, and you can tell it's an early novel. It takes place after an apocalyptic crash of civilization out on the rather isolated Florida Keys. The mainland they tend to call the wasteland and is avoided by decree. Reading it you try to surmise just how long it's been: there's a music teacher and a semblance of musical or symphonic gang, a group determined to keep some shred of culture alive, while other social moors are rather tossed away, like when women reach a certain age they cease wearing shirts.

There's also a strange group of people living on the island who are called the shadow people, or something, but they're not part of the "normals" world. They're known to take young men and do things to them, to their dicks. This group seems like legends used to scare the kids, until the main character is nabbed and operated upon.

I grabbed the book just now to thumb through to get an idea of the name of the "others", and I realized I can't remember a whole lot of what I was looking at. So take what I've said with a grain of salt. This has been pretty much what I've taken from the story after a five years and a few beers.

I do remember the mother and the matriarch, who aren't the same person. The "mother" is the mother of the main character, and as her kids are now older and she's found a "pebble" in one of her boobs, she finally decides to drop the shirt wearing act. For this she's reminded by another with a laugh that it easily could have been done earlier.

The matriarch of the settlement, grandma, is the oldest person in the story, and has the most recollections of the world before the fall. in a long flashback section we see the real story that Denis Johnson wants to tell; it's a scene from Vietnam.

The grandma character has vivid memories of being a nurse on a fleeing helicopter as it was downed in the Gulf of Tonkin and getting rescued. This character, as a young lady, is very similar to a character from Tree of Smoke, and having read both, and Fiskadoro second, the connection--from my own writer's perspective--in undeniable. The woman doesn't have to be the exact same lady, but the fact that they look the same and act the same shows what's going on in the head of a word artist.

For those who know the following reference, this is similar to, but not as obviously directly used in a different manner, the Porpentine and Goodfellow story "Under the Rose" from Pynchon's short story collection Slow Learner and how it was later utilized in V.. That novel did come out first, and when the collection of stories came out readers and fans were able to see how that material morphed into scenes for V., but started as something slightly different, and here, in a different venue, consist of a story. Almost like a missing scene, or something that adds to the canon.

V....I can't think of any writer's first novel being as......maybe the best novel ever written by a teenage girl, also a first novel, but became more of cultural touchstone than anything Pynchon ever wrote could be in a similar category (I'm talking about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein).

Digressions. Fiskadoro is a good look at a writer growing and using something like a post apocalyptic world--typically a sci-fi or fantasy trope--as a setting for some wacky literature. Check it out if either opf those things interest you; watching authors mature or weird shenanigans on the post-apoc Keys.

"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime", Mark Haddon: Third One's the Keeper

I believe it was my mother who either got me this book or strongly recommended it.

It is written from the point of view of a young man who has some social issues and his parents crumbling relationship plays instigator to many of his scary experiences in the world. It is a very good book. There are those tragic moments that only you, as the reader, can see, while our troubled narrator can't put it together.

Funny thing though, is that I brought the book with us to Europe. I wanted something to read where I figured I wouldn't be getting to very often. You go to Europe when you're 25 to backpack and adventure, not to sit in cafes and read.

Well, I finished it while we waited for the ferry from England to Hoek van Holland, on our third day of the trip. It was a very long wait for the ferry, but still. The missus had her own book, and I like sharing, so I gave my copy to our friend Tami Love who was living in Munich and with whom we visited. She and I had met many years before working as tutors in the Mathlab at a community college I attended for a short time. English language books aren't exactly nowhere to be seen in Munich, but good complex literary fiction is a little harder to just run across.

So as the years go by, I bought another copy while we were living in Brooklyn. That's the copy that the missus read, and I eventually loaned gave it out as well, to my cousin, a young lady visiting us from college in Seattle.

The copy I have now, the copy that's pictured, is one I purchased for a dollar or two from an Amazon.com gift card, just to make our collection complete.

I recommend it. You need to borrow a copy?

"The Politics of Experience", RD Laing: Looking for the Second Title

I think I picked this up at either a sale-by-the-inch book extravaganza, or maybe the Phoenix Books, a large downtown San Luis Obispo used book-store.

In my days of collecting the authors I followed for philosophy I came across this copy of Laing's essays and speeches concerning his psychological approach to explaining alienation, schizophrenia, and other less exciting forms of interpersonal experience. It is an attack on the establishment's assumptions about "normality" and "mental sickness".

In all honesty I haven't finished it. There is a receipt from 1976 inside, and I used it as a bookmark.

Ronald Laing became one of the guys in my philosophical collection near the end of my days reading and annotating philosophy. It was his book The Divided Self that drew me in; a book about psychedelics and schizophrenia, and covered a similar theme to this book, The Politics of Experience.

Now, I ended up going in a different direction from Laing. Different direction may not be the right phrase, but at the time I ended up branching out in two separate directions philosophically. The first represents the real last few writers I roped into my philosophical dream team, Marcuse with Eros and Civilization (the last philosophy book I may have purchased)(from a little indie bookstore in Brooklyn) and the monumental The Concept of Mind, by Gilbert Ryle.

To put this in context: I was primarily a philosophy writer for about 18 months...maybe a little more. But, I was constantly searching out writers I perceived to be the building blocks of my philosophical world. With each new discovery, I added a bit to my view. Ryle was the most important final entry in the stable, but I added Marcuse years later because I liked his contention that sexuality played a non-trivial role in the development of civilization.

The other branch from the Laing tree was the one that dealt with psychedelics and their use and effect on philosophy, and that was in the direction of Carlos Castaneda and his Don Juan series.

Now Castaneda and Ryle and Marcuse will get their day in this forum. Today's post is about Laing, and the title refers to the fact that I can't find the other copy, The Divided Self. I may have loaned it to somebody.

This book, ...Politics... was left behind when we moved to Brooklyn, which explains why it was discovered anew and in good condition. Many of my more important-to-me philosophy books were trucked to New York and then to Austin, and if they weren't important enough to stay, they invariably went--as a loan out or a trade or a sale--in actions that were meant to make the collection stronger.

Left behind were this, and Heidegger's Poetry, Language, Though and Sartre's Existentialism and Human Emotions and others that will eventually appear here.

Wow. I haven't thought so much about my philosophy stable as I have this morning in a serious while.

Castaneda entered my world as it was changing, and my writing focus changed with it.