Friday Quick Notes

First, some Love is the Law reviews and such:

sabotabby writes that it is a bleak, hilarious, clever little** novel (** little==short).

pantryslut writes:

What I loved about Love is the Law:

* Girlpunk point-of-view character.
* She is not perfect and flawless (goodbye Nancy Drew...).
* She is not saddled with a Tragic Origin.
* She is saddled with a complicated family.
* Amaranth is tasty stuff.
* The spot-on critical yet affectionate take on both politics and magic(k).
* It's really funny without being fluffy.


Sue Lange reviews it here: t’s the story of America: subtle and outrageous.

Joseph Tomaras interview me a bit here:

In that respect, it seems similar in some ways to Crowleyan "magick": The notion that one need only find the "correct" slogan acts as a kind of abrahadabra, the stenciled placard as a kind of sigil.

Now I wanted to talk about another book, BTW, by Jarett Kobek. His last novel, which I loved, was Atta, a fictional memoir of the 9/11 terrorist. This one is the opposite: unashamedly autobiographical, with its narrator an American of Turkish Muslim descent bouncing around the parts of America where one doesn't need to drive. Then, after 9/11, to LA. It's interesting to compare it to the broadly similar The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. Both are about literary young men of sorts, both young men–the children of immigrants—are motivated by sex and fear in a way, and both books are funny and well-observed. So why is the more authentic one being published by a small press that cannot corral widows and orphans on the page, and the other got the full New York rollout?

The answer is in the question: BTW is more authentic. More than a decade from 9/11, Kobek is able to show his narrator's foibles and excuses without either minimizing them or wallowing in them. Waldman wallows greatly, saying "Nate had not always been the kind of guy women call an asshole," right up at the top of the second chapter, and then a sentence or two later demonstrating what a nerd he'd been back in those non-asshole days: he wrote a song for math class, a Madonna pastiche, entitled "Like a Cosine (Solved for the Very First Time)." Take that, Nathan P!

There's much alike in the two books, however. From BTW:

bell hooks is phenomenal, and so is Diane di Prima, and I'll lay it on the road for Sandra Cisneros and climb to the high heavens for Dorothy Allison, but Holy Jesus, please save me from their bewildered disciples. Save me from the students of Eugene Lang College.

And from The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P:

And if they hadn't read Svevo or Berhnhard—and let's face it, most hadn't—at least they knew who they were. "Zeno's Conscience, right? Doesn't James Wood, like, love that book?"

Well, somewhat alike, anyway. It's the difference between the new literary territory of the American Muslim experience, versus the fairly well-traveled territory of the Jewish-American experience, enthusiasm about cynicism versus cynicism about enthusiasm, making literary amends versus taking literary revenge, and frankly, one is funnier than the other and that book, BTW, ends up in Izmir. Who can relate to that? Not anyone making decisions in New York publishing. No surprise that BTW is about a guy with little money who does a magazine assignment here or there, and Nathan P is about the titular character after he receives a six-figure advance.


Finally, the case of Maria, supposedly kidnapped by Roma in Greece, ends well enough. Private adoption isn't unusual in Greece. No more "blonde angel" for the Greek media now; she's just another γύφτα. While antiziganism is common in Greece, like anywhere else, this little story became international news almost assuredly because of the rise of fascism in Greece and the rest of the European periphery. Blonde? Why, she can't be Roma, or even a Slav—the gypsies have stolen an Aryan! Golden Dawn is explicit in simply stapling "and Greeks" to the old Aryan Nazi propaganda. We'll see more visual racism and ethnic lumping/splitting like this very soon, and not even necessarily in publishing!