“Men have two fears / The first is crashing your hang glider / Into the center of the ocean at 1 am / And having to swim around naked for hours / Until a shark hears you splashing / The other fear is living forever” – Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi, “sleep story”
Miraculously, it’s Friday. How do we even get to this point every week? I’m exhausted. But we’re here. Let’s talk about two incredible books. But first! New Lazy & Entitled Podcast this week. I’m flying solo! Reading from Anarcho-Indigenism: Conversations On Land and Freedom, the Gord Hill and Clifton Ariwakehte Nicholas interviews. Also Studs Terkel’s Working, the Roberto Acuna and Jack Spiegel interviews. Apple | Spotify | SoundCloud
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:
Two books that, again, paired shockingly well. I mean really went together like buttered popcorn and cherry coke spiked with a little cherry limeade THC syrup. Do you ever feel not quite right in the world? Do you ever feel out of step, like a bit of a weirdo? Is it sometimes horrifying? Does it sometimes make you laugh a whole lot? Well, you need to go read Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson and Disintegration Made Plain And Easy by Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi.
Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson: somewhat miraculously, this is only the second time I’ve ever read this book. I read “Car Crash While Hitchhiking” in my first undergrad fiction workshop in 2008 and then the whole book I believe in 2010. Even though I wanted to read basically nothing else ever again, I waited 15 years. I think I was afraid of it having too much influence on me. There is a certain type of white guy who gets really into Denis Johnson, and those dudes can be bleak clichés.
This book, however, remains a singular work. What he does with prose—leaping from thought to thought, event to event, negating the previous or paragraph (“or maybe that wasn’t what happened” is a frequent sentiment)—nothing I’ve ever read moves like these stories. Yes, that’s partially because these are alcoholic/drug addict stories. The narrator is a man who has hit bottom and then let his addictions drag him lower, and we get to read about it. Yet there’s enough yearning for something—beauty and truth? Good sex? A good high?—that you always feel like the narrator sees life clearly for what it is. Or maybe one version of what life is. In the very last story, “Beverly Home,” he sees a different vision of a humbler, more righteous approach to life. It’s kind of remarkable, the turn his outlook takes in “Steady Hands At Seattle General” and “Beverly Home.” Of course, this life-affirming revelation in “Beverly Home” comes because the narrator, newly sober, is now a Peeping Tom. Nothing’s ever uncomplicated with this asshole! If you can stomach some pretty appalling behavior (sometimes very funny appalling behavior, but always appalling), these are some of the very best short stories ever written. If you think you know what the form can do? Read this collection and have your world flipped.
Disintegration Made Plain And Easy by Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi: what to think, when you’re in the process of making a new friend—a new poet friend—who tells you, “yeah I started a press because my friend’s book was so good and it wasn’t getting picked up and he was gonna abandon it so I published it.” I have to confess, talking to Ben Nespodziany on the L&E podcast, that I approached this book cautiously. Not that starting a press to publish a book you believe in is a bad thing—Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant did that with Small Beer Press, and what a success story that is. Ben is not only someone I like, but someone I admire. He’s a great poet himself, for one, and his tireless work as a Poet In A Scene, both online and irl, more than establishes the dude’s bonfides. Plus, this book’s sold out. Still, the thought nagged at me: what if this book is so obviously a vanity thing/one person’s obsession that it ends up being sad? Pathetic, even? It’s an irrational fear, yes, but I never wanna be saying nice things just to say nice things.
All of that throat-clearing is to say: I was absolutely blown away by this book. I started reading it at 5 a.m. one morning and was laughing so hard, just my cat and me on the couch with one light on and a cup of coffee cooling. WHAT ARE YOU DOING, MORE ESTABLISHED PRESSES, NOT PUBLISHING THIS? These poems are vulnerable, funny, irreverent, surprising, sad, sometimes about X-Men, sometimes asking what Elmer Fudd would feel like if he ate Bugs Bunny. These poems are full of nudity, these poems are like sitting at the lunch table with the funniest kid in school and realizing how profoundly sad they are. We’re in the Mathias Svalina/Heather Cristle/Julie Doxsee/Adrian Sobol range of surreal poetry. Not as whimsical as Zachary Schomburg, although he blurbs the book and it feels appropriate. This is an incredible book of poems. I will be close-reading one on the blog soon, I will be re-reading this book many many times. Ben should do 100 runs on this book and it should sell out every time and Kiik should get live the lavish life of a jewel thief based on his poetry.
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? Have we done Cloakroom? I really like Cloakroom. Especially the shimmery, quasi-50s melody, quasi-Nirvana guitar effects on this song.
- Gonna say up top: Greg Bovino and a good amount ICE troops might be leaving Chicago, but ICE is not out of Chicago. Some jagoffs got cold and ran scared to New Orleans, but a bunch of them are still here, and our communities are still under attack. From Chicago Reader: Chicago has always defied kidnappings of our neighbors by Jeff Nichols, How immigrants shaped Chicago’s bar scene by Tara Mobasher, and Chicago tenants demand eviction moratorium as long as ICE is in our city, by DMB aka Devyn-Marshall Brown
- From South Side Weekly: Cook County Board Reapproves Contract with ICE-Linked Data Firm as Raids Sweep Chicago and Junta del Condado de Cook renueva contrato con empresa de datos vinculados a ICE mientras se realizan redadas en Chicago by Alma Campos, and After ICE Raid, Swap-O-Rama Vendors Push for Safety by José Abonce
- From Block Club: ‘I Lost Everything’: Venezuelans Were Rounded Up In Dramatic South Shore Raid But Never Charged With A Crime by Melissa Sanchez, Jodi S. Cohen, T. Christian Miller, Sebastian Rotella, and Mariam Elba (originally in ProPublica), Chicago Daycare Teacher Taken By Feds Has Been Released by Molly DeVore, 6 Broadview Protestors Plead Not Guilty To Conspiracy Charges As Supporters Rally: ‘We Will Win’ by Madison Savedra, Protesters Keep Getting Arrested At Broadview By State Police Despite Promise To Protect Free Speech by Mina Bloom and Charles Thrush, and Federal Judge Sets March Trial Over Use Of Force In Immigration Crackdown by Mina Bloom and Mick Dumke.
- From The Triibe: Racist police violence is always the common denominator by Bella BAHHS and These Black Chicagoland organizations are stepping up to fill the gap of the SNAP freeze by Corli Jay (yes, I said last week that I was focusing on ICE above all else, but this falls under the umbrella of neighbors helping neighbors, so it feels important to include. Plus, I love the echoes of what the Black Panthers did, feeding people).
- And now, for some art and sports: “Going Under” by Lauren MacKinnon and “The Tilt-a-Whirl Knows My Name” by Bethany Bruno, both in Bending Genres. Over at KD On Hoops, I’ve been appreciating Kelly Dwyer’s eye towards history talking about the worst general managers and mediating on how long LeBron’s been in our lives.
I don’t get every story linked. I try to, but it always seems like something happens on a Friday. If ICE is starting to leave, with plans to come back in March? Well, those cowards are gonna hate March, too. And April’s the cruelest fucking month, dickheads. Not that y’all can read. Anyway what are you still doing here? Don’t you know that Micah and Brendan have a show?
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. Denis Johnson teaches us to *not* do every drug our coworkers offer us. Kiik teaches us that “Men have two fears / The first is crashing your hang glider / Into the center of the ocean at 1 am / And having to swim around naked for hours / Until a shark hears you splashing / The other fear is living forever.” No one should want to live forever, but no one should want to end up at Beverly Home. Don’t crash the hang glider.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris
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