Weirdos at Readings

Last week I went to a reading by the wonderful and excellent Patrick deWitt, who was reading from his newest, The Sisters Brothers.

I've been to a lot of these. They all go pretty much the same way. The author gets up to a podium, reads something (which can be sort of disappointing as I don't think I would go see an author I wasn't a fan of, yet they are almost always reading something I've already read), and then goes for the Q&A portion.

This is where things tend to get fun.

At one memorable reading with Chuck Klosterman, who read an excerpt from Killing Yourself to Live that included a reference to the fact that Thomas Jefferson told Lewis and Clark to keep a sharp eye out for Mastodons during their trail time, a guy stood up with this "question": "Lewis and Clark did find something out in those woods that no one had ever seen before. Do you know what it was? Bears." After which he promptly sat down and let that one sink in on all of us.

I wish, for the life of me, that I could remember the answer because Klosterman did a really nice job of not saying something like, I don't know, "What the fuck are you talking about?" Because, though I am not an expert on bears, I am relatively sure that bears were discovered long before Lewis and Clark were even ovum exploring the fallopian tube trails of their respective mothers.

Also, what the hell kind of question is that? It reminds me of the times I visit grade schools. There is a certain age, maybe 3rd or 4th grade, when kids start to understand what a question is, what it's purpose is, and how to ask one in such a way that it can be answered. But when you visit a preschool, for example, and ask for questions, you're likely to get stuff like, "We went to California this summer."

Every reading, without fail, has a person like this, someone who comes up with a bizarre, strange semi-question that is very loosely based on one small thing the author said over the last hour. Something lights up a little part of their brain and the train is now rolling out of the station.

This last week was no exception.

Now, to be fair, the weird questioner was at least asking questions that were related to the material. She'd clearly read it, so she wasn't some berserk hobo off the streets who wanted to make sure we knew that bears were out there and that they could strike when we least expected, while our backs were turned because we were on the lookout for mastodons.

And, to be fair, Mr. deWitt did a damn good job of answering her questions even though they seemed completely insane to me. For example:
"Do you think Eli [the narrator] will ever settle down and have a wife and kid?"

Hmm...maybe a little explanation is necessary.

The book she was referring to is about two brothers who are assassins in the old west. They travel a long way to kill a guy, have some adventures along the way, and end at their mother's house. The entire book takes place over maybe the course of a couple months out of their entire lives.

So, to speculate on whether a character will do something not in the story feels like the thoughts of a crazy person to me. Because, truthfully, the answer is absolutely not. No, of course not, because that character will never do anything ever again because that is the end of his story. He will not do anything that hasn't been written in those pages.

I was completely blown away by the question and had no idea how one would answer it. I felt nervous, sort of like those times when you were watching other kids give speeches in class and you were waiting your turn, not really thinking about what was going on up front but just thinking about how it was almost your turn.

He answered it well, and clearly he thought of his characters as much more than just a few pages worth of a person, which is probably why the book turned out as good as it did.

Like a lot of these question weirdos, she asked several questions. Her last one: "Clearly you got your MFA somewhere. Where did you go and what did you think of it?"

What an odd question.

It turned out that no, in fact, he had never gotten an MFA, nor gone to college, nor finished high school. The answer turned out great because he told a long story of him not being interested in school, becoming interested in writing, working hateful jobs, and so on.

Prefacing can be everything, and why you would preface that question with a "Clearly you" is beyond me, especially when you could just say, "Did you/and if so" instead.

But, if I'm being honest, these weirdos are what make these sorts of things worth going to. I can hear some guy read from a book any day, and it's pretty rare that the author reads a book aloud better than you read it in your head. Even the audiobook, most times, is better read than it is by the author, which shouldn't be a surprise because one person is a writer who is used to writing things down and the other is an actor who is used to taking things written down and giving them expression and life.

If it weren't for these weirdos we'd just get a few words followed by the rote questions When did you know you wanted to be a writer? Who are your influences? and Are they making anything of yours into a movie?

The weirdos are what make it fun, make it an event. If you are unsure about going to a reading, I would say go and bring a really bizarre, obnoxious friend who can't keep his or her mouth shut. It'll be a party.

The Scarlet Letter aka My First Adventure in Cliffs Notes

It's great to finally get back to the classics. It's been far too long since I read a book with careful intensity, noting throwaway lines that are likely to show up on a multiple choice or short answer test that misses the main themes of a book entirely while managing to ask lots of questions like, "In the fourth chapter, what kind of shoes was [character you don't even remember] wearing?"

I was thinking maybe it would be nice to read a book like this without worrying about that stuff, just absorbing it for what it was and then moving on through my life drunk.

Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

It's hard to know where to start with this thing.

The prose itself is almost unreadable. Let me give you an example of what a sentence in this book is like:

A man- who was born in a small town, which bore no resemblance to the town his parents imagined for him when they settled in the area over 40 years ago with every intention of starting a small business selling gift baskets online that sort of petered out after bigger companies like FTD caught onto the whole thing and ran the little guys out with predatory pricing- decided to go for a walk one day.

I shit you not. Whenever I saw a dash I'd skip down to find the second dash, and usually managed to cruise through half a page to find the relevant piece where the prose picked up again.

Word on the street is that Hawthorne, who published the book in 1850, actually wrote it to seem EVEN MORE old-timey than it was, which is pretty goddamn old-timey at this point. As far as I can tell, writing old-timey means:

1. Describing furniture and clothing in such exhaustive detail that royal wedding coverage appears shabby and underdeveloped.

2. Using commas wherever the fuck you feel like it.

3. Structuring the plot in such a way that you already know everything that's going to happen way before it does.

Let's talk plot while we're on the topic.

The plot is like Dynasty with all the juicy parts pulled out. I'm serious. All events could be summed up by video of a guy sitting in front of a sign that says, "Banging people isn't so bad" and winking from time to time. One of the characters is damned, and as she walks through the forest the bits of light that dot the trail through the canopy of trees literally vanish before she can walk into them. Now this would be fine in a book where the damned character was in the woods, say, leading an army of orcs. But in a book where the sexual and social mores of Puritan society are called into question, it kind of overdoes everything and kills the mood.

So it all begs the question: What the fuck is going on with these classics?

The Scarlet Letter, according to a recent study, is the sixth-most taught book in American high schools. It's very popular, and you can hardly enter a Barnes and Noble without seeing a new version with such awesome cover art that it almost tricks you into buying it.

I have a frequent argument with my brother regarding what makes things (movies, books, whatever) great. To him, for example, a movie might be great because it's the first movie to usher in a new era in filmmaking, really redefining an era while paying a loving homage to the past. Context is important to him, and reading the stuff on the IMDB page is part of the movie experience in his world.

For me, I don't really give a shit about context. Knowing that Hawthorne had certain feelings about Puritanism based on his ancestry doesn't really matter much to me. Finding out that the main character was based loosely on the author's wife doesn't really do a whole lot for me. In other words, I demand to be entertained on at least some level, and if the level of entertainment doesn't spur me on to dig deeper, I think that's a failure of the art and not an example of my own laziness contributing to my dislike of the art in question.

Furthermore, when the prose is TOO challenging I am constantly thinking, "This is a book I am reading and here is the next line of this book." I am not at all swept up in the narrative and therefore don't enjoy it nearly as much.

I like to think of books as being like magicians. Take a David Copperfield...the magician, not the book. His schtick is to do amazing tricks that appear effortless on his part, which is why they are, well, magical. David Blaine, on the other hand, performs feats that do not appear effortless whatsoever, and therefore far less magical. It takes a great writer to write a great book. It takes an even better writer to write a great book that appears nearly effortless.

One might accuse me of rarely reading challenging books, and maybe it's true. I find myself drawn to books that compel me to finish them as opposed to those that I feel I have to slog through while other books are sitting in growing piles around my apartment, calling out to me with their promises of genuine laughs, heartbreak that is relevant to me, and prose that doesn't challenge me to the point that it's more of a barrier to the story than anything.

Perhaps most telling, at the book club meeting we were discussing this last night, and an older lady asked a pretty decent question: "Why is this considered a classic?"

There are two answers, one that is what the Everyman Library will tell you and one that I would tell you.

Everyman would say that the book is a classic because it is an excellent snapshot of a historical period. It has a narrative set within a framework that allows us to better understand our roots as Americans. The issues of people's perceptions of women and rights of women are still very alive today. Overall, it gives us a chance to examine our own society through the lens of fiction, therefore re-framing the conversation to make it less personal and easier to examine without bias. Blah, blah, blah.

I would say it's a classic because it was one of the more palatable books that came out during the period when "classics" were made. I would also point out that the canonized classics are never revised. We never go back and say which books maybe have less to say about our lives than they used to, or which might still be relevant but have been usurped by something that is closer to the lives we live today. I would also say that it continues to be taught in schools because the kind of people who end up teaching high school English are most often people who have a deep and abiding respect for these types of books and identified with these types of books at around that time in their lives. I think there are a lot of people out there who never liked these books, and rather than making their voices heard about what they think people should read they just drop out of the world of books altogether.

My point is, I think this is a bad book. It's got low readability, even for adults. The plot is melodramatic. The characters are single-dimensional crap, the women being constant victims of the time and the men being weak examples of humanity. Also, a very serious story is halted in places where we are expected to believe that magic letter A's pop up in the sky like you might see in an episode of Sesame Street.

It must have been a very exciting book in its time, without a doubt based on its sales. And if this kind of book is your thing, good for you. I don't begrudge you your joy. It's just not a book that I would ever dream of foisting on someone else, nor would I recommend reading it unless you are absolutely required.

Bossypants by Tina Fey

I'm a man and I read this book.

We'll just get this out of the way right off.

Taking a page from Fey's own book (that was not meant to be a book pun, but here we are) I thought it would be more fun to respond to some Amazon reviewers than to write an entire review myself. Besides, this book is famous as shit, so it's not like it needs my help.

And then there is the nit picky things that bother me. The larger kind of font, combined with wide margins, and funky spacing, added I would say 50 pages to the book. It's not 273 pages, it's more like 210ish. I hate when books are padded in this way. But that's me. -Lulu "literature Lovin'" Girl

Wow, Lulu. For someone so picky about the typset, you have a ridiculously long Amazon reviewer name. Could I suggest Lit Lovin Lulu instead? It's got the Triple-L, and it's shorter. So the book was a fast read. So what? Are you asking for someone to crank out extra shit so you could feel like you got your money's worth? The book was quick, but I would expect no less from a comedy writer. Plus, by your standard, Encyclopedia Britannica is the best piece of literature ever written. Although I should have known, based on your name, that length counts.

Ehhh...I read this book in 45 min. while my kid played at the Thomas the Tank Engine table at Barnes & Nobles. Not really my thing; the jokes got old quickly. I liked 30 Rock at first, but the show seems to be on a downward trend. I wish the cast would spend more time on the show and less time on things like this and "I am the New Black." If you're looking for a funny book, read A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole...it's great. -A. Conway

Hmm. Well, I suppose that you make a decent suggestion of a funny book. However, I might say that a person looking to get a chuckle out of a modern memoir by a comedy writer isn't in the market to get laughs from a cinder block of a book about an overweight gentleman in old-timey New Orleans who, like one of 3 Stooges, runs a hot dog cart for a day before he (uh-oh!) eats all the hot dogs.

I actually like both books, but I hate when people do this shit. "Read some real literature, like [insert stupid book that people are forced to read in high school] as opposed to something you might enjoy for a moment. Here, I'll give you an example that is almost completely unrelated to the book in question." Imbecile!

Unfortunately if it has the "F BOMB" within the first 8 pages and it is her saying it as a 5 year old I guess I won't read this book. Sad too, because I really wanted to. Bad language never wins me over. -michele mclure

You know what? That's fine. You're probably such a hit at parties that you have a full dance card for the next several weeks. Better the world gets to share in you, as a person, than you spend time locked away reading a book that has the word fuck in it.

While I appreciated the memior I was surprised when I didn't feel it was candid enough. Maybe that was a conscious effort. There was a trauma as a child that she explains but doesn't elaborate one. Fine! I don't think she needs to give us the details, they are hers but I felt that she was approached to write a book and agreed but didn't really want to.

This is something that crops up in a lot of reviews. Yeah, the bit about her scarred face wasn't really detailed beyond her being a kid, a man walking into her yard and cutting her face with a knife. Is that really what you wanted to read about? How traumatic it was and shit? What did you want to read, a tearful courtroom scene where she fingers the suspect who continued to send her letters from prison? Maybe you wanted an impassioned plea that we stop this rash of attacks where a strange man cuts a kid's face? I suggest you reread The Giving Tree. Not because they are similar in any way, but because it will put you in a different section of the bookstore and I won't have to associate with you.

But where the book really shines is in Fey's dissection of the rampant sexism found in the male-dominated field of comedy, both past and present. She tackles the topic with a humor and eloquence I haven't seen or heard anywhere else, and it's these bits scattered throughout the book that really make it worth reading. -A. Henley

Well, A. I have to disagree a little bit there.

Maybe it's just me, but the point that Fey made in the "dissection" of the "rampant sexism" in the "male-dominated" (quotation-mark finger is getting worn out here) was that male comedy writers urinate in cups and don't know about feminine hygiene products from 30 years ago. I felt like the section was another joke, a misdirection where Fey gets you ready to hear about the very serious topic of sexism in comedy and then reveals that a number of SNL writers pee in cups rather than getting up from their desks.

I've had an assfull of this male-domination in comedy talk. I'm not going to pretend it never existed, but let's look at the top shows on tv from last week:

1. American Idol -Wed.

2. American Idol -Thurs.

3. Dancing With the Stars

4. Glee

5. Modern Family

6. The Office

7. House

8. Bones

9. Survivor

10. Desperate Housewives

Boy, that lineup is really dripping with testosterone.

You tell me how many of those are thanks to a strong male influence. Jane Lynch is by far the funniest part of Glee. And how many great Office episodes were written by Mindy Kaling? If Desperate Housewives if popular, I don't think it's because a bunch of dudes are waiting every week to find out what happens to whoever the hell is on that show. Check your facts, fool!

It's reviews like yours that make the book seem like a screed against sexist comedy. Overall, I thought it was pretty fair to both sexes. There was a section that spoke to the fact that Amy Poehler is funnier than Chris Kattan in a dress, which is undoubtedly true. And there are a lot of sections that I would say felt very empowering, but those had a lot more to do with issues women face as opposed to those pressed down on women by men. You missed the point I think.

However, I should say that your review is clearly inferior as it was written by a woman, and I want to allow you to make mistakes. How else will you cuties learn?

Maybe she is trying to be self loathing in order to be humourous, but the self hating is taken way too far. It is like she hates herself with a passion. Every other paragraph she makes fun of her butt or skinny lips or the scar on her chin that I never noticed until I squinted. She has done alot for the comedy genre in the past 10 or so years and she should pat herself on the back and be proud. She has earned the right to be a little full of herself. Geez. -simple sellers

Ah, the body issue portion.

You know, I can't claim to understand body issues beyond saying, "Although I don't fully understand these issues, I can understand that they are causing distress, and I can best help by being sensitive to them and working with the feelings they cause as opposed to trying to force myself to go to the same place, an effort which probably won't pan out." To put it more simply, "I don't make fun of uggos, but I still like hot babes."

I thought the body issues were handled well. Maybe this would be a good book to read if you had some minor body issues because you can look at Tina Fey and say, "Alright, she's smart and successful and pretty, but she still feels that way." Maybe your feelings about your appearance are not necessarily tied to a rational place, as tends to be the case with feelings, which is why they aren't called "Knowings." Somebody call Dr. Phil with that line, please, now.

As someone who doesn't have thin lips and has a totally awesome butt, I couldn't identify with Fey, but she made me laugh, and I felt like she was laughing too. So maybe you should read it again. Or maybe you're ugly, in which case I don't care what you do. Ever.

I found Chelsea Handler's books to be hilarious, and she's a flippin dummy that never went to college (sorry Chelsea, maybe you went to junior college for a semester or something-I don't care because I find you hilarious anyway). Someone capable of writing two hit shows could have done much better with a short book.

Ugh, the inevitable comparison.

Here's why this is a good book: As a dude who has no understanding of what it's like to consider stopping work on a hit sitcom to have a baby despite being middle-aged, I could still laugh at it. The closest frame of reference in my life would be deciding whether or not it's appropriate to eat a popsicle on the toilet. I could care less about the debate on breast-feeding, but it was still entertaining. That's good comedy writing.

I don't want to get into a Handler-bash here, but the first chapter of Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang is about learning to masturbate. Wow, fascinating. Learning to do something that everyone does. As jokes go, mostly it's the tossing in of reference to Fantasy Island, Three's Company, Ms. Pac Man and Mary Lou Rhetton in the first 7 pages. Less a story, more a group of references and "heard it before" comedy about masturbation as a sport and so on.

What I'm saying is, Tina Fey's book was enjoyable to me as a complete outsider, having not really watched her much or grown up in her era. Handler's book is probably a real laugh if you're into her, but otherwise it's kind of boring. If you read Tina Fey's book, it will make you want to watch 30 Rock. I can't imagine a situation, however, where you would even get through Handler's book without being a fan already.

This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper

Before getting into this book review, you should know that I am not one to shy away from fiction that crosses the line. I've enjoyed everything from the overtly sexual (Tom Spanbauer's the Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon) to the graphically violent (Battle Royale by Koushun Takami) and books that mix the two (See: Dennis Cooper).

The point being, I'm not one to crap all over a book just because I find the content offensive. Far from it. Usually, the more offensive, the more engrossed I become. I read I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell with pleasure that I wouldn't even call guilty.

But this book, I have to say, was dirty without a whole lot of purpose and to no great effect.

Now, I'm not here to play comedy police, and it sounds like a lot of people found this book to be a laugh riot, but I'm just not sure what was funny about it.

There were funny moments, I'll grant that. When the main character's nephews experiment with swearing, coming up with combinations like "f*** dolphin" I got a chuckle or two. But most of the jokes are what I like to call American Pie Humor.

This is turning into a bashfest review, but I really don't like the American Pie movies. Again, not because they're crude, but because they are silly and rely on flimsy setups to get a laugh. It's always some kid is trying to help his buddy do something, and two minutes later Eugene Levy walks in and one kid's hand is glued to the other kid's ass somehow. To have all this build-up that leads to a scene where it appears, briefly, that someone is having sex with a dog doesn't seem worth it. Plus, you can't help but think, "Wait, the scene cuts there, but wouldn't a one-sentence explanation and slight change of angle convince any rational human that this guy wasn't having sex with a dog?" It's the same problem as the Fokker movies. They create this whole house of cards, and if Ben Stiller would just stick up for himself for one half of one second everything would be fine. EVEN THAT is no big deal, but the problem comes when you have this insane, farcical setup that then tries to reach for an emotional climax somewhere towards the end.

This is Where I Leave You reminded me a little bit of that kind of humor, with scenes like listening to two characters have sex as broadcast on a baby monitor, or a bizarre turn of events that cause the main character to have sex with his sister in law for no real reason and with no repercussions whatsoever.

That's all I really want to say about the humor. I think there's a tendency with books and movies to look at comedy, judge it as unfunny, and then attack it as being misogynistic, misguided, or whatever. But we reserve room for the things we find funny to be truly offensive, just so long as they reach a certain threshold of entertainment value. So whether or not I found it funny isn't so much relevant as explaining the style of humor and allowing other readers to decide whether or not it works for them.

What I will say is that I gave the book a chance, thinking that the high level of crudeness was there as a counterbalance so that the book could reach a level of emotion that would seem all the better considering how low it started. It just didn't hit that redemptive note for me, however. In fact, just as the author gets close in some places, he has a character throw in a one-liner from off to the side that deflates the moment. I'm all for mixing comedy and tragedy, and I genuinely believe that a little tragedy makes the comedy a hell of a lot sweeter, but the humor feels thrown in, like screening a movie to a test audience and throwing in a couple fart noises in post-production just to squeeze out a few artificial laughs.

If you read the first few chapters, get up to the part with the infidelity and don't find yourself laughing, then put the book down and move on. It doesn't really get any better.

Also, to be 100% fair, I read it in large print. So maybe the largeness of the words made it seem more gratuitous. But, dumb as I may be, I don't think I'm THAT dumb.

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt

The Sisters Brothers is so perfect and wonderful that I can’t imagine picking up another book for a while. There’s just no point. Okay, it’s kind of like eating a filet with just the right amount of pink in the center for dinner. You wake up and eventually have to eat something else, but the entire time your mind is on that filet.

The author, Patrick deWitt, is going to be a big deal. A very big deal. If you haven’t picked up his last book, Ablutions, then I suggest you do so immediately. You’ll never read another book that opens up into a dark place with such gentleness and care.

The Sisters Brothers is a western, a dark comedy, and you could compare it to so many other big name authors like Robert Olmstead, Cormac McCarthy, Mark Twain, or Charles Portis. But to tell the truth, dissecting what makes this book great is like taking apart a plasma TV: I’d have all these parts that are clearly important, but I don’t have the mastery to really explain how they work or to put them back together for you.

Have some guts, take a chance, and just read the book. It is my personal and professional opinion that you need to. Trust me.

The World According to Garp by John Irving

Whew, done!

Just about four months after starting, I can stick a fork in this one. And then return it to the library and pretend to be mystified by the four lined-up holes that have appeared in the book. Maybe it was one of their machines?

I would be remiss in talking about this book without talking about the Best Chart Ever (rivaled possibly by the McDuck family tree http://duckman.pettho.com/tree/v_american.html)

After noticing that Garp and the main character in Owen Meany were really short, I started wondering if John Irving were no short, short man. So I looked it up.

To my amazement, Wikipedia gave me the following chart:

If you’ve ever doubted the wonders of Wikipedia, be here converted. How hilarious is this? Maybe I’m just unjustifiably enamored, but I happen to think this is a stroke of genius, particularly the “Bears” column. Some of the others don’t so much float my cookie or whatever, but that column will be the one I use as a guide in picking any future Irving books.

So what the hell took me so long to finish this book? It was long, but even at nearly 700 pages that puts me at a rate of about 7 pages a day. Not too impressive.

There were a lot of factors. Have you guys heard that Nintendo Wii is a thing that was invented?

But there was something else that made it even more difficult.

I visited with an old teacher from college. She was (and is) a fantastic teacher, as evidenced by the fact that she always asks “What are you reading?” I told her that I was working on Garp. She told me that one of her professors brought Irving to her school and that he was a short asshole who was trying to nail every student on campus.

It was kind of an awkward moment, made worse by the fact that she dropped a grape on the ground, and after I nudged it into the sewer with my foot she suggested that I could have left it out for a squirrel or a bird.

Does it matter if the author is an asshole?

It shouldn’t. I think that I enjoy the music of Metallica the same amount as I would have regardless of their dislike for Napster, although that’s kind of different because though what they were doing seemed a little greedy, it wasn’t morally reprehensible. Plus, you can’t take the most extreme example. I’m sure that if Hitler had written the Cat in the Hat it would have seen a pretty sharp decline in sales in the mid 1940’s, spiking somewhere around the release of American History X, and then falling back into the red.

Here’s the big difference I see, however:

Garp, in the book, is a writer, and if you do a little digging you’ll find that the writing paths taken by Garp and Irving are pretty similar. Whether or not the book is autobiographical, and I hate to confuse the author with the narrator, it sure as hell FEELS autobiographical, which I think is no accident. Now, that in and of itself isn’t an issue, but let me pose this:

As an 18 year-old kid I went with a buddy to Chicago ComiCon. This has a point, I swear. Among the things to do at ComiCon, such as meeting Lou Ferrigno or being very saddened when the original Green Lantern artist is trotted out as a symbol of the way comic companies screwed creators, you can meet some of the big writers and artists of the day.

At the time, I was enjoying the hell out of a title called 100 Bullets by Brian Azarello. He has become a pretty big name in the meantime, but at that time he wasn’t one of the people with a long line waiting to see him.

I wanted to bring books for him to sign, but because I was traveling from Colorado to Chicago, I figured I’d leave my comics at home. So when I got to Brian Azarello, I just asked for his autograph on a blank piece of paper in a journal. He looked up at me like I was a fucking idiot and said, “Just sign this?” He sighed, signed, and handed it back without saying anything else.

I understand that it’s not the best thing to go to a signing and not bring the proper book. But I came so far, was a genuine fan, was only 18, and I was pretty saddened by the whole thing. It was so depressing that I tore the page out of the journal and threw it away, hoping that I would forget the whole thing. That was…coming up on 10 years ago, so obviously I didn’t forget.

After that, it was tough to read his stuff. I knew that I shouldn’t let it bother me, but I didn’t want to support someone who treated me like shit. I haven’t bought an Azarello book since.

Contrast that with James Kolchalka, who not only signed, but even drew his signature elf character in my book without me so much as asking. Since then, I’ve followed his work, and have recommended American Elf to anyone with even a subtle interest in comics.

I’m not saying that the one encounter turned the tide for Azarello, or Kolchalka for that matter. But hey, if you have 100 interactions like that, and someone else across the convention floor is having 100 positive interactions, you’re putting yourself in a bad place.

And to authors and artists who do signings and whatnot: If you don’t want to be there, we don’t want you there. Period. I’d rather miss out on seeing you entirely than have a bad experience that taints all your future work.

Let’s bring it back to Garp.

Garp felt autobiographical, and I heard from a trusted source that Irving was an ass. It made it really hard to not read it as the main character being Irving, which made it hard to get through. Which is why I put it down for a solid month.

But, bolstered by the fact that I had made a vow to try some long books this year, and further bolstered by the fact that this was only number 2, I pressed on.

Based on the two books by Irving that I’ve read, I can say a couple things about them. They can be long, and they can be a bit of a slog, but they often pay off in a lot of ways. I’m not an ending guy, and flipping to the end of a book has never been a satisfying experience for me, but the endings of Irving’s books always seem to happen in the right place and at the right time.

It’s also notable that his books tend to be pretty long. What I was looking for in reading long books this year was that sort of cumulative effect, the emotion that was heightened by spending what amounted to three times as long with a set of characters. And for me, it worked.

If you like Irving, you like him. If you pick this up and get 200 pages in, you will finish. If you’re not a fan, I’m certainly not the person to convert you.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Things that are for kids are not for me, with the exceptions of Life cereal and anything from a 25-cent machine with a crank.

So it was with a lot of fear that I tried out the Wimpy Kid books.

Honestly, there's a weird throwback, nostalgia thing that people about my age seem very into at this point, and it's not working for me. I can't really get into Finding Nemo. It's not because I think there's no way to hit those emotional points in animation, but because when the emotional low-point is blunted by an elephant hitting a camel with a surfboard, it's pretty hard for me to take seriously. If you took a good sad movie, like the Wrestler, and added in five seconds where he meets a little kid who runs up and punches him in the nuts for comic relief, it would kill the entire movie. But if a cartoon old man's wife has a miscarriage, it's somehow still okay to watch him use a flamingo as a sword.

Movies, TV, books, anything that is intended for children is almost always unsatisfying for me.

Calvin and Hobbes was always an exception. That never felt like it was for kids, to me. It felt like it captured what it was like to BE a kid, something that had been done before, but usually in a schmaltzy way like a dumb little kid asking his mom a question about whether or not god has a better beard than Santa.

Maybe it had something to do with the kind of kid it captured. Maybe there were kids out there who liked going to school and who played baseball b choice. But that wasn't me.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid definitely pushes those same buttons for me, too. It makes you laugh a little, the drawings are funny, and it's doesn't sound like someone speaking to a child and explaining everything.

Also, and this is a big one today, it doesn't take itself too seriously. We don't have to learn a life lesson along with the main character every time. Sometimes he pulls off a stunt and gets away without consequences, sometimes not. The main character can be a complete asshole sometimes, and he's not tied in to modeling perfect behavior all the time.
And you know what? He's right. Maybe it's not good for kids to play a prank on one classmate where they all pretend he's invisible, but if that's the behavior kids are modeling, oh well. I think we'll be fine.