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The Origins of Bastard Out of Carolina (Plus Two Writers Whose Best Material was Not Even Considered by the High Risk Editors)

#tim lieder #mary gaitskill #dorothy allison #jeffrey epstein #wanda coleman #aids #death #cps #bastard out of carolina #drunks #otero #puerto rican #love #creepy uncle #private rituals

Lawyers, Neil Gaiman and RetCons

#neil gaiman #fuck palestine #xiran jay zhao #john cheever #tim lieder #suburbs #bible #the book of job #bildas

Job Chapter 21

The Wicked do prosper...

At first we think that Job is going to go back to his standard "look at me" like seriously look at me. Job's dumb friends have been jumping all over themselves to ignore him for chapter after chapter but seriously he says "will you just take a moment to see how horrible I look"

Then he actually responds to them. He probably shouldn't respond to them but there he is, noting that the wicked live and not only live but prosper. This is seriously the major problem with society, not just capitalism, but damnit capitalism has made a particularly terrible form of the wicked.

Dale Carnegie, Henry Ford, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Lorenzo di Medici, etc, etc. How many sonsofbitches and motherfuckers are prospering because they broke unions, robbed from the poor, inherited wealth in a system that gave them an advantage whether through class or racism or Apartheid...and then claimed that they worked hard to get where they are?

And even now, people worship these fuckers. There was a meme going around claiming that Ford instituted the 40 hour work week with a "boo evil capitalist" sarcastic statement as if Ford did this from the goodness of his wealthy heart and wasn't forced to do it by decades of union struggles. As if he wasn't at the forefront of fucking over his workers.

And then there are all those genocides. The Germans kind of pay for the Holocaust but many wealthy Germans still owe their fortunes to all the money stolen from Jews. Every American lives on native lands and there were literally millions of corpses. I've been saying that a lot the past couple months because Israel is at war and all the "ceasefire now" crowd seems blithely unaware of the atrocities much closer to home. Like they have an advantage.

Job goes on about the happiness of the wicked. They sing. They dance. They don't care about God. They don't even care about their children. Even if you get to the notion that the children of the wicked will suffer for their family's evil deeds (Oh sure Anderson Cooper seems to be enjoying all his nepo baby privilege from being a Vanderbilt but his brother committed suicide) what does that matter. Who cares if Trump's dumb kids lose everything if Trump gets away with it?

And besides that, does it really matter who dies in perfect health and who dies in bitterness? They are both dead. Dead is dead.

Oh sure Job's friends really do love to say that the wicked will suffer, but Job keeps seeing all these wicked men enjoying their privilege. No one cares to punish them. No one even pisses on their graves because they have guards.

"Why then do you offer me empty consolation?"

And seriously what kind of consolation is it to imagine a world where the wicked suffer more than the person who is suffering? Not only is that a lie it's a trivial lie. Even if Job got to see Trump die of a multiple heart attack, Job's children are still dead. Job is still in poor health. Job is still broke having lost everything.

#The Book of Job #Tim Lieder #Job #suffering #wealth #genocide #apartheid #generational wealth #music #lute #drunks #money money money

"The Swimmer" (The Stories of John Cheever)

This has really nothing to do with that Mad Men episode

I was actually looking forward to re-reading this story (as I let my ADHD take over and I've forgotten the stories that I've read) and it is definitely worth a re-read. It's not as brilliant as it seemed in the first reading, but it's still pretty great.

It's also the only story that can be considered science fiction but then again I'm sure that there are critics who state that it was a symbolic story or a story about memory going bad. But the time travel is happening in the story.

Ned Merrill is having a great time in summer. The first paragraph says that it was one of those Sundays where everyone says "I had too much to drink last night" so we are smack in the middle of the Cheever milieu, the suburban oasis where the best thing in the world is to drink and hang out and be merry in the lingering days of Sunday.

Of course, this is never going to be the case in a Cheever story, especially in the Cheever stories from the latter part of his career when drinking was taking a toll but he had yet to quit. Drinking sounds so fun in theory but in reality it's a short term high that makes you sick and miserable. Rarely do Cheever protagonists get to drink and enjoy their alcoholism without consequences.

Our swimmer Ned Merrill decides to "swim across the neighborhood", meaning that he is going to go from house to house and go swimming in the pools. He's in the prime of life. His neighbors are his friends and they are more than happy to let him into the back to swim. Some pools are abandoned. Some parties are giving away free drinks and some clouds are gathering.

But then it takes a turn. I'm not sure if it takes a turn on the highway where he is stuck trying to cross looking pathetic. He's half naked in swim trunks and everyone is honking at him and throwing things at him. Even when he gets half through he's still waiting for enough cars to pass so he can get across (I once crossed a highway like this - it's fucking terrifying. It's even more terrifying to contemplate)

And then when he gets to the last houses, the world has changed. He's changed. They've changed. Neighbors that were always friendly to him are suddenly hostile and gossiping about him. Others are telling him that they are sorry for his loss. In one gossip, the couple talks about how he came over begging for money but he doesn't know that they are talking about him.

He's too weak to even get out of the pool by himself. Other places are closed off. In one case, the couple doesn't even have alcohol because his friend had abdominal surgery three years back. He doesn't remember that surgery. He doesn't remember anything.

Time has moved past him. He's gotten older and sadder. His life has gotten older and sadder. His mistress tells him that she refuses to give him money, but he doesn't even know that he ever asked her for money. By the end, he comes to an empty house that he once lived in. Everyone and everything is gone.

There are so many themes to this one. Time passes by and your sins catch up with you. Maybe Ned only remembers a summer day where life was beautiful and everything was perfect when he comes back to the places where he once lived. Maybe these are many days coming in and poor Ned has Alzheimer's. But there are several places where they remember him and act as if he still lives there.

But I prefer to think of it as a time travel story where every swimming pool is a new time travel device. His life is going forward and he doesn't know it. Ok, now I just made it sound like the 1960s sad version of that Adam Sandler movie where he has a fast forward device.

Oh yeah, one bit from the headline. There was a Mad Men episode where Don Draper is swimming throughout. Either the writer or the comment of the episode (in AVClub when it was good) said that it reminded them of this story. Now that I've read this story, there's really nothing in that episode that should remind anyone of the story. But it did put this story on my radar which meant that I finally read John Cheever. So I don't know what to think about that dumb comparison. It's dumb, but I'm grateful to it.

#John Cheever #The Swimmer #Tim Lieder #sorrow #drinking #alcoholism #1960s #suburbs #drunk suburbanites #drinking on sunday #alcohol #sad people #the highway #swim trunks #neighbors #time goes by #end of life #empty houses

I just had to take my cat to the vet. He had a mass on his mouth and he was getting sk… Tim W. Lieder needs your support for Help me pay fo

Oh hey sincecwe are talking about Israel, my cat got sick and the vet bills are killing me

https://gofund.me/875810cc

So yeah, I could use some help.

#cats #israel #tim lieder #the book of job #kitties #money #jumblr #free palestine from hamas

"Montraldo" (The Stories of John Cheever)

Tourist meets people and yeah...

I found a link stating that Montraldo is a name that means "artist, problem avoider, charismatic" and I think that might be the best key to this story. Not only is the main character avoiding any problems by taking off to Italy and the town of Montraldo but the writer is avoiding any possible lasting plot from the beginning to end.

In order of appearance, the plot threads introduced in this story include:

Our nameless protagonist stealing a diamond ring from Tiffany's by swapping it for a worthless ring.

A voyage to Italy that involves an affair

A bullying owner of a villa that rents out to sad people

An old woman and her servant who hates her

A woman on a beach with a kid

An anecdote about a waiter who actually pushed a customer's head in his food

A band that plays Dixieland Jazz.

Eventually Cheever settles on the old woman and her servant. Her servant is her daughter actually and also her servant/daughter probably kills her. This is a strange one since the servant insults the old woman and the old woman simply speaks of her in loving terms.

This really doesn't make sense, even filtered through a sardonic narrator who is more fascinated with everything. He doesn't really do much of anything after that initial robbery of Tiffany's (the first time he robbed Tiffany's but as far as the story is concerned, the last time he robbed Tiffany's. Certainly there might be other times, but he's probably coming into a new adventure.

This is a 6 page story with 7 different plot threads. Most of them are abandoned. A more cynical view would state that Cheever was trying to find a story and when he finally managed to resolve one of the stories called it a day (I hate the pantser vs. plotter dichotomy but I would say that this is more pantser than anything.)

Just as the Job chapters feel repetitive when it comes to Job's dumb friends telling Job to shut up and Job telling them that God is a tyrant, the John Cheever stories are feeling repetitive in their seemingly random happenstance.

I also feel like these stories are beautiful in their romantic nature and their love of travel and Italy but also so random that John Cheever appeared to be coasting on his reputation. He was the author that New Yorker bought. They loved him and they sold more issues when he was in them (kind of like in the 90s when a Harlan Ellison story would be an automatic sale because almost everyone who loved science fiction would be excited with a new Ellison story - even if Ellison's best days were behind him).

Oddly enough I was thinking more about the Beckett plays I saw in college. They were uniformly awful. One was just a guy getting up and looking shocked as a voice droned on. I don't even remember the other two, but the program said that he sold these to a television show and it aired on a certain date. I immediately thought "I bet they paid him before he wrote them" because "Holy shit, the guy who wrote Waiting for Godot wants to be on television" superseded everything including anyone actually reading those scripts to find out if they were actually worth producing.

So this is another messy John Cheever story that is kind of from the late period (although the stories of John Cheever were all written before he stopped drinking so there was at least a decade of writing afterwards) and if it hadn't been for "The Swimmer" (we're getting to it) critics would have probably let his legacy end in the 1950s as the "Checkov of Suburbia".

#John Cheever #Montraldo #Tim LIeder #criticism #Italy #mothers #daughters #jewelry #jewels #Tiffanys #1960s #Italian neorealism #Italian cinema #Italian villas

"Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin" (The Stories of John Cheever)

We are back with Cheever, as confusing as ever

This is a story about a man reading stories and finding them very silly. As the reader, I'm not sure where I'm supposed to land here. Is the guy who comes home to America and starts reading these stories a terrible snob with an overly critical view of literature or are the stories really that bad? I don't know.

The stories don't seem that bad. They seem a little cliche, but I've been reading a lot of cliches in stories, so I don't know. The first passage is a string of bathos strung together that gives the narrator a headache. The next story is a story about a poor man who only realizes that his mother had an affair and he's the son...

Oh. I just googled this one. Ok, so now I have to say that my John Cheever expertise must bow to someone who actually knows that John Cheever is making allusions to Romantic poets and writers. In fact, he's just taking passages word for word and in this story the passages keep getting written on bathroom stalls and in pamphlets left on trains.

The blog that discussed this story hypothesized that this was a joke on the middlebrow audience who didn't get Romantic poetry. More importantly, he's giving the audience Romantic literature but then filtering it through a European who just doesn't get it.

So this guy is reading 19th century literature, written by Europeans, ascribing it to stupid Americans and going back to Europe as a relief from all this garbage.

Ok. It's a little funny. But I didn't get the allusions until I looked them up. Well except for mene mene which is totally Biblical. And alludes to our hero judging society and finding it wanting.

#John Cheever #New Yorker #Tim LIeder #Leigh Hunt #Keats #1963 #middlebrow #1960s #Europe #America #Stupid Americans

Job Chapters 16-17

Say to the Pit "you are my father"

So Job is still bummed out, obviously and he calls Eliphaz out for his windy words. He kind of replies to the fantasy about the wicked being punished. After all, he has been punished enough, right? His face is read with weeping and is sewed in sackcloth.

It seems like Job is saying "I'm already dead and punished. Can G-d punish me farther?" but then turns it around and says that maybe someone in Heaven can advocate for Job. Can't someone come between G-d and his victims.

Oh fuck this is sounding Christian.

Either way, Job speaks up against G-d hoping someone could stand in for him, but no one is going to do that. At very least they won't be doing it with his friends mocking him and telling him that he's actually the wicked man.

Let's say that Job is wicked, says Job. Well then he's paid for his sins. He's like Tophet (which is considered to be the place where baby sacrifice took place, but regardless it's in ruins) so all the righteous can now marvel at him and say how he paid for his sins. Isn't that enough?