Laugh Now, Cry Later

Cry now.

Coffins

Coffins by Rodman Philbrick is Gothic tale of supernatural terror that befalls the Coffins, a sea faring family in Maine. The story has wonderful characters like craggy old sailors, a tyrannical ship captain, and a genius dwarf abolitionist (you don't get one of those in every book you pick up). Like every great Gothic tale, Coffins incorporates the supernatural, dark family secrets, and an eerie abode.

The tale takes place on the brink of the Civil War and incorporates historic figures like Frederick Douglas and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. In a series of frightening events, the Coffin family begins dying off one by one in gruesome and bizarre circumstances. The family members who don't die go mad. The patriarch of the family, Captain Cash Coffin, rules his home with an iron fist (and firearms), but he is afraid to step foot out of his bedroom. Dr. Brentwood, as a proponent of Transcendentalism and Ralph Waldo Emerson's biggest fan, is the most rational person that Jebediah Coffin knows. Jebediah Coffin (a.k.a. as the abolitionist dwarf and Cash Coffin's youngest son) summons his best friend, Dr. Davis Brentwood, to come to the coast of Maine to help save his family from the malevolent spirit that seems to have invaded the family home. Before the novel ends, Dr. Brentwood faces the sinister force and must unlock the sinister secret that is destroying the Coffins.

There are not a lot of books that I have trouble putting down, but Coffins is a true page turner. Coffins reminded me of when I first read Edgar Allen Poe's Tell-Tale Heart as a child. Philbrick has achieved an exciting and suspenseful mystery, but because of one rather violent sexual encounter in the book, I would not recommend Coffins for the entire family.

Hey Nostradamus!

One of my favorite authors is Douglas Coupland. I started reading him in the early nineties when he published Generation X. A lot has been written about Coupland being the voice of Generation X, and I can't help but believe that is true. Each of his novels speaks to me through the pop culture references and the sit-com speak of the characters who are his voice. Hey Nostradamus! tells the story of a school shooting through the recounting of the experience by Cheryl, Jason, Heather and Reg. Coupland explores the aftermath of the tragedy as it ripples through the community, through time, and through the psyches of all involved.

Without spoiling the story, I can tell you that Cheryl is a girl who is killed in the shooting. She is active in a youth Christian fellowship group, and she tells the story from her perspective, post mortem. Jason and Cheryl met in the Christian fellowship group, Youth Alive, and they were secretly married before their senior year. Jason's chapter of the story is told many years after Cheryl's death. It is hard to say which was more detrimental to him, the school shooting, or his father's extreme religious beliefs. Heather is Jason's girlfriend at the time he is telling his story. As her story unfolds, it is clear that even she was affected by the shooting, in spite of not attending the high school with Jason and Cheryl. Reg is Jason's father and he tells the story from his perspective, showing how the shooting shook his faith and destroyed his family and life as he knew it.

Hey Nostradamus! is a timely and realistic story that explores the epidemic of senseless killing that is happening schools today. Coupland's success in telling the story lies in his use of very personal perspectives of people who are touched by the tragedy.

Sometimes Madness is Wisdom

I just finished reading a biography about Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Sometimes Madness is Wisdom, by Kendall Taylor. The author of this biography, Kendall Taylor, was once a professor and historian, and he produced a very thorough account of the Fitzgerald's youth, their marriage, and how they fell from the great heights of the Jazz Age into the depths of mental illness and addiction.

Learning more about Zelda made me feel like I had a window into the world of my grandmother when she was in high school. She always got a twinkle in her eye when she talked about how she was a "flapper," and from the way she lived (back in the day), I think Zelda was probably one of her heroes. Sad and flawed, but a hero to a young and impressionable girl nonetheless. Not unlike the jet-setting celebrities of today (think Paris Hilton), Zelda was renowned for her outrageous behavior and her never ending quest for a good time.

I discovered many things about Zelda and Scott's life that surprised me, starting with their promiscuity during a period in time when being chaste was still considered the norm. If Kendall Taylor's findings are accurate, then Zelda actually had sex with one of Scott's college buddies while on her honeymoon. Scott and Zelda were just a vague idea to me before reading Taylor's book, so I never knew how darkly their story ended. Zelda's nude frolicking in New York fountains became the stuff of legend, but her fated attempt to become a professional ballerina in Paris and the way her obsession with dance drove to despair is not mentioned in most accounts of her life. Zelda was an accomplished artist, a skill that she developed during her many stays in mental hospitals around Europe and in America, and several beautiful examples of her work in water color are shown in the book.

I never realized that Scott relied heavily on Zelda's diaries to write his books, and in many instances used whole passages verbatim to build his characters. In the beginning she was flattered that he would build whole novels around characters that he based on her, but when she decided to write a novel herself, Scott jealously undermined her throughout her process of writing her own book. Ultimately, he caused her failure as an author at a time when she desperately needed to succeed at something.

Scott and Zelda drank themselves into oblivion each night as they partied their way through whatever city they found themselves in, and obviously, that lifestyle has its drawbacks. In the end, Zelda became a schizophrenic and Scott became a drunken wastrel. Their daughter, Scottie, is a classic example of a child raised in an alcoholic home, and she admitted in her own biography that not receiving proper parenting herself, she had trouble connecting to and parenting her own children. Scottie tried to avoid the pitfalls of her parents, but in the end, Scott and Zelda's life impacted their daughter and her children in ways that they never could have imagined.

Scott's attempt at becoming a screenwriter in Hollywood failed miserably because of his drinking, and Zelda never did recover her mental faculties. After many years of paying for treatment for Zelda's mental illness, Scott was left financially and creatively bankrupt. They were completely dependent on each other for their identity and for their emotional and financial support, making their relationship both symbiotic and parasitic. Scott died much too young from the effects of alcoholism and Zelda died in fire in a sanitarium. The Fitzgerald's made each other legends, and in the end they destroyed each other completely.

Lunatic Fringe

For the last week or so, I have noticed that my mentally ill neighbor has been standing out in the median of a nearby busy intersection with a handmade sign that reads: Impeach Bush Now! She starts this pointless ritual about 7:30 AM and I've noticed her packing it in about 2:30 PM. When it is raining, she is out there with an umbrella. When her sign wilts, she makes a new one the next day. I haven't been able to get a picture of her holding the sign - frankly, I would not want to risk being caught - but that's a shot of the sign in the back of her car.
Last week, our new apartment management company placed a letter on each door stating that the maintenance man would be coming to inspect the apartments for A/C filters, fire alarms, etc... The day that they did the inspections, I found the letter shown above on my neighbor's door. It reads:

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: No one is to enter this apartment without the Expressed verbal and physical presence of (insert her name here). Violators who enter will not like what's on the other side. Return time is this morning or mid noon. Adhere to these rules and you will be fine.

I have both a morbid curiosity and a fear of what exactly she is threatening. It never occurred to me before that she might actually be holed up in her apartment armed and waiting for an interloper, but that possibility doesn't seem unrealistic given her cryptic threat. Today I had the pleasure of hearing her scream at the yard workers who were using a gas blower to clean the courtyard. She chased three men out of the courtyard while screaming, "Get out God damn you! DON'T you DARE come back in here!" She screamed obscenities at them, and believe me - they ran like hell to get away from her. I think I am starting to smell ink in her future...the wet ink on a freshly written eviction notice.

Oddly enough, I had trouble sleeping the other night and woke about 3:00 AM to the sound of a trash truck picking up trash. An hour or so later, I woke again. This time it was the incoherent ranting of a mentally ill man (apparently unrelated to my neighbor) who was wandering up and down the street. He stopped in front of my apartment building, and I couldn't help but wonder if he was picking up on the vibrations that surely must emanate from my insane neighbor. It occurred to me that they could be kindred spirits. I almost expected to see him howling up at the moon as he searched forlornly for his mate, who is no doubt sleeping fitfully three doors down from me. I watched him out of my window until he wandered out of site still bellowing random nothings into the night, then I went back to bed. As soon as I was about to nod off, I heard him coming back up the street, so I got up and watched him until he meandered back in the other direction. On the same morning that I saw my neighbor tilting at windmills in the median, I also saw the ranting man - he only made it about two blocks up the road over the course of 4 hours. Very disheartening.