Citizen Beta

I heard Lydia Millet taking about her book, How The Dead Dream on “To The Best Of Our Knowledge” one of my favorite radio shows. I was driving and dangerously began looking for a scrap of paper and a pen so I could write down the title…I found a receipt and a blue crayon and accidentally wrote Linda.

When Mandy and I started thinking about putting together an online book club this book came to mind. I remembered some details from the radio show and thought it sounded like a book with a lot of ideas to explore (ecology and civilization, isolation and love, etc) and so here we are.

I will admit that the first chapter was hard for me. I really like the way Millet structures her sentences but it took me a while to get into the rhythm if things. Plus, T. is hard to like and, especially in the first chapter, hard to understand. But, the opening of the second chapter, with the death of the coyote, then this book really started to draw me in. I thought that whole coyote episode was so interesting and compelling and I kept coming back to it mentally as I moved on with T.’s story. I thought the ending (which I am hesitant to discuss until I know everyone has finished the book) mirrored this scene perfectly.

For me, Millet really captures, in such a poetic and strange and sad and sometimes very creepy way a sense of isolation that comes with, at least in this story, the current state of society. An isolation from nature, from each other, from self. T. and his parents all demonstrate this and it damages them in various ways. The other characters demonstrate it to lesser degrees (I often felt these minor characters—not sure if they are minor really but you know what I mean— were “types” and so it was harder to get a handle on their motivations). And the animals….of course, the animals!

I found T.’s empathy with the animals fascinating; he creates feelings for them based on his own experiences and sometimes it makes such sense and sometimes I read him as so hopelessly off the mark—so disturbed by his own emotional isolation— that he was incapable of really even seeing these animals for what they were. Are you angry with him for selfishly trying to “experience” these animals or heartbroken for him? He had the means to make a real difference for some of the animals and habitats he obsessed over but either choses not to or is incapable of even framing the problem in those terms.  The vision of humankind’s relationship to other animals is pretty bleak in this story and one of the characters I found myself caring about was the (unnamed) dog that T. adopts…

Overall I think this is a great book: a dark and solid story with so much of importance swirling around in it, written in a strong and unique voice.

Your turn. What did you think? What kind of guy is T.? What do we take from his journey? Are we doomed to ruin the world until there is nothing but solitary examples left of each species who eventually die in a lonely and altered landscape? Who are the dead here and, whether in the Pancake House or not, how do they dream?

The chickens are doing well.  Very well.

Just four days until the launch of the online book club (do we need a clever name?  a mascot? a slogan?).

We are reading How The Dead Dream by Lydia Millet.  Send me your thoughts on the book and then start checking back here on the 24th to get into the discussion.  If you haven’t finished the book by then, that is fine, you should still join us!

If you need the email address to submit your response to, please leave a comment on this post and Mandy or I will be in touch with you soon.  

The next book will be announced soon, as well.

I actually took this one in June of 2007 but the bike is still there so it counts…

I have a big blood blister on my toe. This disgusting indignity is the price I pay for finally getting some exercise. I have never been a jock, or even someone who likes standing for more than fifteen minutes at a time, but I am now in the worst shape of my life and I don’t like it. In the past few years I have taken yoga but nothing aerobic and just eating healthy, which I do, is not enough. My mental image of myself doesn’t include a head dwarfed by saddlebags. And so to Nia. This dance-type exercise class has loud-ish music and lots of martial arts kicks. The class I attended had just three other attendees and a wall of mirrors. It was humbling to say the least but not the agony I anticipated. My toe hurts and my muscles are sore but pleasantly so and so I am committed to stick with this a while. My goal is to just feel a bit better physically by the end of March.

I am slightly more accomplished at mental exercise (note I said slightly) and to that end have been reading (and writing) up a storm. First I have to just say that though I love to get paid to write, today I was reminded why sometimes just getting the book is enough when an advanced copy of Elie Wiesel’s latest novel arrived in the mail…

Recent reads include For The Thrill Of It by Simon Baatz about the Leopold and Loeb case. I knew next to nothing about this real life murder case before reading this book. I knew those guys were super creepy which Baatz confirmed. I was left wanting to dig a little deeper into the psyches of Leopold and Loeb but still think this was a really interesting and well-written book.

I just finished Murial Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog which I really loved. It is the story of a fifty-something concierge in Paris named Renee. Though she is incredibly intelligent she hides it behind her role in the building and secretly reads philosophy and Russian novels and watches artsy Japanese films. A new tenet in the building and a suicidal 12 year old girl bring her out of hiding so to speak. She is the hedgehog: prickly and unkempt on the outside but truly elegant and wise. This is a lovely and thoughtful book.

Another creepy one was In The Woods by Tana French which is about a murder in a small Irish town and the detective assigned to the case who witnessed the murder of his friends in the same town as a boy. Very fun and readable and more literary than it sounds though toward the end it started to unravel for me…I felt the author started to go in too many directions and the ending was both surprising and frustrating.

Hmmm….what else? How about some reviews?

Miles from Nowhere by Nami Mun

Voluntary Madness by Norah Vincent

Sunny Holiday  (kids book) by Colleen Murtagh Paratore

We Can’t All Be Rattlesnakes (kids book) by Patrick Jennings

And scroll down to page six here for a review of the really good book The Jewish Body by Melvin Konner (or you could stay on the front page to read my brilliant bit of journalism there).

One last writerly bit to share. I have been published on glossy pages for the first time (I am really excited about that!) with an interview with Amy Shearn in “Albuquerque The Magazine.”

And lastly, if you are going to do the online book club there are about two weeks left: discussion begins on February 24^th. I have my copy of the book—do you??