In Defense of the "Boring"

Before I sat down to write this I was texting back and forth with a friend that ultimately led me (after he asked me to take a photo of my penis next to a Coke can for "mathematical analysis") to see this Oatmeal cartoon. If you'd like to just enjoy the short and sweet of what my argument is going to be, then by all means go read the Oatmeal, and stop reading here.

Okay, so you're still here. Let me begin:

I don't have a gym membership. I don't drive a BMW X-series or Audi A-series . I don't wear patterned or brightly colored tank tops. I don't go tanning. I don't worry about carbs. I don't drink vodka and soda. I don't utter things like "I have to lose X pounds for Pride." I don't give a shit about Madonna, Lady Gaga, or Cher. I don't care about the next hot party at the hottest club. And yet, these are things that are typically expected of me because I am a gay man. And the question is: who is to blame for this? Well, the answer is, quite tragically, gay men themselves.

For some reason, one which I'm not going to waste my time attempting to find at its source, gay men believe that they must be someone that is defined by their sexuality. (Note: obviously not all gay men are this way. But a significant portion of the "community" takes center stage when it comes to how the "community" is perceived collectively as a group.) They have to have six packs, or spend way too much time attempting to get them; run away from carbs; go to tanning salons; use expensive hair and body care products; wear designer clothing; drive "status" cars; wear the rainbow on their sleeves. Anyone who doesn't fall in line with this mode of being is usually deemed "boring." This is my defense of those who refuse to conform to the bullshit standard.

I listed all the things that do not define me. Here are the things that do define me: I run marathons. I ride my bike everywhere. I drink and appreciate craft beer. I read books. I value knowledge. I'm aware of what's going on in the world. I listen to music that was written by real artists. I write and perform stand-up comedy on occasion. I go to the opera and the theater. Save for the last one, you wouldn't think I was a gay man. That's right; I don't conform to the pandering bullshit that is thrown my way each and every day of my life. I'm a man who happens to be gay; I'm a person first.

During the 14+ months that I've lived in San Francisco I've met far too many men that live their lives according to the standard that they think they have to follow. To be rather reductive, they crave attention. That's not to say that I don't crave the same attention; it's just that I don't kill myself in order to attain it. I don't fault the men that go to the gym (to actually work out for the sake of their health), but I do fault those that see my lack of gym attendance as a fault. San Francisco is by no means flat, and the fact that I bike everywhere, and also walk and run, is indicative of a healthy lifestyle. Fuck you if your sole criterion for being "fit" is a washboard chest. I once dated a guy who wouldn't walk a few blocks to our destination. He opted for a cab. He was "crack skinny." But that meant nothing in terms of being healthy. I was far healthier than he was, and I had extra weight on me--remnants of my obese days--and I still do.

I Googled "Gay Men."

The point is that I do things that I enjoy doing, and not because I'm gay. Some men--I've gotten better at weeding them out in the dating process--find the things that I enjoy to be boring. I would rather read a book than go to a club filled to the brim with cookie cutter versions of boys in tank tops drinking vodkas and sodas taking photos of themselves to post on Instagram with 25 different, albeit the same, hashtags to the tune of "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga. (Admittedly, and quite obviously, I don't know what the current pop sensation is right now in the clubs.)

And as for the running and cycling, I do those because they keep me healthy both mentally and physically. I don't want to steal anything from the Oatmeal cartoon, but it's true: I thought that I'd lose the extra weight in my abdominal area by running and cycling, but I just haven't. It's still mostly there, and I'm still learning to be okay with that. I know that I could stand to change my diet here and there, but I'm not going to sacrifice the things that I love (beer for this matter) in order to fulfill someone else's wishes. You won't see me joining a gym anytime soon. The world is my gym, and guess what? It has a $0 monthly membership fee. (And dudes just go there to take photos of themselves in front of the mirror and then go blow each other in the steam room.)

Additionally, the fact of the matter is that there have been several men, men that I thought to be completely out of my league, that have found me to be handsome and sexy, despite what I personally feel about how I look in the mirror. And I'm sure that there will be several more men in the future that think the same thing. Surely, though, that's not the only thing that draws them in. Perhaps it's because I'm an individual with a personality, as well. One can only imagine.

Perks of Working in a Bookstore

I don't remember where I heard about this mammoth of a book--Witz by Joshua Cohen--but I do know that it peaked my interest; I subsequently ordered a copy for myself, and have been anticipating its May release. As I was speaking with my manager this afternoon, I noticed he had a review copy on his desk. I expressed my interest in it, and he kindly handed it over. It kind of made my day. It's always nice when you get something you want, and it comes at no cost to you.

From Dalkey Archive Press:

On Christmas Eve 1999, all the Jews in the world die in a strange, millennial plague, with the exception of the firstborn males, who are soon adopted by a cabal of powerful people in the American government. By the following Passover, however, only one is still alive: Benjamin Israelien; a kindly, innocent, ignorant man-child. As he finds himself transformed into an international superstar, Jewishness becomes all the rage: matzo-ball soup is in every bowl, sidelocks are hip; and the only truly Jewish Jew left is increasingly stigmatized for not being religious. Since his very existence exposes the illegitimacy of the newly converted, Israelien becomes the object of a worldwide hunt...

Meanwhile, in the not-too-distant future of our own, "real" world, another last Jew—the last living Holocaust survivor—sits alone in a snowbound Manhattan, providing a final melancholy witness to his experiences in the form of the punch lines to half-remembered jokes.

Also, the title, Witz, is Yiddish for 'joke'.

A Riddle For Your Monday Afternoon

Okay, so it's not really a riddle. And depending on when you read this, it may not even be Monday or the afternoon. Oh well. As I was doing some "book work" today, I noticed four white index cards near the Cliffs Notes section. Can you figure out what book the person was writing notes on? (Click photo to enlarge)

Glenn Beck Writes Another Piece Of Shit Book...

...and I'm referenced on Slog again!

David Foster Wallace's "Brief Interviews..." Film Adaptation

John Krasinski, of "The Office" fame, has written and directed the upcoming feature film adaptation of DFW's "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men".  BIWHM is one of the books I have yet to read by Wallace, and I should probably do so before watching the film.  It looks promising.  The guy at 0:40 (and his subsequent exclamatory remark) is hilarious.  Here is the trailer:

Reunited And It Feels So Good

I don't remember exactly when I lent out my copy of Hemingway's, "The Old Man and the Sea," but it has finally found its way back to me. I suggested to my former manager that her daughter read it, and as I would imagine, she never did. I base that solely on the fact that she found it "in a drawer that [she hasn't] opened in a longgggg time." Either way, it is nice to come home and find a little package waiting for you in the mail.

Lacking Creativity Is Currently On Hiatus From Reading Books

I've tried to read three different books--"Inherent Vice" by Thomas Pynchon, "A Boy's Own Story" by Edmund White, and "The Waxman Report: How Congress Really Works" by Henry Waxman and Joshua Green--this week, and nothing stuck.  I guess I'm still recovering from my Infinite Summer.  On top of everything else, I have way too many things on my mind right now.  When you start reading the same page, sentence, word multiple times, it's time to take a break.  That's exactly what I intend to do.  Time for a nap.

(Infinite) Book Review

I’m sitting at my desk, writing this review with my worn-out copy of “Infinite Jest” lying center-left of my vision; I do this with the hope that by merely seeing this mammoth, in size and scope, piece of post-modern literature, it will recall in my mind all of the things I learned, loved, and hated about it. We’ll see if I am right, in the end.

Had there been no such thing as the Infinite Summer, I probably would never have finished, let alone picked up, this beast of a novel. The ‘program’ is quite simple: you begin reading I.J. on June 21st and you finish it on or before September 21st. That’s three months and 1,076 pages worth of exercising your mind. I did it. Now it’s time for the Ice Cream Social I was promised by my coworker who is also reading I.J.

Any attempt to explain what happens is rather futile, as one thing always needs an explanation, almost as if it was an endnote—there were 388 of them. Nonetheless, the story is loosely focused around a disturbingly fucked-up family at a tennis academy (Enfield Tennis Academy, or E.T.A.) and an even more disturbingly fucked-up cast of characters at The Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House (sic). The setting is an almost (what I would call) post-apocalyptic North America. Canada, America, and Mexico merged to become the Organization of North American Nations (O.N.A.N.) There are no longer numerical calendar years, but rather, corporate sponsored years, such as: the Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad and the Year of the Yushityu 2007 Mimetic-Resolution-Cartridge-View-Motherboard-Easy-To-Install-Upgrade For Infernatron/InterLace TP Systems For Home, Office, Or Mobile (sic). A lounge singer has become the President. New England is now a wasteland, and was emperialized to Canada—it is called the “Great Concavity” or the “Great Convexity”, depending on which side is referencing the land area. The street parking laws change every night at midnight, resulting in car owners scrambling to their cars to park them on the other side of the street. It’s an overall absurd mess, and Wallace details it perfectly, albeit exhaustively.

One thing that DFW foresaw (perfectly) was in his description of the rise and immediate fall of an emerging/evolving technology. The telephone was seen as a way that people could easily distract themselves without the caller on the other end ever finding out. So people created, in essence, video-phones. This made people focus and pay attention, but they soon discovered that they did not look the way they wanted to on the phone. So the technology was updated to ‘enhance’ the caller’s visual aesthetic. This evolved into a beautified still image that resembled the likes of a supermodel rather than the actual caller. This elicited a return to the traditional non-visual telephone. Do we not see that very thing happening today? Look at most photos online; are they not (almost always) staged and unnatural?

Finally, the worst part of the book was that at some point R. Limbaugh (never explicitly mentioned as ‘Rush’) was the president. The best part of the book comes on page 929: “The door’s got a big poster of R. Limbaugh on it, from before the assassination.” People have written their Ph.D dissertations on this novel, so there's not much else I can say to its credit that has not already been exhaustively explored. Time for bigger...err...smaller and better things.

Book Review

I hardly ever read memoirs. The last one I read was Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast". So when I heard that Stephen Elliot was mailing out free advanced reading copies of his book, I said to myself, "why not?" It would be a nice interruption to my Infinite Summer madness. I sent him an email, and had it within a week.

The book is subtitled: A Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder. That describes the book perfectly. Elliott has so many flaws, but I think that is what draws the reader into his story. He has daddy-issues; his mom died when he was young; he's abused copious amounts of both legal and illegal drugs; he keeps casual relationships with women who like to make him dress up in a camisole before getting in bed; he likes to be cut and beaten. It's a complete laundry list of dysfunctions.

The (what I would call) "guiding hand" that pushes the story forward regards the murder trial of Hans Reiser. From wikipedia:

On 28 April 2008, Reiser was convicted of the first degree murder of his wife, Nina Reiser, who disappeared in 2006. On 29 August 2008, Reiser pled guilty to a reduced charge of second degree murder, as part of a settlement agreement that included identifying the location of Nina Reiser's body.

He jumps around a lot with times and places, and sometimes appears to just start a new thought before ending the last one. Maybe I was too tired when I read it, though. Either way, it's an interesting and quick read, so give it a shot. He'll be reading at Elliott Bay Book's on Friday, September 18th. Perhaps I can formulate some questions for him before that time.

Book Review

After reading "God Says No" by James Hannaham--my review is here--I thought the next McSweeney's Rectangular would be just as interesting and fun to read. I was wrong. I made it 151 pages (out of 241) of Jessica Anthony's debut novel, "The Convalescent".

"Convalescent - a person who is recovering from illness"

It's the story of, what appeared in my mind, a troll--think the troll from Ernest Scared Stupid--living in a broken down bus, selling meat. There is also a supplemental narrative that gives some insight into Hungarian history--to what extent it is accurate, I do not know--and how it led Rovar Pfliegman (the protagonist) to a life of being a butcher.

It had an interesting start, but it left me feeling bored after 100 or so pages. One gets the impression that the story's happenings are realistic, but eventually it turns surreal. In one Hungarian story, a woman gives birth...to fish and enough water that it creates an (historic) river. There's also a hideous looking baby that comes out of her too.

Lastly, McSweeney's needs to employ a real editor, or fire their current one. There were so many grammatical errors that should not have been in there. I'm talking about simple things that would have been caught had they actually read the book. This has been the case with the past three McSweeney's titles that I've read.

Infinite Wisdom

I'll discuss this later (in my review):

"Attachments to things, to places, to other living beings requires in my view expenditures of energy and attention far in excess of the value of things thus brought into the relation of the attachment."

Broom of the System (1987), David Foster Wallace

Book Review

Ahh...the perks of being a bookseller; Joshua Ferris' second novel, "The Unnamed", will not be published until January of 2010. And yet, I've already had the privilege of reading it. A man who seemingly has it all--partner at prestigious law firm, wife, daughter, big house, money--becomes inflicted with an otherwise unknown ailment: his body begins to walk and walk endlessly at random intervals. The man can be working on a high-profile murder case, and merely get up from his desk, and walk outside for miles and miles until his body collapses from exhaustion. This happens constantly, and it begins to take its toll on those around him. His colleagues no longer believe in him, his wife has to surrender her life to his, and his daughter has to babysit him as if she was the parent and he the child.

I found the story and writing to be simplistic, but its message strong and enduring. The point is that we all imagine our lives working out without any flaws or setbacks, and yet, more often than not we have to deal with obstacles--tremendous in size and scope--that force us to adjust to our situations accordingly, whilst still living our lives. There's only two options when these obstacles come to fruition: deal with them or commit suicide. The second option isn't viable. So what does Tim (the protagonist) have to do? He has to adjust his life accordingly. Unfortunately, this means losing his job, his wife, his health, several of his fingers and toes, and any sort of purpose to life other than walking without end.

I would have appreciated more of a stronger middle and end to the novel, but they say that the "second book" is the most arduous. There was a sub-plot involving a murder suspect that could have been crucial to the underlying story, but nothing ever came out of it in the end. And of the four parts of the novel, the latter one was reminiscent of the myth of Sisyphus; such as Sisyphus was tasked with pushing a rock up a hill ad infinitum (devoid of any other purpose), so it went for Tim and his uncontrollable need to walk.

"One must imagine Sisyphus happy." - Albert Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe (1942).

Book Review

I really need to stop reading FSG's twitter feed. Every time I do, I come across another book that I just have to read (and eventually own). Although, after finishing Stephen Amidon's "Security", I told myself that I really did not need to add it to my collection. It's a story of a quiet little town in Massachusetts, where crime is virtually non-existent. Except when, of course, a local female student is found with a broken arm and is claiming that the rich recluse in town attempted to rape her. The only problem is that her father is the town drunk, and has a documented history of criminal activity. It takes the courage and devotion of one man, Edward--who also happens to be the town's sole security proprietor--,to get the truth out of the people who know what actually happened.

I found the character and scene developments to be intricate at first read, but after delving into the plot, they seemed rather drawn out. It took roughly 161 pages of the 276 page book to introduce all the characters and their intertwined relationships. Eccentrics, divorced women with children, insomniacs, troubled students, and lecherous college professors--those are just some of the characters filling out this decent, but not great, story. It had a good storyline, and a mysterious plot to keep you interested, but the ending was a little over-the-top for my liking.

Book cover from Macmillan.

The Best Thing I've Read Today

From "Security" by Stephen Amidon:

"Taking shots at Mark was a waste of time. It was like firing a rifle at a slow-moving cloud. So easy to hit, yet it made no difference. It still floated away, right over the horizon."

Book Review

The main character, Gary Gray, is a young, black, obese, closeted-gay, evangelical Christian. The world has already fucked this guy six ways from Sunday. I think that is the beauty of the story; it's in the struggle. Gary wants to live a life for God, but he can't help but go around blowing nameless guys in parks and Waffle House bathrooms. Gary's story is one of how to be anything other than yourself, even before God, is to live a life of complete misery. He gets a wife and child, but never touches his wife, except when she is overly persuasive and pictures that he is being intimate with his old college roommate. That is part one.

Part two deals with Gary faking his death, by throwing his wallet into a burning train that he was on, and heading for the hills--he takes up the new identity of August Valentine. Eventually he lands himself in a relationship with a man in a manner consistent with how many gay men do--at a night club. They live a relatively happy life together, but it eventually fails on all accounts; especially when Gary's (August never had a wife) wife finds out that he is alive and well in another state. Thus begins part three, which happens to include the saddest moment of the story.

Gary promises to get "better" and so attends a pray-away-the-gay camp where hugs are held to a strict time-limit, and it is sanctioned to rat out anyone who shows signs of the dreadful homosexual lifestyle. This is just a thought, but perhaps placing "formerly gay" men into a group and telling them to stop being gay isn't going to help. It is only going to exacerbate the situation; such as Gary observing the physique of his new roommate, and ultimately making a move on the guy. The downside? This guy does not want to be "fixed". He leaves, and the people in charge order everyone to disown him and never think about him again. Well, that ultimately leads to the most depressing part of the story. Does Gary change his ways? Even I don't know.

As a gay man, I can appreciate this story in all its glory. Hannaham has painted a vivid picture of how miserable and frustrating being gay, and coming to terms with it, really is. But he also gives hope and promise. It all comes down to the individual and coming to terms with who he or she truly is, and living that life to its fullest.

Photo via McSweeney's.

Book Review

I just finished reading "How to Sell" by debut novelist Clancy Martin. I must say that it was quite the captivating read. Think of Denis Johnson's simple prose style of writing combined with the sex, drugs, and corruption of any Bret Easton Ellis or Jay McInerney character. The story is of two brothers who live to scam others out of their money in the jewelry business--not to be confused with the diamond business. The characters are terrible people committing seemingly harmless crimes--in the physical sense of the word. In one instance, a woman comes in to get her very expensive watch cleaned and adjusted. The watch is cleaned and adjusted, but then sold to another customer, that is waiting upstairs, to sweeten the deal. No worries though for the unsuspecting woman customer; they'll just give her a cheap mock-up in return and lead her to believe that she is actually coming out ahead on the deal.

There is some relief every now and then to remind that reader that these people are not completely heartless. A woman--they seem to be the most victimized in the jewelry trade--comes in and wants to sell an old ring handed down from her grandmother. She has her child with her, and she desperately needs at least a thousand dollars. Jim, Bobby's older brother, tells Bobby to offer her only $500 and that her grandmother must have lied to her about its worth. In actuality, it was worth upward of a couple thousand. Bobby could have listened to his brother, but instead he whispered to the woman to leave immediately and go to a different jeweler who would pay actual value for the ring. I felt a moment of relief at that point in the story; there weren't many.

Martin has an interesting background, nonetheless, for this kind of subject matter. Most of what he has written, he claims, is true. The kind of deception and criminality in the jewelry business is extremely prevalent. But he maintains that he is not Bobby Clark--the story's protagonist. An expose on Martin is available here, and it is quite an intriquing read. Here's an example:

In January, his wife found him in the closet with a bed sheet. He was trying to hang himself.

She saved him, quite literally, at which point he admitted to her — and to himself — that he had been secretly drinking and lying about it for three years.

He had become an alcoholic. Suicidal thoughts had been with him for years. He immediately vowed to stop drinking, and with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous has been clean for more than four months.

Some other information about Martin is that he is an associate professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri-Kansas City; he first tried LSD in the fourth grade; he's currently working on a translation of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. It's a very good read, and I would think twice about walking into a jewelry store from now on if I were you.

Photo via Macmillan.

Book Review

"On November 11 Lowboy ran to catch a train...On November 12 [omitted to prevent spoiler]." Thus are the opening and closing sentences of John Wray's new novel, "Lowboy". I came across this novel whilst perusing the Macmillan (MPS) website several weeks ago. Apparently it has been receiving rave reviews. So I managed to snag myself a copy. This past week I decided to actually sit down and get through it. If I had to grade it, it earned a 'B' in my book. The story is about a 16-year old paranoid schizophrenic and his misadventures in and around the New York City subway system. Apparently the world is going to end, and only he can save it from total destruction. Along with Lowboy's extremely unreliable story telling, we are given the somewhat more reliable story of how his mother and a detective track him down.

At times absurd and mysterious, Lowboy is a novel about human relationships and how a mental disorder can make, break, and distort those very relationships. While considered literary fiction, the book has tendencies to make you think that you are reading a science fiction novel. That is part of its thrill. The reader is given many clues as to what is actually going on, but there are several things that remain unanswered at its end, including the end itself. What happened in Richard's basement (exactly)? How is it that it ended that way? Was Lowboy right all along and we were the crazy ones? Well, I guess those are answers that can be left up to the imagination of all those who partake in Lowboy and his quest for global salvation. Here is a promotional video of John Wray reading the first page or so on the L train:

Photo from http://us.macmillan.com/lowboy.

My New And Improved Personal Library

I think I have mentioned this previously, but due to the economic downturn--and because I opt to be terrible with my spending habits--I had to purge my personal library (twice) to get some cash when I needed (read wanted) it. I have been slowly rebuilding it--with hardcovers primarily--and I am doing rather well thus far. Take a look (Click Image For Larger View).

Roll call...

First Row: "Watchmen" by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, "2666" by Roberto Bolaño, "Tree of Smoke" by Denis Johnson, "Beautiful Children" by Charles Bock, "Sea of Poppies" by Amitav Ghosh, "Plato Collected Dialogues" (edited) by Edith Hamilton, "Glamorama" by Bret Easton Ellis, "Underworld" by Don DeLillo, "Against the Day" by Thomas Pynchon, "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand, "How It Ended" by Jay McInerney, "Lowboy" by John Wray, "The Name of the Rose" by Umberto Eco, "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsky, "The Boat" by Nam Le, "Philosophical Investigations" by Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Second Row: "The Pets" by Bragi Ólafsson, "Snuff" by Chuck Palahniuk, "How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone" by Saša Stanišic, "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller, "Animal Farm" & "1984" by George Orwell, "The Sun Also Rises" by Ernest Hemingway, "A Farewell To Arms" by Ernest Hemingway, "For Whom The Bell Tolls" by Ernest Hemingway, "The English Philosophers: From Bacon to Mill" (edited) by Edwin A. Burtt, "Shadow Country" by Peter Matthiessen, "The Boat" (signed and personalized galley copy) by Nam Le, "Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon, "The City and the Pillar" by Gore Vidal, "Then We Came To The End" (signed and personalized galley copy) by Joshua Ferris, "The Savage Detectives" by Roberto Bolaño, "2666" (still bound three-paperbacks in a slipcase) by Roberto Bolaño, "The Rebel" by Albert Camus, "For Whom The Bell Tolls" (personally annotated paperback) by Ernest Hemingway, "The Correction" by Thomas Bernhard.

Third Row: "Plato's Sophist" by Martin Heidegger, "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" by Robert Nozick, "The Wittgenstein Reader" (edited) by Anthony Kenny, "Death of a Salesman" by Arthur Miller, "Less Than Zero" by Bret Easton Ellis, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey, "The New York Trilogy" by Paul Auster, "Metamorphosis and other stories" by Franz Kafka, "Silas Marner" by George Eliot, "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA" by Tim Weiner, "Invisible Monsters" by Chuck Palahniuk, "The Stranger" by Albert Camus, "A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962" by Alistair Horne, "Out of my Skin" by John Haskell, "The Gay Science" by Friedrich Nietzsche. [Free Galley Copies: "The Lie" by Chad Kultgen, "In-N-Out Burger" by Stacy Perman, "Cutting For Stone" by Abraham Verghese, "Stone's Fall" by Iain Pears].

Four Row: [Books On Loan From Work: "Going To Extremes: How Like Minds United and Divide" by Cass R. Sunstein, "God Says No" by James Hannaham, "Yoga for Everyone" by Judy Smith, et al..

I can only hope I continue to find some worth-owning harcovers. Book Karma, keep them coming!

Buy The Book

This is actually a very heartfelt, albeit sad, story.

Book Review

My manager reviewed this book, "Out of My Skin" by John Haskell (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009), and handed a free copy off to me, claiming that I would really like it. I did. Although after reading the book, I am rather suspicious of why my manager would have recommended this for me. From the publisher's website:

Los Angeles. A would-be movie reviewer, looking for romance, takes an assignment to write a magazine article about celebrity look-alikes. After getting to know a Steve Martin impersonator, the writer decides to undertake his own process of transformation and becomes not Steve Martin but a version of him—graceful, charming, at home in the world. Safe in the guise of “Steve,” he begins to fall in love. And that’s when “Steve” takes over. Set in the capital of illusion, this is a story of one man’s journey into paradise—and his attempt to come out the other side.

One must read the relatively short novel below its surface and understand what it is that Haskell is trying to do here. That is, how do we reconcile with who we are, and when we become someone else, how do we find the way to return to our original self. I guess the more concise and simplistic way of describing it would be to say it deals with issues of identity. One thing is determinate when I try and write reviews, and that is that I cannot write reviews.

The story reminded me that life is about taking risks; every encounter is an opportunity to learn and grow; don't be afraid of trying something new and unexpected. I am currently one chapter deep into his previous novel, "American Purgatorio", which met with rave reviews.

*Photo from us.macmillan.com/FSG.aspx