Disclaimer: I am in a bi-weekly writing group with Mike Chorost, so all the opinions that follow are extremely biased. Then again, isn’t the purpose of blogs to propogate bias?

I’m ashamed to admit that the first time I read an excerpt of Mike Chorost’s Rebuilt I wasn’t sure if it was science fiction or memoir. It certainly had a premise worthy of sci-fi: a deaf man gets an device implanted in his head which allows him to hear again. My confusion was compounded by the fact that the first person narrator referred to himself as a cyborg. But the contemplative narrative voice, so full of self-deprecating humor, seemed too human to fit into my conception of a cyborg.

I arrived at Scott James’ SoMa loft unsure how to approach my critique – not that there were many nitpicks; Mike’s an accomplished writer, with a knack for jaw-droppingly precise analogies. Anyway, the mystery soon dissolved as I watched Mike plug his brown headpiece into his belt-side processor and enter the hearing world.

My immediate impressions of Rebuilt? Mike has overcome a daunting narrative task with characteristic grace. To explain, through the noisy preconceptions of the hearing world, how a deaf person relearns to hear seems almost impossible. There are no easy parallels. We’re accustomed to metaphors that draw from visual experience. But what does deafness sound like? Mike patiently reveals his world with the judicious use of metaphors and his impressive arsenal of literary tricks. He’s kicked some serious ass.

Though Rebuilt is an intensely personal story of his sensory and emotional transformation, there’s never a plea for sympathy, which makes the reader that much more sympathetic.

I’d seen much of the book in draft form, but in it’s final form, Rebuilt is a trim, compact, engrossing read. There’s less of the struggle between Dionysian and Apollolonian ideals. Mike’s first cat, Elvis, spends less time pattering across the pages. All signs that Mike’s will have plenty of material for his next opus. I’ll look forward to every word of it.

James Salter’s sentences were built to be blurbed. It’s impossible to talk about them without releasing the effusive inner critic. So, in the interest of of avoiding marketing talk, I’ll go at it by musical analogy: Salter writes like Charlie Watts. His rhythm is impeccable, almost to the point of sterility. But then he delivers a snap-crack of beauty that forces everything around it to bloom. Of course, he achieves all this with a deadpan expression.

The story of A Sport and a Pastime is simple. A young American abroad, Phillip Dean, is wandering France after dropping out of Yale. He meets a nice French girl. He falls into lust and finds something like love on the other end of it. He has a fair amount of anal sex. Then he goes home.

Notice something slightly out of place in the last paragraph? Ok, that depends on your viewpoint. Anyway, this simple story is complicated by the fact that Dean’s relationship is conveyed to the reader by an unnamed first person narrator. Dean is staying with this voyeur, who in turn is using his friends’ house in a small town named Autun. Apparently our narrator is there to escape the City of Lights and work on his writing. But his imagination — or outright spying; we’re not sure — makes any other activities seem irrelevant. The narrator sees himself as an

agent provocateur or as a double agent, first on one side — that of truth — and then on the other, but between these, in the reversals, the sudden defections, one can easily forget allegiance entirely and feel only the deep, the profound joy of being beyond all codes, of being completely independent, criminal is the word.

Or just creepy. It’s appropriate to understand the book we hold in our hands as the product of that creepiness. The narrator is attracted to both Phillip and his amour and admits that, where information is lacking, he fills in the blanks — with vaseline, I imagine. It’s both unsettling and unsatisfying, maybe for the same reason: the perfect prose stalks the relationship without ever getting to the heart of it. I think that’s what Salter intended. Just imagine Charlie without Mick and Keith. You get the idea.

Great diary of a first timer at the Breadloaf conference.

MoorishGirl

Tobias Jones nails the first chapter The Dark Heart of Italy. It’s a concise, straight-forward ramble through the quirks that make Italy such a desirable place for a holiday and, depending on your makeup, such a difficult place to live. A British ex-patriate relocated to Parma, Jones paints the order and anarchy of Italian society in broad, genial strokes. It would make a great magazine article.

But from the second chapter on the book becomes a shrill exercise in counter-intution. Jones revels in baiting the reader. You think Italy is beautiful? Try this on: The Italian soccer leagues are corrupt. Not enough to turn you off? How about the raft of unsolved murders? Or political infighting. Or their orange-skinned conglomerate of a leader.

Are there problems in Italy? Without question. But The Dark Heart of Italy presents those problems as the summary portrait of a nation. Jones is straightfaced and indignant at the country because it doesn’t operate as he thinks it should. He claims early on that Berlusconi is the root of modern Italy’s corruption , but never connects the dots. Then he’s too courteous (or too aware of his slippery premise) to even tackle the problems directly. Each chapter is bracketed with warm-hearted tales of why he loves his adopted country. It’s disingenuous to tag an extended harangue with a dewy-eyed closing chapter that reads like any other tale of innocents abroad. It’s like wrapping shit in rose petals.

It’s refreshing to read a counterpoint to the romanticized Italy portrayed in Under the Tuscan Sun and its ilk. No country should have to bear the repeated burden of soft-focus landscapes. What Jones misses in his binary view of Italy is the subtleties that make Italy such an appealing country.

For a more engaging read about Italy, good and bad, I recommend Peter Robb’s Midnight In Sicily.