Thoughts on Books I Finished, August 2023

I Am Not a Wolf, Dan Sheehan

Almost certainly the last book deal that will ever be given to somebody for having a funny Twitter / Instagram account, I Am Not a Wolf is funnier, sadder, and deeper than it needed to be, and is easily one of the best humor books I have read. It's formally playful—no spoilers!—and as far as I can tell only recycles one and a half jokes from Twitter as it takes you through the surprisingly nuanced challenges of navigating work, roommate relations, public transit, post-work drinks, dating, family, and—again, without spoilers—resisting capitalism in the human world while being a wolf, lightly disguised but so far undiscovered.

So, a relatively light touch on many, perhaps most, of the heaviest topics our day-to-days give us. ("Can you call it the big foist? I'm fucking overwhelmed!")

I keep thinking about the Principia Discordia:

Some excerpts from an interview with Malaclypse the Younger by THE GREATER METROPOLITAN YORBA LINDA HERALD-NEWS-SUN-TRIBUNE-JOURNAL-DISPATCH-POST AND SAN FRANCISCO DISCORDIAN SOCIETY CABAL BULLETIN AND INTERGALACTIC REPORT & POPE POOP.

GREATER POOP: Are you really serious or what?
MAL-2: Sometimes I take humor seriously. Sometimes I take seriousness humorously. Either way it is irrelevant.

GP: Maybe you are just crazy.
M2: Indeed! But do not reject these teaching as false because I am crazy. The reason that I am crazy is because they are true.

GP: Is Eris true?
M2: Everything is true.
GP: Even false things?
M2: Even false things are true.
GP: How can that be?
M2: I don't know man, I didn't do it.

and, of course:

A SERMON ON ETHICS AND LOVE
One day Mal-2 asked the messenger spirit Saint Gulik to approach the Goddess and request Her presence for some desperate advice. Shortly afterwards the radio came on by itself, and an ethereal female Voice said YES?

"O! Eris! Blessed Mother of Man! Queen of Chaos! Daughter of Discord! Concubine of Confusion! O! Exquisite Lady, I beseech You to lift a heavy burden from my heart!"

WHAT BOTHERS YOU, MAL? YOU DON'T SOUND WELL.

"I am filled with fear and tormented with terrible visions of pain. Everywhere people are hurting one another, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war. O, woe."

WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THAT, IF IT IS WHAT YOU WANT TO DO?

"But nobody Wants it! Everybody hates it."

OH. WELL, THEN STOP.

At which moment She turned herself into an aspirin commercial and left The Polyfather stranded alone with his species.

And I keep thinking about the Illuminatus! trilogy's thought that "it's not true if it doesn't make you laugh, but you don't understand it until it makes you cry". This feels like the book's goal, and at its best, it succeeds.

Special song of accompaniment with similar power in and of and from mundanity: "Spud Infinity", Big Thief.

Down the River Unto the Sea, Walter Mosely

After the success of last month's read of this series' second book about Joe King Oliver, I tried the first book, with nearly as much enjoyment. To kick off the series, Mosely gives us a private eye who was a cop, then got sent up to Riker's for a sex crime he didn't commit, where he was brutalized both by brutes and by a prolonged stretch in solitary confinement. Ten years later, he's adrift, a bit, getting by but engaged in nothing, when he gets a couple cases dropped on him that, in time, reconnect him with his passion and evolve him into new relationships with his trauma and the law.

It felt like a prequel, rather than the beginning, but that may have been an accident of order. I liked this one, but less than the second.

Art & Fear, David Bayles, Ted Orland

I'm taking another drawing class, and this short, odd, book was recommended as an extra thing to read as part of it. Starting enormously promisingly by staking a claim to be about "ordinary art", it quickly deflates, concerning itself mainly with the issues and anxieties of professionals in and around the art economy. Where it avoids this narrow focus—the "free up time for making art by skipping committee meetings at work" passage is a conspicuous and irritating example of this focus*—it contains many helpful and even insightful reflections on the processes of making stuff, and thoughtful, heartfelt observations about the many, many self-imposed obstacles one can ... impose between oneself and those processes.

Does a lot of it read like self-help? It does. But the whole thing is maybe 120 pages long (or about three hours long, in the audio version I got from the library), so it's not particularly onerous. And while their version of "ordinary art" may not be mine**, somebody interested in making things can certainly find something in here that will be of use in that pursuit.***

* Asking oneself "Who is allowed to do this opting-out, and who shows up to have that work non-escapably assigned to them?" is something nobody involved in the anecdote that undergirds this advice seems to have asked.
** The definition they offer is something like "everything less than Mozart" which is ... not helpful. I found myself redefining the term mentally as something along the lines of "things made in a non-professional(-ized) environment
*** A comparably helpful piece of advice, taken from "Nuts and Bolts" from Richard Hugo's The Triggering Town:

When young it's normal to fear losing a good line or phrase and never finding anything comparable again. Carry a small pocket-size notebook and jot down lines and phrases as they occur. This may or may not help you write good poems, but it can help reduce your anxiety.