mark Jabbour's Blog - Posts Tagged "fiction"
Good fiction
Bloodmoney: A novel of espionage (2011) David Ignatius
Last night I wanted a good book to read – some fiction – I read a lot of non-fiction but I wasn’t in the mood. I wanted a good story with some bite to it, not fluff or fantasy. I tried a Nora Roberts novel but that bordered on pushing me towards the edge—and jumping. I think what I was wanting was another book like Bloodmoney. It’s topical and about big ideas. It’s about people—people not like me but who live in the world, too. It’s about the craziness that is “The War on Terror.” It’s about one of my favorite subjects— lying, and the professional liars, the intelligence services, that sneak around the world trying to manipulate people into coming around to their (= the people who are in power in a particular place) point of view, or belief – which is that what they believe is The Truth. Something like tolerance, truth, and science doesn’t have much respect in the world of professional liars. That world isn’t really much different from the world of non-professional liars except for this: Smart people (professionals) lie to others, and stupid people (most everyone else) lie to themselves. Stupid people are dupes and rubes and victims and happy idiots who are exploited by smart people; and also about the contrast between two very different POVs. One is old, pre-literate, & closed (Afghanistan/Pakistan and all the other Stans), and the other (The US or us) is new, literate, and open – you might say “post-modern.” So we’ve got this crazy mix of old & new weapons of war about the oldest of wars – who gets to dominate who, which is ultimately about sex, money, power & revenge, motives for murder – the ultimate expression of dominance.
Ignatius isn’t the greatest of writers, not close, but not so bad so as to not be readable. His characters are flat and stereotyped. (Maybe archetypal is kinder.) In fact the CIA AD was Russell Crowe from Body of Lies, Ignatius’ previous “War on Terror” novel/movie. I think he changed the guy’s first name but his surname was the same. But this time the protagonist is a female USA spy. Yay. But she’s not very interesting. None of the characters are. They are flat, boring, my least favorite type of people in books and in real life – be they smart or stupid. My problem is I just don’t like liars – got little tolerance for it (See Degrees of Lying).
But, but, but, Ignatius is digging into something important here. According to him in the notes at the end of the book – the big idea here is how to go about ending war. And guess what? Yep, there are two different approaches, to that end, expressed by the different cultures – the old and the new. The old demands a face-to-face tête-à-tête. An asking for forgiveness and a granting of such. The new believes that face-to-face is blasé. That is: That when someone doesn’t agree with you can destroy them from a distance by bomb or blog, or if that doesn’t work, you can bribe them with cash via an envelope in a clandestine meet with an anonymous currier. One approach is intimate, say by rape and blade, and the other dispassionate, by bribe and bomb. So we fight about how we fight. And this is true. What we have here folks, when we dig down deep to the root of the tree in the garden
– is a failure to communicate. Good fiction.
Last night I wanted a good book to read – some fiction – I read a lot of non-fiction but I wasn’t in the mood. I wanted a good story with some bite to it, not fluff or fantasy. I tried a Nora Roberts novel but that bordered on pushing me towards the edge—and jumping. I think what I was wanting was another book like Bloodmoney. It’s topical and about big ideas. It’s about people—people not like me but who live in the world, too. It’s about the craziness that is “The War on Terror.” It’s about one of my favorite subjects— lying, and the professional liars, the intelligence services, that sneak around the world trying to manipulate people into coming around to their (= the people who are in power in a particular place) point of view, or belief – which is that what they believe is The Truth. Something like tolerance, truth, and science doesn’t have much respect in the world of professional liars. That world isn’t really much different from the world of non-professional liars except for this: Smart people (professionals) lie to others, and stupid people (most everyone else) lie to themselves. Stupid people are dupes and rubes and victims and happy idiots who are exploited by smart people; and also about the contrast between two very different POVs. One is old, pre-literate, & closed (Afghanistan/Pakistan and all the other Stans), and the other (The US or us) is new, literate, and open – you might say “post-modern.” So we’ve got this crazy mix of old & new weapons of war about the oldest of wars – who gets to dominate who, which is ultimately about sex, money, power & revenge, motives for murder – the ultimate expression of dominance.
Ignatius isn’t the greatest of writers, not close, but not so bad so as to not be readable. His characters are flat and stereotyped. (Maybe archetypal is kinder.) In fact the CIA AD was Russell Crowe from Body of Lies, Ignatius’ previous “War on Terror” novel/movie. I think he changed the guy’s first name but his surname was the same. But this time the protagonist is a female USA spy. Yay. But she’s not very interesting. None of the characters are. They are flat, boring, my least favorite type of people in books and in real life – be they smart or stupid. My problem is I just don’t like liars – got little tolerance for it (See Degrees of Lying).
But, but, but, Ignatius is digging into something important here. According to him in the notes at the end of the book – the big idea here is how to go about ending war. And guess what? Yep, there are two different approaches, to that end, expressed by the different cultures – the old and the new. The old demands a face-to-face tête-à-tête. An asking for forgiveness and a granting of such. The new believes that face-to-face is blasé. That is: That when someone doesn’t agree with you can destroy them from a distance by bomb or blog, or if that doesn’t work, you can bribe them with cash via an envelope in a clandestine meet with an anonymous currier. One approach is intimate, say by rape and blade, and the other dispassionate, by bribe and bomb. So we fight about how we fight. And this is true. What we have here folks, when we dig down deep to the root of the tree in the garden
– is a failure to communicate. Good fiction.
Louis C K & the fiction writer
What do Louis C. K., stand up comic, & The Fiction Writer have in common? I just watched LCK's latest stand up show: "Live at the Beacon Theater" via my MacBook, in my own home, Saturday night, for five bucks, and I was grinning from ear to ear even before he got into the part about smoking the new, not the old, weed, which made me, that's right! Right as rain, you bet, made me - pause the show - reach over to the end of my desk and open up my little stash box and get out my little gray pipe and slide into its little bowl a pinch of Purple Haze, and then ... find and strike a match and put the fire to the pot and then ... breathe in slowly and then ... I unpaused the show and laughed until my cheeks hurt.
I have been watching, and listening to, Louis C. K. for exactly a year. Ever since Jake turned me on to him on a road trip across the high desert and I remember saying to Jake, "No way that dude stays married," and Jake says, "He's not. He got divorced last year." And you know how I knew? Because this guy, Louis C. K., was speaking truth to power--the power of pussy. And I know that sounds crude but if you watch LCK's routines you'll know exactly what I mean. There just isn't any way a woman is going to be/remain with that man because when he's on stage, and also now in his serial TV show on FX, he says things about men and women and children that nobody has dared say out loud before but are mostly true and because it's Comedy he can deny it and say "just kidding." Which Freud discovered was never true - that a person is kidding when they say 'just kidding.' It is the same with the best fiction writers, who can tell the way things really are, because it is only Fiction. Hunter Thompson said, "Fiction is a bridge to the truth that journalism can't reach." He said that a long time ago, knew it, and that probably launched his, at the time, ground breaking "Gonzo Journalism." Which blew the lid off the lies that politicians have had to push to please the people that profess they want the truth - but everyone knows - not really, because reality and honesty isn't flattering. That it's not really feel-good, I'm-looking-out-for-you, I love you actual fact and it's often better to lie if you can get away with it than not. Which puts some of us "folks" who are cursed/blessed with the ability to see things the way they really are, and whose denial and self-deception mechanism came somehow unhooked, in a bind. Because, believe it or not, we "folks" still get lonely and need a little nooky so have had to come up with ways we can get some, and also - some respect and some money so ... we write comedy and stories about what we see and tell everyone, "It's Not True. I just made that shit up. You didn't think I was talking about You. Did you? Nooo, no. I was just kidding." So LCK puts up the disclaimer that his TV show, which stars a character named Louis C. K. played by him, is not him, and any resemblance to him, or anyone else also, is merely coincidence. And David Foster Wallace writes in The Pale King: "The Pale King is basically a nonfiction memoir, with additional elements of reconstructive journalism, organizational psychology, elementary civics and tax theory, ..." (pg. 73) and " ... this right here is me as a real person, David Wallace, age forty, ... . All of this is true. This book is really true." (pg. 66-67) " The only bona fide 'fiction' here is the copyright page's disclaimer-- ... ." But of course, no one believes him and then they ask: "Why did he kill himself, when he had a wife who loved him, and so many friends, and money and success, and, and ... ?" Watch the episode of Louis with Eddie, where Eddie is a failed stand-up comic off on a final binge before offing himself and tell me if you think it's funny, or not true, and LCK is just kidding. Seriously, this guy is funny and dead on.
But like Wallace, he's not for everyone, because, like Wallace his fiction tells his story truthfully and for most people - that's just too much truth to take.
December 14, 2011
I have been watching, and listening to, Louis C. K. for exactly a year. Ever since Jake turned me on to him on a road trip across the high desert and I remember saying to Jake, "No way that dude stays married," and Jake says, "He's not. He got divorced last year." And you know how I knew? Because this guy, Louis C. K., was speaking truth to power--the power of pussy. And I know that sounds crude but if you watch LCK's routines you'll know exactly what I mean. There just isn't any way a woman is going to be/remain with that man because when he's on stage, and also now in his serial TV show on FX, he says things about men and women and children that nobody has dared say out loud before but are mostly true and because it's Comedy he can deny it and say "just kidding." Which Freud discovered was never true - that a person is kidding when they say 'just kidding.' It is the same with the best fiction writers, who can tell the way things really are, because it is only Fiction. Hunter Thompson said, "Fiction is a bridge to the truth that journalism can't reach." He said that a long time ago, knew it, and that probably launched his, at the time, ground breaking "Gonzo Journalism." Which blew the lid off the lies that politicians have had to push to please the people that profess they want the truth - but everyone knows - not really, because reality and honesty isn't flattering. That it's not really feel-good, I'm-looking-out-for-you, I love you actual fact and it's often better to lie if you can get away with it than not. Which puts some of us "folks" who are cursed/blessed with the ability to see things the way they really are, and whose denial and self-deception mechanism came somehow unhooked, in a bind. Because, believe it or not, we "folks" still get lonely and need a little nooky so have had to come up with ways we can get some, and also - some respect and some money so ... we write comedy and stories about what we see and tell everyone, "It's Not True. I just made that shit up. You didn't think I was talking about You. Did you? Nooo, no. I was just kidding." So LCK puts up the disclaimer that his TV show, which stars a character named Louis C. K. played by him, is not him, and any resemblance to him, or anyone else also, is merely coincidence. And David Foster Wallace writes in The Pale King: "The Pale King is basically a nonfiction memoir, with additional elements of reconstructive journalism, organizational psychology, elementary civics and tax theory, ..." (pg. 73) and " ... this right here is me as a real person, David Wallace, age forty, ... . All of this is true. This book is really true." (pg. 66-67) " The only bona fide 'fiction' here is the copyright page's disclaimer-- ... ." But of course, no one believes him and then they ask: "Why did he kill himself, when he had a wife who loved him, and so many friends, and money and success, and, and ... ?" Watch the episode of Louis with Eddie, where Eddie is a failed stand-up comic off on a final binge before offing himself and tell me if you think it's funny, or not true, and LCK is just kidding. Seriously, this guy is funny and dead on.
But like Wallace, he's not for everyone, because, like Wallace his fiction tells his story truthfully and for most people - that's just too much truth to take.
December 14, 2011
