As the very first post for this blog I'd like to kick it off with my very favorite of distractions--Literature.
Apathy and Other Small Victories
Is a classic in my contemporary book collection that I believe to be highly underrated. In the form of Classic Noir its dark humor keeps the rather ingenious plot clipping along, splitting your sides and wondering if the life you lead is as necessarily stressful as you seem to make it for yourself. The book even starts out with the main character, Shane, and a couple of cops exchanging, and possibly lampooning, the kind of witty banter reminiscent of Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart. Shane is the Holden Caulfield of corporate America. The neurotic debauchery alone is worth the read but add in a dash of the absurd, enough to be realistic, and you've got a classic. With a main character who sleeps with his landlord's wife to catch a break on the rent and the dominant corporate she-tool he dates Shane illustrates a life rife with carefree apathy most of us are too afraid to live. And when he waxes philosophical on the merits of being lucky enough to take a bus ride and have no one sitting next to you so you can stretch out your legs describing it as "knowing you've found a treasure, a treasure nobody else is looking for," you know this author has been where this main character finds himself and is good enough to show us that place.
Author Paul Neilan puts on paper crazy things that, very similar to real life, one doesn't usually talk about but most definitely happen. Catharsis is rarely so carefully invoked as when an author walks that razor-sharp line between culturally acceptable and politically incorrect. From leather-clad guinea pigs to deaf dental assistants who sing atonal karaoke the characters might seem more of a cheap joke if they weren't so poignant of the flaws and mundane sterility of mainstream American life. Oh, and the spot-on representative use of cliche by the aforementioned girlfriend reminds me of every person I've ever run away from upon hearing them string together TV show phrase after TV show phrase.
Seriously, do yourself a favor. Read this book then please respond to this blog and tell me what you thought. I'd really like this blog to be a shared experience in Lit., Music, Art and life.
James
