“We made love in the bed, ate steaks at the restaurant, shot up in the john, puked, cried, accused one another, begged of one another, forgave, promised, and carried one another to heaven.
“But there was a fight.”
I love that “but”. It says that all the puking and crying were the normal happy parts of the relationship which the fight contrasts with. It makes the drug madness seem domestic while also making the fight seem more severe. Such a nice little gleam of mastery.
It's remarkable how behaviors that are so socially undesirable can become normalized into a relationship or even family life. Then again I grew up with a father who was drunk every day from 3PM on, so maybe not so unusual.
I agree with you that this is the story when we start to like Fuckhead in a more genuine way - he's an old friend, we've seen the best and worst of him, he's growing and maybe the best is winning out. Or maybe it's just what you said: we strongly recognize that feeling of "I worked hard today and earned this" and it's difficult not to like someone you can identify with.
I had the same reaction to the final paragraph: did that actually eventually happen to the bartender or not? It's a pretty specific memory considering the narrator can't recall her name. I think that it didn't, though maybe I just like the idea that Fuckhead has false memories of future events. "Endearing" isn't the right word - it just feels recognizable, an insight into the way a real person thinks, and that makes you like him more.
Last comment on "liking" Fuckhead: I think I like the narrator more in this story than in Car Crash While Hitchhiking, even though he's pretty close to a genuine hero in that story. Tied into the above, it might just be that I'm getting to know him better now, and it's difficult not to like someone you really know.
Having cheated and read ahead, because I was enjoying the book, I'd say that Fuckhead is genuinely growing on me. I don't like his life in the least, but it's interesting to hear about. My favorite section from this story would be, I think, the way he describes how he's wandered into someone else's dream.
In Work, you get a sense that there's a righting of the path and of a possible redemption.
In the previous stories he was a drug taker, and a witness to the lives of others, a traveler passing by the tragedies and small victories of strangers.
Then in Two Men we see the de-evolution of a man into an ape, football player into a druggie, and the protagonist in a potential killer.
In Out on Bail we see twists of fate: a condemned man is actually a free man, and the freed man is a dead man. We're "confused as to who the real criminals were." He's resurrected. " I had a moment's glory that night, though. I was certain I was here in this world because I couldn't tolerate any other place."
In Dundun It's his birthday and McInnes' death day, thanks to Dundun. There's a, There, but for the grace of God go I, feeling to it. "It felt like the moment before the Savior comes. And the Savior did come, but we had to wait a long time."
In Work the word "sacrifice" is the centerpiece, for me. "Sacrifice? Where had he gotten a word like sacrifice? Certainly I had never heard of it."
I had a similar experience with the word "empathy."
I was unknowingly empathetic. I didn't really understand the word till I was 33. Then I was standing in front of a fellow student in Alexander Technique school appraising them and I felt like I got hit in the knee with a hammer. It hurt like hell. I asked the person if they had a knee injury. They said they'd just had surgery on it. It was obvious, then, that I could feel the pain of others. And all that confusion I felt in the past stemmed from this word, empathy. I'd been feeling the pain of others and not known it.
And while it seems Fuckhead's life is taking a turn it doesn't change the direction and tragedies of the characters around him.
I think people place too much emphasis on whether the characters are likable. I grew up on Beckett. His characters are way too strange to pass judgement on, but like Johnson, his prose is mesmerizing. This book club forces me to read a little closer and there are gifts to be gleaned below the surface of these stories.
Lots of good points here. It's easy to think of Fuckhead as essentially unchanging because he's so blank, but I think we're seeing it slowly play out at this point.
To me, the passages related to women are all that really make this story more than just a sort of sad tale of two lowlifes doing a suburban salvage operation to get some drinking money. I like the line where the narrator says he's wandered into Wayne's dream; it really makes sense in context, and calls attention to the fact that many of these stories are really about someone other than the narrator. (I am reminded in this connection of another story we discussed some time back, William Gibson's "New Rose Hotel", which is really about the girl Sandii, though the narrator does a good job of making you think about other things.)
I've never been a serious drinker or had any kind of chemical addiction, but at one point in the '80s I was a fairly regular visitor to an Irish pub, enough to understand that it's possible to have a surprisingly close relationship with a bartender you see often, even if you don't really know much more about them than their first name and that they work as a bartender. They probably don't really care about you (you're just another guy buying a beer), but they become part of your sense of what this bar is, part of the sense of comfort you feel when you're there, and to that extent, you can feel an emotional attachment of sorts -- not that it lasts long if they quit or you stop going to that particular bar.
Yes, 100% agree about the women, and I also think that this shifting of the focus away from the narrator helps to open up the text, which sometimes felt a little hermetic to me in the early stories.
This story was my favorite so far. I especially liked the flashback to the almost bar fight, and the flashback within that flashback of the post-coital hailstorm. I can’t exactly pinpoint why that stood out so well to me, but I know that eerie silence after something violent or almost violent happens, and I thought it was an especially poignant metaphor for it. I like his description of the bar after the kerfuffle: “The cards were scattered on the table, face up, face down, and they seemed to foretell that whatever we did to one another would be washed away by liquor or explained away by bad songs” Maybe it’s more of a “guy” thing but I feel like this kind of situation is very common when you’re out drinking in your youth--it goes from almost fighting to the death to completely forgotten about in minutes.
Also the Bartender was great--there are people we meet whose names we won’t remember but they were good to us, showed us kindness when we needed it, even if we didn’t deserve it--I know because I‘ve had many, and forgotten most. But hopefully I show another kindness, and so it goes, or something.
I dunno, I don’t have a specific criticism or anything, but this is becoming more and more clearly Not My Kinda Book. I see value in the writing, but it doesn’t really engage me. (I saw the movie when it came out, and remember liking it, but don’t really remember it.) I’ve had better luck with previous Book Club books. Ah well. I’ll continue reading it, maybe something will click.
I enjoyed this story and marveled at the ending even if I didn’t understand what it was about. It didn’t read like a real memory to me, and not quite a dream either. He sounded like someone drunk / high hallucinating.
Like Bob here in the comments, I also didn’t consider whether any of these characters are likeable. Maybe it’s because these stories are so far removed from my own life, and these characters aren’t people I’ll have to interact with and pass judgment on.
I love this sentence and also have no clue what the second part means:
“Where are my women now, with their sweet wet words and ways, and the miraculous balls of hail popping in a green translucence in the yards?”
I can't look at my end and see which particular sections you're subscribed to, no, though I see that you're subscribed as a paying member. The directions for how to turn on Book Club emails are in here, so see if that works: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/how-to-enjoy-this-newsletter
thanks! this helped me too. I hadn't checked the Book Club box when I was a freeloader b/c I knew it wasn't included. And when I moved to paying I didn't revisit the notifications.
I loved this sequence at the opening:
“We made love in the bed, ate steaks at the restaurant, shot up in the john, puked, cried, accused one another, begged of one another, forgave, promised, and carried one another to heaven.
“But there was a fight.”
I love that “but”. It says that all the puking and crying were the normal happy parts of the relationship which the fight contrasts with. It makes the drug madness seem domestic while also making the fight seem more severe. Such a nice little gleam of mastery.
It's remarkable how behaviors that are so socially undesirable can become normalized into a relationship or even family life. Then again I grew up with a father who was drunk every day from 3PM on, so maybe not so unusual.
I agree with you that this is the story when we start to like Fuckhead in a more genuine way - he's an old friend, we've seen the best and worst of him, he's growing and maybe the best is winning out. Or maybe it's just what you said: we strongly recognize that feeling of "I worked hard today and earned this" and it's difficult not to like someone you can identify with.
I had the same reaction to the final paragraph: did that actually eventually happen to the bartender or not? It's a pretty specific memory considering the narrator can't recall her name. I think that it didn't, though maybe I just like the idea that Fuckhead has false memories of future events. "Endearing" isn't the right word - it just feels recognizable, an insight into the way a real person thinks, and that makes you like him more.
Last comment on "liking" Fuckhead: I think I like the narrator more in this story than in Car Crash While Hitchhiking, even though he's pretty close to a genuine hero in that story. Tied into the above, it might just be that I'm getting to know him better now, and it's difficult not to like someone you really know.
"false memories of future events" is a delightful mindfuck
Having cheated and read ahead, because I was enjoying the book, I'd say that Fuckhead is genuinely growing on me. I don't like his life in the least, but it's interesting to hear about. My favorite section from this story would be, I think, the way he describes how he's wandered into someone else's dream.
I've wandered into other people's dreams before, I think....
In Work, you get a sense that there's a righting of the path and of a possible redemption.
In the previous stories he was a drug taker, and a witness to the lives of others, a traveler passing by the tragedies and small victories of strangers.
Then in Two Men we see the de-evolution of a man into an ape, football player into a druggie, and the protagonist in a potential killer.
In Out on Bail we see twists of fate: a condemned man is actually a free man, and the freed man is a dead man. We're "confused as to who the real criminals were." He's resurrected. " I had a moment's glory that night, though. I was certain I was here in this world because I couldn't tolerate any other place."
In Dundun It's his birthday and McInnes' death day, thanks to Dundun. There's a, There, but for the grace of God go I, feeling to it. "It felt like the moment before the Savior comes. And the Savior did come, but we had to wait a long time."
In Work the word "sacrifice" is the centerpiece, for me. "Sacrifice? Where had he gotten a word like sacrifice? Certainly I had never heard of it."
I had a similar experience with the word "empathy."
I was unknowingly empathetic. I didn't really understand the word till I was 33. Then I was standing in front of a fellow student in Alexander Technique school appraising them and I felt like I got hit in the knee with a hammer. It hurt like hell. I asked the person if they had a knee injury. They said they'd just had surgery on it. It was obvious, then, that I could feel the pain of others. And all that confusion I felt in the past stemmed from this word, empathy. I'd been feeling the pain of others and not known it.
And while it seems Fuckhead's life is taking a turn it doesn't change the direction and tragedies of the characters around him.
I think people place too much emphasis on whether the characters are likable. I grew up on Beckett. His characters are way too strange to pass judgement on, but like Johnson, his prose is mesmerizing. This book club forces me to read a little closer and there are gifts to be gleaned below the surface of these stories.
Lots of good points here. It's easy to think of Fuckhead as essentially unchanging because he's so blank, but I think we're seeing it slowly play out at this point.
To me, the passages related to women are all that really make this story more than just a sort of sad tale of two lowlifes doing a suburban salvage operation to get some drinking money. I like the line where the narrator says he's wandered into Wayne's dream; it really makes sense in context, and calls attention to the fact that many of these stories are really about someone other than the narrator. (I am reminded in this connection of another story we discussed some time back, William Gibson's "New Rose Hotel", which is really about the girl Sandii, though the narrator does a good job of making you think about other things.)
I've never been a serious drinker or had any kind of chemical addiction, but at one point in the '80s I was a fairly regular visitor to an Irish pub, enough to understand that it's possible to have a surprisingly close relationship with a bartender you see often, even if you don't really know much more about them than their first name and that they work as a bartender. They probably don't really care about you (you're just another guy buying a beer), but they become part of your sense of what this bar is, part of the sense of comfort you feel when you're there, and to that extent, you can feel an emotional attachment of sorts -- not that it lasts long if they quit or you stop going to that particular bar.
Yes, 100% agree about the women, and I also think that this shifting of the focus away from the narrator helps to open up the text, which sometimes felt a little hermetic to me in the early stories.
Yes! And I also underlined that sentence about wandering into Wayne’s dream. I love those two pages where they visited Wayne’s wife.
This story was my favorite so far. I especially liked the flashback to the almost bar fight, and the flashback within that flashback of the post-coital hailstorm. I can’t exactly pinpoint why that stood out so well to me, but I know that eerie silence after something violent or almost violent happens, and I thought it was an especially poignant metaphor for it. I like his description of the bar after the kerfuffle: “The cards were scattered on the table, face up, face down, and they seemed to foretell that whatever we did to one another would be washed away by liquor or explained away by bad songs” Maybe it’s more of a “guy” thing but I feel like this kind of situation is very common when you’re out drinking in your youth--it goes from almost fighting to the death to completely forgotten about in minutes.
Also the Bartender was great--there are people we meet whose names we won’t remember but they were good to us, showed us kindness when we needed it, even if we didn’t deserve it--I know because I‘ve had many, and forgotten most. But hopefully I show another kindness, and so it goes, or something.
I dunno, I don’t have a specific criticism or anything, but this is becoming more and more clearly Not My Kinda Book. I see value in the writing, but it doesn’t really engage me. (I saw the movie when it came out, and remember liking it, but don’t really remember it.) I’ve had better luck with previous Book Club books. Ah well. I’ll continue reading it, maybe something will click.
“Burgulate” is a funny word.
I enjoyed this story and marveled at the ending even if I didn’t understand what it was about. It didn’t read like a real memory to me, and not quite a dream either. He sounded like someone drunk / high hallucinating.
Like Bob here in the comments, I also didn’t consider whether any of these characters are likeable. Maybe it’s because these stories are so far removed from my own life, and these characters aren’t people I’ll have to interact with and pass judgment on.
I love this sentence and also have no clue what the second part means:
“Where are my women now, with their sweet wet words and ways, and the miraculous balls of hail popping in a green translucence in the yards?”
I realized today that I haven’t been getting the book club posts. Freddie, is that something you can check on for me?
I can't look at my end and see which particular sections you're subscribed to, no, though I see that you're subscribed as a paying member. The directions for how to turn on Book Club emails are in here, so see if that works: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/how-to-enjoy-this-newsletter
Brilliant. Not sure why but the last one I got was 11/9. Thanks for the tip.
thanks! this helped me too. I hadn't checked the Book Club box when I was a freeloader b/c I knew it wasn't included. And when I moved to paying I didn't revisit the notifications.