January 19: Vomity Kind of Cabs, Lonesome, "Wonder Boys," New Cartoon

The Cab I had was a real old one that smelled like someone'd just tossed his cookies in it.  I always get those vomity kind of cabs if I go anywhere late at night.  What made it worse, it was so quiet and lonesome out, even though it was Saturday night.  I didn't see hardly anybody on the street.  Now and then you just saw a man and a girl crossing a street, with their arms around each other's waists and all, or a bunch of hoodlumy-looking guys and their dates, all of them laughing like hyenas at something you could bet wasn't funny.  New York's terrible when somebody laughs on the street very late at night.  You can hear it for miles.  It makes you feel so lonesome and depressed.  I kept wishing I could go home and shoot the bull for a while with old Phoebe.  But finally, after I was riding a while, the cab driver and I sort of struck up a conversation.  His name was Horwitz.  He was a much better guy than the other driver I'd had.  Anyway, I thought maybe he might know about the ducks.

Holden is back in a cab, out on the streets of New York, feeling quite alone.  He wants to go home to talk to his little sister, but he doesn't want to deal with his parents.  It's a depressing paragraph.  In a city as large as New York, Holden has no person to turn to.  He eventually turns to a stranger (a cab driver) for companionship, and Horwitz isn't the friendliest guy in the world.

Holden reminds me of a character from novelist Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys.  James Leer is a university grad student with a penchant for lying and loneliness.  James doesn't get along with many people.  He likes old movies and is obsessed with the suicides of Hollywood stars.  On top of all that, he has a tiny bad habit:  he steals things.  James is adrift in life, possibly depressed, alienated from his rich parents who don't understand him.  Sound familiar?  James Leer is a little older version of Holden Caulfield, with a lot of pot smoking thrown into the mix.

I know I've written about Wonder Boys before.  I read it last year for my book club and loved it.  Michael Chabon is a tremendous writer.  Prolific.  Talented.  Good looking.  A Pulitzer Prize winner.  Kind of a wonder boy himself.  When I see pictures of him, he looks like the kind of guy who would be very popular with everybody, girls and guys.  In his senior year of high school, I could imagine Chabon being voted Best Hair, Best Smile, Most Talented, Most Likely to Succeed.

Wonder Boys centers around the adventures of a college writing instructor, Grady Tripp, who has been suffering from a serious case of next-book-itis.  His previous novel, The Land Downstairs, won a big award, and Grady has been working his new manuscript, Wonder Boys, since "the early stages of the previous presidential administration."  It's an immense pile of papers, and Grady sees no end in sight.  Throw into this mix Grady's pot-smoking habit, James Leer's suicidal tendencies, a dead dog, a transvestite,a couple failed marriages, a stolen jacket that once belonged to Marilyn Monroe, a desperate book editor, and you pretty much have a description of Chabon's book.

I'm struggling to find a passage that really captures the strength of Chabon as a writer.  His prose is witty and surprising and lyrical.  Wonder Boys is one of the funniest books I've ever read.  The following excerpt is the best I can do, but it doesn't even touch how good Chabon really is:

I rose like a kite, in fits, tethered to the mortal husk of Grady Tripp by a thin pearly string.  Below me Pittsburgh lay spread, brick and blacktop and iron bridges, fog in it hollows, half hidden by rain.  The wind snapped at the flaps of my jacket and rang in my ears like blood.  There were birds in my hair.  A jagged beard of ice grew from my chin.  I'm not making this up.  I heard Sara Gaskell calling my name, and looked down, way down into the fog and rain of my life on earth, and saw her kneeling beside my body, blowing her breath into my lungs.  It was hot and sour and frantic with life and tobacco.  I swallowed great mouthfuls of it.  I grabbed hold of the opalescent thread and reeled myself in.

It's poetic and heart-breaking and hilarious at the same time.  Grady is looking down on his life, watching his pregnant, married lover trying to draw him back to earth.  Michael Chabon has the ability to move from the ridiculous to the sublime in just a few words.  His writing is stunning.  Gorgeous.  Moving.


And Saint Marty hates him.

Confessions of Saint Marty