Sarang's latest effort, Don't Look Down, is one of his saddest and best movies to date. (The movie should not be confused with Eliseo Subiela's No mires para abajo, which is called Don't Look Down in its English translation.)
The movie centers on the relationship between Jason O'Neil, a law firm librarian, and his wife Margaret. At work, Jason is stressed out, barely able to keep up with his tedious work. At home, he is disrespected when he isn't ignored. In a revealing scene, Margaret tells him that her friends are coming over for drinks. There is an awkward back-and-forth until Jason realizes that Margaret is asking him to leave the house until her friends have come and gone. Margaret can be cruel, but she can't bring herself to acknowledge her own cruelty.
It's no wonder, then, that Jason finds refuge from both spheres of his life by taking long, unnecessarily meandering walks to and from work. Here, striding along the sidewalk, admiring his surroundings, Jason seems happy and in his element. He can name the types of the trees and the architectural styles of the houses. His sense of the city, its contours and rhythms, its impulses and pent-up energy, is encyclopedic.
When we meet the couple, Margaret is barely bothering to conceal her affair with Jin-woo, a real estate speculator. But things are more complex: through Margaret, Jin-woo has met Jason, who turns out to be hugely useful in Jin-woo's work. Jason can tell him, almost as an afterthought, whether a particular house is undervalued or overvalued. He has an instinctive sense for which neighborhoods are about to pop, and Jin-woo easily translates these insights into huge profits.
But it is more than that, and here Sarang draws down some of the audience's sympathy for Jason. When Jin-woo is selling a house, he arranges for the real estate agent to "bump into" Jason while showing prospective buyers around the neighborhood. Jason then poses as a neighbor and gushes about how much he loves the neighborhood. Jason has a gentle, avuncular appearance—a running joke throughout the movie is that people keep mistaking him for Cass Sunstein, even though Jason is in his early 40s. While Jason doesn't look like Margaret's idea of a good husband, he looks like almost everyone's idea of a good neighbor: earnest, enthusiastic, and ever-so-slightly disheveled.
But of course it's a ruse—Jason doesn't actually live in whatever neighborhood the sale is in—and it's a little hard to see what Jason gets out of it. Jin-woo doesn't give Jason a cut of his enviable profits, though Jason could certainly use the money. Perhaps Jason just wants to feel useful, even in such a tawdry and compromising way. But whatever the explanation, Jason's behavior raises interesting questions about Jin-woo's relationship with Margaret. Jin-woo appears to be losing patience with her. Maybe he is sticking around not because he wants Margaret but because he needs Jason. The three are locked in a triangle that is more transactional than any of them can admit, balanced at the edge of the precipice. And none of them dares to pull any of the loose threads because of what might be revealed, and what might be lost.
The only discordant note came not when I saw the movie, but afterward, when I sent a congratulatory note to Sarang about it. He must have thought I was being sarcastic, because he responded with a quick apology, urging me not to "take it personally." I have no idea what he thinks he's apologizing for. It is one of the best movies I have seen in a long time. I wonder if our correspondence is another one of Sarang's performance art pieces, like the time he published a Chrome extension designed to "improve the accuracy of the internet" by deleting the string "syncra" from all descriptions of me. I still haven't figured out what that was about, either.
Monday, October 19, 2015
Saturday, October 10, 2015
Dave's Tabula Rasa
Dave's latest effort, Tabula Rasa, marks a return to the intellectual but action-packed science fiction that launched him to fame in the first place. Charles Tully, an insurance company executive who has been convicted of embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars (leaving the company bankrupt), is given the option of an experimental new form of punishment: instead of serving the rest of his life in prison, he will undergo a procedure that will destroy most of his memories. On some level this is like the death penalty—little of his identity will remain when his memories are gone. On the other hand, the procedure will have no noticeable effect on Tully's body or his intelligence. He will be allowed to build a new life, in freedom and with no liability for the crimes of his "past self." He won't even be told that he committed a crime—the "new Tully" will be told that he suffered a trauma that robbed him of his memories.
Once the procedure is done, Tully is held for a few weeks. The procedure sometimes overshoots a little, and so Tully is monitored while the technicians make sure that he can still function in society. But Tully's "wipe" was clean, and soon he is freed. Legally, Tully is a new person, but before the procedure Tully chose to remain married to his wife, Susan, and so she picks him up from the prison. Tully doesn't recognize her, of course, but his reconditioning has prepared him, to some degree, to return home.
Here is where the story takes its first bizarre turn. A few weeks after returning home, Charles realizes that Susan is lying about something that happened in their previous life. The lie itself is not consequential, but Tully is shocked. He shouldn't have been able to recognize it at all. It appears that some of his memories are intact, though they are not accessible until something brings them out of the recesses of his mind.
Charles begins to find clues about his previous life, and they spark more memories. Susan tries to shield him from the facts about his previous life, but to the reader, some of her lies are inexplicable. Susan is hiding something. She packs Charles off to spend time with his sister, a federal judge, and we feel that we are on the cusp of discovering what her motives are. But then there is a knock at the door, and the stranger on the doorsteps announces that he is Charles Tully, returning home from an extended hospitalization. He tries to kiss her and is upset when she pushes him away.
"Real Charles," meanwhile, confronts his sister and demands an explanation for his patchwork of memories. She tries to evade his questions, but he has pieced together quite a lot, and finally she tells him about the embezzlement, the conviction, and the punishment. She also tells him about his previous life—his alcoholism, his depression, his gambling, his adultery. We realize that his marriage was essentially over when the FBI arrested him. And we learn that when he was arrested, the FBI found only a tiny fraction of the money that he had stolen. Susan's behavior begins to make sense.
Meanwhile Susan has managed, with considerable awkwardness, to convince the stranger who thinks he is Charles Tully to rent a hotel room, and the two order delivery food and eat it there. Unlike the "real" Charles Tully, this man has easily accessible memories of the time period that was wiped from her husband's memory. But the memories are patchy and mostly incoherent, and from time to time he pauses and loses his composure as inconsistencies crop up. He is clearly on edge, barely hanging on to the thread, and in his confusion he has become childlike and easily manipulated. Susan plies him with beer and coaxes his story from him.
Of course, what has happened is that the team responsible for wiping Tully's memory has intentionally done an incomplete job, in an attempt to track down the hundreds of millions that they assume Tully has hidden away. A smaller group of conspirators has tried to implant Tully's memories into another prisoner undergoing the procedure. The memories proved to be too fragmented to track down the money, and the team had no choice but to release the man on schedule.
That's about as much of the plot as I should divulge—I've probably gone too far already—but there's one interesting technique that Dave uses that, unfortunately, probably means that the book can never be made into a movie. In the last third of the book, Dave starts referring to each of the men simply as "Tully," introducing intentional ambiguity about which man Susan ultimately chooses. Of course this ambiguity is untranslatable to film, which is too bad in a sense. Dave has recaptured the vivid, cinematic feel of his early science fiction, and Tabula Rasa would make a stunning movie and a welcome break from the stream of comic book blockbusters and superficial fantasy movies that have proliferated in recent years. This was not to be—but the book is still a sheer joy to read.
Once the procedure is done, Tully is held for a few weeks. The procedure sometimes overshoots a little, and so Tully is monitored while the technicians make sure that he can still function in society. But Tully's "wipe" was clean, and soon he is freed. Legally, Tully is a new person, but before the procedure Tully chose to remain married to his wife, Susan, and so she picks him up from the prison. Tully doesn't recognize her, of course, but his reconditioning has prepared him, to some degree, to return home.
Here is where the story takes its first bizarre turn. A few weeks after returning home, Charles realizes that Susan is lying about something that happened in their previous life. The lie itself is not consequential, but Tully is shocked. He shouldn't have been able to recognize it at all. It appears that some of his memories are intact, though they are not accessible until something brings them out of the recesses of his mind.
Charles begins to find clues about his previous life, and they spark more memories. Susan tries to shield him from the facts about his previous life, but to the reader, some of her lies are inexplicable. Susan is hiding something. She packs Charles off to spend time with his sister, a federal judge, and we feel that we are on the cusp of discovering what her motives are. But then there is a knock at the door, and the stranger on the doorsteps announces that he is Charles Tully, returning home from an extended hospitalization. He tries to kiss her and is upset when she pushes him away.
"Real Charles," meanwhile, confronts his sister and demands an explanation for his patchwork of memories. She tries to evade his questions, but he has pieced together quite a lot, and finally she tells him about the embezzlement, the conviction, and the punishment. She also tells him about his previous life—his alcoholism, his depression, his gambling, his adultery. We realize that his marriage was essentially over when the FBI arrested him. And we learn that when he was arrested, the FBI found only a tiny fraction of the money that he had stolen. Susan's behavior begins to make sense.
Meanwhile Susan has managed, with considerable awkwardness, to convince the stranger who thinks he is Charles Tully to rent a hotel room, and the two order delivery food and eat it there. Unlike the "real" Charles Tully, this man has easily accessible memories of the time period that was wiped from her husband's memory. But the memories are patchy and mostly incoherent, and from time to time he pauses and loses his composure as inconsistencies crop up. He is clearly on edge, barely hanging on to the thread, and in his confusion he has become childlike and easily manipulated. Susan plies him with beer and coaxes his story from him.
Of course, what has happened is that the team responsible for wiping Tully's memory has intentionally done an incomplete job, in an attempt to track down the hundreds of millions that they assume Tully has hidden away. A smaller group of conspirators has tried to implant Tully's memories into another prisoner undergoing the procedure. The memories proved to be too fragmented to track down the money, and the team had no choice but to release the man on schedule.
That's about as much of the plot as I should divulge—I've probably gone too far already—but there's one interesting technique that Dave uses that, unfortunately, probably means that the book can never be made into a movie. In the last third of the book, Dave starts referring to each of the men simply as "Tully," introducing intentional ambiguity about which man Susan ultimately chooses. Of course this ambiguity is untranslatable to film, which is too bad in a sense. Dave has recaptured the vivid, cinematic feel of his early science fiction, and Tabula Rasa would make a stunning movie and a welcome break from the stream of comic book blockbusters and superficial fantasy movies that have proliferated in recent years. This was not to be—but the book is still a sheer joy to read.
Saturday, September 26, 2015
Alan's The Weight of the World
It is always a pleasure to watch a new literary light appear on the horizon, although in Alan's case, some critics maintain that a more appropriate term would be "literary lite." Alan's first effort, The Weight of the World, is an experimental science fiction novel that takes its inspiration from President Reagan's famous statement that humans of all nationalities and ideologies would unite in the face of an alien invasion.
The Weight of the World envisions a strangely familiar near-future in which Russia, teetering between democracy and authoritarianism, capitalism and gangsterism, elects as president a young technocrat named Alexei Gorbachev, who ran on an anti-corruption platform. His project is derailed when a group of Russian petroleum engineers is captured by an extremist Muslim group operating in Libya, forcing him to focus all of his attention on the crisis as it develops.
In the midst of this disruption, a far bigger threat appears: a fleet of alien spaceships approaches Earth and threatens to invade. Now President Reagan's hypothesis is put to the test, as a common threat looms over all of humanity and our common fate is readily apparent.
I won't reveal what happens, but I will share perhaps the most controversial scene in the book, one that has divided critics and confounded any attempt to categorize The Weight. By this point in the book, humans have developed a technology that can convert the force of gravity into a devastating beam, the only weapon capable of piercing the armor of the alien spaceships. As the humans prepare to mount a final decisive attack, they realize that they must measure the incremental gravity that will result from millions of barrels of mercury that are being pumped haphazardly into the Great Wall in China. The U.S. president turns to his ally and exclaims, "Mr. Gorbachev, tare down this wall!"
Alan's harshest critics claim that he started with this scene in mind and that the rest of the novel amounts to an elaborate setup for a groan-inducing pun. Other critics have defended the pun, and some have even argued that Alan has launched a new literary school, one centered around the use of wordplay to convey deep human feeling. If that's true, then it will be very interesting to watch this new genre unfold. And I look forward to reporting on it.
The Weight of the World envisions a strangely familiar near-future in which Russia, teetering between democracy and authoritarianism, capitalism and gangsterism, elects as president a young technocrat named Alexei Gorbachev, who ran on an anti-corruption platform. His project is derailed when a group of Russian petroleum engineers is captured by an extremist Muslim group operating in Libya, forcing him to focus all of his attention on the crisis as it develops.
In the midst of this disruption, a far bigger threat appears: a fleet of alien spaceships approaches Earth and threatens to invade. Now President Reagan's hypothesis is put to the test, as a common threat looms over all of humanity and our common fate is readily apparent.
I won't reveal what happens, but I will share perhaps the most controversial scene in the book, one that has divided critics and confounded any attempt to categorize The Weight. By this point in the book, humans have developed a technology that can convert the force of gravity into a devastating beam, the only weapon capable of piercing the armor of the alien spaceships. As the humans prepare to mount a final decisive attack, they realize that they must measure the incremental gravity that will result from millions of barrels of mercury that are being pumped haphazardly into the Great Wall in China. The U.S. president turns to his ally and exclaims, "Mr. Gorbachev, tare down this wall!"
Alan's harshest critics claim that he started with this scene in mind and that the rest of the novel amounts to an elaborate setup for a groan-inducing pun. Other critics have defended the pun, and some have even argued that Alan has launched a new literary school, one centered around the use of wordplay to convey deep human feeling. If that's true, then it will be very interesting to watch this new genre unfold. And I look forward to reporting on it.
Saturday, September 19, 2015
Sarang's Render to Caesar
All the excitement in television this summer centers on Sarang's HBO series, "Render to Caesar" (tagline: "Drugs. Murder. Sects."), which has finally allowed Sarang to operate free of the prudish constraints of network television. The show follows a unit of the Roman police trying to maintain order in Judea, which is seething with revolutionaries, cults, and everyday criminality. Sarang portrays the Roman institutions of governance as dysfunctional and ineffective, but when a high-ranking official's somewhat soft-headed brother-in-law gives away all of his money following an encounter with a shadowy religious zealot, a special unit is formed to investigate. Although the unit is staffed by castoffs and misfits, its intelligent, pragmatic leader and his commitment to "real po-lice work" soon produce results.
Whether those results will be palatable to the existing political and religious power structure is another question, though, and in many ways Sarang's exploration of this issue constitutes the core of the show. In Judea, truth is the first victim of the political machinations of the elites, and the justice system is merely the stage on which political ambitions play out. The only people who can operate with integrity are low-level players such as an arrogant, alcoholic detective from Hibernia, who is the closest thing the show has to a hero.
An interesting aspect of the show is that it portrays several groups in parallel—the police, of course, but also religious groups, politicians, and a network of criminals smuggling contraband through the province. (The second season will apparently focus on dockworkers in the port of Caesaria Maritima.) The viewer comes to realize that in their dysfunction and alienation, these groups are more similar to each other than they first appear. Institutions are all alike, Sarang tells us. They crush individualism, compromise human values, and smother individual efforts to make sense of the world and achieve anything resembling justice. Only by carving out protected spaces in bureaucratic backwaters can individuals accomplish anything meaningful, and when those pockets of effectiveness come to the attention of the incumbent elites, the results are cataclysmic.
I caught up with Sarang at the release party for the pilot episode (which Sarang annoyingly insists be rendered "the Pilate episode" in all written materials). Unfortunately, we didn't get to discuss the show very much, because Sarang spent most of the time lashing out at Dave, whose reaction to the show has been... less than generous. When Sarang started tweeting short clips of the show to generate interest, Dave and his arena rock band, Boltzmann Penis, released the parody song "Blurred Vines," which has become a huge hit and generated intense controversy when it was played at the VMAs. Dave has since made his rounds through the talk shows, criticizing Sarang's decision to film the show in English rather than Greek, Latin, and Aramaic. (Dave invariably describes Sarang's decision as "selling his artistic integrity for 30 pieces of silver." He also likes to joke that Jesus was lucky that Peter disowned him only three times before the cock crowed, whereas Sarang forsakes literature and good taste "basically every time he turns on a camera.") On Charlie Rose, Dave mocked Sarang's decision to focus the second season on a largely white cast of characters, predicting that Sarang's attempt to widen the show's appeal would backfire artistically.
I wouldn't be so hasty. Sarang has found compelling drama in unexpected places before, and most of the cast from the first season will return to reprise their roles. When the Season 2 DVDs arrive (and I expect them any day), I doubt I will be able to resist binge-watching the season over the course of a weekend. The show's verisimilitude and incredibly compelling plot more than make up for whatever deficiencies Dave has found, and I can't wait to plunge into the world of the show again.
Whether those results will be palatable to the existing political and religious power structure is another question, though, and in many ways Sarang's exploration of this issue constitutes the core of the show. In Judea, truth is the first victim of the political machinations of the elites, and the justice system is merely the stage on which political ambitions play out. The only people who can operate with integrity are low-level players such as an arrogant, alcoholic detective from Hibernia, who is the closest thing the show has to a hero.
An interesting aspect of the show is that it portrays several groups in parallel—the police, of course, but also religious groups, politicians, and a network of criminals smuggling contraband through the province. (The second season will apparently focus on dockworkers in the port of Caesaria Maritima.) The viewer comes to realize that in their dysfunction and alienation, these groups are more similar to each other than they first appear. Institutions are all alike, Sarang tells us. They crush individualism, compromise human values, and smother individual efforts to make sense of the world and achieve anything resembling justice. Only by carving out protected spaces in bureaucratic backwaters can individuals accomplish anything meaningful, and when those pockets of effectiveness come to the attention of the incumbent elites, the results are cataclysmic.
I caught up with Sarang at the release party for the pilot episode (which Sarang annoyingly insists be rendered "the Pilate episode" in all written materials). Unfortunately, we didn't get to discuss the show very much, because Sarang spent most of the time lashing out at Dave, whose reaction to the show has been... less than generous. When Sarang started tweeting short clips of the show to generate interest, Dave and his arena rock band, Boltzmann Penis, released the parody song "Blurred Vines," which has become a huge hit and generated intense controversy when it was played at the VMAs. Dave has since made his rounds through the talk shows, criticizing Sarang's decision to film the show in English rather than Greek, Latin, and Aramaic. (Dave invariably describes Sarang's decision as "selling his artistic integrity for 30 pieces of silver." He also likes to joke that Jesus was lucky that Peter disowned him only three times before the cock crowed, whereas Sarang forsakes literature and good taste "basically every time he turns on a camera.") On Charlie Rose, Dave mocked Sarang's decision to focus the second season on a largely white cast of characters, predicting that Sarang's attempt to widen the show's appeal would backfire artistically.
I wouldn't be so hasty. Sarang has found compelling drama in unexpected places before, and most of the cast from the first season will return to reprise their roles. When the Season 2 DVDs arrive (and I expect them any day), I doubt I will be able to resist binge-watching the season over the course of a weekend. The show's verisimilitude and incredibly compelling plot more than make up for whatever deficiencies Dave has found, and I can't wait to plunge into the world of the show again.
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Calista's The Devil and the Deep Sea
Calista's latest effort, The Devil and the Deep Sea, is a subtle and nuanced examination of the way we negotiate the terrain between art and law, and the extent to which personal dimensions govern that space. The story, which is set in the early 1980s, is loosely based on the artwork "Shoot" by Chris Burden, in which Burden was shot in the arm with a .22 rifle. In real life, there were no legal consequences. In Calista's version, the matter comes to the attention of Louis Gelb, a prosecutor in Memphis, Tennessee. Gelb vacillates, but ultimately he brings charges against Robert Fink—not the artist, but a friend of the artist who was roped into the art project and who pulled the trigger. The artist, Jim Sullivan, is also charged, but the charge—disturbing the peace—results only in a 30-day suspended sentence and a $50 fine. Sullivan pays up, and no controversy is generated.
But Gelb brings felony charges against Fink, and this stirs up the hornets' nest that drives the rest of the book. Fink is an earnest college student who simply thought he was helping Jim Sullivan, his idol, produce an avant-garde work of art. Gelb and his wife are ostracized from their social circle in Memphis, and Gelb comes under heavy criticism from the media.
Calista has a sharp eye for the ways that people's responses, varied and fluid at first, harden over time. She also writes insightfully about the way that the reaction of Memphis's elites says as much about their insecurities and ambitions as it does about Gelb and Fink. Gelb brought his family to Memphis after his wife was threatened on a subway in New York, and his arrival in the city was heralded as a sign that Memphis was cosmopolitan enough to compete with bigger, higher-status cities. Now his decision to prosecute Fink is portrayed in the New Yorker and elsewhere as a sign of the city's provincialism and redneck mentality.
Why does Gelb insist on prosecuting Fink? The book gives us several possible answers. The one that puts Gelb in the best light involves a case that came to him as a junior prosecutor in New York. A black teenager, relentlessly bullied because of his obesity, took an unloaded handgun to school as a last-ditch effort to scare his tormentors into leaving him alone. Gelb believed this was a desperate strategy employed by an otherwise sweet-tempered and law-abiding young man, but he was forced to bring weapons charges that ended the boy's high school career and effectively ruined his life. Gelb dwells on the disparity of outcomes... a scared black kid makes a mistake and ruins his life, whereas an entitled white kid knowingly shoots someone and wants to get off scot-free. Fink's lawyer doesn't help matters when he tells Gelb that his client is "a good kid... not one of those," gesturing at the jail cells behind them, filled mostly with black men.
But darker motivations may lurk beneath. Gelb's marriage is in trouble, and it is hard to exaggerate how big a chip he has on his shoulder about his working-class upbringing. His wife's old boyfriends, as well as a friend she reconnects with over the course of the novel, are all upper-middle-class Jews... much like Fink.
It is also pretty clear that while Gelb enjoys his initial success with high society in Memphis, even then he despises the city's small, monochromatic, unsophisticated upper class. After a cocktail party, Gelb won't stop mocking their acquaintances ("Oh, yes, I so enjoyed Wuthering Heights by Jane Austen. Such appreciation for the classics these Southerners have!"). This sparks one of the ugliest fights between Gelb and his wife, and the next day Gelb learns that a hospital has reported a gunshot injury to the police, launching his involvement in the Fink case.
Several chapters follow a New Yorker writer who is dispatched to Memphis to cover the story, and in many ways these chapters are the most illuminating in the book. Sullivan, for instance, gives a several-page monologue on the borderline between art and non-art, his role in exploring that boundary, and Gelb's role in defining it according to the dictates of his conscience. But Sullivan, wracked with guilt over Fink's involvement, ultimately decides to take a much more simplistic line, calling Gelb a bullying cretin and joining the calls for his dismissal. Calista plays this as an understandably human reaction, but also as a betrayal of Sullivan's artistic integrity. In some ways Sullivan's struggle is the moral heart of the book.
I actually had a chance to sit down with Calista to discuss the book at the 92nd Street Y, and the conversation touched on some very interesting points. Here is a partial transcript:
James: Let me start by saying that this book is almost certainly top 10 for the year. I mean, I don't want to sort of pre-shadow—
Calista: You don't want to spoil the much-anticipated—
James: —right, the highly anticipated James top-10 list. That's going to be clickbait in like the middle of December. But anyway this book is just stunning, but counter-intuitively I want to start with maybe my biggest criticism, which is in the nature of a missed opportunity.
Calista: Is this about the jury deliberations? Because you know, it's interesting, I had originally written it—
James: No, forgive me, no, it's just. You've got Memphis high society, you've got the smaller circle of Jewish, I don't want to call them intellectuals, but highly educated Jews who are friends of the Gelbs. And you've got this New Yorker writer, and the larger media culture. And the sentiment is, this guy is a philistine. He's Memphis at its worst, redneck... That's sort of, initially the response is much more varied, but things kind of solidify and everyone gets on the same page. Even Sullivan.
Calista: That's right, I'm really glad that came through, because that was absolutely... you know, the book is set in the 1980s, but in a lot of ways I think you see this dynamic today on Twitter. People don't know what to make of something, and so they—
James: Okay, but here it is. The guy's name is Louis Gelb. Lou Gelb. And I sort of thought to myself, why not name him Phil E. Stein? Get it? Phil E. Stein. It's even a Jewish name.
[long pause]
Calista: Well, let me put it this way. I think that's a joke that only someone at your intellectual level would really appreciate.
James: You know, I guess that's right, the book needs to work on all levels. It needs to work for people who might not have quite my level of... but you know, won't it just go over those people's heads? Won't it be, like, no harm no foul? Like if you get it, great, but if you're maybe a little less intelligent, a little less sensitive to literary allusions...
Calista: Is that a... is that a literary allusion, really?
James: Let's move on.
But Gelb brings felony charges against Fink, and this stirs up the hornets' nest that drives the rest of the book. Fink is an earnest college student who simply thought he was helping Jim Sullivan, his idol, produce an avant-garde work of art. Gelb and his wife are ostracized from their social circle in Memphis, and Gelb comes under heavy criticism from the media.
Calista has a sharp eye for the ways that people's responses, varied and fluid at first, harden over time. She also writes insightfully about the way that the reaction of Memphis's elites says as much about their insecurities and ambitions as it does about Gelb and Fink. Gelb brought his family to Memphis after his wife was threatened on a subway in New York, and his arrival in the city was heralded as a sign that Memphis was cosmopolitan enough to compete with bigger, higher-status cities. Now his decision to prosecute Fink is portrayed in the New Yorker and elsewhere as a sign of the city's provincialism and redneck mentality.
Why does Gelb insist on prosecuting Fink? The book gives us several possible answers. The one that puts Gelb in the best light involves a case that came to him as a junior prosecutor in New York. A black teenager, relentlessly bullied because of his obesity, took an unloaded handgun to school as a last-ditch effort to scare his tormentors into leaving him alone. Gelb believed this was a desperate strategy employed by an otherwise sweet-tempered and law-abiding young man, but he was forced to bring weapons charges that ended the boy's high school career and effectively ruined his life. Gelb dwells on the disparity of outcomes... a scared black kid makes a mistake and ruins his life, whereas an entitled white kid knowingly shoots someone and wants to get off scot-free. Fink's lawyer doesn't help matters when he tells Gelb that his client is "a good kid... not one of those," gesturing at the jail cells behind them, filled mostly with black men.
But darker motivations may lurk beneath. Gelb's marriage is in trouble, and it is hard to exaggerate how big a chip he has on his shoulder about his working-class upbringing. His wife's old boyfriends, as well as a friend she reconnects with over the course of the novel, are all upper-middle-class Jews... much like Fink.
It is also pretty clear that while Gelb enjoys his initial success with high society in Memphis, even then he despises the city's small, monochromatic, unsophisticated upper class. After a cocktail party, Gelb won't stop mocking their acquaintances ("Oh, yes, I so enjoyed Wuthering Heights by Jane Austen. Such appreciation for the classics these Southerners have!"). This sparks one of the ugliest fights between Gelb and his wife, and the next day Gelb learns that a hospital has reported a gunshot injury to the police, launching his involvement in the Fink case.
Several chapters follow a New Yorker writer who is dispatched to Memphis to cover the story, and in many ways these chapters are the most illuminating in the book. Sullivan, for instance, gives a several-page monologue on the borderline between art and non-art, his role in exploring that boundary, and Gelb's role in defining it according to the dictates of his conscience. But Sullivan, wracked with guilt over Fink's involvement, ultimately decides to take a much more simplistic line, calling Gelb a bullying cretin and joining the calls for his dismissal. Calista plays this as an understandably human reaction, but also as a betrayal of Sullivan's artistic integrity. In some ways Sullivan's struggle is the moral heart of the book.
I actually had a chance to sit down with Calista to discuss the book at the 92nd Street Y, and the conversation touched on some very interesting points. Here is a partial transcript:
James: Let me start by saying that this book is almost certainly top 10 for the year. I mean, I don't want to sort of pre-shadow—
Calista: You don't want to spoil the much-anticipated—
James: —right, the highly anticipated James top-10 list. That's going to be clickbait in like the middle of December. But anyway this book is just stunning, but counter-intuitively I want to start with maybe my biggest criticism, which is in the nature of a missed opportunity.
Calista: Is this about the jury deliberations? Because you know, it's interesting, I had originally written it—
James: No, forgive me, no, it's just. You've got Memphis high society, you've got the smaller circle of Jewish, I don't want to call them intellectuals, but highly educated Jews who are friends of the Gelbs. And you've got this New Yorker writer, and the larger media culture. And the sentiment is, this guy is a philistine. He's Memphis at its worst, redneck... That's sort of, initially the response is much more varied, but things kind of solidify and everyone gets on the same page. Even Sullivan.
Calista: That's right, I'm really glad that came through, because that was absolutely... you know, the book is set in the 1980s, but in a lot of ways I think you see this dynamic today on Twitter. People don't know what to make of something, and so they—
James: Okay, but here it is. The guy's name is Louis Gelb. Lou Gelb. And I sort of thought to myself, why not name him Phil E. Stein? Get it? Phil E. Stein. It's even a Jewish name.
[long pause]
Calista: Well, let me put it this way. I think that's a joke that only someone at your intellectual level would really appreciate.
James: You know, I guess that's right, the book needs to work on all levels. It needs to work for people who might not have quite my level of... but you know, won't it just go over those people's heads? Won't it be, like, no harm no foul? Like if you get it, great, but if you're maybe a little less intelligent, a little less sensitive to literary allusions...
Calista: Is that a... is that a literary allusion, really?
James: Let's move on.
Sunday, May 10, 2015
Dave's The Carriers
Dave's latest effort, The Carriers, is something of a return to form for the reclusive novelist. After the commercial failure of his nonfiction opus Entertaining Anecdotes from The Lives of U.S. Senators Told from the Perspective of Someone Who Urgently Needs to Urinate, Dave retreated to a rental apartment in Osaka and ignored all communications for 14 months, to the consternation of his readers and the wider literary world. But when Dave emerged last summer, pale and blinking in the bright August sunlight, he held in his hands a typewritten manuscript running to some 2,200 pages. Since then the book has been laboriously translated into English from a private language that Dave invented and then partially forgot, and it has been stripped of the many passages that Dave copied verbatim from Entertaining Anecdotes. The result is The Carriers, one of the greatest novels ever written about illness and the struggle for human connection.
Set in a thinly fictionalized Victorian England, the book chronicles the appearance and rapid spread of a devastating sexually transmitted virus. People who are infected go through a symptomless (but contagious) stage and then develop terrible lesions, debilitating organ failure, sterility, and in many cases premature death. But not everyone is vulnerable: 10-15% of the population is completely immune. The virus can't gain a foothold in their bodies, and they neither experience symptoms nor transmit the disease.
But a much smaller fraction of the population has a different response: their bodies never develop the symptoms of the disease, but they remain contagious for their entire lives, exposing anyone they have sex with. For some time, the existence of these "carriers" is a matter of scientific dispute, and here Dave weaves an enthralling story about scientists and policymakers and their grim efforts to understand the disease and stem its tide.
But the book really gets going about a third of the way through, when the existence of carriers is proved conclusively and the government implements "the Programme"—a policy of isolating carriers from the rest of the population for the remainder of their lives. (It is thought unnecessary and cruel to isolate people who are exhibiting symptoms, since there is no danger of contagion other than through sexual contact. On the other hand, temporary quarantines are set up for people thought to have been exposed to the virus, so that they don't transmit it before the symptoms set in.)
The problem is that carriers are almost impossible to identify unless they turn themselves in. Charles Stonton, the administrator of the Programme, launches a controversial campaign to track the carriers down using forced interrogation and peremptory detainment. Members of Parliament, Government officials, judges, and doctors are split on the effectiveness and legality of Stonton's tactics. Stonton's hand is strengthened considerably, though, when he rounds up seven men who continued having promiscuous sex even though they very likely knew they were carriers. But are the men representative of a larger trend, or are they sensationalized outliers, of the sort bound to crop up in a large country?
Dave's most compelling prose is reserved for the domestic dramas that ensue—women who fear that their husbands are carriers, husbands who without explanation stop having sex with their wives, wives who join their husbands (accused of being carriers) in isolation camps. People are forced to put aside the platitudes and evasions they formerly relied on, because too much is at stake if they are wrong. And people are forced to reexamine the assumptions that, in a more innocent world, seemed built on stone. One woman bemoans the "strange new math that we have been forced to learn" and remembers fondly the days when math seemed "useless and remote, a chilly cathedral" that was compulsory to learn but not to use.
The book's triumph comes from its reconciliation of two seemingly contradictory aims. First, it is unblinking and unromantic about the remorseless logic of the disease and the stringent measures taken to fight it. But bizarrely, a deeply moving romanticism develops regardless, emerging from the struggles, painful failures, and rare triumphs that people find. "Somewhere out there," a husband says, gesturing vaguely toward the New World, "There is a place where none of this has happened, where people can love freely and without consequence. But we have been shattered, and all that is left for us is to make what we can of the pieces. Of life itself." He is speaking of his marriage, but it would be a fitting summary of this masterful novel.
Set in a thinly fictionalized Victorian England, the book chronicles the appearance and rapid spread of a devastating sexually transmitted virus. People who are infected go through a symptomless (but contagious) stage and then develop terrible lesions, debilitating organ failure, sterility, and in many cases premature death. But not everyone is vulnerable: 10-15% of the population is completely immune. The virus can't gain a foothold in their bodies, and they neither experience symptoms nor transmit the disease.
But a much smaller fraction of the population has a different response: their bodies never develop the symptoms of the disease, but they remain contagious for their entire lives, exposing anyone they have sex with. For some time, the existence of these "carriers" is a matter of scientific dispute, and here Dave weaves an enthralling story about scientists and policymakers and their grim efforts to understand the disease and stem its tide.
But the book really gets going about a third of the way through, when the existence of carriers is proved conclusively and the government implements "the Programme"—a policy of isolating carriers from the rest of the population for the remainder of their lives. (It is thought unnecessary and cruel to isolate people who are exhibiting symptoms, since there is no danger of contagion other than through sexual contact. On the other hand, temporary quarantines are set up for people thought to have been exposed to the virus, so that they don't transmit it before the symptoms set in.)
The problem is that carriers are almost impossible to identify unless they turn themselves in. Charles Stonton, the administrator of the Programme, launches a controversial campaign to track the carriers down using forced interrogation and peremptory detainment. Members of Parliament, Government officials, judges, and doctors are split on the effectiveness and legality of Stonton's tactics. Stonton's hand is strengthened considerably, though, when he rounds up seven men who continued having promiscuous sex even though they very likely knew they were carriers. But are the men representative of a larger trend, or are they sensationalized outliers, of the sort bound to crop up in a large country?
Dave's most compelling prose is reserved for the domestic dramas that ensue—women who fear that their husbands are carriers, husbands who without explanation stop having sex with their wives, wives who join their husbands (accused of being carriers) in isolation camps. People are forced to put aside the platitudes and evasions they formerly relied on, because too much is at stake if they are wrong. And people are forced to reexamine the assumptions that, in a more innocent world, seemed built on stone. One woman bemoans the "strange new math that we have been forced to learn" and remembers fondly the days when math seemed "useless and remote, a chilly cathedral" that was compulsory to learn but not to use.
The book's triumph comes from its reconciliation of two seemingly contradictory aims. First, it is unblinking and unromantic about the remorseless logic of the disease and the stringent measures taken to fight it. But bizarrely, a deeply moving romanticism develops regardless, emerging from the struggles, painful failures, and rare triumphs that people find. "Somewhere out there," a husband says, gesturing vaguely toward the New World, "There is a place where none of this has happened, where people can love freely and without consequence. But we have been shattered, and all that is left for us is to make what we can of the pieces. Of life itself." He is speaking of his marriage, but it would be a fitting summary of this masterful novel.
Monday, May 4, 2015
Sarang's Cool It! How We Can Tap the Upper Atmosphere for Safer, Healthier, and More Sustainable Lives
Sarang's latest effort, Cool It! How We Can Tap the Upper Atmosphere for Safer, Healthier, and More Sustainable Lives, is very different from his previous works. Bookstores have not been given clear instructions on where to display the book, and so it has popped up in fiction, nonfiction, politics, science, opinion, and fantasy. Just about the only place it hasn't appeared is the New York Times bestseller list—not because its sales have disappointed, but because the New York Times refuses to "countenance Sarang's ridiculous performance art" by choosing whether to put it on the fiction or nonfiction list.
Cool It! proposes the construction of 4-mile-high towers shaped like the St. Louis Arch (except that each tower would consist of two arches set at right angles to each other and meeting at the top). Pipes would carry water (actually a solution of water and propylene glycol) through the arches, radiating heat away at the top (where temperatures average about 75°F below the temperatures at ground level) and then returning to the surface to be used in air conditioning and refrigeration. Sarang calculates that a few dozen towers could cool an entire city—indoors and out—eliminating the need for air conditioning and allowing people to enjoy outdoor activities all summer long. The towers would also contain lightning rods and would protect vast areas from lightning strikes.
Sarang's reputation precedes him, and critics have approached the book gingerly, fearing that it is some sort of Sokal hoax. Malcolm Gladwell fulminated, "How can I review a book that refuses to put its cards on the table?" (He declined to take the book at face value and called it "a mockery of the brand of journalism I have practiced my whole life, and which I still believe in.") Cass Sunstein greeted Sarang's idea warmly, but noted, "By endorsing the idea, I may be setting myself up for the biggest embarrassment of my life." (Dave tweeted: "Apparently Prof. Sunstein has forgotten about Republic.com 2.0.")
For what it's worth, Sarang insists the plan is real, and has offered to install the system in any city willing to pay a fee that is "commensurate with the services I will be providing and sufficient to cover my expenses while leaving me with a modest profit." So far, no one has taken him up on his offer.
I'll go out on a limb and say that I think the suggestion is worthwhile whether it is serious or not. We are faced with calamity on a grand scale, and it will require every ounce of inventiveness and daring to save our planet and our civilization. The towers must be built—and the sooner the better.
Cool It! proposes the construction of 4-mile-high towers shaped like the St. Louis Arch (except that each tower would consist of two arches set at right angles to each other and meeting at the top). Pipes would carry water (actually a solution of water and propylene glycol) through the arches, radiating heat away at the top (where temperatures average about 75°F below the temperatures at ground level) and then returning to the surface to be used in air conditioning and refrigeration. Sarang calculates that a few dozen towers could cool an entire city—indoors and out—eliminating the need for air conditioning and allowing people to enjoy outdoor activities all summer long. The towers would also contain lightning rods and would protect vast areas from lightning strikes.
Sarang's reputation precedes him, and critics have approached the book gingerly, fearing that it is some sort of Sokal hoax. Malcolm Gladwell fulminated, "How can I review a book that refuses to put its cards on the table?" (He declined to take the book at face value and called it "a mockery of the brand of journalism I have practiced my whole life, and which I still believe in.") Cass Sunstein greeted Sarang's idea warmly, but noted, "By endorsing the idea, I may be setting myself up for the biggest embarrassment of my life." (Dave tweeted: "Apparently Prof. Sunstein has forgotten about Republic.com 2.0.")
For what it's worth, Sarang insists the plan is real, and has offered to install the system in any city willing to pay a fee that is "commensurate with the services I will be providing and sufficient to cover my expenses while leaving me with a modest profit." So far, no one has taken him up on his offer.
I'll go out on a limb and say that I think the suggestion is worthwhile whether it is serious or not. We are faced with calamity on a grand scale, and it will require every ounce of inventiveness and daring to save our planet and our civilization. The towers must be built—and the sooner the better.
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