“For those of you who think that the lefties and progressives have gone a little nuts over the whole fascist-Trump thing, The Plot Against America should be your wakeup call that it doesn’t take much more than a popular figure spouting off ‘purifying’ nationalist parlance for our political landscape to quake violently.”

For those of you who think that the lefties and progressives have gone a little nuts over the whole fascist-Trump thing, The Plot Against America should be your wakeup call that it doesn’t take much more than a popular figure spouting off “purifying” nationalist parlance for our political landscape to quake violently.

The alternative-history novel, every bit as beautifully written as some of Roth’s other great works – Portnoy’s Complaint, American Pastoral, The Human Stain – tells the story of Philip Roth’s re-imagined own childhood growing up in pre-WWII Newark, New Jersey, which stays pre-war for a while longer than Roosevelt’s America, as this alternative America, led by isolationist and Nazi sympathizer Charles A. Lindbergh, stays out of the war, choosing not to assist the Brits, or more specifically, the Jews.

Yes, that Lindbergh, the world-famous aviator, the first to fly a transatlantic solo flight when he piloted his “Spirit of St. Louis” Ryan monoplane from New York to Paris in 1927; the very one who became even more famous, infamously so, when his infant son, Charles Jr., was kidnapped and murdered, sparking the “Trial of Century,” and causing the Lindberghs to flea America’s media circus and take refuge in Europe. There they stayed till 1939, when Lindbergh came home to lend his vocal support for the America First Committee, who didn’t even believe in monetarily supporting Britain’s war against Nazi Germany.

So far, all of that is Wikipedia-verified fact. Somewhere in the gray area is how much of a Nazi Lindbergh really was, but the alternative storyline of The Plot Against America doesn’t paint a pretty picture. It picks up when Lindbergh returns home, and quickly rises in power, enough to unseat the venerable Roosevelt, and more than enough to throw Roth’s adolescent upbringing in his mostly-Jewish and generally idyllic Weequahic neighborhood into shambles. Lindbergh’s rise to power emboldens the Antisemites of America, and their encroaching rage is felt little by little by young Philip and his family, as their threat becomes more and more real, and hits closer and closer to home.

It’s all so subtle the only way to really appreciate how well the book works is to read every last morsel of it. Page by page, Roth recounts all his minuscule memories of childhood, all those fears of the unknown big-bad world, and then throws the imaginative gasoline of organized Antisemitism on top. And you believe every last word of it. Terrifying stuff in post-fact world, where bravado and bluster and finger-pointing is the language of the land, and no one can be sure who will be the next target.

The post Fiction and All Too Real: Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

“I can’t think of a lot of novels that you can put down for 10 years, pick right back up to read the final passages, and then burst out in tears like you just consumed the whole vital work for the first life-saving time. But that’s the power of not one work by the great German/Swiss writer Hermann Hesse, but at least two that I know of: Siddhartha and Steppenwolf.”

I rediscovered these vital pages just this week, whilst trying to think about what to write about for this here arts column. No new movies, shows, or albums really have me all that jazzed at the moment, and I do my best to only be stoked about the stuff I’m sharing here. So, as I do when I’m wandering and restless and not sure, I perused my book shelves. As soon as my eyes stuck on the “used/saved” sticker from my university bookstore (lifelong thanks to Prof. Markman), I knew I had to write about Steppenwolf, Hesse’s tenth novel, originally published in 1927 in Germany, and far more than just a dope band name. It tells the tale of pathetic recluse Harry Haller, who’s too smart for his own good, paralyzed by his rational, bourgeois upbringing, and in constant conflict with his more wolf-like nature, the madman within. The surreal ending inside the “for madmen only” Magic Theater unfolds into a cathartic moment that every possibly crazy artist must read.

But it’s impossible to bring up that seminal work without bringing up Hesse’ ninth novel, Siddhartha, published in 1922 in Germany, brought to our language in 1951, and evolved into a full-on hippie manifesto by the ‘60s. It tells the story of a young man named Siddhartha, who in his quest for self-discovery, may just become everyone and everything. It’s far more grounded than that, as far as the simple tale unfolds, but at the end, you realize that Siddhartha’s not the only one connected to The All.

But we’re ahead of ourselves here. Discuss either book without first discussing the man himself would be unwise. Hesse was the ultimate self-seeker, and in searching, he ultimately found that love is the connective tissue. There’s a reason the hippies loved him. But during his turbulent lifetime, Hesse saw things that would turn many away from such sentiment, yet he still managed to not just feel love and peace, but through psychotherapy and self-discovery, to intellectually show how to go about attaining it. As such, the winner of the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature remains the most important author in my life, even if I haven’t read one of his books since grad school. Yet when you Google “top authors of all time,” Hermann’s face doesn’t appear. And when you go to Ranker’s list of Best Writers of All Time, you have to scroll all the way down to #57 to get a glimpse of Hesse. And that’s just wrong.

Of course, you don’t win a Nobel Prize in Literature for two great books. Before going back to The All at the ripe old age of 85, Hesse delivered many more inspiring words, including the other two of his novels I’ve read, Demian and Narcissus and Goldmund, which are both revelatory and transportive stories of spirited self-discovery in the face of annihilation. But taken together, the one-two gut/mind/soul punch of Siddhartha and Steppenwolf, gracefully connecting Western culture, Jungian individuation, and Eastern Mysticism, lays a path for which the lost may follow, a trail that meanders along a well-traveled, well loved, and well-lived life, and so on into the next one.

The post In the Summer Doldrums, Revisit Nobel Prize Winner Hermann Hesse appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

“In 2002, a mysterious plague wiped out the more brutish half of the mammalian population, leaving the females facing the prospects of being the last generation of life on Earth. And leaving Yorick, who had been previously oblivious to the world’s pressing needs, hugely responsible for helping to keep it populated post apocalypse.”

Y: The Last Man tells the story of Yorick Brown, the owner of the last human Y chromosome on Earth. He also owns Ampersand, a pet Capuchin monkey (the organ grinding kind) who is the only other male mammal left on the planet. In 2002, a mysterious plague wiped out the more brutish half of the mammalian population, leaving the females facing the prospects of being the last generation of life on Earth. And leaving Yorick, who had been previously oblivious to the world’s pressing needs, hugely responsible for helping to keep it populated post apocalypse.

But not everyone wants Yorkic to succeed in restoring that old misogynistic way of life, particularly the Daughters of the Amazon, who are militantly against it. Actually, Yorick, one of the most likeable characters you’ll ever meet in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, isn’t exactly up to the task of repopulating the planet either, at least not by mass doinking (which is likely the way most men would handle the situation). No, Yorick’s fiancé-to-be Beth is still presumably alive studying Aboriginals in the Outback Down Under, and the last man on Earth is remaining true to her. And in this world of survivors, all of them women, Yorick is seemingly the least tough of the lot. Those are the types of ironies that Eisner and Hugo Award winning Vaughn (Ex Machina, Runaways, Saga) peppers throughout the always-moving narrative.

So Yorick is an unlikely hero at best, who’s plunged into service as much by his circumstances as by his mother, a U.S. Congresswoman who commissions badass covert Agent 355 to protect her boy. Or perhaps Mom has other, more nefarious reasons as well? Either way, Yorick and 355 eventually track down Dr. Allison Mann, a geneticist who recently tried to clone herself, in order to recruit her to help cure the planet using Yorick and his monkey as genetic guinea pigs (since none of those exist any longer). Alas, her laboratory gets firebombed, possibly by the one-tittied Amazons (they cut one off to join the club) including Yorick’s own sister, Hero; or maybe the rogue commandos of the Israeli army did it; or the secret agents of the Culper Ring; or the fallen Culpers of the Sekauket Ring; or perhaps it was a ninja. I’m not going to spoil it for you, but it is a major plot point, that forces Yorick, 355, and Doc Mann to traverse the crumbling country in hopes of reaching Mann’s backup lab in San Francisco. And oh what a bitch of a time they have.

So yeah, we’re talking genre here. But if you’re not a comic book fan, a post-apocalypse fan, or even a sci-fi fan, don’t worry about it. This is just great storytelling, from whatever angle you’re reading it. Is it literature? At times, though Yorick’s perfect pop culture references and random facts spattered throughout help to keep us well out of over-seriousness. And the alluring often titillating art serves the story in a way that a novel never could. Indeed, throughout the first 40 or so issues of the 60-issue run (which has since been volumized twice), I’ve been more easily immersed in the story than any novel has ever made me. (And I’m pretty well read, and endowed with more imagination than sense.)

With Y: The Last Man, I’m immediately there, in the revelatory splendor of Vaughn’s vivid mind, on every action and emotion Pia-packed panel. I still have one more volume to go, and I’m craving this story so badly right now, it’s all I can do to finish up this paragraph and get back to reading it…

The post Don’t Be the Last to Read Brian K. Vaughn’s Y: The Last Man appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

“I didn’t just like the book, I loved it. It’s one of those rare novels that slowly draws you into a very peculiar point of view – in this case the great Arturo Bandini’s – until you’re so wrapped up that the sparse and essential words sweep you up in the end, and hold you aloft for the final passages, as the whole cosmic point poetically unfolds into the ephemeral bliss of higher understanding.”

I’m also a Los Angeles guy; though I’ve lived here for 15 or so years, I only just came to realize as much upon moving back from Washington. See, I grew up in Denver, and when I first moved to L.A., I got homesick for the Colorado Rockies. But when I moved to Washington, I got homesick for Playa del Rey, my gritty little beach town within Los Angeles County, where I am now happily planted. And it finally feels like home.

With such a legacy, it’s no wonder why I’m embarrassed to admit that I had never heard of John Fante, a celebrated American writer who grew up in Denver, and went on to become the quintessential L.A. novelist, before Charles Bukowski could make such a claim. In fact, when Bukowski discovered Fante at the L.A. Public Library, it was like finding “gold in the city dump,” as he writes in the introduction of Harper Perennial ‘s Modern Classics edition of Ask the Dust. Bukowski was so taken with Fante’s poetic yet real style that Fante became his main literary influence. Yet I had still not heard of such a legend as Fante until a few weeks ago, when, just because he thought I’d like it, my friend Russell with the biggest smile on the beach, handed me a copy of Ask the Dust — a short, perfect novel widely regarded as an American classic, and one so popular as to have inspired a Hollywood version starring Colin Farrell and Salma Hayek.

I don’t know what part of me gives off the Fante feels, except that I love words and one of the book’s main characters is named Camilla, which also happens to be my wife’s name. Regardless, Russell was dead on, except that I didn’t just like the book, I loved it. It’s one of those rare novels that slowly draws you into a very peculiar point of view – in this case the great Arturo Bandini’s – until you’re so wrapped up that the sparse and essential words sweep you up in the end, and hold you aloft for the final passages, as the whole cosmic point poetically unfolds into the ephemeral bliss of higher understanding. That is the power of Fante’s words, written in 1939 about life in Depression-era L.A., and they still resonate across the skyscrapers of downtown.

At base value, the book is about a young Italian-American, Bandini, who left his family in Colorado to become a writer in L.A. We basically move in with him, into his tiny rented motel room, with his outlandish neighbors, none of whom ever seem to have any money, least of all Arturo. And then we meet Camilla, the exotic waitress at the corner bar, and Arturo is forever ruined. Though a mere synopsis can’t do it justice, one written by the author himself certainly lends some poetry to the effort. From the same edition, before having completed Ask the Dust, here’s what Fante told his editor about what to expect:

“New book will be called ‘Ask the Dust on the Road,’ and the story is in a Los Angeles background (no Hollywood stuff). Story of a girl I once loved who loved someone else, who in turn despised her. Strange story of a beautiful Mexican girl who somehow didn’t fit into modern life, took marijuana, lost her mind, and…”

Sorry, the last part there is a bit of a spoiler, and I wouldn’t want to ruin one of the truly great endings in literature, even at the expense of butchering the esteemed author’s own words. And you know how I feel about words. In the end, they’re what I love most about Arturo, and possibly Fante himself; indeed, starving Arturo’s belief in his words never waver. And regardless of the insanity of his unnatural world-order crumbling around him, he knows, deep inside, that his own words will save him.

The post Never Heard of John Fante? Make Ask the Dust Your Summer Reading appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

“So we travel from the rolling darkness of pre-WWII Norway; to the ignorant fields of post-war Iowa; to the hippie and fascist infested streets of 1968 Chicago; to the doldrums and deviance of ‘80s suburbia; to the bloody absurdity of Iraq; to the failing entitlement of today’s college campus; to the vast, violent, magical “World of Elfscape.”

Nathan Hill’s main character, early 30s, sliding-by-lit professor/failed novelist, Samuel Andresen-Anderson, may indeed be haunted – or that could just be bad luck. Or possibly karma. Regardless, Samuel’s mother, Faye, who abandoned him just on the verge of puberty, certainly is, by mischievous Norse gnomes, no less. Not that this is a ghost story as much as a family drama/historical fiction/scathing satire that just happens to be influenced by ghosts.

But trying to put The Nix into any genre would discredit the 11 years of layering and “like ten drafts” that went into Hill’s debut novel. The present day of the novel takes place in 2011, 20 years after Faye left. Samuel prosaically teaches crappy uninspired students at a crappy liberal arts college by day. Then at night, he uses his high speed professorial internet connection to stage gloriously successful “World of Elscape” raids.

His life becomes evermore eventful when long-lost Faye shows up on all the news channels throwing pebbles at ultra-conservative presidential candidate Governor Packer, who actually carries a sidearm. As the story unfurls, Samuel, and America, find out that Faye was arrested once before: at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. When Samuel’s publisher, Guy Periwinkle, comes to collect the book he’s owed, with threats of lawsuits and foreclosures and such, Samuel offers up the only thing he’s really got: Faye’s tell-all story.

So we travel from the rolling darkness of pre-WWII Norway; to the ignorant fields of post-war Iowa; to the hippie and fascist infested streets of 1968 Chicago; to the doldrums and deviance of ‘80s suburbia; to the bloody absurdity of Iraq; to the failing entitlement of today’s college campus; to the vast, violent, magical “World of Elfscape.” Throughout the years and locales, Hill puts you right there, with descriptions at once accurate-to-the-smell and profoundly ridiculous. But it never gets so absurd that we lose track of the engrossing and timely story.

Along the way, it all works, hauntingly well. But it’s the frightening similarities between 1968 and now that make the The Nix so poignant — the people shouting in the street, politicians who game the system for their own nefarious gains, and a population at once complicit and offended. It’s like Periwinkle says: “Sometimes the country thinks it deserves a spanking, sometime it wants a hug… When it wants a hug, it votes Democrat. Im’ hedging on it’s a spanking moment right now.”

Well, if you need help understanding how we got so thoroughly spanked, The Nix is a great place to start.

The post ‘The Nix’ Is the Right Book for Right Now appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

Defending Your Castle by William Gurstelle will teach you how to “build catapults, crossbows, moats, bulletproof shields, and more defensive devices to fend off invading hordes.” Yes, it said crossbows. While the book walks you through various defensive positions and weapons in the context of defeating ancient armies like the Mongols, Huns, Tartars, Macedonians, Crusaders, and Vikings I’m pretty confident a goddamn crossbow will work on a modern thug.

This is what a men’s self-help book should be. “You? You’re just fine. But here’s how to build a battering ram…” Defending Your Castle walks you through the history of ancient armies and then shows you the defensive technologies that either did or could have defeated each one.

It is a fascinating journey for historians and makers alike. Neither of these elements are too focused on, leading to a very balanced and fun read. Whether you’re worried about the zombie apocalypse, all those damn [insert ethnic group here], or just looking for a fun, weaponized Sunday project, Defending Your Castle is right up your alley, or maybe castle wall.

The post Defending Your Castle With a Catapult appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.