See? But Chip Kidd is a graphic designer who did the covers for a lot of books that have cool book covers. Like Jurassic Park and its sequel, The Lost World.
They're pretty cool looking book covers. Chip Kidd is an author and he wrote The Cheese Monkeys and that is the novel that I am currently reading and I like it. I do. I really do. But Chip Kidd does those things that a lot of contemporary authors do that's a little annoying. I'm referring to two things in particular:
(1) He sometimes writes extraordinarily long sentences that are longer than traditional paragraphs and should be broken up into various smaller sentences so that the prose flows better, but it's a quirky stylistic device that a lot of people like and that I, too, am guilty of. Then he'll pepper short sentences in between the longer ones. Like this. Real short. Fragments, really.
(2) He is very judgmental and condescending. Well, the narrator is. Again, maybe it's a stylistic choice that many people appreciate, but I feel like that's more Chip Kidd than the narrator, if that makes sense. Or rather, Chip Kidd has imbued himself so much into the protagonist of The Cheese Monkeys that the protagonist is more a slightly altered version of Chip Kidd than an entirely new person. Make sense? Kinda? I hope it does. But here's a quick snippet from one of the first few pages that showcases both of these bullet points.
I was her captive in line for the duration and I learned a good deal about her, as one would from a misplaced child in a police station while awaiting the arrival of her parents. Her name was, cross my heart, Maybelle Lee. She was born outside of Augusta, Georgia and moved up North when she was twelve (Daddy's company was expanding. She made it sound as if he owned it, which surely meant he did not). She'd always had that creative "itch" and she decided to scratch it by pursuing the Visual Arts, with the hope that someday she could "apply her acquired knowledge and amassed skill in a conventionally useful and lucrative way."
See? Chip Kidd is definitely a funny and talented writer, but he (or, rather, the protagonist) has to distance himself from any kind of emotional attachement. Chuck Klosterman employs both of these techniques and he's one of my favorite writers. But that dettachement (deattachment? deattachement?) makes it more difficult to be vulnerable. Which is the point, right? Can't judge me if I maintain this snide veneer.
I do that too. It's hard to show emotion. It's much easier to be witty and clever. Also, whenever someone calls you out on it, you can use the excuse that you're just playing. It's not to be taken seriously. Duh.
My sister (not gonna say which one so as to not call her out) has started reading a lot and it makes me real happy (This might seem like an abrupt topic change, but it'll make sense in a bit. Just bear with me). I have these vivid images of the two of us going to coffeeshops, reading for an hour or two, and then discussing what we just read afterwards. We'd act very scholarly while drinking our yerba mate.
When I took Kayla Christmas shopping, she picked out one of those books with a cowboy on the cover for our sister. Those books that you find at the front of Kroger or Jewel-Osco, with titles like "Midnight Delivery," "Master of Desire" or "Ripe for Seduction." Something like this:
She said that our sister liked reading romance novels. I thought she was mistaken. Our sister was surely reading Anne Lamott or Lucy Grealy. Right? Not that nonsense drivel that's for middle-aged woman with no excitement in their lives. Riiiiight?
I was wrong. Kayla was right. Our sister liked Elizabeth Reyes on Facebook a couple weeks ago. Elizabeth Reyes is an author. She is an author that writes romance novels. But not just any romance novels. Romance novels with a Latin twist. From her Amazon page, we can see that Elizabeth Reyes is a prolific writer. Not just prolific, but also successful. Like, really successful. She has 109 reviews on her latest book. That book has a 4-star rating.
Here is a snippet from one of her more successful books:
“I wanna taste you,” he said in her mouth, stopping when he felt her body freeze. Her wide eyes got even wider when he added, “everywhere.”
Instantly, I judged. It was an instinctive reaction. I judged Elizabeth Reyes so hard that I dropped my pen. What trash, what tripe! But then I felt bad. Because my sister liked it. And who was I to judge? What had I done? Elizabeth Reyes has released nearly a dozen novels. Are they good? I don't know. I haven't read them. But other people have. And other people love them. What gives me the right to say whether or not it's trash/tripe?
But, what's even more important, is the fact that this woman is trying. This woman is putting herself out there, you know? She's working on her craft and putting her work out for the world to see. And she's actually making money off of it. That blows my mind. She's a hustler. She's doing what she loves and she's earning a living off it. Shouldn't we be applauding her, even if some of her novels have titles like Making You Mine: The Moreno Brothers? and Always Been Mine: The Moreno Brothers #2? (See, there I go, judging again)
A few days ago, Delma and I checked out a Neo-Futurists show. It's billed as a sketch/improv show, but it's not. It's very different. The Neo-Futurists try to do 30 plays in 60 minutes. The plays range in length from 5-seconds to 5-minutes. And they're not all comedic. In fact, I thought the comedic ones weren't very funny. I wasn't a fan. But the dramatic ones... Man. Those were killer.
There were a bunch of the dramatic plays that I loved, but my favorite was a monologue. A guy came out and started talking about this recent event in which scientists recorded a zebrafish's thought process. He then moved on to his thought process, using very precise scientific terms explaining how his thought went from one part of the brain to the other. To illustrate this, he used a sharpie and drew all over his bald head, following his thought process. But then he started getting to the area of the brain that deals with doubt and then, from there, went to a very dark place and started talking about how he often deals with suicidal thoughts because of it and if he ever did commit suicide, it'd be like "this," as he drew down his forearm with the sharpie.
That gave me chills. And it started off as comedic, but very quickly shifted into dramatic without skipping a beat and it was so... Poignant. So powerful. So fucking simple, man. I think that's why I loved it.
But what I loved most about it was how vulnerable he was up on stage. He wasn't out to get laughs or to come off as witty or smart. He was simply opening up to us, the audience, and revealing himself. Exposing his mind to us. And that was crazy.
I want to do that.
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