OF A GOLDEN AGE

The January 25 New Yorker fiction is Trailhead, an account of the life and times of an ant queen and the colony she establishes. Ants are kind of gross, and some of the details are kind of gross too, but it’s compelling stuff and doesn’t romanticize the ants:

First, however, she had to take a few minutes to shed her wings. To do that, she simply bent her middle legs forward, pressed them against the base of the wings, and snapped them off. This mutilation caused no injury to the rest of her body; it caused no pain. The Queen was a parachutist who slipped her harness upon landing. Now she could move more quickly to avoid the ants, spiders, and other predators hunting around her in the grassroots jungle.

The same issue has a long profile of Neil Gaiman and this insane piece on cryonics. It’s definitely worth picking up.

My sweet, precious little cat was put to sleep on Monday because of a giant, growing, inoperable mass in her throat. She got very sick over the last few months and she started to suffer a great deal as the tumor obstructed her breathing and eating, which made this the only humane and decent thing to do. She was 7. I loved her so much, and I am so, so sad.

My workplace now houses an environmentally friendly tankless water cooler. It taps into our main water line, filters the tap water, and dispenses it hot, lukewarm, or cold. It is marvelous (literally) to press a button and have water hot enough to brew tea within a few seconds.

Our ongoing conversation here about ways we can be more conscious is almost a matter of company policy more than moral fortitude, and the natural manner in which we all assume we will move toward a smaller carbon footprint and less waste is one of my favorite things about working here. Of course, in homes and in personal lives the dialogue can play out very differently. The New York Times ran a tragicomic piece on the rise in green issues among reasons to visit a therapist, like one California couple:

Mr. Fleming, who says he became committed to Ms. Cobb “before her high-priestess phase,” describes their conflicts as good-natured — mostly.

Even being a vegetarian has opened my eyes to how sensitive everyone is to feeling like they’re on the receiving end of someone’s judgment. “I don’t care what you eat, I’m just choosing for myself,” I hear myself say constantly. And sometimes I forget how easy it is to be a vegetarian in a huge city, or how understanding my parents or other people from previous generations have been for me. Imagine if this were your life, from the NYT piece:

If Ms. Petso prepares a vegan meal for the family, her parents prepare hot dogs to go alongside. Her parents serve on throwaway Styrofoam plates; she grabs a plate that can be cleaned and reused. Her mother, who says she prefers the way food tastes when it is served on Styrofoam, notes that washing dishes has its own environmental costs.

“She prefers the way food tastes when it is served on Styrofoam”?!

Let me stall a bit while I think of what to say.

Nearly two years ago I devoured John Steinbeck’s late-in-career travel memoir Travels with Charley and, later that year, took a road trip across America’s northeastern quadrant. Steinbeck’s prose walks a line between the all-out terseness of Hemingway and the more ornamental nature of other writers, and because of that he embodies my favorite writing rule: Don’t let your writing distract from your point. (Maybe you remember this from when I read Flowers in the Attic?)

I read all but the last ten pages of Of Mice and Men while waiting for a wake. The son of one of my dad’s oldest friends died at age 25 after a difficult and terrible cancer battle, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and even now completely lack vocabulary to describe how I felt or feel. This book took my thoughts away and replaced them with a similar sadness that somehow felt more complete, less ragged, because Steinbeck puts his characters in the middle of situations where they must grieve and, more importantly, gives each of them the words and the breathing room they need.

George and Lennie work as transient laborers on various California farms and ranches; in my mind they resembled Jonesy and the other rousties from HBO’s truncated epic Carnivále. Lennie has a mental disability of some kind, and has a damaged or impeded sense of his surroundings as he lumbers through them. At the book’s beginning he has killed a mouse by petting it to death, and he and George have new plans after somehow finding trouble in their previous locale.

George cares for Lennie, and while the other characters describe George as smart, his most relevant trait is his bottomless kindness toward his friend. George realizes he relies on Lennie just as much as vice versa, and by watching out for him George remembers what family means, how people can matter to each other, and the value of another person who shares your backstory and everyday experiences. The other laborers gravitate toward the pair because they don’t understand the bond George and Lennie share; why would George weigh himself down with this big galoot who doesn’t have any sense? They particularly draw the attention of the story’s wannabe alpha male, the boss’s son, who shares an actual legal partnership with his wife but spends his time trying to impress and pick fights with his underlings.

The story is short, and reads fast. Explaining even a little bit in detail would take something significant away, because the momentum and well-paced storytelling are like another character, an observer at the ongoing campfire. In fact, the prose and plot structure make the story feel like it’s been kept in the back pocket of one of its characters, carried from one job to the next, and pulled out during the first card games and conversations with fellow laborers. The story seems significant not only to the reader but to the other men in the story, and their respect for each other and the difficulties of their situation in the Great Depression makes this one of the most compassionate pieces of writing I’ve ever seen. There is no pity here, but there is enormous compassion.

The best place to start with Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian is this: It is the twelfth book in my Cannonball roster, but takes up more than a sixth of the total pages so far. It is a LONG book and the prose is dense. It is also a lush, loving book involving more research than I can begin to fathom: Even if Kostova made up the entire thing, to place it in history and make it credible requires a lot of thought and digging.

The result is cerebral but passionate. I turned the pages as quickly as possible, both because the plot was compelling and because the writing had polish and verve. Kostova mimics Bram Stoker’s Dracula in style, and her book is set just long enough ago, among a crowd of just-removed-enough academics, that the innocent, distant tone of classic Gothic narrators suits it. Primary narrator Paul is a sort of nonprofit diplomat, traveling all over Europe and allowing his sixteen-year-old daughter to tag along. He reveals a story in bits and pieces and built with the help of letters and journals.

The presence of these and of “primary sources” give Kostova’s story a great postmodern edge, and as I read I felt like I was watching over the main characters’ shoulders as they explored. It helped that Kostova is a gifted suspensist, because this book scared the hockey sticks out of me a LOT, moreso than anything I’ve read since my Stephen King heyday. In a way, the scariest part of the book is how convincing Kostova is when describing a group of intellectuals descending into a supernatural epic. These are really educated, skeptical people and for some reason they are handpicked as victims of a villain who’s incredible in every sense.

It is rare to be surprised and pleased by the creativity of a vampire book, or any supernatural-evil book, or any epistolary (framed by fictional letters) book, or, let’s face it, any book. The mystery and horror genres in particular suffer tropes lightly, but this is the most interesting horror I’ve read since House of Leaves blew the genre apart with its own brand of postmodern braindrain.

I loved this book, if you couldn’t tell already. My love of horror writing runs deep and old, and it’s clear Kostova’s done her research in the nonfiction and fiction areas of vampire lore. If vampires don’t interest you, turn back. If history doesn’t interest you, double turn back. Most of all, if you’re expecting some underdeveloped Freudian back-room sex metaphor like Twilight, I can certainly show you a new moon of your own.

Cannonball logo font: Sketch Rockwell. For more on the Cannonball Read, see Pajiba.

I realized recently that we had a little turf war between my childhood home and my best friend’s house across the street. We had a Nintendo and he had a Sega Genesis: On my side of the street was a neverending carousel of Excitebike and Super Mario Bros. and when I crossed over it was strictly Sonic the Hedgehog.

(Of course, Nintendo brought them all together in the new Super Smash Bros. Brawl. +1 cooperation!)

My brand allegiance to Mario goes way back. Even today, when I look through the NES catalog, the only games I can even play for more than a couple of minutes are the Super Marios — they’ve aged well because of strong pacing, clear design, and easy controls. My friend Nathan lured me into the treacherous world of RPGs starting with Super Paper Mario, a delightful platformer-RPG hybrid that was the beginning of the end for me. Even in elementary school, a frend’s Super Nintendo, and Super Mario World, kept our friendship alive longer than it had any business doing. And we all know my feelings about Mario Kart.

But when he got and played through Super Mario Galaxy, the latest incarnation of 3-D games starting with Mario 64, all it did was give me vertigo. The answer for old-fashioned schmoes like me is New Super Mario Bros. Wii, a classic 2-D side-scrolling platformer enhanced with the more powerful graphics and capabilities of the Wii. New features include some Wii-catered controls:

• Platforms which tilt based on your controller’s positioning
• Bonus round in which you aim and shoot a cannon with your controller
• Several applications for which you shake the controller

Sometimes the two means of control interfere with each other. Holding the controller at an angle while doing other things with the buttons is confusing even at its easiest, and I don’t play video games to test the limits of my hand flexibility or prehensile strength.

Another good and bad addition to the game is the expanded multiplayer mode. Instead of alternating turns between Mario and Luigi, or choosing one of four playable characters in the Surrealist weirdoworld of Super Mario Bros. 2, New Super Mario gives you multiple characters on-screen at once. Not only that, they interact with each other and present new possibilities for multiplayer moves. Also, if you’re like me and you’re the weak link, a more dominant player can sort of carry you in a bubble through difficult parts and bring you back afterward. Yeah! Loopholes to avoid failure!

I have triumphantly weaseled my way through almost the whole game without help, and with only a medium amount of infuriation and controller-hucking because of my own ineptitude. The game is wonderful and challenging and gets moreso in bursts: Some levels in the earlier worlds were incredibly difficult for me, and some levels in later worlds seemed bizarrely easy, but overall the play gets tougher as you move forward. There are a few levels that stood out to me as nonsensically difficult, and I’m sure there will be more to come as I finish world 8 and attempt world 9.

To that end, the game builds in a new feature: the Super Guide. If you lose 8 guys while attempting one level, an alert box appears and offers to show you an example video of Luigi completing the level. I didn’t ever use this, although it appeared in at least half a dozen levels because I am not particularly gifted at video games. If you choose the Super Guide and watch through to the end, you are given an option to skip the level completely, which some purists (code for “able-fingered meritocratists”) criticize as a dumbing-down of the franchise.

Well. Those people should know by now that without some kind of safety net, people like me would simply have a nerdy friend over, pass the controller, and say, “Beat this for me.”

(Longest Cannonball post title to date? Methinks yes.)

My parents know I’m obsessed with food, and to that end my mom gave me Erica Bauermeister’s novel The School of Essential Ingredients. It is newer than the Jane Austen Book Club and follows a very similar format: A small group of overlapping characters share a common event, in this case a cooking class. They have a leader, though, and she works in place of the omniscient narrator, guiding characters toward one another, directing their parallel lives into intersecting ones. The relationships described in the book’s course, or forged in its course, are satisfying enough.

But the real star of this show is the food — luxurious, emotionally loaded descriptions of fresh ingredients and the fragrant experience of cooking. Bauermeister brings her A-game and slathers it on thick. If you love food you will love this food; if you love this food you will love the characters she draws to interact with it. More than that, Bauermeister builds a great deal of legitimate food information into the book, along with a healthy and slightly laissez-faire attitude toward cooking. Because yes, baking is a series of ratios and requires scientific precision, although it can still be filled with love and adaptation and creativity. And no, building a fresh tomato sauce is not the same slave to process.

For more on the Cannonball Read, see Pajiba.

When a book I like is made into a movie, I value the not-a-movie-tie-in copy all the more — it makes me feel sad and cheap to read a book that’s wearing a big “Now a Major Motion Picture!” sticker. Of course, George Clooney isn’t on my copy, and who could ever say that’s a fair trade?

Walter Kirn’s 2001 book Up in the Air followed one of my most deeply loved favorite books, Thumbsucker. Up in the Air fell on my deaf ears by necessity: I was no adult, and the corporate world held no interest for me. After his previous novel of poignant teen angst and even orthodontia, how could I relate to this new novel? I couldn’t, and my disappointment steeped for eight years.

“They’re making a movie out of that book I hate?” I said many times in 2009.

Kirn’s book faced an unusual obstacle, as far as I could see. His wonderful other novel was made into an okay movie, and now the adaptation of a book I disliked was raking in huge awards buzz. But the descriptions of the movie never matched with my memory of the book, and I had to reread it to remember one way or the other.

I haven’t seen the movie, but I can say the book is exactly as I remembered: neurotic, complex, populated with empty people. What I see now that I didn’t before is that Kirn affects this tone on purpose, draws his world with people you dislike or barely notice, populates his main character’s mind with the most bland, Michael Scott preferences masquerading as his ticket into the high-rollers’ club.

Ryan Bingham works as a “transitions” man: he comes in after a firing to do recognizance and triage. At the book’s beginning, he believes he’s approaching a juncture in his career between his previous job and a new, mysterious role at a smoke-and-mirrors business consulting house. He is also attempting to break the one-million-mile mark as a frequent flier and has a then-unheard-of “digital assistant” device to coordinate his entire schedule.

For his flakiest sister’s upcoming wedding, he spends exorbitantly and begins a stock portfolio for her. When his sisters call they ask where he is and he frequently lies; he isn’t sure why it matters where he’s calling from, and chooses a city to assuage a worry whose origins he doesn’t understand. At some points he gobbles pills by the handful, at others he wantonly mistreats the few people who like and recognize him; but again, a suspended-animation manchild is no different from an adolescent when it comes to likable behaviors.

Bingham’s eagerness and absolute devotion to the corporate “Airworld” in which he lives make it hard to resist him, and the way he comments inwardly about all the people he remembers, all the ways he tries to make a good impression, it all made me root for him despite myself. He knows what clout fakingstance and posturing hold in his chosen field, watches others as they behave affectedly:

His painful, frostbitten feet explained the slippers, but the bubbles he blew were the purest affectation, intended to show that he plays by his own Hoyles. He knows, as all the cleverest ones do, that no human being is so interesting that he can’t make himself more interesting still by acting retarded at random intervals.

The book is a roast of corporate zeitgeist, of the talking heads whose shortest thoughts make up entire books, and of what we each lose by taking one step too far into that hype and altered reality. I also got a warm, anti-busyness feeling as Bingham’s completely planned journeys and meetings began falling apart, although he has great adaptability and takes the obstacles in stride. The obstacles themselves form an interesting subplot, and it speaks to Bingham’s nature that his greatest adversary is the same corporate culture responsible for his success. When he suspects someone is out to get him, it isn’t a someone at all. It’s a whole company without a face.

A lady appears in the book, but is not significant except in the red flags sent up by Bingham’s treatment of her. There is also no junior colleague, no plans to change corporate M.O. — in fact, Bingham states at the beginning that he’s leaving his job and has submitted a resignation. The idea of sending a colleague he must rely on for a new way of doing business is contradictory to the book’s message and makes me wary of the movie. Kirn explained it this way on All Things Considered:

In this case, a whole new character had to be introduced. A sort of sidekick had to be given to a lonely hero who spends most of the time in the novel observing and thinking about his world. But now we had to give him a chance to talk about his world.

If you work in the corporate world, I suspect you will like or at least relate to this book. If you’re interested in comeuppance by proxy, some karmic punishment for an ascetic corporate life, then step into Ryan Bingham’s office. It isn’t an office at all, and yet houses his many, many issues.

Cannonball logo font: Sketch Rockwell. For more on the Cannonball Read, see Pajiba.

My dear friend and I discuss work holidays.

tycho: all my coworkers are being all butch and showmany and like “i’m not taking holidays”
tycho: “holidays are for wussies”
tycho: and I’m like, I’ll see you on tuesday
tycho: cheers!
me: Hahahaha
me: “holidays are for wussies”

And in the holiday spirit, the Frugal Vegan has a list of suggestions in lieu of money to give to homeless people, including easy-open nonperishable foods and hygiene items. It’s a lovely idea, especially as the weather grows bitterly cold here in Chicago.

The New York Times reported that Kim Peek died of a heart attack a week before Christmas. Peek was a savant of nigh unprecedented abilities and the inspiration for Raymond Babbitt in the movie Rain Man:

Mr. Peek had memorized so many Shakespearean plays and musical compositions and was such a stickler for accuracy, his father said, that they had to stop attending performances because he would stand up and correct the actors or the musicians.

“He’d stand up and say: ‘Wait a minute! The trombone is two notes off,’ ” Fran Peek said.

(This is, I think, how my friends imagine I feel when I see typos or grammar errors. They’re wrong, by the way.)

The article is a lovely tribute, and the contrasts in Peek’s mental state — brilliant in some ways, completely incapable in others — create moments of dark humor:

When Kim was 6, another doctor recommended a lobotomy. By then, however, Kim had read and memorized the first eight volumes of a set of family encyclopedias, his father said.

Rain Man is one of my family’s favorite movies, something from which we quote incessantly. Raymond — the character inspired by Peek — communicates almost entirely through nonverbals, and Tom Cruise’s character must learn to read between lines that aren’t present. He undergoes a now-classic Cruise transformation from crass to humbled, from uncaring to involved.

When the economy flounders and so many talented people find themselves out of work or underemployed, I think it can be tempting to lament that we aren’t all a certain way or haven’t followed a certain path. I love Kim Peek’s story because he spent most of his adult life giving presentations and making public appearances, helping to shore up the self-perceptions and confidence of other adults who faced challenging mental circumstances.

With great brain power comes great responsibility, usually at the sacrifice of some other part of one’s life or personality: our most beloved artists, scientists, and any of those who make important waves for humankind have discovered this firsthand.