Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Review: Pocket Kings by Ted Heller

Many a novel has been written satirizing, in some form or fashion, the literary world and its pretentious, back-stabbing denizens. However, most of the works within this sub-genre seem too much like shooting fish in a barrel or self-congratulatory or, most commonly, quickly outdated. That Pocket Kings by Ted Heller, son of Joseph Heller, suffers from none of these defects is a testament to the author's talent and his ceaseless and unflinching eye towards exposing contemporary literature's marginal status and fixation on sales as the benchmark of "success." One of the refrains of this brilliant novel is protagonist Frank Dixon's obsessive/self-absorbed/nervous glance at his Amazon.com sales rankings (he's the author of several hack novels). On page three of Pocket Kings Dixon is America's 711,653rd most popular novelist (better than your truly, I kept thinking).

Realizing his career is going nowhere fast, Dixon gives up, dives headlong into the world of online gambling (he goes by the name Chip Zero) and lies to his wife and friends that he's writing his next book--all the while earning hundreds and thousands of dollars gambling (and flirting) with people he's never met. Gambling is one of the few things in life Dixon admits that he's actually good at.

In other words, the protagonist turns on its head the old ironically inspirational nugget from Samuel Beckett: "Try again. Fail again. Fail better." Nah, Dixon argues. If your Amazon.com ranking is in the 700,000s, give up and find something else more pleasurable and profitable to do. Life is too short. This is both the heart of Pocket Kings and its most controversial point. Giving up is anathema to the literati raised on the belief/fallacy that hard work eventually pays off. But--this novel proffers--what if it doesn't? What if the dream of literary reward is a bogus offering, a chimera based on good old American false optimism and creative writing boosterism. This novel points out the hard truth: the literary world can only accommodate an extremely small set of winners. Everyone else loses. Heller points out that despite the touchy-feely encouragement, finding success in writing books is just like everything else these days--acting, professional sports, art, music. Most of the competitors fail.

Peppered with real contemporary references rather than fictionalized versions thereof, Pocket Kings is a delicious read: Kim Kardashian, Charlie Rose, A Million Little Pieces. Nothing and no one is spared. This novel portrays the contemporary winner-takes-all-mentality vividly, from the loser's point of view. It is a culture in which the celebrity writer flavor of the month garners the sales and attention, while the midlist authors are relegated to bottomfeeding. Throughout the novel Dixon has a particular loathing of slick over-hyped Post-Modernists--Johnathan Franzen, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jonathan Lethem, Michael Chabon, and David Eggers. Dixon fantasizes sucker-punching the likes of them.

And yet. Heller saves the juiciest nuggets for Dixon's alternate reality--online gambling. It is by playing cards that Dixon exposes his latent addictive tendencies. What Pocket Kings suggests is that many writers, mediocre or otherwise, would rather be doing something else with their time other than writing. Why? In Pocket Kings Heller suggests this has to do with the fact that the cut-throat nature of the literary sphere is such that "conversations between two writers are like two dogs casually sniffing each other's rear ends and then ten seconds later gouging out each other's throats." One page later Heller compares the smell of another writer's book in galleys to "changing the diapers of someone else's baby." Soon after Dixon writes a cheesy blurb for a book he has never read. It's the kind of blurb any writer knows might easily find its way onto the back matter of his/her novel with or without his consent. Heller exposes the tit-for-tatness of literary goings-on for what it is--a sham, a game in which the participants pat each other's backs and trade favors for mutual self-benefit.

Pocket Kings is not a perfect novel. Heller could have trimmed a few pages here and there and benefitted. Some sections of the novel are, in its satirizing, a smidge over-the-top (but not many). However, for the most part Pocket Kings is top-shelf material--high satire which not only offers bone-crunching truths worthy of a non-fiction expose, but also a wealth of insight writers might glean from their own writerly worlds. Afterall, Dixon is the "master of the suburban mimetic" (the book is filled with such sly digs and literary affectations). Pocket Kings is both a cautionary tale, and also perhaps a path to a form of literary liberation.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

A Sliver of Silver


Like most Americans I spend far too much time in my car. Not only do I live 40 minutes away from where I work (which is about average nationwide), but my various hobbies, interests, social outings, and errands, put me on the asphalt frequently. So I think about cars a lot--far more than they deserve.

In fact I could probably write a thousand little essays on various little car-related observations on top of the book of short fiction I've already scribbled on the subject.

One of the societal certainties over the past few years has to do with the uptick in silver and pewtery paint jobs for automobiles. According to the New York Times (Oct. 8th, 2010) nearly 31% of new automobiles are silver or silverish (gray, etc.) in hue. That's a whole lot of silver paint jobs. The question is: why?

Thoughts/theories/conjectures:

1. Silver=money. This is the Jaguar effect. If you buy a $12,000 silver Hyundai (like I did) it will look like a more expensive car, or so the thinking goes. This is keeping up with the Joneses. This is car manufacturers offering the illusion of style rather than actual style. This is the 21st Century disco effect--everything should be smooth and chic (silver finishes are apparently more expensive). However, when every car is silver does silver still glitter?

2. Silver is colorless. Despite the appearance of glitz and glimmer, silver is understated. How many gold cars do you see on the road? Gold on automobiles is gauche. Silver says upper-middle class classy-but-not-in-your-face. Silver says you too can buy me.

3. Silver is depressed. And still on a cold winter afternoon silver cars seem lifeless. Something about the silver fad makes me think subconsciously we are buying cars as suits--something to wear (drive) to the office. We no longer drive because we want to, we drive because we have to. Silver is an affirmation of this. Cars fit to make a professional appearance.

4. It's a recession color. With the decline of the stock market and dollar, what does best? Gold and silver. Silver is a precious metal you can drive.

5. We were supposed to have flying cars by this point, right? That's what we learned on The Jetson's, at least. Silver automobiles won't fly, but they might resemble the color of jetliners, which might have the same subliminal effect, or something.

6. Silver blends right in. It's similar in color, most noticeably, to the road on which we drive--which, at least in my area, is only a shade darker in most places than the paint jobs. Silver also blends right in to other (mostly silver) cars. They disappear. We don't notice them. If you want a car which doesn't say too much, silver is for you.

7. Silver accommodates. It makes one feel at home. When one has a fancy dinner party one busts out the fancy silver. Now we can have the same effect with our cars.

8. Silver reveals a lack of self-esteem, a malaise, as it were. What happened to the (overly?) optimistic bright red cars of the 80's? What brown wood-paneled station wagons were to the 1970's nearly identical swooshy bubble cars are to the teens.

9. An old article in New Scientist (Dec., 2003) reports that silver cars are safer. Perhaps the car industry is simply protecting us in a shield of glitz?

I'm sure there are other reasons.