if i were discussing this novel: big machine

in the last year, i spent a month doing nothing but staring at computer monitors. i spent nine intolerable months plotting the destruction of the very thing i valued most in my life (which was not a computer monitor). and i spent most of my nights in clumsy chase of questions i couldn't ask. i also did some ordinary things, like drive my ford, make soup, and write stupid stuff on the internet. there was enough existential angst in that year to people a squabbling troop of teenagers, enough relationship madness to secure a plot line on days of our lives.

but i don't think my year would have made a good novel, unless, that is, someone like victor lavalle got a hold of my story.

lavalle's big machine is the kind of novel that blends emotional depth and ordinary life with the absurd. he takes a troubled character--an andrew, if you will--and bends him around a series of ever-more shocking circumstances. imagine haruki murakami's the wind-up bird chronicle without the strange sexual fixations and with a more tangible sense of personhood and culture--lavalle's story consciously focuses on particular racial and economic groups (and the protagonist, in his cleverness and humble beginnings, and perhaps, i'll admit it, his non-whiteness, actually reminds me of the narrator of aravind adiga's the white tiger).

big machine is a novel that confronts some of the whys, whats, and hows of my 2010. and in doing so, it sidles right up to the darkness and says, have faith.

xoxoxoxoxox

i'm leaning toward a 13/17 rating, which makes big machine a 17 point scale-recommended title, unless you prefer to avoid titles with profanity, fantastical events, and almost-too-perfect chapter-ending cliff-hangers.

you can purchase big machine here.

change

the next issue of the other journal will focus on the 2008 election. although i'm interested to see how theologians will address this topic, and i think it will be an interesting issue for our readers, i wonder how creative writers will take to it.

if poets and writers are our modern prophets, our contemporary truth-tellers, then it makes sense that their work might be politically noisy, that it might voice protests or hoorahs over policies and potentates. and perhaps we should listen.

but when i sit down to read a poem or a short story, i don't want to bullied into belief. i don't want a writer knocking me up side the head with the moral bush is bad. if this is their point, i'd like the message to sneak past my defenses, settle in my mind, and convince me via the rhythm, images, and story.

so, yes, i'm afraid that some writers will forget their subtlety and fly headlong into the role of teacher. therefore, when i think of our next issue, i'm most excited by the lens we're hoping to use for election '08: change.

it's a word that's on the lips of all our pundits and politicians these days, but i also think it's a potentially rich word for christian writers. when you think about it, nearly all great literature is about change. we read books that have shifting plots, characters that are melded by their stories. and at the heart of the christian faith is change.

and speaking of change, here's the point of today's entry: today i'm on the brink of change. after battling a nasty cold, i'm starting to feel much better. this seems small and shallow, of course, but to me, at this moment, it feels big and important.

and i just finished haruki murakami's the wind-up bird chronicle, which i hope to say more about later.

and after several years of off-and-on practice, i'm finally learning debussy's "claire de lune" in its entirety.

so hooray for change!