Review: The People Who Watched Her Pass By

Posted on 2012/01/132012/01/18 by Jason Hensel

I always include Scott Bradfield when people ask me who are some of my favorite writers. I base this solely on such works as The History of Luminous Motion, Animal Planet, and What’s Wrong With America.

But those books were long ago, and I was young and impressionable. Would a work more recent hold up to my memories? The answer is yes, with The People Who Watched Her Pass By. Bradfield remains a favorite of mine, and he’s one of America’s great satirists. I imagine he’ll be a writer whose fame and influence will arise after he’s dead. Please don’t let that happen; read him now. Talk about him now. Buy all his books now.

The People Who Watched Her Pass By is a story about Salome Jensen, a 3-year-old girl kidnapped by a boiler-repair man, who she refers to as “Daddy” throughout the story. As with his previous books, specifically Luminous Motion, Bradfield gives the child protagonist a worldly, aged, adult voice. Daddy doesn’t stick around, so Salome (Sal, for short) lives with someone else. Eventually, Sal bounces around different caregivers, either by choice or circumstance. The way she travels from one situation to another clearly lands this novel in the great America road trip genre.

Sal’s story is more than her kidnapping and wandering. It’s a satirical look at selfishness, ego, and the ache for a greater meaning in life. The people who Sal encounters offer sage advice, but in the end, they’re really looking out for only their own wants and needs. Their concerns for Sal are superficial, and she recognizes this early in her so-far short life.

One of my favorite sections in the book is Sal’s persona as a deity, or prophet, by strangers who haven’t seen her, who have only heard rumors of her life. The worship of the unknown is a strong pull for most people, and reading about them lining up just to take a picture of her room’s window is humorous and sad at the same time.

This same temptation for something greater pulls at Sal, too. The difference, though, is she’s doing it for herself. She’s like Jesus wandering in the desert, figuring out who she really is. Other people, specifically adults, in the book try to find themselves through others. Their narcissism is only fed by extraneous encounters and emotions.

This raises the question: What does Sal represent? Bradfield wrote that he didn’t have a purpose in writing the book.

“As with my previous novels, I simply discovered the voice of a character who carried me along until I found out where she was going,” he wrote in a blog post. “Then I spent several years trying to give her, and her story, shape.”

The issue of shape is where satire comes into play. Is Sal a critique of the modern American psyche, always looking for solutions from others via self-help books and reality TV instead of finding it within itself? Is it a story about being responsible for your choices, regardless of what others think? Or is it an acknowledgment that life is a gyre and that one should accept fate and use it to the best of your advantage? Maybe it’s all of those. Maybe it’s none of those. As with the best satirists, Bradfield gives his readers a beautifully written and deeply contemplative story. It’s one that when you’re finished, you’ll want to immediately begin again, like a magic trick you want to experience over and over, always thinking you’re about to discover the solution, only to find you’re still in the dark. But what a delicious darkness that is.

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Books Read in 2011

Posted on 2011/12/272012/01/02 by Jason Hensel

Every year I post my annual list of which books I read, a list that helps me remember past events and feelings that I may have forgotten, like resting in my hammock on a nice summer day reading The Truth About Celia or the eagerness I felt flying to Italy while reading Poets in a Landscape. You could say that I remember things through the books I’ve read. I don’t think that’s such a bad way to live. Happy reading in 2012, everyone!

Lysistrata by Aristophanes
Tinkers by Paul Harding
Me, Myself & I by Edward Albee
Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Diviners by Jim Leonard Jr.
The Second Child by Deborah Garrison
The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick by Peter Handke
A Week at the Airport by Alain de Botton
Burn This by Lanford Wilson
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink
The Sunset Limited by Cormac McCarthy
Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them by Francine Prose
Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr
The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh
The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey
The Mercy Seat by Neil LaBute
Augustus by John Williams
Poets in a Landscape by Gilbert Highet
Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America by Steve Almond
Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet
The Truth About Celia by Kevin Brockmeier
A Happy Death by Albert Camus
The Commedia dell’Arte by Giacomo Oreglia
The Architect of Flowers by William Lychack
The Actor’s Art and Craft by William Esper and Damon DiMarco
Dying City by Christopher Shinn
Slowness by Milan Kundera
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
Improvise: Scene From the Inside Out by Mick Napier
Book of My Nights by Li-Young Lee
The Sea Gull by Anton Chekhov
Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason by Jessica Warner
The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books by Jeff Martin and C. Max Magee (editors)
Beautiful & Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry by David Orr
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Jitney by August Wilson
The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing
Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honday Dynasty by Tony Hoagland
Travesties by Tom Stoppard
Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee
The Harvard Psychedelic Club by Don Lattin
The Wrecking Light by Robin Robertson
The Chairs are Where the People Go by Misha Glouberman with Sheila Heti
In a Forest, Dark and Deep by Neil LaBute
Whatever by Michel Houellebecq
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute by Grace Paley
The Night Season by Rebecca Lenkiewicz
A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Seven Guitars by August Wilson
The Curfew by Jesse Ball
The Cripple of Inishmaan by Martin McDonagh
The Jokers by Albert Cossery
Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey Into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism by Daniel Pinchbeck
Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer
Normal People Don’t Live Like This by Dylan Landis

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A Completist Life

Posted on 2011/12/132011/12/15 by Jason Hensel

I’m a completist. I don’t know why. I don’t know when it started. All I know is that when I find something that I enjoy, and it appears in a series, I have to complete it.

My latest obsession is with New York Review Books (NYRB) Classics. I read one (Stoner by John Williams), loved it, and decided to see what else was in the series. I’d find one at Half Price Books (“Oh, this looks interesting, too!), buy it, and put it next to the previous one. This process repeated itself until now, where I find myself wanting (daresay, needing) to collect the whole series.

I know this is crazy. I won’t read every single book immediately or even like all the ones I read. But that’s not the point, which is to complete the collection.

I’ve done the same thing with the Best American Series (Short Stories, Travel, Science and Nature, Essays, Non-required Reading, Poetry) and the O. Henry series. Have I read any one volume of those all the way through? You can safely bet no. There was even a time I collected all the Shakespeare plays in individual volumes by a certain publisher because I liked the woodcuts used on the covers. This is ridiculous because I have many copies of his plays in anthologies scattered throughout the house. Do I really need four copies of Hamlet? Apparently, the answer is yes.

The completist in me is not something new. I collected baseball cards, coins, stamps, records, etc. when I was younger. I never saw it before as a problem, which makes worrying about it now kind of crazy.

The cliched saying is that if you know you’re crazy, then you’re not crazy. Then what am I? Perhaps being a completist is a type of crazy that’s more accepted in society, or at least it was. Hoarders has spoiled that game. Now when I bring a new NYRB book home because it’s part of “the collection,” my plus-one rolls her eyes, silently saying cuckoo cuckoo.

Or maybe I’m obsessing too much on the obsessing. I should focus on the pleasure I get from these books beautifully aligned on my shelf, knowing they are ready for me when I’m ready for them. I should obsess on the knowledge that I have a lifetime of reading ahead of me.

And I will, just as soon as I finish completing this collection.

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Review: In a Forest, Dark and Deep

Posted on 2011/10/25 by Jason Hensel

Neil LaBute is my favorite contemporary playwright. His style, his subjects, his view of the world all appeal to me for reasons I’ve yet to figure out for myself. While I wouldn’t give all his plays five stars, most of them deserve that much praise.

In a Forest, Dark and Deep, however, is not one of those. It’s the worst LaBute play I’ve ever read, with its lack of nuance and its overt narrative cliches reminding me of rookie scripts in a playwriting 101 course. Seriously, LaBute, you’re going to put in thunder and lightning to mirror the storm between the characters? That’s bush league.

The two-character play focuses on a brother-sister relationship. The brother, Bobby, comes to a cabin in the woods to help his sister, Betty, clear it out for some new tenets. Throughout the play, we learn more about Betty and the cabin and her real purpose for being there. But the story is so predictable, because in our crime drama-driven world, you’re able to pick up the clues if you have half a brain and give it a 10th of your attention.

And how does LaBute lead you to the conclusion? Through pages and pages of arguing and yelling. Now maybe this is the improv side of me coming out, but I’m tired of arguing in scenes. I’m tired of seeing it, hearing it and participating in it. It’s more fun to engage in conflict subtly. LaBute is great at that, or has been in the past. I don’t why or how he lost his cool in this play.

LaBute writes in the intro

We miss the missing. It’s a simple enough concept, I suppose–when someone has made an impact on our lives and then they’re gone, we long for them and what it was that made them special.

What makes LaBute special is his subtly, his finely tuned dialogue full of understated tension, the way he keeps you cringing but eager to continue watching disaster unfold. Let us hope soon it is that talented LaBute who returns from the missing.

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Review: The Chairs are Where the People Go

Posted on 2011/10/192011/10/20 by Jason Hensel

I work in the meeting and event industry. And one of the things that attracts me most to this field is group dynamics and learning. I love figuring out why people get together to exchange ideas, what ways best foster interaction, and how all of this can make us better humans.

Misha Glouberman loves it, too.

Glouberman, a Toronto-based event planner and facilitator, is also a thinker, a ponderer. His book, The Chairs are Where the People Go: How to Live, Work, and Play in the City, is an exploration of his opinions on a variety of topics. Primarily, though, they focus on interactions and how best to nurture them.

The book is co-written with his friend, Sheila Heti, who originally set out to write a fiction book based on Glouberman. She didn’t get too far into it, because she realized that a fictionalized Misha is no match for the real deal. She decided she would ask him his thoughts about several topics and transcribe verbatim (some of you grammarians may squirm a bit).

Examples of these mini-essays include: “Conferences Should be an Exhilarating Experience,” “Don’t Pretend There’s No Leader,” and “Sitting Down and Listening as a Role.” Each topic analysis is strictly Glouberman’s opinion. This isn’t balanced, journalistic reporting. And that’s what makes this book enjoyable and interesting.

For, you see, Misha Glouberman is a modern-day Montaigne. His thoughts are never settled. He leaves himself room to let alternatives enter into view. And that’s the book’s main theme: Think of others. Learn from them. Entertain other viewpoints.

“It’s easy to underestimate the fact that other people have had similar problems to yours and that you can learn from their experiences–and learn from people who’ve spent lots of time thinking about certain problems,” he tells Heti in the chapter titled, “A Decision is a Thing You Make.”

Glouberman’s thinking about certain problems will cause you to think, as well. And for me, that’s the sign of a great book.

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The Value of Quitting

Posted on 2011/10/05 by Jason Hensel

I love to read books. For the longest time, I would read five books at a time, switching among each one depending on my mood. Over time, though, I felt like I wasn’t reading as much (not true) or concentrating on each book as much (somewhat true). So, I decided to force myself to read one book at a time and give it my full attention.

I’ve been satisfied with this strategy for the most part. However, when I decide to read a book and I end up not liking it after 20 or so pages, I feel terrible about wanting to give up on it. I fall into the old trap that I should finish what I started, that winners never quit.

You should embrace quitting, though. Learning when to quit can make you more successful in the long run. Here’s Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics, on the upside of quitting.

So I hang out with a lot of economists. (I know, you’re envious.) But there are two things they love to talk about that will help us understand quitting. One is called “sunk cost” and the other is “opportunity cost.” “Sunk cost” is about the past — it’s the time, or money, or sweat equity that you’ve put into something, which makes it hard to abandon. “Opportunity cost” is about the future. It means that for every hour or dollar you spend on one thing, you’re giving up the opportunity to spend that hour or dollar on something else — something that might make your life better. If only you weren’t so worried about the sunk cost. If only you could quit.

The “sunk cost” is what hurts us most of the time. It’s living in the past instead of the now or the future. It’s a cause of most of our worries.

These past couple of weeks, I started three different books that looked great. Upon reading, they were real stinkers. I started to worry that maybe I was quitting too soon, that I wasn’t giving the book its due. That’s absurd on one level, because a book is an inanimate object. But it’s more absurd that I worried about quitting something that wasn’t making me happy. I found myself in a worry spiral, and the only way to get out of it was to quit.

Dubner goes on to say:

Of course it takes tremendous amounts of time and effort and, for lack of a more scientific word, stick-to-itiveness, to make any real progress in the world. But time and effort and even stick-to-itiveness are not in infinite supply. Remember the opportunity cost: every hour, every ounce of effort you spend here cannot be spent there. So let me counter Napoleon Hill’s phrase with another one, certainly not as well known. It’s something that Stella Adler, the great acting coach, used to say: Your choice is your talent. So choosing the right path, the right project, the right job or passion or religion — that’s where the treasure lies; that’s where the value lies. So if you realize that you’ve made a wrong choice — even if already you’ve sunk way too much cost into it — well, I’ve got one word to say to you, my friend. Quit.

Exactly. Why continue when you know you’re going to fail? Quit and move on to something that you know will be more successful. Myself, I started to read another book, The Harvard Psychedelic Club. It’s fun to read, interesting, and, more important, it makes me happy.

How easy is it for you to happily cut your loses and move on as quick as possible? Or do you have difficulty quitting things?

(Photo credit via Flickr: Frits Ahlefeldt-Laurvig / Creative Commons)

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