Beautiful Ruins By Jess Walter

I don’t get writer-envy often, but Jess Walter’s seemingly effortless efforts make me want to alternately squash him like a cockroach, and kiss him full mouth with lots of tongue!  I fell in lust with Walter’s writing via his 2009 book, The Financial Lives of the Poets, about a guy who quits his job to create a website featuring poetry about finance and money. Check out this NPR excerpt and you’ll see why I'm goofy over this guy.

Beautiful Ruins first drew me in with its cover, featuring an azure seascape and cream-colored cliffs dappled with pastel houses. But when I saw Jess Walter’s name, I sniffed and walked away thinking “I won’t be seduced by some pretty, opportunistic play on my weakness.” Two weeks later I bought it thinking, “This better be damn good.”  It was.

Beautiful Ruins is a story about love and dreams and how reality and chance mold them into our stories. It begins in 1962, with a humble yet illogically optimistic innkeeper, Pasquale, in a remote Mediterranean fishing village, and the young, beautiful actress, Dee, who accidentally lands on his shore. We are then transported to modern-day Hollywood, where an aging Italian man arrives at a movie studio searching for the same beautiful actress. Back and forth we glide, as Walter spins a fascinating tale and cadre of characters and happenings spanning 50 years. One of the most interesting characters, included to great affect, is Richard Burton (yes, the), who is involved with Dee during the making of the movie Cleopatra.

Jess Walter’s (pictured) has a number of writing talents, but my personal favorite is his sense of humor. It's not just that he's funny. You think he's delivered the punch line, then he says something else so clever that you laugh because it is funny and because it is so ridiculously clever. For example, this description of a Hollywood producer:

The first impression one gets of Michael Deane is of a man constructed of wax, or perhaps prematurely embalmed. After all these years it may be impossible to trace the sequence of facials, lifts and staples, collagen implants, tannings, cyst and growth removals, and stem-cell injections that have caused a seventy-two-year-old man to have the face of a nine-year-old Filipino girl.

Beautiful Ruins is a fun romp through the lives of the almost ruined lives of a lively group of beautiful characters, and is also a comfortable and entertaining reminder of how life simultaneously beats us down and makes us our most glorious selves. Read Beautiful Ruins. It is a truly novel novel.

One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times - Chapter 94

#94 - Eating beans is a sign that you are poor.

Photo is of mom and me having Champagne in the hot tub, around 2003. 

Back when I was a kid and mom would say things like #94 above, it just seemed like a simple declaration. Now it seems much more complex. I’m not sure if that’s because life is more complex, or because I am mature or both or neither.

Granted, beans are one of the least expensive things we can eat, but they are also one of the most nutritious. Perhaps the more significant issue is why mom would say that eating beans is a sign that you are poor. I can’t help but wonder if this is one of the many spin-offs of the Great Depression, when apparently many, many people had very little to eat. Perhaps people who ate food other than beans during that time were relatively “wealthy.”

I wonder if my mother experienced hunger. I wonder if my mother experienced poverty.  I wonder why it mattered to mom to not appear to be “poor,” and what, in her day constituted poor. These seem such trivial matters, but they really aren’t because they are the things that shape our lives. And yet I would never think to ask my mom these questions. And I can’t because she is no longer with us.

On a less melancholy level, #94 doesn’t seem that far from some people’s wish to appear wealthier than they are. We buy houses, cars and clothing that are less expensive models of more expensive versions. And some people really seem so driven to homogeny – only eating, doing, wearing, living like the people they want to be.

By the way, did you know that you can leave beans, or any food for that matter, sitting out of the refrigerator for up to 24 hours and they won’t spoil if you do not put an airtight lid on them? Mom said to boil beans (or whatever), or rewarm adequately within 24 hours and the dish will not spoil. I’ve done this for years, without poisoning anyone, and it really works.

Myself, I like beans cooked with bacon and beer and lots of cumin and garlic, and served with cornbread and green onions. And admittedly, when I’m feeling a little financially pinched, I always think of cooking a big pot of beans. So maybe mom was right, eating beans is a sign that you are poor.

Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story by D. T. Max

Every time I read David Foster Wallace’s writing I feel like a hamster on an exercise wheel. The more I read the faster my mind moves until I become intellectually exhausted and have to slam the book shut and go do something mindless. D. T. Max’s biography of David Foster Wallace, Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story, had the same effect.

I suppose I should tell you a little about David Foster Wallace, so here you go, in 25 words (a personal challenge): Born into academia, brilliant, driven, sometimes professor, published, a substance abuser, constantly depressed, suicidal, and horribly insecure about his looks, women, penis size, and writing.

I didn't even know who David Foster Wallace was until shortly after he committed suicide in 2008, and a book club friend recommended Wallace’s book, Consider The Lobster, which is actually one of his lighter tomes. I really loved how Wallace made me think differently about things, so I read David Lipsky's book,  Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, about a road trip he took with Foster Wallace.  Around the same time, I stumbled upon Mary Karr’s fabulous book Lit, and found out that she and Wallace were ill-fated and ill lovers – both brilliant writers and substance abusers. So long story short, I've become a bit of a David Foster Wallace junkie, and had to read Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story. 

Did I enjoy it? Well yes, in the way that you enjoy a long, hot, sweaty run. You know it is good for you and you feel magnanimous in your discipline, and even in love with the run once it is completed. The major difference being that unlike running, while reading Every Love Story, I didn’t want to stop. To the point, neither David Foster Wallace nor D. T. Max are casual reads. They delve deeply and use big words.

KEY WEST 2012