White Whales and Fuzzy Caterpillars

Is this D. Keith Mano?

June 23, 2009

Casey and I have decamped Brooklyn to seek some quiet and contemplation on the road—and charge through D. Keith Mano's novel, Take Five. Instead we find ourselves hunting a white whale.

The scenic drive north through the “All American Valley” of western Connecticut should have focused my energies on Simon Lynxx’s journey back to his ancestral Queens manor, not to mention his efforts to produce the film Jesus 2001. Why did I pack a copy of Moby Dick, as well?

For whatever reason, Melville is on my mind. Perhaps as a procrastination trick for not facing the Mano. On Sunday we drove through the Berkshires and past the farm where Moby was hatched. Yes, the author of "I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes" was a landlubber, for a period, in western Massachusetts.

Is this D. Keith Mano?

Where was D. Keith when he wrote Take Five? On the pampas? In a strip club? In the break room of a post office on South Hero Island? Driving northward I spy many Meno who I suspect are reposing incognito. Could the redhead staring into mid-distance from a Burlington sandwich shop (above) be our guy? Or maybe the cable access dude up top lecturing on wiring and insulation according to Vermont specs? One can only ponder.

Reaching Montreal we stroll the boulevards and stare into Quebecois bookstores. I'm distracted both by the copy of M.D. I stole from the bookstore, and a critical biography published by Grove in the 1960s. It is written by a cranky Frenchman and translated into English by John Ashbery. He suggests that Hermie likes to eroticize sailors and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Suitably procrastinated, I finally I settle in to read more T.K. at a cafe on the Rue St. Denis. Opening up the book, a caterpillar parachutes onto my head and slips to the open page. Is his appearance not foreordained? You judge for yourself. As the photo to the left shows, he has underlined a passage.

breast: plane'sll: --she got a: attendants: the jolly: yourself (p.559)

Since this seems propitious to me, I pause to evaluate before reading further. Maybe I need to finish more Melville before I tackle Mr. D. Keith. Later in the week we head deeper into Quebec and up the St. Lawrence. There are whales there I hear...

--Peter Miller

20 Questions for Take Five

June 13, 2009
Lost in the labyrinth of Take Five--ok, it's not so much a labyrinth as a cluttered attic--I can't help but try to classify the thing. Where would I shelve this brick if there was no convenient catch-all like the fiction aisle? What category would be named in its honor? Staring around this bookstore I search for guidance. I know it is a novel set in New York, so we can start from there. But what kind of New York book is it?

The next few blog posts--perhaps with the aid of my anonymous ill-wisher and erstwhile competitor-in-the-race-to-finish-Take-Five--will narrow down that answer through elimination.

Is it a NY gardening book?
The fictional Van Lynxx estate harbors orchards and rose gardens, but this ancient Queens patroonship has fallen into shabby disrepair by the novel's opening. The end of the family line, Simon Lynxx, wakes up to find his grounds a pastoral nightmare. Slums circle the electrified perimeter, their residents using the manor's backyard as a convenient garbage chute and target practice. Even the lawn chairs get flattened by uninvited suicides leaping off next door rooftops: "He sat like Rodin's thinker, but the head was set on knees as if his torso had been edited out. The chair legs splayed like a young colt's first walking."

Unfortunately this disqualifies it alongside The City Gardener, a more worthy candidate for this category. "An indispensable guide to successful gardening in the city," author Philip Truex sought to give nature back to urbanites, especially those high rise New Yorkers coping with "problems peculiar to the city."

However, the problems he refers to are not the riots, racial tension, and sensational crime unfolding at street level in 1964 when the book was published. Truex, whose lineage stretched back to Dutch New Amsterdam (with a Walloon ancestor who farmed a patch near the South Street Seaport), favors the terrace set. As Kew Gardeners ignored Kitty Genovese's screams, Truax warned his penthousers not of knife-wielding lunatics but of excessive shade cast by balcony awnings. Our whiskey barrels (seen up top in an aerial view) would warrant disapproval for the squash we planted inside; Truax felt oak tubs were better suited to trees and large shrubs. But he'd applaud its placement "to break up the monotony of a long row of boxes." Perhaps that monotonous row was the source of violent outbreaks in Harlem and Bed-Stuy throughout the summer of '64.

So, since D. Keith Mano provides no proscriptive advice on ornamental vegetables and window ledge flowers, or his Van Lynxx Manor no sufficient sunlight or oasis for birds, we officially eliminate Take Five as a roman-a-vert.

Next up: Is Take Five a NY Porn Memoir?
--Peter Miller

Ugly Si Newhouse and Empty Chang

June 3, 2009
So where were you anony-critic? I waited patiently at Melissa's Deli, keeping my promise. Hours I stood in the Goya aisle, ticking off their product list: Vienna sausages, sliced beets, cilantro cooking base, squid, vegetales mixtos. I ate Devildogs and Honey Buns, washed down Zingers with Jarritos, and flipped through the latest Vocero de Puerto Rico in anticipation of our showdown.

But nothing. Were you home smoking metholated ganja? Tweezing your nose hair? Clearly you don't like to mixtos it up. For you literature is like the hollowed out books The Container Store sells for $39.99 (illustrated above). "Book vaults" you hide your precious keys, store your cash, safeguard your pinky rings, maybe even entomb your copy of Take Five. Because, hell, who would break open a book to READ it? You sure wouldn't. Least of all for our man, Mano.

I picture your library like the ransacked book department of the bankrupted Virgin record store on Union Square (seen to the right), cheap histories of hair bands lying atop anthologies of Maxim Magazine articles. Do you REALLY think you have the time or depth to stick with Mano? You mistake the reverse pagination for accomplishment--thinking you completed 583 pages when you are still only on page 1.

Yesterday I got a call from a certain Ugly G. (I prefer not to reveal his full name--the poor man has been exploited enough in his life), who just wanted to share his passion: to fill the cable access airwaves with his videos of women undressing. He's been around a lot longer than C-SPAN's Book TV and claims more viewers (9 million). Here was a person dedicated to his craft, serious about his mission, focused on his goals. Who am I to judge a man in a robot costume asking fellow New Yorkers to unrobe? Hunter Thompson took one look at him and said "Gonzo!" Tom Wolfe parades in front of his cameras when he needs publicity. Even Barbara Bush not so casually drops his name when she wants to drive people to her memoirs (she is a savvy one, old Barb--knowing how to maximize key word searches online).

Anyway, anony-critic, Mr. G. has read Take Five backwards and forwards and up and down. He was impressed by my undertaking and praised my efforts. There's a real patriot! The authentic article. Would Si Newhouse be wrong? He is so in awe of Ugly G. that he sicced James Wolcott on UG in the latest Vanity Fair just to drive up the circulation.

I await your answer, sir. The Goya aisle is quickly being depleted.
--Peter Miller

Mano a Mano?

The fruits of Nnenna Ogwo and Mary Catherine Muir's labors--the blossoming backyard

June 1, 2009
"Do you ever get the uncanny feeling of being murdered and not knowing till you got home?" Lev Grossman asked an audience of tweeting bloggers this past Friday beneath the tall ceilings of the Javits Convention Center. The sound system kept fuzzing out until the four panelists on stage had to pass one microphone back and forth. Rumor had it that the tweets were jamming the signal.

The panel was a follow up discussion to the SXSW session I befouled three months earlier. However, this was a much more receptive audience. Even the pigeons who call the Javits home were well behaved.

For three days I stood in my employer's booth, gave out galleys, chatted about the fall books, discussed the future of publishing and the value of an annual convention. I wandered the aisles looking at competitor's wares and searching for swag to take home. Just my luck that publishing has entered a new era of frugality so the usual marketing materials were either eliminated or severely scaled back. Tote bags emblazoned with colophons were handed out, but convention-goers had nothing to put in them.

Harper Collins went for the airport concourse look and didn't even display their books or catalogs. Random House hung a giant four-sided mobile from the ceiling as a beacon for wayward booksellers, but then sadistically placed a humble information kiosk underneath. The joke circulated that it was the "Random Shack."

So I reached Sunday a little exhausted and weary from upholding literature, not to mention ticked off I had no booty to haul home and pore over like Halloween candy. Instead I returned to find an anonymous comment on my last post about D. Keith Mano.

This supposed critic called into question my ability to properly appreciate Mr. Mano--or to read through Take Five. What makes you so special, bub? You think you can take me on? You think you have the brain cells to focus that long on a 583-page novel? I eat spam like you for lunch and wash it down with Bustelo. I challenge you to a read-off, my friend. If you have the guts, meet me at Melissa's Deli tomorrow and I will show you how to turn a page.
--Peter Miller