Something We Said

 Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me

By Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor

I first heard the author, who is Richard Pryor's daughter, on Fresh Air. I am glad I picked up the book.

First of all: Being Richard Pryor's daughter sounds like it was a pretty wild experience. I am somewhat familiar with Pryor's work, mainly through his collaborations with Mel Brooks, but knew very little about him outside of that. He was a complicated figure to say the least. He was raised in a Chicago-area brothel. It was a violent, traumatic upbringing that seems pretty clearly connected to some of his "hang ups", as he described them, later in life. The first was his relationship to women. He was never with one very long, and fathered children by lots of them. To his credit, he seemed willing to maintain relationships with the mothers of his children, but infidelity and conflict were constants in his love life. The second, of course, was drugs. Cocaine and alcohol were a big part of his life until the infamous night that he lit himself on fire -- whether intentionally or as a result of a free-basing accident I still don't know -- and, in the painful aftermath, went sober.

All of this turmoil makes you wonder how he was able to maintain enough time and energy for his pretty significant creative output.

But that's not what this book is about. It's about the author's complicated relationship to her father and, to a lesser extent her mother, particularly in light of his pioneering use of what we now can call the N-word. Using it -- the full IT -- was a mainstay of his comedy; it was part of what made him groundbreaking and edgy. During the first part of his career, Pryor's use of it was a kind of re-appropriation, a way to harness the power of the word and use it as a way to fight against racism rather than gird it up. That changed, though, after a trip to Africa, where he realized that, despite being surrounded by black people, the N-word was absent. He disavowed it, explaining that using it, even in the context of re-appropriation, still somehow reinforced America's peculiar racial hierarchy.

Liz, as she is known, traces not only her father's use of the word, but her very personal experience with it. She switches between vignettes about her childhood, her first days teaching at Smith College, and the historical progression of the word and its meaning. All of it is powerful. She does a great job of highlighting what are, now, shameful moments and explaining what she learned and how she grew from them. As a teacher, I was particularly struck by her initial reaction to and subsequent reflection on the first time she heard a student -- and a white student at that -- use it in her classroom; it was a quotation from Richard Pryor's role in Blazing Saddles. In the moment, she basically did nothing. But it set her on a path of figuring out how to do better. I am not black, have never been called the N-word -- but I still can identify with this.

I was also fascinated by the historical "Interludes". I learned a lot about the N-word -- such as the fact that the "N-word" as a way to refer to it became popular as a result of the prosecutor's use of it during the OJ Simpson trial. Huh?! And that there is a historical record of black people re-appropriating the word as far back as the 1800s. I'm hoping to use some of these in my class next year. 

Anyway -- a great, thought-provoking read.

Magnificence

 Magnificence

By Lydia Millet

The last in the trio of books featuring T., a development tycoon who, in the last book, found a change of

heart in the jungle of Belize. That novel was told from the point of view of Hal, the husband of T.'s secretaries, Susan, who agrees to go find T. as a way to escape his discovery that his wife was having an affair. It ends with him bleeding on the sidewalk after being stabbed during a robbery. Will he make it?

No, he will not. And so this book is written from the point of view of Susan, his wife. Turns out, she'd been having lots of affairs. While Hal responded to the accident that left his daughter, Casey, paralyzed by fretting over her, Susan responded with adultery. Hal's death put her in a tailspin. She is, she decides, a murderer; Hal never would have gone to Belize if he hadn't found her out. She is lost, and listless.

Until, one day, she receives a call from a lawyer. Her great uncle has died, and left her a large estate in Pasadena. There is no money, but a trust has been set up to pay for it's upkeep. When she arrives, it is larger than the even imagined. And, strangely, stuffed with taxidermy; heads are everywhere.

She does some research, and finds that her uncle loved to hunt, and, in fact, headed a hunting organization. With little else to do, she throws herself into the house, reorganizing the stuffed animals based on plans of famous natural history museums. It too will be a museum, she decides. There is a chance I am wrong, but it seems to me that her uncle's hunting in some ways matched Susan's infidelities; she, too, was seeking trophies of a kind, and Hal's death has her organizing them in her head.

There is not much of a propulsive plot in this book. A minor conflict arises in the form of Susan's cousins, who are jealous of her inheritance and sue to overturn the uncle's will. It seems obvious from the reader's point of view that she will prevail, but there is tension nevertheless. In addition, this threat spurs Susan to learn even more about the house, and a new mystery arises. The original plans contained a large basement, yet Susan has seen no evidence of it.

A search leads her to a manhole. It doesn't belong to the city. A backhoe is hired to remove the lid, and when Susan descends into the cavern it uncovers, she finds even more animals. At first, it just seems like overflow from the main "collection". But there are strange dates, and then she connects the dots: they are all extinct. There is even a room dedicated to a dodo skeleton. And then, farther on, a different room. It's contents? The remains of humans who were the last of their tribes. 

What does it all mean? I don't know, but it speaks to human's odd relationship to endangered species. We are fascinated by them, hyper focused on their potential demise to the point, perhaps, of ignoring the animals right nearby, who, if we aren't careful, will also end up on the list.

I've really enjoyed delving into Millet. I hope she writes another book.

Ruthie Fear

 Ruthie Fear

By Maxim Lukutoff

Sickel gave this to me during our visit to the cabin this summer. He'd meant to mail it, and inside was a
note that said: "This book is crazy!" Obviously, I was intrigued.

To be honest, I didn't find it all that crazy -- for most of it. It is the story of the titular character, Ruthie Fear, who lives in a trailer in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana with her father, Rutherford. One of the main themes of the book is the gentrification of the area by outsiders while longtime residents see their lives upended. This particularly grates on Rutherford, who simmers not-so-silently with rage. They were technically poor, but with all the public land around, they were rich -- until the really rich started taking that land away. Rutherford is particularly incensed when a country music star moves into the valley and starts baiting ducks near a public pond. Why? Because it is illegal to shoot baited ducks. 

We watch Ruthie struggle in the valley to find a life of meaning and, it seems, upward mobility. She is torn, both loving and despising the insularity of Montana mountain life. She briefly attempts to flee to Las Vegas, inspired by a poster of the city her father brought back from his only trip out of Montana. But she can't quite make it, and winds up robbing a tourist for bus fare back.

It's all pretty ordinary, if disturbing. Except. One day when she was seven years old, Ruthie saw a creature. It had no head, spindly "insect" legs, and a kidney-shaped body covered with feathers. Rutherford believed it to be a figment of her imagination, but Ruthie held fast. She build a blind so she could see it again. But it never appeared. 

Until. One morning she was duck hunting, and there it was. And then there was another. And another. Gun shots rang out through the valley. Hundreds of the creatures had appeared, and been killed. They brought them to the local dump, where the fire warden was waiting for approval to light the pile of carcasses up. But when he did, they gave off a noxious smoke that killed everyone whose nostrils it entered. All along, it had been posited that the valley would be better off with fewer people. And now there were.

The creatures were obviously a metaphor for something. The author certainly seems unsympathetic to the Big Sky-ification of Montana. What, exactly, they stand for I'm not quite sure. But this was a good read, propulsive till the end.

Ghost Lights

 Ghost Lights

By Lydia Millet

I'm not sure if the reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey was intentional, but the main character of this

installment of Millet's cycle, Hal, is definitely on autopilot. He works for the IRS and, even after a decades-long career there, is still a true believer. He is happy to be a cog: in the governmental machine, in his marriage, in life in general. Especially since the accident, on a snowy Colorado night, that left his daughter, Casey, paralyzed. That loss, in which he had no direct role, is all Hal seems to have room for in his brain. 

But then the machine turns against him. He returns home early from work one day to find his wife's co-worker, Robert, leaving his house. Huh. He finds said wife, Susan, showering. And in the folds of the rumpled bed, a shiny piece of metal packaging. His heart races. Could it be...? No. Yes? No? Yes. He follows her to the office the next day and witnesses it: she is having an affair. 

Autopilot off. He is due at a dinner party at Casey's house, and decides to have a few drinks beforehand, something quite uncharacteristic. When talk turns to Susan's boss, T. -- who we met in How the Dead Dream -- Hal stays out of character. Someone needs to go to Belize to find T., Susan insists. I will do it, Hal insists back. It's no problem. The true believer has months of vacation time accrued.

Down Hal goes. Finding T., who against all odds is not dead, is actually easier than anticipated. All he had to do was ask for Marlo, the foreman on T.'s now-destroyed island resort project. But Hal doesn't know that. So he accidentally enlists the help of a German couple with two tow-heads. The patriarch, Hans, is all business and somehow calls in the U.S. Coast Guard to search the area where T. was last seen. The matriarch, Gretel, takes a shining to Hal that results in some inebriated, late-night beach sex. 

One morning, Hal, sleeping on the pool chaise, is woken by Marlo, who takes him to the island. T. is there, feral, with a new perspective on life. The pursuit of money for money's sake, he avows, is silly. He is bearded. He is dressed in rags. He is, after speaking with the brother of the guide who died on his jungle journey, taken into custody.

Hal freaks out. He goes to the embassy and finds cynical help, who insist there is nothing to worry about. T. insists there is nothing to worry about. Hal is not so sure. Still, things are looking up. He has confronted Susan on the phone; there will be a future for their marriage. He has confronted his autopilot tendencies; he will be different upon return. 

The machine, though, will not compute. Just as he feels like he has made some peace with the world, an unnoticed boy, who Hal tries to make room for on the sidewalk, stabs him, takes his wallet, and leaves him for dead. Will he die? It certainly seems so. But I thought T. would die, too.

Hal's final thoughts are on the nature of Jesus, and the way that the lives of the rich are antithetical to who he was. He meditates on the way the many suffer and die for the few when it was actually supposed to be the other way around. Though not rich by American standards, he is a bit astonished to realize that he is, in fact, one of the few. Not as much as T., though. Does he die for T.'s sins?

How the Dead Dream

 How the Dead Dream

By Lydia Millet

After reading A Children's Bible I thought I'd go down a bit of a Lydia Millet rabbit hole. This book is the
first in a trilogy of sorts with a similar story line.

This book focuses on T., which, we learn later in the book, is short for Thomas. It's a fitting nickname for a character focused on efficiency in all aspects of his life. Everything he does is meant to move toward an end goal of wealth. Even in college, his "friendships" with wealthier frat brothers are in the interest of potential business connections.

For a long while, T.'s life plan seems to be working out. His lifetime pursuit of trading for profit works well in New York and then in Los Angeles, where he breaks into real estate. His relationships with people, and the earth, remain purely transactional. 

But then his mother shows up. His father, she says, is missing. No note, no phone call, no ideas about where he could be. At the same time, he begins to fall in love -- real love -- with a woman named Beth. He sees a future in which they are partners and he is no longer alone. As in A Children's Bible, though, cracks appear in the Edenic plan. 

T. finds his father -- slinging drinks at a gay bar in Florida. His whole life, up until that point, was a lie, he says. His father files for divorce, which sends his mother into a tailspin. Then Beth suffers a heart attack, which leads to a car crash, which leads to her death. All of a sudden, T. feels what it is like to lose. Always alone in the world, he now begins to feel lonely.

For comfort, he begins to seek out endangered species in zoos, imagining them to be feeling what he is feeling: the last of their kind, lonely. He takes lessons in picking locks and finds himself napping with them at night. He takes an interest in the endangered kangaroo rats displaced by his mega development in the desert outside L.A. 

He next has his eyes on an island in Belize, where he hires a guide to take him into jaguar country. The odds of seeing one, he knows, are very, very low. But just to be in their presence is enough. But then, more loss. His guide has a heart attack, and T. is now very, very alone. He attempts to find his own way out of the jungle. At the end of the book, though, it doesn't look good for him.

Up next: Ghost Lights.

A Children's Bible

 A Children's Bible 

By Lydia Millet

Another recommendation from the Anthony Jeselnik book club. 

It starts off dreamily: "Once we lived in a summer country." The "we" here is a group of several families vacationing in a mansion built by a robber baron by the sea. The kids, including the narrator, Evie, have free run of the place and are turning more and more feral by the moment. But soon cracks appear in the Edenic vision.

The kids aren't given freedom -- they're neglected. The parents, who never have names, engage in a pattern of "hair of the dog", "drink and conversation", dinner, and then boozing for real. They disgust the kids, most of whom seem to be in their late teens with the exception of Evie's brother, Jack and a friend (whose name I forget but who only speaks through signs). Then more cracks. The troupe of kids decide to camp out on the beach for the night. There, they meet the scions of an Uber wealthy family sailing their yacht up the coast. They smoke weed and party -- but also talk about survival compounds. The book feels contemporary, but it's either a few decades in the future or a bit of an alternate reality. Are there "preppers" out there? Sure. But they are fringe elements at the moment. 

And then the thing falls apart. A storm hits. Jack and his companion, who have recently been given "A Children's Bible" take on the role of modern-day Noah's and gather any and all animals they can. They store them in a tree house, where they ride out the storm. The parents don't notice. Instead, they take Ecstasy and have an orgy. The teens clamor to the tree house. The storm is bad; it ruins the house and, it seems, the surrounding countryside. 

One day, a man named Burl appears. He's been paddling for days, and is glad to find respite. When the waters recede, he joins the teens in an effort to escape to one of the family's Rye, NY, compound. They don't make it, instead holing up on a different compound somewhere in Pennsylvania. For a moment, it seems like they have found another, truer Eden, one bereft of their bothersome parents. But cracks appear again, this time in the form of an armed, roving gang drunk with power and motivated to horde as much food as they can. Things are, after all, bad out there.

In the end, the kids are fine. The parents, though, they somehow disappear into the ether.

It is, it seems, a metaphor for the impending climate crisis. The older generation, which may or may not include me, parties on as the earth falls apart, giving into their hedonistic tendencies while leaving the inevitable destruction to their kids. 

I really liked this book. The description above sounds intense, but there were moments of levity and humor. It was, in a way, absurdist. One of the blurbs on the back compared Millet to Vonnegut, and I think it's an apt comparison. I'd never heard of her, and I've decided to dig deeper and check out some of her other novels. 

The Department of Speculation

 The Department of Speculation

By Jenny Offill

This was part of the Anthony Jeselnik book club. The book is a series of vignettes exploring the
dissolution of a relationship. You don't even know the character's names, but you do know that the husband has an affair that blows up the relationship and the wife is trying to figure out what to do. It was funny at times, heartbreaking at others. But, in this middle age of mine, it was tough to read. Don't let this happen to me!