The Best American Writer-Ever

My hero.

In the realm of classic literature, there are a few American names that spring to mind. Let us proceed chronologically.

19th Century: Poe, Twain or Melville are the only ones who stand a chance of being called the greatest American writer. Huck Finn is one of the most influential books in our history. Moby Dick alone means the latter has a pretty good shot.

20th Century: Modernists: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner. I am partial to Hemingway. And although Fitzgerald wrote the best American novel of the 20th century (The Great Gatsby), Tender is the Night is his only other work that can be called truly excellent. Both Faulkner and Hemingway won the Nobel Prize in Literature, but I would argue that Hemingway did more to change the face of the American novel. His lapidary style in The Old Man and the Sea is Biblical. We could also mention Salinger and Bellow in this discussion.

Postmodernists: I have ranked the following authors in tiers since not enough time has passed to truly measure their greatness:

In the top tier: Pynchon, Updike, Roth. Gravity's Rainbow is arguably as devastating to fiction as was Moby Dick. Updike wrote a lot, but he will always be remembered for the wonderful Rabbit Tetralogy. And Roth is similarly masterful, and has a number of novels that could be called masterpieces. Toni Morrison is also a contender, she won the Nobel Prize in 1993.

Second Tier: McCarthy, DeLillo, Mailer. These guys have all written great novels, but The Naked and the Dead is a war novel and too limited in scope. White Noise is a contender. And I'm reading Blood Meridian right now. It's hard to assess authors who are still producing, but if I missed anyone, let me know. And feel free to make your case for your favorite.

Nipple and Ass Hair

We are so conditioned to fear hair. Nipple hair for example, is hard to hide. Even when freshly shaved, you can taste tiny stubbly pricks that remind you that even the most beautiful women have long black nipple hairs. Is this wrong? They existed to protected the mammary glands from cold, so that your baby can have a fresh teat to suckle. And now you want them to be shaved and cleaned. But they are kind of gross, like ass hair.

Remember when that girl used to shave her pussy in the shower and then she’d make light of shaving her asshole by noting the difficulty of reaching it. You laughed along with her. Ass hair. How absurd. On one hand it’s easy to improve your hygiene by trimming or shaving it, on the other, leave that shit alone and don’t fuck with it. It’s for shitting, not sexual penetration. But in our pornographic culture, it’s more acceptable to practice butt sex than to have an asshole full of fuzziness.

So you were at first repulsed by the nipple hair, then you grew up and realized it was natural, now you are still kind of repulsed by it and view it as a cultural norm that should be obeyed: thou shalt shave thy nipple hair.

The Chicago Mayoral Election in Post Postmodernism

Trending, I'm going to write a book with Tweets and Facebook status updates. And a dream chapter.

So Rahm Emanuel is going to win the Chicago mayoral election, which is cool. Chicago's mayor is a big deal because Chicago is one of our finest cities. There is always the possibility though, that Houston has grown so much that it is now the 3rd largest city in the country, which would be sad. But I like Rahm because he wears Timberland boots when campaigning, in the same distinct post postmodern fashion as Obama's open shirt collar (yo, I'm a boss, and I'm bucking convention). By the way, did anyone else know Emanuel is a Jew? which would make him Chicago's first Jewish mayor. And it will mark an end to the Daley reign, which is a good thing, because as Americans we just don't like that aristocratic noise of transferring power within families.

I'm just reading at the cafe, writing, trying to make my book more intimate, like you reading it are my confidant/e, O my brothers.Wanted a break, that's all. Back to work.

Coriolanus, Lemon Chicken Recipe, Jimmy Stewart

 How do you lose a sixteen-inch screw?
I gotta run money, gotta get up, it's the first of the month.
Throwing a hot dog in a hallway, you don't know where it goes.
Gorilla snot with a stitched catty backseam, but it's all about stockings.

Jimmy Stewart, in The Naked Spur, is how I want my son to be. He is a tragihero, but he gets the girl at the end, bullet-legged and all.

My lemon chicken has reached perfection. The secret, my friends, is to add the chopped dill and rosemary when the chicken has a small pink spot in its middle. Then you flip it and let it fry for, say, two minutes.

Sometimes Daniel Adler just don’t feel like biking seven mile, especially when he wake up real dehydrated, and it’s lightly snowing. Better to just read on the subway,
Why did you wish me milder? Would you have me false to my nature? Rather say I play the man I am, Coriolanus, III.ii.14-16.
Shaw said that this tragedy is Shakespeare’s best comedy. I did a Drunk History of it last night.

1 Year Edit On Williamsburg Skate Rounds

    But the Williamsburg bridge Buckley and I skated best. Ride red and blue: steel mesh caging smears uptown Manhattan. Until the river is directly below you skate uphill, a drag worth it for the ride down. The grade steepens, you close in to the shore and shadows play catch up, running over each other. On a skateboard you must carve a path back and forth so the board doesn't speed wobble and throw you off.  Should that happen you reflexively use your palms for protection, even though they will gash and bleed and raspberries form on knees and elbows after rolling facefirst– no, instead dig heels into and toes over the board-edge to allow you more lateral mobility. Boardsporters know this. The original phrase 'hang ten' comes from ten toes off the surfboard to shred the wave. You gain speed, while weaving to slow down, though eventually you see the end of the path and a solid cement wall three hundred meters down the 8% grade, and you feel imminent wobble. A flying board is dangerous and each second you feel less invincible. Reason kicks in and you jump off to send the board careening off bridge-walls until it falls supine, wheels violently a-spin in stasis. Adrenaline pumps, chest heaves, lactic acid builds in quads and calves. You are glad you bailed because another second or two you'd be bloodied.
   

Williamsburg has more grafitti and fewer people. They can't afford Manhattan luxury or weren't lucky enough to be passed down a rent-controlled apartment, and instead commute or are artists who enjoy the quiet and cheap lofts, or have parents who immigrated here last generation and haven't moved because it's home, are the kinds who live in Williamsburg.

A Post Postmodern Moment

 Mr. Quinn had grown up in small-town Pennsylvania. His father was a coal-miner and worked hard all day. After their shift he and the boys went to the local watering hole before heading home. Three times out of four, Davy's father came home to hear his weak wife complain about something Davy had done, while she nursed two other young children, Davy the oldest by five years. After a few shots of whiskey, Mr. Quinn Sr. hated to hear from his wife that Davy had been evil during the day. And as tired as the soot-faced man was, he took his belt to the boy and made him sleep in the toolshed. 
    Davy had done his Ph.D at Penn State in English after spending most of his youth reading classics and avoiding his father's wrath. He had never married, was a philanderer. He presently dated the school nurse, Ms. Pillary, a tall, thin woman clear blue eyes and thin red lips. He lived alone with a Staffordshire Terrier, and spent most weekends upstate, sometimes with Ms. Pillary. He fished on Sundays.
    You don't even know that happened with certainty, do you? That stuff about his father beating him and keeping him in a shed, that was all bullshit wasn't it?
    No, of course not.
    Well how do you know it happened?
    I remember the way he looked, older Gabriel. That glimmer in his eye when I turned in that villanelle and no one else did, and he said keep it, and I asked if we're going to get graded on it and he said no, but you didn't do it for nothing, and he nodded slowly, with his big Staffordshire head convincing you that your efforts weren’t for naught. His gimlet eyes were enough to tell me some of his own pain. So whether or not his father was a coal miner or a printer doesn't matter, but what does is  how he influenced us. Without him you would probably wouldn't be writing this right now.
    Yeah, you're probably right about that.
    I know I am. Why do you always argue with me? You think that your youth was simply idealistic prattle, but it was the purest you've ever been, the most passionate about writing. All of the stuff you're writing now is pablum compared to what you did when you were eighteen, nineteen.
    But I was so young, inexperienced.
    No one said you were Hemingway. But if you try to channel me a little more often, older self, you might actually find some readers. They will listen to you, through me. Why? Because I am your inner child. I am raw. I am not cultivated by society's expectations. Listen to me! Don't ignore me because you've grown wiser. I was wise, but inexperienced. Together we can be great. You need to recognize me.
    Maybe you're right. I have been taking a lot of criticism about the lack of passion in this book. We were so ubermenschian when we were younger.
    I know. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Once you hit twenty-five you became jaded and realistic.
    You're right.
    Okay, you're boring them. Get back to our story.  

Help: A Post Postmodern Dilemma

Bernini's "Apollo and Daphne"

Dear Gorgeous,

So far this has been my blog. I'm totally willing to publish anything you guys think is relevant. I mean, it is an internet warehouse after all, it's supposed to store a lot of different stuff.

Anyway I've been thinking about my book lately, the ol' Hot Love On The Wing. I've been trying to delve deep into the character of my female protagonist, Daphne. I've two main ways of approaching it:

1. Show Don't Tell: The way most good writing works. I show a scene where Daphne gets frustrated by the way menfolk don't take her seriously, even though she has good things to say, and you guys get an idea of what kind of woman she is.

2. Post Postmodernist: I point out to you that I can't truly know what Daphne is thinking, but based on the fact that I, the narrator and protagonist, have lived with and known Daphne for years, I have a good idea of what she might be thinking. While this can give you insight into the protagonist's psychology and his relationship with Daphne, it is a potential trap: I'm telling without showing.

Can you see my dilemma? If there are any ideas on how to solve this, or if any writers wanting to step up and suggest what I ought to do, please feel free.

All my love,
Daniel Adler

The Friendship Garden

Social class and similar interests are the most important fertilizers in the friendship garden, and sowing requires effort. From there, the sunlight of frequency and the water of luck bring forth agape flowers.

 Some people are grounded. You can tell this immediately from the flash in their eyes and their first words. But then they may be working on a different wavelength, which can be hard to negotiate. Others are attractive, and you think they may be okay, but you feel obliged to laugh at their jokes. Will this get in the way, you ask yourself? Perhaps it can change once you get to know them better? But eventually, the false laughter produce a friendship that lies like a fallen apple with sweetness clustered in one spot, bitter and rotten around. And so you go taking bites from all the apples, trying to eat your fill, but wishing that you might find one entirely ripe, sweet.

You scour the orchards, move into the vegetable garden. Hey, there, look at that ripe vegetation. You take a bite, revolted with its bitterness. Maybe the bitterness becomes tasty when cooked with the herbs of time. You watch outer layers wilt sweetly like the blackened leaves of a buttery baked brussel sprout. Covered in garlic and butter delicious, those crispy, tasty layers fall off and leave a greener core still tasty, more substantial.
 
-A post postmodern excerpt, by Daniel Adler

Postmodern Classic Literature: Bright Lights, Big City

The second person is a fine technique to use. It is adjuratory and precise. The first person is confessional. The two effects are distinct. In Jay McInerney's classic literature roman a clef, the second person is exhortatory, nearly allowing us as readers to tell the protagonist how best to deal with his sexual abandonment and job loss.

I dreamed about Bolivian Marching Powder last night. Not doing it, just the metaphor of the marching armies, brigades tramping through the forests of a brain. Well done. "Her voice was like gravel spread with honey." Voices are hard to describe, and McInerney's imagery is beautifully suggestive, though not necessarily illuminating. The protagonist is pathetic enough to sympathize with. Goosebumps for the last line, when he must learn to live again, the way we all must, in every single moment.

Constantly we revert to habit and routine. Despite the expectation of cocaine, sex, and high pleasures, luxuries lose importance, a notion exemplified by the '80s me-generation of fast-money and its repudiation in this great read. Our generation is a tad more in touch with what matters, maybe because of the Great Recession, maybe because of the physically-distancing nature of the internet. So I'm working on how to convey that in my writing.

Back in the Soup Kitchen

The days became shorter, slowly. When the heat peaked, people did not like to exert themselves, their tempers flared, and they had little patience. Even the homeless folks in the kitchen were slow to move, eager to take their time. 
Eventually he could not bear it any longer. He had to say something to this man who felt so entitled to peace and escape.  While he swept around the man, who was eating his thirds, he nearly stuttered. The thin clunky sunglasses prevented eye contact but Gabriel Arnold was resilient. "What did you do today?" he asked.
The man looked at him warily. Gabriel watched his spoon-hand hover in midair.
"I lived."
"But what do you do?"
"I existed." He sipped his spoon.
"Well I always hear you talking about highfalutin (here he felt good about himself for using a polysyllabic word) ideas and the Man, and I just want to know what you do." His obsequious tone undermined the haughtiness of his words. 
"Listen, kid. When you see what I've seen, then we can talk. Until then, you have no idea what makes the world tock."
"Money." The man looked up at him after quickly slurping some soup, his mouth ajar. "Exactly. And how do you make money? You pour your eyes out until you become fecal and defunct. What did I do today? I stayed alive kid. I lived."
"Do you work?"
"Of course I work. He works, you work, I work. We all fucking work. Don't you see that's how it happens?"
"What happens?
"Jeezus hailmary fucking Christ. I'm not your fucking mentor. Go home, kid."
"No, seriously. If you live then you work. But you don't buy your own food. Why do you think you've got it all figured out?"
    The man threw his spoon into his empty bowl. He rose quickly and left without looking back.

Color Theory, By Daniel Adler

    He looked like a turtle. Through the square framed glasses that rested on his chubby cheeks, he blinked slowly. His wide body and enormous back resembled a shell. And his favorite color was green, which made sense, according to my color theory.
   
Everyone has a favorite color. It happens back in pre-school, when everyone learns the the spectrum. Sure, maybe there are a couple of them that appeal to you now. But there's one you always really loved. Mine is red. Yours is probably blue. Buckley's was green - quirky, realistic, and intelligent.
   
When I went into his apartment and sheepishly greeted his mother, who looked if anything like a bird rather than a reptile, I was very queer. Parents made me uncomfortable as a child, especially fathers who came home in suits after selling bonds all day. Although they were welcoming and kind in the way parents of friends are when you are in their home, I couldn't help but compare them to the way my father came home in faded blue jeans and a toolbelt, and how much warmer and fluid my mother was than the avian woman with pearls.        

-Hot Love on the Wing, Daniel Adler

Ode to Marble

I wrote this for Amsum & Ash, a countertop company. I hope they like it.

Sweet marble. You are the saddest stone. Your icy-soft purity beckons us to watch. You resist time in a way we cannot. You harden, grow colder, but never coarser. You  last a thousand lifetimes, while we will die all too fast. Under the mountain sky your rest is soft. You are resilient and perfect for daily use. To counter you is to appreciate you, use you. Marble countertop, you are strong.

Before you were quarried, to how many storms were you witness? Aching-hot days? You felt nothing, you simply were. In the kitchen how many spills can you withstand, you luxurious stone, ancient and weathered with your dark veins of prescience?

How base of you to discount desire, temptation! Would you trade your centuries of plenitude for one of our chance-filled lifetimes? Would you understand love if you could? Alas, you are stone ideal for the bathroom vanity. You counter our concupiscence, and give us firm ground on which to lean. And I have not a qualm against you for it, dear marble. Should I have chosen one of the granite varieties, I'd be no happier. i surround myself with tokens of immortality; it reduces my arrogance and humbles my being.

-Daniel Adler

Irony's Dead in Post Postmodernism

Times were, person with the messiest hair or the biggest glasses was the coolest. That was so 2007. If we look at fashion these days, we can note the reversion to the Mad Men era of style and panache. Hats are back. Two-button nondescript suits are classic. Jeans should be worn with room enough for your balls not to be squashed if you cross your legs.

Postmodernism was all about irony, viewing things from high above to make reality look absurd. Take Seinfeld for example. We can laugh at the idea of a woman's man hands or man on man massage action because we're watching it in the safe removal of our homes.

In contrast, take the close-up documentary style of The Office. We like being right there with the characters, understanding how they feel. And it's funny because they're characters, weirdos, just like us, we like to think. We get them just as easily as they would get us, if they could. The same idea translates into post postmodernist literature. We want to be right there with the protagonist, understanding his every thought and desire. And to make this original, distinct, it would be great if he could attempt to provide perspective from a removal of, oh say, ten years. This wouldn't exculpate his younger self, however; it would give the reader further insight into his embedded delinquencies. That's what my shitty post postmodern novel will attempt to do.

The Way I Shoot

When they weren't skating they were cultivating their espresso connoisseurship. Among the many cafes in downtown Manhattan, Gimme! Coffee in quiet SoHo attracted him with its red banner. The two boys entered the slender espresso bar, placed their orders, and waited patiently at the end of the granite counter in front of the beautiful red Marzocco espresso machine. They balanced their skateboards with index fingers, watching the hipsters and the pretty girls, and the artistic photographs over the black wainscoting. The baristas were red haired girls and mustachioed young men with bicycle caps and tight t shirts and chains that held their wallets snugly in the pockets of their tight pants.
  
The first espresso was delivered on a plate with a spoon and a glass of water. It was always his ever since the first time he lunged on it as soon as it was offered.  If you don’t drink the espresso within the first ten seconds it’s made, it will spoil and bitter. You can prevent this by adding sugar or milk, but he was a purist. The shot landed on the plate and he hurried it into his mouth eagerly savoring the flavors, eyes-shut, consciously feeling people watching him. He closed his eyes tighter and lolled the chocolate-sweet piquancy on his tongue back and forth, over the divots in his molars, feeling the hints of cinnamon, burgundy, ochre, all so good and the perfect temperature so his tongue didn't burn and he swallowed it. And it was over. The last brown pearl he poured onto the espresso spoon and touched it to his palate, complimenting the barista afterwards.

Postmodernism Revisited

Okay, enough is enough. I’ve read most classic literature, and I’ll get back to it. But it’s time to flex my postmodernism muscles.

I started American Psycho last year and put it down after a hundred fifty pages. I picked it up again this morn and remembered the wave of disgust that it left me with. The violence, crudity and pornography all make for a page-turner, but the true skill of Ellis is when he describes men’s fashion; when he delves into the psycho’s mind as he wonders about whether his lover would love him more if she weren’t cheating on her boyfriend; and when he notes the evasive eye contact of enemies.

Generally, however, I feel sick after reading it, and I wonder whether it’s a testament to the power of the work. Does good art inspire visceral disgust? Or is that a symptom of entertaining middle-brow work? I touched on this in my Black Swan post, and want to suggest the latter.

This is termed the grotesque. We continue reading to see if the grotesque can be conquered, but in this case, it is the reader who has been conquered, fooled. Thus the postmodernism. But something tells me that the best works of art do not invite reaction by appealing to the most basic human emotions, but rather, to the loftiest.