Review: How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

Posted on 2013/01/142013/01/14 by Jason Hensel

Navel-gazing, or the art of self-reflection, hit its high point on the Internet around the turn of the century. Then, every third blog you came across was an exploration of an individual’s daily habits and thoughts. Letting strangers have a glimpse of their lives didn’t bother the authors, because either they wanted the attention or they sincerely wanted to know themselves better. Both options played a role, I’m sure.

In the 16th century, Montaigne was the ultimate navel-gazer. His only aspiration was to learn how to live, the proper way to conduct one’s life. He set out to discover this by writing essays, pieces that are about one subject but would meander or jump to another thought. His goal wasn’t order, but to present life as it is so that he (and the reader) could learn from it. Many readers claim that when they read Montaigne, they feel that he’s writing about them on a personal level. It’s because he was honest with himself, and that we’re all connected, we all feel the same things, experience the same joys and griefs. Many, though, try to rein in their thoughts and feelings, creating a systemic narrative. That’s not life, which really can be compared to a game of Pong. Sometimes you move in a straight line, sometimes you move diagonally. A lot of the time you move back as far as you move forward, and the speed of it all is random. Montaigne knew this and embraced it.

In How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, Sarah Bakewell offers readers a portrait of a man clearly ahead of his time. Even now, Montaigne’s raw honesty would be frown upon or mocked. One only likes a mirror when it’s there to please.

Bakewell organizes the book in 20 chapters, each with such headings as “Q: How to live? Question everything” and “Q: How to live? Give up control.” Each chapter covers a period of Montaigne’s life while at the same time exploring the topic at hand. It’s a clever progression. Throughout the book, you learn a lot about French history, nobility, and philosophy, both Montaigne’s accidental attempts at it and Greek and Roman thoughts.

It’s clear that Bakewell loves Montaigne. The writing is at times energetic, humorous, and balanced, much like her subject’s essays. If you’ve never read any Montaigne, you’ll be inspired to after finishing this book. You may even be inspired to contemplate your own existence, perhaps begin a journal or create a blog. If anything, you’ll definitely think about not only how to live, but what it means to live.

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Review: Busy Monsters

Posted on 2012/12/242013/01/03 by Jason Hensel

I will admit that a great first line is all that is needed to cause me to continue reading a book. Surely, I’m not the only one that’s been drawn into, for example, Fahrenheit 451 or A Prayer for Owen Meany based solely on their first lines. Busy Monsters by William Giraldi is another book that kicks you in a kidney with its first line: “Stunned by love and some would say stupid from too much sex, I decided I had to drive down South to kill a man.” If you’re not grabbed by the lapels after that first line, then you’re suffering from a deep state of depression that Hallmark wouldn’t even be able to help.

Busy Monsters is the story of Charles Homar and his quest to win back a woman who left him. Homar is writer for a periodical that publishes his over-the-top, true-life stories. Yes, Giraldi makes Homar similar in name to Homer, another writer who wrote over-the-top stories full of monsters. And if you didn’t catch that in-your-face similarity, then let me drive you back to school for your first day of high school freshman English.

Homar’s fiancee leaves because she wants to discover a living giant squid. In his quest to win back his lover, Homar tries to prove himself a man by shooting down a ship, capturing Bigfoot, and confronting UFO enthusiasts. Homar, of course, has his own odyssey on his way to reunite with his Penelope.

Giraldi’s narrative reminds me a lot of Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Robbins. I’m okay with that; however, it took me a couple of pages to get into the swing of things if I put the book down for a day. The style’s over-the-topness took me aback for a bit, but once I got into the groove, I was happy to ride this rocket to its destination.

Along the way, Giraldi wrote some great lines that encapsulate the book’s theme.

“We human monsters make choices with the minds of worms; good sense lies east, we veer west; trouble sends an invitation, we RSVP the very same day.” Also, “…all I mean to say is that a human being is an oblivious ape in the grip of nonsense…” Those are two that come to mind and really struck me enough to memorize the page numbers they’re on.

If you’re a fan of Vonnegut or Robbins, then I believe you’ll love Busy Monsters. It’s a fun read, and it will cause you to contemplate what kind of monsters, real or imaginary, you’d battle to win what’s important to you.

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Review: Butcher’s Crossing

Posted on 2012/11/042012/11/05 by Jason Hensel

I’ve now read three books by John Williams, and each one was different in setting and story. The tone, though, has been the same. Williams is a master of the understated. He’s not shy in asking the reader to think, and that’s what I love most about him.

In Butcher’s Crossing, Williams tells the story of a buffalo hunt beginning with lofty intentions only to succumb to sudden changes of nature and humanity. The narrative is set in 1870s Kansas and Colorado. Will Andrews arrives in the town of Butcher’s Crossing seeking to discover the West after dropping out of Harvard. He meets an experienced buffalo hunter named Miller who convinces him that he knows where thousands of buffalo graze in a Colorado valley. Miller promises Andrews there’s a lot of money to be made with the number of hides they’ll bring back. Andrews agrees to fund and go on the hunt, along with two other men, an old man named Charley, who will steer the wagon, and Schneider, the skinner.

Much of the narrative is about the long journey to Colorado. This portion of the book is repetitive and tiresome, and kudos to Williams for making the reader feel exactly how the riders feel. Once in the valley, the killing starts. Miller becomes obsessed with getting as many hides as possible, and Andrews supports his decision even as Schneider objects over and over. Miller’s goal is what makes them miss their time to leave the valley before winter starts. The story then becomes one of survival under a harsh winter for eight months.

Times have changed once the buffalo hunting party arrives back in Butcher’s Crossing, and it’s this portion of the book where Williams’ writing shines.

Andrews is talking with McDonald–the hide buyer–about why he came out West and what he was trying to discover. McDonald tells him there’s nothing to find out.

You get born, and you nurse on lies, and you get weaned on lies, and you learn fancier lies in school. You live all your life on lies, and then maybe when you’re ready to die, it comes to you–that there’s nothing, nothing but yourself and what you could have done. Only you ain’t done it, because the lies told you there was something else. Then you know you could of had the world, because you’re the only one that knows the secret; only then it’s too late. You’re too old.

It’s a bleak outlook, and it reminds me of the tone of Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Butcher’s Crossing was published almost 25 years before McCarthy’s classic. I wonder if he read it and was influence by its philosophical outlook on the American dream of manifest destiny. Whereas McCarthy concerns himself with evilness in the world, Williams wonders about something else, something just as damning as evil because it’s unknowable.

We have something to say to each other, Andrews thought dimly, but we don’t know what it is; we have something we ought to say.

I’ve been thinking about that line a lot after finishing the book. It’s stuck with me, and I don’t see it vanishing anytime soon. It’s going to be a filter I experience everything through for a while. And it’s all because Williams gave us a classic tale of the hero’s journey and then questioned if the journey is worth it. That’s something I never thought about, and I’m not sure I want to know the answer. At least not yet. I’m too young.

(Image via New York Review Books.)

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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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Review: Whatever

Posted on 2011/11/102011/11/10 by Jason Hensel

Duality is a common theme in literature. In fact, it’s one of my favorite themes, especially when it’s an internal struggle. Questions such as who we are, what’s our place in the world, how we perceive ourselves as opposed to how others perceive us are questions that have fascinated and baffled humans for thousands of years. I suspect we’ll still be trying to answer them millions of years from now as the growing Sun swallows our planet.

Whatever (Original French title: Extension du domaine de la lutte) by Michel Houellbecq is another book posing these types of questions without definitive answers. With so much literature published on this topic, the most important question rises as to how well a writer attempts an answer.

The novel’s protagonist is a 30-year-old computer programmer who writes strange stories about talking animals in his spare time. He’s content (or resigned) to how is his life is playing out, until he’s sent on a trip with a co-worker to train provincial workers on how to use a new computer system.

His traveling partner, Raphael Tisserand, is younger and a virgin. Together, they train by day and go out at night in various French cities. The protagonist (he’s never given a name) observes Tisserand’s repeated failures in trying to have sexual relations with women and comes to the conclusion that capitalism is to blame. Because of a free-market economy, the rich (the good-looking) get richer and the poor (the ugly) get poorer.

In one of the more suspenseful scenes in the book, the protagonist urges Tisserand to exact revenge on a woman and her lover that has thwarted Tisserand’s advances. The outcome, though, succumbs to the protagonist’s capitalist theory about love.

After this scene, the book becomes a lot more philosophical, shooting toward the universal like a slim rocket.

“For years I have been walking alongside a phantom who looks like me, and who lives in a theoretical paradise strictly related to the world,” the protagonist says toward the end of the book. “I’ve long believed that it was up to me to become one with this phantom. That’s done with.”

This is a common feeling among many in the world, that what you once thought would happen–or once thought you’d be–will no longer be a part of reality. It’s a difficult realization. Some never accept it, for better or for worse.

It’s this realization that Houellbecq asks his readers to consider in Whatever. His hero’s response may not be your choice. Nevertheless, it’s the only choice that will keep us alive.

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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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Live Aqua

Posted on 2011/09/142011/09/27 by Jason Hensel

My naked feet rarely feel the sun. I have nothing against going barefoot; I just rather wear shoes or socks whenever possible. Because of this, my feet are two extra pale parts on an already pale body. So when I’m out in the sun for an extended time, and I’m wearing very little, I make sure to wear sunscreen. A lot of sunscreen.

In Cancun, Mexico, though, I forgot to put protection on the tops of my feet. There I was on the beach, relaxing in a chair, under a wide umbrella, taking slow drinks from a mimosa, and reading Jitney. I stretched my legs, letting my feet linger in the sun just outside the umbrella’s protective shade. By mid-afternoon, my feet felt like fire ants were under the skin biting through to escape.

This happened the first full day of my vacation and visit to Live Aqua, an adults-only all-inclusive on the northern end of Cancun’s hotel zone. Live (pronounced with a short “i”) Aqua is very contemporary, almost Vegas in aesthetics, that prides itself on appealing to the senses. When I walked in to the lobby, peppermint scents overwhelmed me. At the registration desk, I was offered some tea, which is some of the best tea I’ve ever had in my life. After check in, I was offered a hand massage. If you don’t want to hear about the resort’s time-share program, I suggest you leave for your room after your hands are properly rubbed and relaxed.

The hotel offers 371 guest rooms, and it’s worth the extra money to get an ocean-view room. It was comforting going to sleep with the sound of waves and nice waking up and seeing the ocean from my bed every morning.

For those that enjoy laying by the pool or beach, Live Aqua is your place, because there’s not much more to do than that. The resort features three restaurants, three bars and little much in nightlife entertainment. One night, I took part in a turtle release activity. Another night, I had dinner on the beach. The other nights, well, there was TV in the room.

The three restaurants were all good, with Azur offering the biggest portions and MB offering the best presentations. Siete is the largest restaurant and the only one that offers a daily breakfast. Every meal I had was well prepared (well, except for my steak at MB that I almost needed a hacksaw to cut through) and fresh. It felt like I was eating healthy while there.

You can definitely tell that Live Aqua is going for an upscale feel in everything they offer. Whether it’s their pristine pools or soft sand beach, the place exudes extraordinary. But much like the scents that greet you upon arrival, the extraordinary evaporates with a lack of nightlife entertainment.

Maybe I’m being too hard about that point. I’m sure there are people who just want to do nothing but sunbathe, eat, and drink. For them, this place is perfect. For others seeking a little more, the resort could up its game.

It’s just that one element, the lack of nightlight activity, that Live Aqua suffers from the most. Kind of like how I only got sunburned on only one area; the rest of my body perfectly fine.

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Review: The Architect of Flowers by William Lychack

Posted on 2011/06/042011/09/27 by Jason Hensel

My friend Danny introduced me to William Lychack’s writing a few years ago. The story he had me read was “A Stand of Fables,” which is about a woman who yearns for the sea, to return to what she was once before. The story is beautifully written with a vein of sadness streaming through it, like a red line of clay in limestone. And even though there was that sadness in it, there was also hope and redemption.

This duality of sadness and hopefulness is Lychack’s bailiwick in his collection of stories, The Architect of Flowers. Opening with “Stolpestad,” a story about an animal mercy killing gone wrong, Lychack bats the reader back and forth between grief and discovery. He doesn’t let up for the whole collection, and if you were to read this book straight through, you too may need to go for a walk in the dark woods to find yourself.

Lychack’s prose is lyrical and often sparse. It reminds me of Raymond Carver’s writing (or maybe I should say Carver’s writing heavily diced and sliced by Gordon Lish). There were several times I ended a story and had to pause, contemplating Lychack’s overall meaning, much like one does after reading a poem.

And much like great poets, Lychack knows how to construct a line that causes you to do exactly what he wants you to do. Here’s the beginning of the first line of “Stolpestad”: “Was toward the end of your shift, a Saturday, another one of those long slow lazy afternoons of summer…” Just try reading “long slow lazy” fast. I dare you. It’s impossible without sounding like half your tongue is cut off. Those three words slow the reader down, immediately putting you in the story’s time location.

Lychack’s syntax in these stories is like a short earthquake, often throwing you off balance, but never to the ground. This goes along with his major themes of grief and redemption, forcing you to re-examine the world, to re-evaluate what is important to you, what you can live with and without.

There are 13 stories in the collection. A lot of the stories feature birds. You’ll come away knowing more about flowers and gardening. You’ll learn where to properly kill an animal on its body. You’ll often pause and think and daydream a bit, much like most of the characters. Lychack sets his fabulistic stories in a world of truth to help secure your footing. And then he tells you that the world you know isn’t what you expected or hoped for. It’s up to you to imagine a new one, maybe even something better than was once here before.

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