Assorted flavors of numb & lies like ice cream

February 7 to 10, 1976 I read:

The House on Garibaldi Street, Isser Harel
The story of the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann in Argentina by the Mossad, Israel's secret intelligence service. Harel was the leader of the team that brought Eichmann to Israel for trial. Fascinating book—updated and still in print.

The Santaroga Barrier, Frank Herbert
In some ways I like some of Herbert's lesser know books better than Dune, and definitely better than the sequels to Dune.

You Can Get There from Here, Shirley MacLaine
I like Shirley MacLaine (I was going so say "so shoot me" but I never use that expression anymore...the times we live in.)

Best SF '74

Clive: Inside the Record Business, Clive Davis James Willwerth
I obviously hadn't heard of Clive Davis because my note reads "some record tycoon."

The Intruders, Pat Montandon
This scary book was hard to track down, seeming to have vanished into book limbo. I remember this story of a haunted Lombard Street apartment. Even in the 1960s and '70s you didn't just leave a prime San Francisco apartment like that because of a little psychic disturbance. Finally I found a web page about it!
http://www.sfgate.com/offbeat/pat.html


February 7 to 10, 2006:

Two books I read this week have unexpected elements in common. Lost Souls and A Million Little Pieces both seem to be first novels with lots-o-drugs, cynical, suicidal youth and shaky redemption at the end. No vampires or homoerotic scenes in Frey though…

As a kind of weird segue, I have been imagining that some of the 1988 teenage drugged-out runaways in Lost Souls might end up 16 years later in the rehab unit where James Frey sets his story—and yes I know the controversy is about how much of Frey is true, and I will get to that.


Lost Souls, Poppy Z. Brite
This is the second Brite book I've read (a few months back I read her second book, Drawing Blood). Lost Souls came out in 1988 and I could see how it made an impact, there wasn't anything out there that I've ever heard of then that resembled it.

Like so many first novels, it is a Sensitive Story of Disillusioned Youth. Only it also has vampires, romanticized homoeroticism with teenage boys as the focus of lust, sex & drugs & rock & roll, graphic gore and bodily fluids, murder, rape, cannibalism and incest. Oddly enough, these amenities—though not my usual choice of story elements—did not bother me. I think it's because the characters were engaging, vulnerable and so very numb.


A Million Little Pieces, James Frey
Speaking of numb. The main character starts out the book starts out semi-comatose.

What do I think about James Frey's work?

It ain't William Burroughs, or even Augusten Burroughs. The no-quotes dialog and paragraphs-jammed-together style does convey the flattened emotions of the main character (or of his recollections, if we're thinking of this as Frey himself). But it's a very tedious form to maintain for hundreds of pages and for me that made it more difficult to keep reading.

In Frey's case, his lies, like the web spun by a con artist, fitted neatly into a very popular view about drugs and rehabilitation. The myths are—anyone can fall prey to drugs—even those who "have everything" and anyone can claw his way back to normalcy. There's some truth in these myths. The lies are in the packaging and the amplification of the fall.

James Frey was irresistible to Oprah and company literally because he was not the scary bad boy he played on television and in his book. I'm sure there was never a sense that he might fall off the wagon and be found passed out among empty liquor bottles in an alley behind the TV studio. There are many genuine survivors in recovery from drugs and lives of crime, some of them probably have written books. But their stories don't go down like ice cream. Their damaged faces and bodies show real, permanent scars.

Frey presents an irresistible Ivy League educated, fresh-faced package, the (much enhanced, and in some cases perhaps "borrowed") stories of a down and dirty addiction, tough guy encounters with cops and criminals, and eventual recovery.

The myth went down like ice cream. And now people are reading the label on the package.

I read this book after the story came out about how Frey stretched the truth for this "memoir" so there's no way I could say whether I would have guessed the fraud if I'd read it earlier. A friend who worked in a mental institution said the author photo confirmed for her that this guy could not have suffered the kind of battering he describes in the book and avoided permanent, visible facial scarring (also that the dental work without novocaine incident was unlikely in the extreme).

The phrase "a bullshit artist" came to mind, but after reading most of the book (I skipped some because that no punctuation thing can get really tedious) I'd say he's on the border between B.S. and crap by Hanne Blank's definition--link to her essay below.

Crap is what makes you throw the book across the room in disgust, while bullshit is the occupational hazard of the professional liar (a.k.a. fiction writer).
http://www.reflectionsedge.com/archives/dec2005/vatcc_hb.html