Review: "Certain American States" by Catherine Lacey

Catherine Lacey is part of a new group of writers with big ideas but not necessarily interesting ones, and her new short story collection, Certain American States, is a perfect example of this. Reading her books (I read her second novel, The Answers, last year) is a very distinct experience just from how it looks and is presented. She does not use parenthesis to denote dialogue and instead uses italics, so it gives every scene she writes were two or more people talk an air of unreality or misperception, as if what is being said is being filtered through a fissured mind. It provides some of the stories here with their most memorable moments, but also, distracts from what would have been a good story. As always, I will single out a few stories that stuck out, whether they were good or bad. The first one that stands out is “ur heck box”, where a woman reeling from grief is presented with texts messages from a mute co-worker. It is a story that kind of keeps you at arms length about what it might be about, and its ambiguity would have bolstered its quality if it were put forth in an interesting manner. Lacey has a tendency to zero in on minute details, whether it is a stray hair falling off someone’s head or the act of someone looking in a mirror, and it distracts from some of the story elements I want fleshed out. But what she gets right a handful of times are endings, with the title story, “Please Take” and “The Grand Claremont Hotel each ending in haunting manner somewhere between reality and nightmare and emotion and intellect. It is thankfully these moments that are strong and memorable that I am taking away from this book, with its bad sections being easy to forgive in hindsight. 

Rating: 4/5

Theater Review: "Arcade Fire: The Redemption of Billy Mitchell" directed by Casey Ross

In 2007, a documentary came out chronicling the seemingly life or death struggle to obtain the highest score on Donkey Kong, and now, 11 years later, a local musical has been produced here in Indiana that does sincere justice to the incredible true story and to at least one of the subjects involved. Full disclosure, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is my favorite documentary. Beyond its surface level silliness and people who make it hard for viewers NOT to mock them is a classic study in what drives us, who we tend to gravitate toward and the fickle nature of success and failure. Playwright Casey Ross’s story understands it and plays right to it, with an absurd opening where Billy Mitchell, played confidently by local actor Luke McConnell gives a blunt, Darwinian speech into a large, cumbersome video camera held by a clearly uncomfortable cameraman. It showcases a few things: Billy’s high opinion of himself, his lack of knowledge toward technical advancements (with some of the play’s biggest laughs being his reactions to what people are saying about him online) and the shaky foundation of his reputation, bolstered by his hot sauce empire and a few reliable underlings. The one-hour musical concerns the accusations that Billy cheated to get the high scores on all of the games he holds records on, such as Donkey Kong, Pac-Man and Burger Time. Into this chaotic maelstrom comes Billy’s old rival Steve Wiebe, played with relish by local actor Anthony Logan Nathan. Obsessive, strung out on Red Bull and a constant source of derision for his wife, played by local actor Kayla Lee, who brings the play a welcome, singular sense of levity. The crazed Wiebe, in an effort to dethrone Mitchell, manipulates the malleable and soft Brian Kuh, played by local actor Jim Banta, who imbues Brian with enough tenderness (as well as a not so subtle crush on Mitchell) to make him the musical’s sympathetic heart. Local actor Ryan Powell rounds out the cast as Walter Day, whose role and persona were not as fleshed out and pinpointed as I would like, his status as a sort of monk-like sage uninterested are glossed over rapidly in a few quick, albeit witty lines of dialogue, but Powell’s performance provides another wrinkle to the real world nestled just outside of this cloistered setting. The songs are sickeningly catchy; with the opening song “King of Kong” and “It’s a Kong Off” are guaranteed spots in your mind whether you want them there or not. The stage setup is minimal, with two blocks in the center of the stage and two arcade games on either side and it is seems very appropriate, especially when he sings “Second Place, First Loser”, why Steve’s arcade machine is Donkey Kong Jr. and Mitchell’s is the original Donkey Kong machine. And I can’t end this review without talking about my one major issue, which is the characterization of Steve. It will be hard for anyone familiar with the documentary to separate the movie with the Ross’s vision, which places much more emphasis on Billy’s struggle and tries to make him into a heroic figure, evidenced by a crucial act of altruism at the end. But what I found so interesting about the movie was how Steve and Billy were almost total opposites, with Billy this type-A go-getter whose ego-driven approach to life, hot sauce and video games garners him fame and fortune but to an outsider sometimes verges on the monstrous and Steve being this man who could have exceled toward greatness if it weren’t for his lack of confidence and a crippling sense of humility, which was brilliantly characterized by his account of choking at the baseball championship, set to the tune of The Cure's "Pictures of You". I know I should view the play for what it is, but Nathan’s maniacal Steve was distracting at best and inaccurate at worst. But for what the play is, a fun and timely romp tinged with nostalgia and heart, it is a success and should provide some comedic relief for some of the more self-serious shows at the Fringe. The audience I saw it with ate up, and there is a good chance you will too. 

Rating: 4/5

Review: "Early Work" by Andrew Martin

Early work, author Andrew Martin’s debut novel, will send shivers up the spines of aspiring writers, this one included. It does not tread new ground or present any new ideas readers haven’t seen in countless permutations, but it really acts as a kind of update to the “writerly” novels of the mid-20^thcentury, where overly educated, mostly white men used their hyper intellect to justify their terrible, childish behavior. It’s easy to see echoes of Updike and Roth in certain passages. I’m still wondering where its heart lies though, whether it is lampooning such behavior, the narrative voice guiding the protagonist laughing behind his back, or if it has a little more sympathy for those involved, who have overthought their way out of any kind of enjoyment, quick to always improve their situation and unable to happy where they are. It concerns a man named Peter, a man who wants to be a writer more than he wants to put forth the work to do so. He is out of college and teaching at a women’s prison. His girlfriend, Julia, a pre-med student, is overworked and both slowly fall into a habit that does not include regular sex. That all changes for Peter when he meets Leslie, a woman he assumes he has a connection with, and from there, he begins an affair with her with the expected consequences. Like I said, this book is very familiar but well written and knowledgeable, and its tendency toward self-abasement makes some part easier to swallow, evidenced by the character of Molly, a cinephile whose self-seriousness is the book’s most humorous aspect. My qualms are minor, like a sections devoted to Leslie’s previous sexual history hindering what was a rather engaging narrative and an ending that lacks profundity, at least it did for me. Far from the best novel I have read this year, but one with an interesting perspective on a formula I thought was entirely tuckered out. 

Rating: 4/5

Review: "My Year of Rest and Relaxation" by Ottessa Moshfegh

It was easy to tell from her first novel, the chilling Eileen, that author Ottessa Moshfegh was a burgeoning force to be reckoned with. She further proved that with her short story collection, Homesick for Another World (her debut book, the novella McGlue, is creepy but flawed) and proves it once again with her second full-length novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Much like her first novel, it plumbs the depths of the female psyche in ways you have not seen before, harkening back to writers like Flannery O’ Conner and Shirley Jackson, other authors with a keen eye for the macabre and the beauty in grotesque and aberrant behavior as well as a sympathetic ear for these people, caught between feelings they know to be destructive and societies that will never, ever understand them. Reading this, and seeing it done, right made me think of other book with similar stories with women on the verge of collapse and what they got wrong. I couldn’t help but think about books like Liska Jacobs Catalina and Jade Sharma’s Problems, books that presented a woman’s downfall in stylized, almost pretty ways, where whether by their environment or the other people around them, we feel pressured to admire them. That isn’t the case here, with an unnamed narrator, whose visage and breakdown are equally ugly. Told from her perspective, it showcases a year in her life in New York City where she figuratively and literally tunes out the world. Financially stable after her parent’s deaths, she spends most of her days in her apartment, watching VHS tape after VHS tape (this is the early2000’s, years before Netflix), swallowing all different kinds of pills and sleeping for long, stretched out periods of time. Others pass through her life, whether in real time or flashback, like her friend Reva, a holdover from college who clings to the narrator out of a sickly desperation and need to coddle someone and her on again off again cold boyfriend, Trevor, who the narrator is obsessed with to disturbing degrees. It creates kind of a blur, like a ore personal version of Bret Easton Ellis’s early work, where we don’t know what is real, what is perceived correctly or incorrectly and what is a total fabrication, with long sections where the narrator describes, in great detail, something she is imagining. Moshfegh has a real talent for the morbid of the Lynchian variety, with scenes involving what she does when she is fired from the art gallery she worked at and the one where her most important appliance breaks are tense, brutally rendered and creepy as hell (as is her idolization of Whoopi Goldberg). It is a disquieting book, but one filled with an odd sense of hope in individual freedom, the perverse, sometimes good side effects of cutting yourself off from the world and how important it is to survive and value life, evidenced by its ending, which is easy to predict given its time period and location, but is no less perfect. This is a wild ride through the mind of someone hell-bent on destroying themselves, and thankfully it comes from a talent as rigorous and ingenious as Moshfegh. 

Rating: 5/5