Puddles of My Mad Men: "Lady Lazarus"

Once again, Matt Domino shills his weekly "Mad Men" column at the Montreal Review as well as give a brief state of Puddles address.

World's Coolest Dude 1911-2011, (1951-1960)

We continue with the fifth installment of the World's Coolest Dude 1911-2011 list, which covers the years 1951-1960.

World's Coolest Dude 1911-2011, (1921-1930)

We continue with the second installment of the World's Coolest Dude 1911-2011 list, covering the winners from 1921-1930.

Cleaning House

Matt Domino discusses the Puddles of Myself hiatus, Cat Stevens, Ernest Hemingway, as well as the best way to take a shower.

Top 20 Friendships of All-Time Part 1

One of the best parts about reading this blog is observing and enjoying the lists that I post from time to time. One of the other great parts about reading this blog is intently following my long, romantic and poignant posts on friendship, which is probably the virtue I have sought to define for much of the twenty-five years I have been alive. I’ve quoted Michael Chabon before, but his quote from The Mysteries of Pittsburgh that it is friendship and not love that truly eludes us is probably one of the most true statements that has ever been written. One could write for hours about what it means to be a good friend to another person. What a good male friendship consists of or what a great female friendship consists of. And even more hours could be spent analyzing male and female friendships or whether the relationship between men and women is ever truly a friendship. There are layers upon layers and gestures upon gestures that lead us to great and meaningful discoveries about who we are as people and what we value in others. We can make great virtues out of our friendships and drive our friends crazy by holding them to high standards, or we can place little value on friendship and sleep with our best friend’s girlfriend. And even then, there is plenty of grey area. It is a topic I will spend the rest of my life trying to define.

However, in the meantime I’ve decided to probe history, movies, TV, music and literature in order to find the Top 20 Friendships of all-time. This list is so in depth and eloquent that we’re breaking it up into two parts. Believe me, that’s definitely the reason we’re splitting it up and not because I had to fill in some space this week.

So, without further ado, here is my list of the Top 20 Friendships of All-Time:

20. Dawson Leary and Joey Potter – I think that this ranking will immediately have some dissenters due to the fact that these two characters have a spot in any twenty-something’s heart. Dawson Leary and Joey Potter were introduced to us in 1997 on the WB and for those of us in our early to mid teens were directly influenced by the relationship between Dawson and Joey. She was the pretty tomboy who snuck into his window at night to talk about life. He was the film geek who just couldn’t see how beautiful she actually was and that he loved her. There was a classic element of tragedy to their friendship and that tragedy was called love. The fact that Dawson romantically loved Joey is actually what drops them down on this list. Sure they had a star-crossed romance that eventually ended up with them not being together. But over that time you can’t overlook that these friends slept together, which somehow disqualifies them from the mystic connection that an actual friendship is. With romance, you can pin the sensation down from time to time and express love, passion or romance in sex. Friendship is only briefly defined by obscure actions, nonchalant conversation and beer that slowly fades away. Some may believe in sex being possible between friends (e.g. the Natalie Portman fuck-buddy movie) but I’m more of a skeptic. Sorry Joey and Dawson, maybe you should have stuck to talking shop about Spielberg.

19. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson – This has become one of the most underrated friendships of all time. These guys were once bitter political rivals in the early days of this country. They both lived in the shadow of George Washington and were trying to form the country in line with their own strong visions. It was a classic story of fame and politics getting between two friends. Adams and Jefferson were originally close during the days of the Revolutionary War, even setting some Lennon/McCartney precedents by penning the “Declaration of Independence” together. However, the growing interests of this country both home and abroad tore them apart. The greatest betrayal may have been Adams’ appointment of the “Midnight Judges” after he lost the 1800 election to Jefferson in an attempt to spoil Jefferson’s presidency by putting some of his men in the Supreme Court right before his term was up. Jefferson was able to pass legislation to remove these men from office and slowly their friendship resumed as the bright candles of the White House faded from each of their eyes. They started an epic letter correspondence (like two other friends who will appear on this list) until the day they died—which was the same day. On his deathbed, Adams famously uttered, “Thomas Jefferson survives.” However, before the Internet and Twitter there was no way he could have known that his friend had already died a few hours earlier. Nothing says friendship more than the belief that no matter how you fail or no matter if your time is up, you are thinking about how your buddy is continuing on.

18. Monica Geller/Rachel Green/ Phoebe Buffay – This list would be not be complete with out an entry from the legendary sitcom Friends, which was probably one of the most iconic cultural items of the entire decade of the 1990’s. Some would say that Joey and Chandler were the better “friends” on the show, but I have to give it to the girls. Friends as a show was not believable in the slightest, but it seemed like the fights between Monica and Rachel were more believable as friends. Now, Phoebe generally didn’t have storylines involving her fighting with Monica or Rachel, but she was definitely a good source of comic relief to ease the tension when there was a fight. And of course she had her feelings hurt from time to time as well. We’ve all seen the show—these women had some good times and some bad times. They fought with each other and slept with men that the other liked. They all lived in New York in the same apartment and waited a long time to have kids in non-traditional ways. Wait a second; maybe the show was more realistic than I thought.

17. Han Solo and Chewbacca – This might be the most famous interstellar friendship of all time. Spock and Captain Kirk were too aloof. Now, friends will be aloof, but their relationship was different, it felt too professional. Obi wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker had more of an older brother/younger brother dynamic and Luke and Han had a sort of romantic rival dynamic that was eventually settled when it was revealed that Leia was Luke’s sister. Han and Chewy, now that was a friendship. From the moment we meet them in A New Hope, we get a sense of their back-story, that this galactic swashbuckler and his large hairy friend had all kinds of adventures together and truly cared about each other. You can picture Han and Chewy behind the wheel of the Millennium Falcon on some long space startrip across a galaxy far, far away, smoking cigarettes and listening to the Replacebots and just idly talking and roaring about how strange life can be and how just the simple good looks of a spacewoman can ease their aching hearts. If you don’t think that these were the two of the greatest friends of all time, then you are racist and need to look at yourself in the mirror.

16. Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway - "That is what you are. That's what you all are...All of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation." That is the concluding line of a story about a mechanic that Gertrude Stein told to Ernest Hemingway, which inspired his inscription for The Sun Also Rises. Their friendship was a short but powerful friendship. Stein introduced Hemingway to bullfighting, encouraged him to give up journalism and embrace fiction and even helped edit some of his earliest work. Stein was like a mother figure to Hemingway, which is a friendship that is not often discussed in the world and literature: mother as friend to son. Now, of course there were Oedipal undertones as Hemingway has admitted that he wanted to sleep with Stein because of the fact that she reminded him of his mother, but they never did (unlike Dawson and Joey). They had a terrible falling out in 1926 that cut their friendship short. But they had already helped each other in many ways in their art, in their identity as Americans abroad and in life.

15. Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza – Some people may complain about this ranking, however, I was conflicted putting these two in even this slot. My main issue with the Seinfeld/Costanza friendship was this elemental fact—were they even friends? Think about it: one of the fundamental traits of the characters of Seinfeld was the fact that they all took some level of pleasure in the misfortune of others, including their own “friends.” That fact made the show realistic, because there is an element of truth in the fact of wanting to see the misfortune of others. Even in groups of friends, we laugh when a friend trips or “eats it.” We love to see slapstick happen to the people we like spending time with; it is one of the strangest phenomena in life. So, when George got into a mess, who was the first to laugh most of the time? Jerry. And vice versa. Now, that still doesn’t overlook the fact that these two grew up together and that Jerry let George spend so much time at his apartment venting about all his problems, lies and insecurities. Now, that is the mark of a true friend: listening and generosity. People may claim that Elaine and Jerry had the better friendship, but their friendship was based on romance and then the resulting post-relationship sexual tension, which is a rare occurrence. However, in my mind the non-sexual tension trumps a sexual-tension related friendship. Any woman that I have sexual tension with I usually don’t call my friend because I’d be thinking about sex more often than our friendship. If I have sexual tension with a girl, I tend to call her “this girl I know,” rather than “my friend.” To me, that’s just being honest with myself because I never think about sleeping with any of my friends.

14. Rory Gilmore and Lane Kim – Another rule of this list is that it does not include the “family friendships.” Obviously Rory Gilmore and Lorelai Gilmore as “friends” would be in the top five of any “Top Friendships” lists; that fact is undeniable. But you still have to give credit to the other anchor in Rory Gilmore’s life, the indefatigable Lane Kim. Lane is the epitome of a rock scholar. When Lane talks shop to Rory you learn something every time. Due to her strict Korean upbringing she even had to install a secret compartment in the floor of her room to store all of her records. Those were records she shared with Rory so she could outsmart any snobby girl or guy at Chilton or Yale. Also, Rory needed to know some deep cuts to keep up her witty banter with Jess outside of Luke’s Diner or by the gas station. This friendship wasn’t a one-way street either. Rory helped Lane with all of her schemes to sneak out of the house or to go to a party to meet her bandmate and boyfriend Dave. Rory also convinced Lorelai to let Lane’s band practice in their garage. Lane and Rory’s friendship endured Rory going to a different high school and then going away to college. Speaking as a person who has retained friendships with some people for nearly fifteen years, I can safely say that maintaining a close friendship over the passing of years and circumstances is no joke. We could delve into the different nuances of a “maintained friendship,” but lets just settle on the fact that Lane Kim and Rory Gilmore were some of the best friends to come out of Star’s Hollow, Connecticut.

13. Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway – One of the most mythic and ambiguous friendships in history, the relationship between Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby has influenced me perhaps more than any other in fiction, history or real life. It was the friendship with Jay Gatsby that caused Nick to utter the famous line that he wanted “no more privileged glimpses into the hearts of men,” which is how most male friends and even female friends feel from time to time when confronted with the enormity of what being a friend means. “No, no more. I can’t have any more empathy.” It might just be the melancholy yet crisp nature of the prose or of the tragedy of the story itself, but the relationship between Nick and Gatsby just seems to mean so much. Gatsby represents a romantic way of looking at the world, while Nick retains some sort of pragmatism and yet finds the appeal in Gatsby’s way of seeing the world. Nick sees some value in the kindness and attention that Gatsby can display with a smile or an “old sport.” And Nick ultimately sees how the world will use up a man with all of Gatbsy’s traits and just move onto the next house lit up with money and the glow of champagne. Nick is not able to save Gatsby, but he does relay one heartfelt compliment to him, by stating that he’s better than the rest of their group near the end of the novel. We never see things from Gatsby’s perspective, but in real life, sometimes its just that one comment, that one compliment from a friend that can make all the difference—that one phrase that illuminates the relationship in a new way.

12. Sancho Panza and Don Quixote – This friendship has perhaps been overlooked due to the fact that it is a well-established tenet of western literature (i.e. no one reads Don Quixote anymore), but it is one of the most iconic. You have the hero (even if he is comedic) and his trusty sidekick. The sidekick supports him on his foolish whims because he actually doesn’t know better himself and even plays a joke on the hero at one point because he can’t resist (isn’t this how most guys spend most of their 20’s?). The two go on an epic journey together, which was one of the earliest and most well-known “road trips” along with The Odyssey and Pilgrim’s Progress. The friendship between Sancho Panza and Don Quixote suffers because they are embedded in our consciousness and culture in ways that we have forgotten. However, all you need to know is that Sancho Panza was by Quixote’s side when he thought he couldn’t go on anymore.

11. Bob Uecker and Norm MacDonald – I’ll admit that this friendship gets such a high ranking because of its seemingly random nature and also because I love both of these guys independently that finding out they were weird cross-generational friends was just an added bonus.  Their friendship can basically be summed up in this story told by Norm MacDonald in a vintage Letterman moment (at this point Letterman has that same “I don’t care vibe” that MacDonald does, though Norm is much warmer and less curmudgeonly in his vibe).  The friendship between Uecker and MacDonald covers that strange and great situation where you have an old guy who is friends with a middle-aged guy because they share some kind of ancient secret of men.  Norm MacDonald and Bob Uecker just seem like two guys. It’s as simple as that. One has made a career out of a great announcing voice and a love for baseball and just happens to be a funny guy; the other on his love of comedy and a unique delivery. They are both just men in the most non-testosterone way possible.  They remind me of beer and putting on a worn navy blue hat. There is something to be said for that.

Click here to continue to Part 2.

Theoharides on Spring, Captain America and Literature

It's Wednesday, my Puddlers, and I hope you are enjoying the terrific spring weather. I myself am looking forward to the summer, which means drinking insanely cold beer, going to the beach, being tan and generally seeming open for adventure—basically the idea of things being simpler that will ultimately fade by August after the accumulation of serial-killer heat and I'll look forward to "things beginning again" in September, much like Nick Carraway (soon to be played by Toby Maguire) once did.

But, we can't take these still cool May evenings for granted, especially with that serial killer heat looming in June. So please go out and enjoy the May evenings. Eat at a picnic table at a French restaurant, drink a Monte Carlo or some other rye drink that you've never had before and be sure to watch the trailer for the upcoming Puddles of Myself movie.

Also, since its Wednesday, you can read Alex Theoharides as he muses on spring, literature and comic book heroes.

Theoharides On Spring, Captain America, and Literature

Alex Theoharides

(channeling my inner Dick Vitale)

That’s right, it’s the trifecta baby!

Spring has finally come to Minneapolis and with the arrival of the magnolia blossoms and the hyacinths and the people waking from their winter doldrums, my fortitude to write has slipped, my words sucked away from me, replaced by my desire to sit on the benches by Lake Harriet, staring out at the sailboats as they float in endless circles around a golden buoy, getting nowhere.

All I want to do is sit on my bench, thinking of nothing, doing nothing, writing nothing.

“Nothing, you say?”

“Yes, this post will be about nothing.”

“Excellent, nothing sounds better than the something you usually bring.”

Indeed it does, which is why what I would like to do during my sojourn into nothingness is introduce you to a little game I play in my head on days like this. Namely, if you could be any super hero, who would you be and why. Except, I’ll replace you with famous writers. And instead of asking the writers for their own though, I’ll just assign them random slots and hope the alleged shoe (I swear it was a sock) fits.

Today, I’ll start with one hero, the Captain himself.

Mr. Steve Rogers was born a sickly child, who always wanted to be a hero, but was too weak to fight in WWII. Instead, he volunteered to take a secret serum, which turned him into the fighting machine known as Captain America, and along with Nick Fury and his trusty sidekick Bucky, he set about destroying the Axis powers. In the post war years, he was left for dead, frozen in ice, as the public’s desire for super heroes faded. Of course, we all know what happened next. Yes, school children, that’s right, it’s the Cold War. The Cap’n was promptly unfrozen, and he became one of the founding members of the greatest crime fighting, world-saving gang known to mankind—The Avengers.

With no further ado, I give you …

The Captain America Contenders

Rules: The writers must be American (#BIRTHERS!). They must have no supernatural tendencies (Including but not limited to: magical realism, fantasy, creationist myths, or general Poe-isms). They must have either fought in a war or written about war. They must be frank and honest, almost to the point of simplicity. Finally, they must look great in red, white and blue leotards!

3. Tim O’Brien. He’s close but not quite good enough to be given a shield by FDR made out of vibranium, an metal found only on the planet of Wakanda. (Yes, I stole the previous tidbit from Wikipedia. And yes, I’m aware this takes away the dork cred I was so hopeful to establish in this post.)  O’Brien’s most famous novel, The Things They Carried, is one of the best accounts of the Vietnam War, peaking with his description of the inner struggle he had over whether or not to dodge the draft. However, O’Brien’s other work, including the often lauded Going After Cacciato, falls flat for me. Plus, the Captain never would have even thought about dodging the draft.

2. Joseph Heller. Catch-22 is the greatest war book ever written by an American, and Goddammit, I don’t care what my old English Professor Dr. Boyers (#namedrop!) says, it’s a whole lot more fun to read then Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which I feel obliged to call the greatest war book ever written, period. However, unlike Heller’s masterpiece, Captain America is rarely funny. And, in many ways, he’s kind of an idiot. (But he’s our idiot.) Frankly, I like Heller too much to place him at the top of this group. It also would have helped if all his follow up attempts to Catch-22 hadn’t completely bombed. The Captain came back from the dead, better than ever. Joseph Heller? Not so much.

1. Ernest Hemingway. The journalist’s journalist. The guy’s guy. The earnest bastard who made me dream when I was a 16 year old with a pen and a moleskin notebook of travelling to Spain to cover the civil war and watch bull fights and sleep with the local women until I realized A) there’s no longer a civil war in Spain and hasn’t been for some time, B) Bull fights are really just about little men in funny hats throwing spears at pissed off bulls, and C) Spanish women would have about as much interest in sleeping with me as they would in sleeping with a blade of grass or a bullfrog. I’m no longer a Hemingway devote, although I do respect and admire his work, particularly his short stories and, in my opinion, his greatest novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls. However, he fits the Captain America bill perfectly: A strong, powerful writer, who uses simple language to convey his belief in the deep-rooted goodness of man, and in the ability of love to conquer war. He never would have dodged the draft. For God’s sake, he sometimes fought just for the hell of it. And yes, he would look smashing in Captain America’s leotard.

My Top 10 Influential Novels

These past few weeks, each time I post I feel like I am apologizing.  I made some big promises right before the new year about the changes that would be coming to Puddles and I haven’t exactly lived up to them as of yet.  These phases move slowly and recent developments at my day-job have kept me from moving them along at the desired pace.  However, here are a few updates:

1. Podcasts – We will resume doing podcasts as the weather starts to turn.  I need to brainstorm on some topics to discuss with old guests as well as compile and cajole new guests into doing the podcast.  I want to retool a little bit in order to get some humor and wider enjoyment out of each podcast. Look for new podcasts in March.

2. Free Forest City Redemption Project – This has been delayed, but I’ve taken a more hands-on approach to obtaining all the files and the first tracks should be posted in the second week of February.

3. Guest Writers – I am working on swindling and tricking guest writers into helping out with the content on the site. Mr. Mark Jack has been doing a fantastic job and Alex Ramsdell will occasionally drop his well-thought philosophical bombs on us from time to time.  However, we need more writers to create a greater variety of content and voices on Puddles. If you read this blog and are interested, you can also feel free to contact me and we can discuss an arrangement.

4. Fiction – This is the furthest off (as well as the Second Redesign), but the most important.  I fell in love with writing because of the art of fiction and my life is forever devoted to it.  I will be working on this vision non-stop.

With that update out of the way, let’s get to today’s post:

I’ve been looking at Puddles of Myself a lot lately. What I mean is that I have been regarding the site—the content, the organization, the visual appearance—and trying to figure out the impression that it leaves, the message that it sends to visitors.  I have been writing a lot about sports, music, TV and other random (sometimes funny) observations.  However, my identity as Matt Domino, as an emerging brand called Puddles of Myself, actually comes from my true passion, which is the art of writing and the art of completed fiction.  No matter what happens here, my only satisfaction will come from the legacy of my fiction.  That may sound like a daunting or perhaps depressing fact, but it is the only true thing that I can probably say to myself or to any person that I attempt to interact with.

What all this leads to is the fact that there are probably ten books that have directly influenced me as a lover of fiction and as an aspiring writer.  When you look at this list of ten books I know that there will immediately be some outrage.  You will claim that there is a lack of female writers; that most of the novels come from the Modernist period; that all of the books are from the western tradition.  And all of your observations will be true.  I came from a liberal arts education, so I have heard the full argument for reading fiction from all over the world, for not sticking with a set “canon”, for not even using the word “canon” to define literature.  However, I am who I am. I enjoy reading novels by white men from the western world because I am a white man from the western world and very often those white men put things into a perspective that can enlighten me.  I’ve read novels from Africa; I’ve read novels from India; I’ve read novels by women writers; I’ve read novels from the 17^th century and I can assure you that they are pretty terrible.  I’ve read novels from the past ten to twenty years that focus on obscure countries and parts of the world, but leave you feeling sort of used and cheated, since they become platforms for enticing the reader using an exotic setting, for making the reader feel bad that he or she doesn’t know more about things that happen in the world and then leave the reader feeling self-satisfied, when he or she can turn to a friend or acquaintance and say that they know something.  I may be ignorant for saying so, but that is not the sort of fiction I enjoy reading.  That is not the fiction that made me fall in love.  If you read this blog, then you know that I feel passionately for and believe in only the things that move my soul and cause me to give word, to pass the story along about why this thing should be loved or known. I look for that quality in novels. I look for novels to move me to that frenzied pitch. I look for novels to teach me about the human soul and how we can move through the world and continue to be happy despite every sign and symbol that is there to confuse us.  These next ten novels have wholly influenced my viewpoint on life and on writing.

10. East of Eden - John Steinbeck

Why:  I first read this book in the tenth grade.  At that time it was probably the longest book I had ever read. There are a lot of people who think that John Steinbeck is overrated.  I don’t believe that.  He uses simple language that concretely draws you into the story and place.  His sentence structure isn’t as artful as Hemingway’s so he isn't as celebrated for his use of simple language and sentences.  East of  Eden is a chronicle of a family over time in America, specifically California but it is really a story about good and evil, which Steinbeck makes very obvious.  The fact that he makes it so obvious is what a lot of people criticized about the book. I just re-read this book last winter and, while the themes are up front, this book very much assimilates all of Steinbeck’s other works: kindness to strangers, the appreciation of hard work, the comic goodness of life, attention to family saga and sadness, biblical allusion.  It is very much a tale of America and I will always see it in my head that way.  In addition, the theme of the Hebrew word timshel, or “thou mayest,” perfectly sums up American history and perhaps History in general.  We all have the ability to change, no matter if we are marked with good or evil. We can make what we want of the world and the universe.  That is all very powerful and meaningful stuff.  When you add all of that soul-stirring material to the fact that I first read this novel after basketball practice, in the warmth and safety of my home, while listening to “Rain Song” by Led Zeppelin, you have to figure that its going to have an influence.

Basketball Equivalent: Tim Duncan.  There is nothing fancy about John Steinbeck’s writing, but book after book he gets it done just like Tim Duncan has in the NBA. Although,  I don’t see Steinbeck as a silver and black man (more of an orange or sepia and darker brown).  They both excel at the fundamentals and, no matter how much you want to write them off (as I have done with Duncan), you simply can't.  Each one can also flash surprise moments of brilliance, such as Steinbeck when Adam is dying in East of Eden and Tim Duncan when he nails a perfect 14 foot bank shot.

9. Desolation Angels – Jack Kerouac

Why: Kerouac is criminally overlooked in the history of American literature and this is his best book by far.  While On the Road and Dharma Bums may be more polished, Desolation Angels is his most honest and visceral work (well, Big Sur may be more visceral but you can pick and choose).  The first part of the novel better exhibits Kerouac’s “first thought, best thought” philosophy more than any other part of his “Duluoz Legend.” The fragments of Kerouac’s happiness, isolation, paranoia, cosmic visions, and nostalgia for childhood, paint an accurate portrait of his (“the narrator’s”) psychology.  The middle section of the novel where Kerouac visits his various friends in the United States and abroad captures his “bop prosody” at its best as Kerouac drinks tokay in back alleys in San Fran, runs around jazz clubs in New York, takes an epic trip to Mexico and then a solemn car ride back, and drinks wine in a wealthy family’s home in Washington D.C. with Gregory Corso.  Kerouac’s love affairs in this novel are also his best written.  However, the real merit of the novel comes from the end where Kerouac starts seeing the sadness in the holy visions of his travels.  He even takes an ill-fated trip across country with his mother to show her what the joys of his life have been for the past decade.  He soon realizes the hollowness and the mortality of all he has loved.  There is a strange seriousness, an inevitability that pervades this novel – perhaps a Catholic guilt or weight – that makes it Kerouac’s best and most interesting work.  It had me endlessly contemplating becoming a wildfire watcher for most of my college summers, so that I could come back from isolation and spring upon the world.

Basketball Equivalent: Allen Iverson. Both Iverson and much of Kerouac’s work were misunderstood. Desolation Angels exhibits Kerouac’s firm belief and investment in a style that perhaps wasn’t going to pay off, the “instantaneous prose,” which is akin to Iverson’s belief in himself as the only way his team was going to win. Iverson’s plight was covered in Free Darko’s The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball and Kerouac’s has been discussed in about a dozen documentaries and among many college students and twenty-something hipsters.  They both could be explosive and retain a humble love of tradition.  Each one could bring you to enlightening moments of religious joy and pity in the strangest of times.

8. Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe

Why: Thomas Wolfe’s sprawling account of his fictional alter-ego, Eugene Gant, is one of the best American novels that many colleges and universities seem to never want to teach.  Writers and artists are appreciated in cycles and Wolfe has been at the down point of the cycle for a long time, waiting to be rediscovered.  This was Wolfe’s debut novel and its story of a misunderstood, but passionate youth and his large, dysfunctional, but memorable family was something that I clung to in college.  This novel always reminds me of summer and it is the novel that I most closely associate with riding a train (although, Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again actually begins on a train).  Eugene is a sensitive youth that we watch grow from a young boy to an eccentric student and aspiring writer on his way to Harvard, leaving the South for the first time. There are terrific passages of small town life and family history and heritage that make you feel at times more a part of America than you have ever felt.  For me, though, it is the character of Ben, Eugene’s shadowy, stubborn older brother that sticks with me.  Ben chooses a solitary and hard life of work that Eugene admires and doesn’t quite comprehend.  Ben is the sibling that Eugene feels the closest to, yet Ben is so hard on Eugene because he wants to make sure he realizes his talent and doesn’t become trapped in the South, a slave to the whims and desires of his family.  It was Ben’s desire channeled through Eugene to be free of institutions such as family, a desire that spurned on Eugene’s own creative desire on, was something I related to in my brooding and drunk college years. I could go on and on about this book and it was just as good when I read it last spring.

Basketball Equivalent: Scottie Pippen. This comparison seems a little stretched as I am thinking about it now because I don't think that Wolfe could do everything in the way that Scottie Pippen could.  However, Look Homeward, Angel is often overlooked among the big boys of the era such as The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, Winesburg, Ohio, and other books much as Scottie Pippen is overlooked among the other greats of his era just because Michael Jordan was his teammate.  Both Wolfe and Pippen had a Southern sensibility to them and came from humble beginnings to arrive at peak artistry. Scottie was a bit more economical in his game than Wolfe ever was in his epic tomes.

7. The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway

Why: I still firmly believe that this book is Ernest Hemingway’s best novel. It is certainly, without a doubt, the quintessential expatriate novel.  I read this novel when I was studying in Ireland for the first time (a late bloomer, I know) and one night, while under the influence, flung it across the room and screamed, “This is not writing!” due to the simplicity of the sentences.  Yet, upon my next three subsequent readings, I have realized the true impact of it. It is in many ways a modernist novel with what must be inferred by the reader.  Its sentences, while seeming straightforward, actually contain strange structures and dictions that are certainly in line with something Joyce would have devised, though probably not as radical.  That the language is so simple is one of the things that brings you back to it.  Like many of the liquors the characters drink in the novel itself, it is a palette-cleanser.  While, and after, you are reading The Sun Also Rises the concept of writing becomes so much clearer.  You understand what can be done with language, with the economy of it, just as Joyce made you realize what could be done with the imagination of language. The novel is extraordinarily accessible and the characters are memorable.  Lady Brett Ashley is both the most annoying woman you’ve ever encountered and also a character who deserves some modicum of pity, someone you want to take care of, like so many women in the world.  Robert Cohn is like any third wheel friend you’ve ever had, yet you feel his plight as he is treated as an outsider.  Bill is one of the most underrated characters in fiction and he has a certain depth that develops over subsequent readings.  Mike and Pedro Romero are perhaps a little simpler and are drawn as somewhat on the opposite end of the spectrum for what can happen to a man.  And then there is Jake.  Jake who knows the world, who knows concierges, bartenders and waiters in France and Spain and New York who all remember him and treat him like a quiet friend.  There is something about Jake and the way he simply does work or reads or goes someplace to drink among the chaos that is so simple and seems to be something to strive for, even though his life is a mess.  The section where Jake travels alone after the fiesta and goes swimming and reads on the beach is some of the most poignant and surprising writing I have ever read.  Each time I read this book it surprises me even though it is so straightforward.

Basketball Equivalent: Bill Russell.  I have never watched footage of a Bill Russell game so I have always been averse to his status as perhaps the greatest basketball player of all time.  For a long time I never read a Hemingway novel so I was just as averse to the claim that he was the most influential writer in American literature.  Well, I have grown and I can admit that they are both extraordinarily influential in their respective fields – right down to their beards. If you ask smart basketball players who they would most like to emulate, they would say Bill Russell or Michael Jordan.  If you asked smart writers who they would most like to emulate, they would say Ernest Hemingway or James Joyce.  And Hemingway was never better than in The Sun Also Rises; it has everything that was Hemingway.

6. As I Lay Dying- William Faulkner

Why: Faulkner is one of my absolute favorite writers and this is my favorite book of his.  It contains everything that Faulkner aspired towards: family history, southern ignorance and pride, corruption, spiritual vision, varying perspectives, exploration of language, and exploration of consciousness.  Darl is one of Faulkner’s most interesting characters and, due to his level of intellectual and spiritual torture that he shares with Quentin Compson of The Sound and the Fury, was a huge influence on me as I was learning how to think and write and also how to create a “strange” character. The range of family perspectives is especially dazzling when Faulker switches from Vardaman’s simple, sometimes abstract voice, to Anse Bundren’s lazy, scheming mind and then to Cash’s honorable, straight-ahead, workman’s voice.  There is even a section devoted to Addie Bundren’s voice from the afterlife.  What makes a technique like that work is how much the rest of the novel is grounded in the hard world of the Bundren family and all of their beliefs and ignorances. When Addie’s voice is heard, you don't find it strange, you believe that a dead person would be able to think in the world that Faulkner creates, just as it might in our world.  There is a spirituality, a cosmic nature that inhabits these earthy characters and that was always something appealing to me.  That aspect as well as understanding why the technique itself worked helped me to learn more about being a writer. And beyond all of this, there is some truly beautiful and rhythmic writing throughout the book as well as some elemental statements about life.

Basketball Equivalent: Charles Barkley. The southern parallels are obvious, but its really the size I am referring to. Both Barkley and As I Lay Dying are compact but each are full of beauty and power.  Barkley was 6’4” but played like he was 6’8” or 6’9”.  He was a fierce rebounder, a prolific scorer and a fantastic passer—he just couldn’t play defense. Depending on edition, As I Lay Dying checks in at a shade under 200 pages, but the depth of the writing, the variety of the voices, the drama of the interactions between family members and their ill-fated journey makes it seem like so much more. Faulkner would make more complex works like Absalom, Absalom but he was never more concise, beautiful, difficult and powerful than he was here.  And like the novel, Barkley is also known to make elemental statements about life.

5. All The King’s Men – Robert Penn Warren

Why: I’ve touched on the influence this novel has had on me on this blog before.  I first read the book in the first semester of my freshman year at Skidmore.  I read it in Professor Tom Lewis’ class, a professor who went on to be a big influence on my college career.  I had never heard of Penn Warren, but the novel immediately floored me. I still have visions of lying in my freshman room and turning page after page of the book.  I still remember how I was baffled, during my senior year, how sometimes I could feel so removed from things, like Jack Burden could.  How by just sticking my hands in my pockets, I could make myself clean of any external, dangling issues or consequences that I was somehow connected to.  The writing is poetic and dense, but is balanced by some of the most crackling dialogue in American literature.  Jack Burden’s narrative is endlessly entertaining and engaging.  You can’t help but be caught up in his history at Burden’s Landing and his oft-doomed love of Anne Stanton and his oft-doomed friendship with her brother Adam.  The character of Adam Stanton and his drive to work and do good has grown in stature each time I read the book.  Then, of course there is the looming figure of Willie Stark and his rise from a backcountry hillbilly to the governor of Louisiana.  Penn’s writing takes left turns and goes on tangents that end up becoming logically tied up and along the way he has shown you some truly mesmerizing images. There are endless quotes that I could list from the novel, ones that still baffle me, but there are some that will always ring true like this one:

"There is nothing more alone than being in a car at night in the rain. I was in the car. And I was glad of it. Between one point on the map and another point on the map, there was the being alone in the car in the rain. They say you are not you except in terms of relation to other people. If there weren't any other people there wouldn't be any you because what you do which is what you are, only has meaning in relation to other people. That is a very comforting thought when you are in the car in the rain at night alone, for then you aren't you, and not being you or anything, you can really lie back and get some rest. It is a vacation from being you. There is only the flow of the motor under you foot spinning that frail thread of sound out of its metal gut like a spider, that filament, that nexus, which isn't really there, between the you which you have just left in one place and the you which you will be when you get to the other place."

I just had to throw that one up there to exhibit the magic and the intoxication of a Penn Warren sentence.  All The King’s Men is a page-turner and it does have a dramatic ending.  However, the last pages stick in my memory all the time, as well as the description of the stormy nights at Burden’s Landing and of the vivid memories of Anne Stanton and Jack Burden’s love.

Basketball Equivalent: Grant Hill.  The glory of Grant Hill’s early career has long been forgotten, just as All The King’s Men is in many ways forgotten.  Hill had the skill and knowledge of the game of basketball that made him a poet, just as Robert Penn Warren was a poet.  However, Hill also had a muscularity to his game, an ability to take the team on his back much as Robert Penn Warren could undertake one of the best American novels of all time.  Each man was educated at a southern college that had a good basketball program (Hill at Duke and Penn Warren at Vanderbilt) and both were extremely well-educated and both well spoken.  I really like this one.

4. Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf

Why: It may be a slight rip-off of Ulysses, but it is an extraordinarily beautiful book. The Waves may be more mesmerizing, ambitious and haunting, but Mrs. Dalloway reminds us about the joys of everyday life and how to appreciate all those people that pass through our lives.  In some ways, Woolf’s style in Mrs. Dalloway, though certainly reliant on Joyce’s breakthroughs, is more enjoyable than the shifting narratives of Ulysses.  Mrs. Dalloway shifts between several perspectives, but does so in a more omniscient manner that is reminiscent of Tolstoy.  We seem to float from the mind of Clarissa, to Peter Walsh, to Septimus Warren Smith and then to his wife Lucrezia Smith.  The fact that Woolf completely commits to this approach and does it so fluidly is why the novel is such a success.  The party scene is especially a triumph as we get a brief glimpse into the mind of nearly every character that is mentioned in the novel.  The language, as it is in nearly all of Woolf, is poetic and lyrical—there is a reason she is known as perhaps the best lyrical writer in the English language.  There are terrific small moments like Peter Walsh sitting on the bench and falling asleep, Clarissa watching the woman in black go to sleep from her bedroom window and deciding that she must return to the party, Richard Dalloway’s quiet, but strong and honorable perspective and ultimately the struggles of Peter Walsh and Clarissa to think about their past love.  Woolf’s use of the stream of consciousness, especially in its Tolstoyan light, has been a huge influence on me as well as Woolf’s overall lyricism.

Basketball Equivalent: Bill Walton.  Walton, like Woolf was a lyrical writer, was a lyrical basketball player.  His ability to throw an outlet pass is the stuff of legend. He was graceful on the court and is looked at as the epitome of the passing big-man.  Like the stream of consciousness narrative in Mrs. Dalloway the game seemed to flow through Walton (again, see some great essay writing by Free Darko for more details) and then onto his teammates, making a fluid championship team such as the 1977 Portland Trailblazers were.  Walton and Dalloway both had their careers cut short.  Walton was oft-injured and only had about 4 “legendary” seasons.  Woolf, meanwhile was tortured by mental illness for most of her adult life and committed suicide.  The similarity there may be stretched, but you see where you could draw it nonetheless.

3. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

Why: It’s no secret that I love this book.  Mr. Marshak, my 11^th Grade English teacher, was the person who first gave it to me.  I fell in love immediately.  Fitzgerald is a supremely talented writer and there is perhaps no American writer who wrote more beautifully than he did.  The whole idea underneath and throughout the narrative of The Great Gatsby of the night and the images that you see there among crowds of people at parties and of a green light that eternally blinks in the darkness, was immediately enticing to a day-dreaming and disillusioned teenager like myself.  I have read the book almost every year since 2001 and it has become embedded in my mind.  The ideas of America, of what the East means as opposed to the West, the vision of Old Manhattan, the vision, feel and smell of Old Long Island, are so vividly drawn.  The Great Gatsby is a novel that emits a perfume and you are immediately wrapped in its allure.  Much of that perfume stems from Nick Carraway’s narrative, which is at turns nostalgic, pensive, angry, joyful, empathetic, reserved and aloof.  Take for instance my favorite passage:

“I wanted to get out and walk eastward toward the park through the soft twilight, but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild, strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.”

What doesn’t that quote tell us about life? About the beauty of the sentence in general?  About what we want and then immediately do not want?  And there are plenty more like that and each person has their own favorite.  Besides, no book perhaps ends more famously or elegantly than The Great Gatsby.

Basketball Equivalent:  Magic Johnson.  The only player that could match the elegance and beauty that Fitzgerald put on the page was Magic Johnson.  Magic’s passes were fine threads of beauty that made their way through defenders, across the polished wooden boards of the court and found themselves into the waiting hands of a teammate who simply had to drop the ball through the net without a sound.  “Showtime” brought the grace to basketball that Fitzgerald brought to the page.  Magic knew his history as did Fitzgerald.  Fitzgerald was perhaps more overshadowed in his realm than Magic Johnson will ever be in basketball, but you can’t deny that each man’s ability to make intense beauty out of his craft was and will, arguably, never be matched.

2. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

Why: What can you say about this novel? Perhaps I can say that the current incarnation of myself literally owes everything to the character of Levin.  Or perhaps that the scene where Kitty and Levin profess their love for each other is literally the perfect romance scene in literature or in reality (Tolstoy actually professed his love to his wife in a code of the first letters of different phrases that his wife completed).  Maybe we could discuss the fact that Oblonsky is one of the best comic characters in all of literature (better than Falstaff? Possibly.) and yet is so empathetic and drawn with a certain drama to him that balances out his character.  We could also just marvel at the scene where Oblonsky orders oysters.  How about the prolonged exile that Levin takes to his family’s farm where he tries to study the peasants?  Maybe this novel is so great because it takes place over such a large span of years and we get full views into different families and we see nearly all of the characters in some kind of dramatic relationship to each other.  Then there is also the fact that Anna herself is such an exasperating and irrational woman and yet remains compassionate and is looked to as a figure of reason and logic up until her demise.  Further still, you will never look at a train station or a woman’s elbow the same way again. This novel has had a profound affect on me, not only as a writer, but as a human being.  When I want to put myself in the mindset to write the “correct” way, I open this book up anywhere and start reading. Tolstoy has such a mastery over the narrative and you are so completely engrossed in it at all times.  It is logical that modernism proceeded from him, because after this novel and its ability to switch perspectives so deftly, there was only room for stream-of-consciousness to be fully explored and then the very idea of narrative to be questioned.  There was nowhere to go after this.  Now, however, there is nowhere to go but back to it.  To full, character driven stories that follow families over a period of time, that don’t become too sensational, that make us fall into the fiction again as though it were real life. For all we want now, is what is “real.”  This book also contains the best and most moving ending in the history of literature. We pick up after Levin has made a huge realization in his constant struggle with faith and how that relates to the love of his wife and his new child.  A storm has just passed over his country home and his fears of his baby and wife being caught in it are over:

"Oh, you haven't gone in then?" he heard Kitty's voice all at once, as she came by the same way to the drawing-room.

"What is it? you're not worried about anything?" she said, looking intently at his face in the starlight.

But she could not have seen his face if a flash of lightning had not hidden the stars and revealed it. In that flash she saw his face distinctly, and seeing him calm and happy, she smiled at him.

"She understands," he thought; "she knows what I'm thinking about. Shall I tell her or not? Yes, I'll tell her." But at the moment he was about to speak, she began speaking.

"Kostya! do something for me," she said; "go into the corner room and see if they've made it all right for Sergey Ivanovitch. I can't very well. See if they've put the new wash stand in it."

"Very well, I'll go directly," said Levin, standing up and kissing her.

"No, I'd better not speak of it," he thought, when she had gone in before him. "It is a secret for me alone, of vital importance for me, and not to be put into words.

"This new feeling has not changed me, has not made me happy and enlightened all of a sudden, as I had dreamed, just like the feeling for my child. There was no surprise in this either. Faith—or not faith—I don't know what it is—but this feeling has come just as imperceptibly through suffering, and has taken firm root in my soul.

"I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; there will be still the same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I shall still go on scolding her for my own terror, and being remorseful for it; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I shall still go on praying; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it."

That’s all I’ve got.  And if you know me, if you know who I am now, then that last paragraph basically says it all.

Basketball Equivalent: Larry Bird.  Basketball flowed through Larry Bird the way that fiction and life flowed through Tolstoy.  They called Larry Bird the “Basketball Jesus,” that’s how divine his powers were at the top of his game and Anna Karenina is the top of Tolstoy’s game.  Bird was so good at basketball that in 1986, during a road trip, he decided to shoot all of his shots left-handed.  He and Bill Walton would try to do the same give and go as many times as possible because teams couldn’t figure the simple play out because they were so good.  Bird was one of the best passers ever, one of the best shooters ever, one of the most clutch players ever and one of the best defenders.  He came in the most unlikely package but his soul was placed on earth to play basketball, just as Tolstoy’s soul was placed on earth to show us the way life is through literature.

1. Ulysses – James Joyce

Why: I know that you saw this one coming.  This is and will always be my favorite novel ever.  I am a sucker for the mundane and how we can make the mundane seem as spectacular, epic and profound as it truly is.  No one did that better than Joyce in Ulysses.  As a writer, you might say, well why not Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, it is perhaps more economical and more lyrical, more focused.  That may be true, but it doesn’t capture our beloved Stephen Dedalus at his most abstract, his most brooding and his most obnoxious.  Every student of English at college wants to be Stephen Dedalus. If they deny it, they are lying. He is an unlikable character in so many ways, but he is so intelligent that you are drawn to him.  In Ulysses he is Hamlet, struggling to make a decision with his life, living in a tower by the sea, making up theories for the true identity of the ghost in Hamlet and how that ghost might actually be the ghost of Shakespeare’s dead child Hamnet Shakespeare (you have to read the novel to understand how absurd this scene is).  Then you have Bloom and his love of the inner organs of animals, of his wife’s butt and all of his ideas for inventions, like a phone to put in a coffin in case you bury someone alive.  We follow this brooding artist and this ordinary ad man with “a touch of the artist” about him through a day in Dublin.  We meet their rivals, their family, their friends and learn about all of their insecurities and fears. And what we learn is that history is rich and enchanting and can teach us many things, but we can’t ever let it define us, because we are defining history in the present, “the point at which all future plunges into the past.”  The novel asks all the important questions such as “what is the age of the soul of man,” all of the cosmic and spiritual points that I want in my novels.  In the end, though, it really affirms the greatness of everyday life, of the significance even our smallest journeys take on because they are the same stuff as history—there is nothing static in this world, it is all fluid. At any instant, you can be the hero, you can be Hamlet or Jesus or Napoleon or Odysseus or Michael Jordan or your grandfather, you can even be the ghost of your previous self.  We are always encountering ourselves and history and we can move within it in order to create a history that is our own—we can own History.  When a book does all of that to you, moves your soul in that way, you have to be influenced by it.  Even if it does cast a shadow over you that you try to dig out from for the rest of your grown life as an artist.

Basketball Equivalent: Michael Jordan. Joyce is widely regarded as the best writer of all time just as Jordan is regarded as the best basketball player ever.  Jordan is seen as the prototypical image of a basketball player just as Joyce is seen as the prototypical image of the artist.  Joyce was described as “the meanest drunk” by Hemingway, while Jordan was known as the most competitive man in the history of humankind.  The image that Jordan left on the game is as wide reaching as the influence that Joyce left on the English language, which is so wide that you have to watch when you use the words “swoon,” “soul,” “snow,” and “epiphany” in your writing because Joyce made them so much his own.  Each man is seen as taking the entire history of his craft and wrapping it up into one neat package. For Joyce, that package was Ulysses (as much as he’d liked it to have been Finnegan’s Wake) for Jordan it was his entire career. Each phase of his game calling to mind some specter of the sport’s past like no other player before him.  These two men belong at the top together.