Book Reveiw: Coney by Amram Ducovny

There’s a wonderful bookstore in downtown L.A. called The Last Bookstore.  It’s in a huge space, and the whole second floor is cheapskate bookworm heaven because everything up there is $1 (and in absolutely NO sort of order, no genre or alphabetical organization at all, just thousands of books stacked willy nilly on at least 4 rooms full of floor to ceiling shelves).  The first time I went there, I decided on just 3 books, a Billie Letts novel, the worst Anne Tyler novel I’ve ever read (Noah’s Compass, the only story of hers I haven’t loved), and Coney, a novel by Amram Ducovny.  This here paragraph is part autobiographical information (as per usual on this blog), part book review.  Coney is about a Jewish family in a very seedy Coney Island in the late 1930’s.  The book jacket calls this book “part noir thriller, part coming-of-age novel”, and I cannot fully agree with this, because the thriller genre uses tension and suspense, which the violent occurrences of this story lack; I feel like there’s no tense build-up to the crimes and deaths in this work, they just happen.  I have a weird relationship with Judaism.  My grandmother’s dad’s side are Eastern European Jews but her mother was English and non-Jewish I think (when I was talking to grandma the other day about how much of our family wants to claim jewishness all the time except her, she said “I’m always telling [uncle] Harry, ‘British, not Yiddish’--  she’s a devoted Anglophile).  My grandfather, on the other hand, is 100% eastern European Jew.  Both Grandma and grandpa are atheist intellectuals (unlike their brothers and sisters) and the only religion they raised their kids with was at the neighborhood Christian church they sent them packing to every Sunday so they could have a little quiet time.  This had the unexpected effect of turning two of their children into Christians (one is a minister!), but my uncle Harry is an atheist with an interest in his Jewish roots and my dad is an atheist with Buddhist leanings.  I do not like religion at all.  In fact, Christianity is my pet peeve, and Judaism is something I am fascinated with but when it comes down to it, it’s still a religion, so it’s still centered around exclusion and beliefs I could never swallow.  But I have always been very interested in Jewish culture:  the Maus graphic novels, Chaim Potok, Dorothy Parker, Maurice Sendak, Philip Roth, and other one-off novelists, as far as literature goes, and as for movies, I have long been a huge Woody Allen fan, and more recently (judge me if you must!) Adam Sandler too.  I’m interested in Jewish culture in general, like the strongly Jewish history of Atlantic City (where some of my family lived for awhile, my great-aunt and uncle who often lamented my non-Jewish ways in their top-decibel voices when I stayed with them once, and their Jewish/black grandson who lived with them and whose beautiful little boy was named Shalom.)  I also like to read non-fiction accounts of the Jewish experience during World War II.  But as I’ve been reminded by many a Jew, I am not at all Jewish, because my mom’s side are English and Italian Catholics, and Jewish heritage is matrilineal.  This is a little rule, or distinction, that really hurts my feelings – my grandpa’s relatives were in concentration camps, yet I can claim no Jewish roots because my mother isn’t Jewish?  Anyway, whether or not I’m technically entitled to it, I do have this interest in Jewish culture, and I also have a LOOOOOVE of Coney Island and related lore, so this novel was really up my alley.  There is a lot about the Yiddish language in this novel, as well, which has a fascinating history, but in general the story is too ugly to recommend.  Almost everyone besides the immediate family of the protagonist, 15 year old Heschel, and some of the sideshow freaks he befriends, is a horrible person, like an actual murderer or else someone who aids a murderer.  This sweeping evilness and murderousness is a little much.  Maybe it was realistic, though I doubt it, but even if so, it over-saturates the story.  Like, every time someone turns around, they’re getting killed or seriously injured.  So I can’t recommend this one.  It is so cool to read about old Coney Island though, and the last paragraph of the novel, which takes place in a concentration camp as it’s being liberated, is really touching, like SERIOUSLY.  You will cry.    

"and when i die i expect to find him laughing"

Life is a Tragedy

 John Durer Melancholia

Lars Von Trier Kristen Dunst Melancholia

Film Reviews and More Galore

I’m taking a break from pissing in the wind posting my novella Yesteryou (an adventure and a love story) to piss in the wind giving my opinions on movies and songs I’ve recently consumed.  Anyone who knows me knows that I love to watch movies and read books all day every day; I guess it’s my version of having a short attention span, though I consider it a tiny bit better than other people’s short attention spans (who doesn’t find their own habits a bit superior?) because at least I’m not screwing around on a smartphone all day like the rest of the world (old lady rant).  After I read something or see something, though, I always wish I could talk about it with someone, so here are some unsystematically recorded thoughts.

Hip-Hop

The last 5 years or so, I think I listen to Hip-Hop more than any other type of music, which I constantly amaze myself over, because it is definitely not in keeping with my sense of aesthetics.  I like things to be tender and in favor of the underdog (and my “real” favorite music is punk like Bikini Kill, rock like Bruce Springsteen, avante garde like Velvet Underground, and folk like Marianne Faithful) while most of the hiphop I end up listening to is this beyond-disturbing Darwinian bullshit about seriously hurting anyone weaker than oneself.  I know there is a sociological reason for this cruelty, and that it’s not intended for me as its audience, but that’s a lot to get into, as far as white guilt vs. my anger as a feminist over how horrible the black woman character is treated in the narrative of most of the hiphop I listen to (I know there is politically correct/ smart hiphop, but I don’t like how it sounds!), and I won’t digress into all that, since that wasn’t the main thing I was thinking about this morning as I thought about how weird it was that I listen to so much hiphop this morning as I drove into work.  I was listening to this Wu Tang song as I pulled in to my office building, and I turned it up really loud as I was driving into the parking lot.  Here is a sample of the lyrics (I'm using the verses with the least n-words in them):   

 "Wu-Tang: 7th Chamber"

[Verse One: Raekwon the Chef]

Champion gear that I rock, you get your boots knocked
Then attack you like a pit that lock shit DOWN
As I come and freaks the sound, hardcore
but giving you more and more, like ding!
Nah shorty, get you open like six packs
Killer Bees attack, flippin what, murder one, phat tracks
A'ight? I kick it like a Night Flite!
Word life, I get that ass while I'm fulla spite!
Check the method from Bedrock, cause I rock ya head to bed
Just like rockin what? Twin glocks!
Shake the ground while my beats just break you down
Raw sound, we going to war right now

So, yo, bombin
We Usually Take All Niggaz Garments
Save ya breath before I bomb it

[Verse Two: Method Man]

I be that insane nigga from the psycho ward
I'm on the trigger, plus I got the Wu-Tang sword
So how you figure that you can even fuck with mine?
Hey, yo, RZA! Hit me with that shit one time!
And pull a foul, niggaz save the beef on the cow
I'm milkin this ho, this is MY show, tical
The FUCK you wanna do? More than Spike Lee's Do
I'm like a sniper, hyper off the ginseng root
PLO style, buddha monks with the owls
So who's the fucking man? Meth-Tical
On the chessbox


[Verse Six: Ol Dirty Bastard]

Are you, uh, ah, uh
Are you a warrior? Killer? Slicin shit like a samurah
The Ol' Dirty Bastard VUNDABAH
Ol' Dirty clan of terrorists
Comin atcha ass like a sorceress, shootin' that PISS!
Niggaz be gettin on my fuckin nerves
Rhymes they be kickin make me wanna kick they fuckin ass to the curb
I got funky fresh, like the old specialist
A carrier, messenger, bury ya
This experience is for the whole experience
Let it be applied, and THEN DROP THAT SCIENCE

Obviously, this wasn’t written to appeal to me or even to have anything to do with me, and objectively, I know it is ridiculous that I listen to this song, and I even feel a little ashamed, both for being a part of the exploitation of black culture as well as for liking something so violent and ugly, but it made me feel better about the upcoming day, and it’s because I feel sad at work, and the anger in this song and many of my other favorite hiphop songs really speaks to me.  I know I could be listening to some punk song about hating work or being angry at this Christian, capitalist, sexist, classist, bullshit society of ours, but nope, for whatever reason (the purity of the anger?) Wu Tang really says it all for me some mornings.   Besides externalizing my anger, hiphop hits other emotional chords of mine at times, like these few Tupac songs that make me cry sometimes because they make me miss a Tupac-idolizing high school friend that died, but this is equally ridiculous ... just imagine me with my whiteness and my buck teeth and scrappy Corolla with my cute baby in the back seat and the window rolled down bumping Tupac's Life Goes On and weeping.  

ANYWAY, on to some passing thoughts on the dvd’s I’ve viewed in the past few days:

Adventures of Baron Munchausen

This used to be one of my favorite movies, and I still remember going to see it at the Rialto in South Pasadena like it was yesterday.  My sister-in-law gave it to my husband for Xmas and when we were watching it the other night I was telling my husband about how much I used to love the little girl who plays Sally Salt, who also played Ramona Quimby in the series Ramona on PBS, and guess what? – I realized that little girl was Sarah Polley.  I can’t believe I never knew that before.  Sarah Polley is so great as a young woman in Dawn of the Dead, The Sweet Hereafter and Go, and I never even realized that she had a career when she was so young and that she was the little girl that little girl me related to so much. 

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World:  

  

This film wasn’t very popular and I can see why:  it’s too sad to be even a Black Comedy and too glib to be a drama.  It’s actually pretty good as a Romance though, and as a Romance I was really touched by it.  The whole time I was watching it though I kept wondering if it was an intentional homage to the 1988 film Miracle Mile or if it was an accidental rip-off of it.  Miracle Mile is also a romance that takes place around the end of the world, and has the added bonus (to me) of being an amazing Los Angeles movie.  I’d highly recommend Miracle Mile, which is surreal and painful, and is partially shot inside of Johnie’s, one of my personal favorite L.A. landmarks (and I have a hunch it’s a favorite of many Angelenos).

I am running out of steam now that my coffee is wearing off so about the two other films I saw over the weekend I”ll just say:

Broadway Danny Rose

A sweet and underappreciated Woody Allen movie!  Woody Allen and Mia Farrow are so fantastic together in this film that it’s hard to believe how bad things turned.  Woody Allen you genius asshole.

Hanna Takes the Stairs

A perfect movie for anyone with a crush on Greta Gerwig.   I suppose it’s pretty good even if you don’t have one, but I get irritated by the generalized ennui-caused laziness of the characters in Mumblecore films, so if not for how good Gerwig was in this movie, I probably wouldn’t have liked it too much.

Yesteryou Chapter 4

4.

It was a rainy Tuesday afternoon, one of the very few rainy days Los Angeles residents see in a year, when George would first meet both Richard and Beth.

"Beth, now I was hoping you'd be coming in his way, I got a problem I need your help with," her favorite security guard was telling her as she arrived at the library that morning.

"Oh, hi Franklin.  Did you run out of cigarettes?  I can loan you a pack for the day, I have 2 in my purse."

"No not today, I'm getting them by the carton at that Armenian place across the street now.  But I know you good with cats and there's a baby one stuck under the building, near the planter out front.  I saw it this morning, and I was fussing with him for a while trying to get ahold of him but then I had to punch in my time card.  Can you ask Lorraine," that was Beth's supervisor, a casual sort of woman likely to allow any request from Beth, "if you can go look for the kitten?  I been feeling bad for it since I seen it, it looked so little and skinny.  I know you like the rain, but I got an umbrella you can take out there with you."

Flattered to be considered in any respect helpful, Beth replied that she didn't need to check in with Lorraine first, then asked him to describe which drainage hole the kitten was crouched in, and, stashing her huge overstuffed purse with Frankin (in fact, her purse was a shoulder bag designed to serve as carry-on luggage for plane trips), she went out front and began walking gingerly between the bougainvillea bushes in the planter, stooped over, looking into the drainage holes unevenly installed along the building's perimeter.  She was planning to rescue the kitten and take it home with her.  She wouldn't be able to bring it on the bus with her, even if she carried it on hidden in a file box, so she would ask Lorraine to give her a ride home at the end of the day, and meanwhile it would make the whole long day at work bearable, the covertness of having an animal where no animals are allowed.  But she found no kitten.  And then a man standing at the bus stop, an old man (he would prove to be just old-looking -- he was only 45 the day he met Beth) with shoulder-length white hair sparse on top and a stooped stance, noticed her, and after some visible consideration, he walked over to where Beth was crouched and making kissing noises and cooing to the unseen kitten, "Here sweetie-sweetie, here baby."

"Excuse me," the man said, bending over the drainage hole she was poised next to, "are you looking for your cat?"  He had a pair of headphones resting around his neck, and he kept the Walkman they were connected to in the pocket of the rain-soaked cardigan he wore; as he was bending down to Beth's level, the Walkman slid out of his pocket and swung into her face.  He was mortified.  When he'd first glimpsed her crouched figure, his admiration had been instantaneous and complete.  Forever.  And now he'd injured her, and of all places to injure her, he'd injured her face, the most important part of a body, in a way. 

Only, she didn't have many opportunities to forgive people, and it is a luxury, to be able to relieve someone from worry like that, so before he could even apologize, she said, "It's okay, it didn't hurt."  At this gesture of kindness, he felt a rush of comfort akin to drifting to sleep.  "I think it might make a little bruise on your nose," he said, and it would, a little bruise on the bridge of her nose where one doesn't usually see a bruise, and it looked like a smudge of newsprint. 

"Well," she continued, "you must be a cat person too, to miss your bus helping me look for a cat."

"Oh yes, I am.  My journal entries end up being about things my cats did that day, more often then not.  I have three of them right now."

From a different man, she might have assumed this admission to be untrue and a ploy to create a feeling of trust, and might have seized on his words critically, might've said, "Jesus, that sounds pretty pathetic."  But she sensed this was a man to be protected from the brusque mockery most people are inclined towards, regarding loving domestic animals, regarding keeping a journal, even regarding taking the bus in Los Angeles, instead of figuring out a way to buy a car, as though a car were a more important purchase than a home.

Throughout the years, she would take him for granted, and take her anger and disappointment out on him, often, but she would never mock his interests or his gentility. 

"I don't know if the kitty is here anymore, and if she is, she probably won't come out now that it's raining harder.  They hate the rain unless they're inside watching it, don't you think so?" she said, and, slowly rising, already sore in her joints from sitting still and slouched so many hours of the day, she wiped the mud from her hands onto her skirt and told him, "I have to get back to work, but visit me sometime if you want to, I work on the Sociology floor.  I shelve books so sometimes I'm in the storage room, but you can ask for me if you stop by, and I can take a break.  I'm Beth."  It felt new and empowering for her, to be so assured of this man's esteem for her.  She could tell from speaking with him that he was basically asexual, and timid, that he was unused to youth, and women.  True.  Beth, and later her daughter Molly, were the only two women he would ever feel comfortable with.

While he felt uncomfortable in the presence of women, he was decidedly disinterested in the company of most men; he only liked the men who came into his bookstore, because they liked to talk about the same things as him, and they appreciated his domain.  But inclinations such as this are seldom ironclad, and when he got back to the bus bench, he saw another man waiting for the bus who immediately caught his attention, really because of how obviously cheap was the quality of the man's three piece suit, the dress shirt he wore, and his shoes.  It was endearing.  This was made more so because of the awkward look of the fashionably droopy mustache on this man's boyish face, the thick lenses of his eyeglasses, and the strange lavender color of the man's umbrella (George would find out later on that the umbrella had been lent to him by a solicitous secretary with a crush on the man).  Though sloppy, his face reminded George, in the quality of its handsomeness, of one of the few actors George knew the name of, Richard Gere.  Coincidentally, the man's name was Richard.  George found this out by the time they were sitting next to each other on the bus.  "Did she tell you what she was looking for?  I was curious, she was crawling around in the mud so intently!" were the first words Richard said to George. 

Richard could be short-tempered at times.  He could be too silly sometimes (in the opinion of the women who were attracted to him), making puns that required several tenuous and obscure connections of language and facts to understand.  He cried easily at sad parts in movies and books.  He was overly concerned with people's impressions of him.  He was compelled to try to make people like him, which was why it was his habit to say funny things on elevators to strangers before the silence got a chance to settle, or to talk to other people at the bus stop when he'd walked from his downtown office to Chinatown for lunch and would take the bus back to the law firm, where he worked primarily on child custody cases.  It was not until he asked the stranger sitting next to him about the woman who'd been crawling around in the library's planter that Richard developed a genuine interest in the woman, and this was possibly the effect of seeing how taken George was with her.  His interest in Beth became instantly genuine, though.  Just because he needed this extra moment to see Beth through George's eyes does not mean the interest was not genuine.

           

"She was looking for a stray cat.  My tape player fell out of my pocket and hit her in the face."

"Ouch."

"I know," George chuckled.  "But she said she was okay."

While he was watching her and George look for the cat, Richard had noticed the employee badge hanging around Beth's neck, and he assumed she worked at the library.  After having a dream where he was confused about the neighborhood he was living in (it was a wholly unfamiliar place peopled with vague-faced strangers), in which she appeared as the neighborhood's only responsive, sympathetic resident, he went into the library and walked thoroughly around each floor until he found her.  Three years later, I was born.  This is my first try at telling our story, and I hope I'm doing okay.  None of the story, the bad or good events, or coincidences, have been exaggerated, it all happened, but of course I've had to guess at what some of us were thinking or feeling when these things happened. 

George went back to the library to find Beth the day after their first meeting, and the two of them had a long conversation about their mutual interest in British culture (Beth was wearing a button of the Union Jack pinned to her vest), but the conversation made him feel anxious and disappointed whenever he replayed it in his head later that day, because he'd felt he hadn't expressed himself well, the words had hurried out of his mouth so quickly, he'd criticized films he secretly unequivocally loved, and he poke vaguely about some topics in which he was an expert. 

He didn't go back to see her after that.  That is, until he became friends with Richard, who began stopping by George's used bookstore after the second time they spoke at the bus stop.  By then, Richard had held Beth, and made love to her, and watched her, enraptured, as she took a bath in the tub he'd never used before, even though he always meant to.