Bloated Pat Conroy, Economical Lee Stringer & the Ongoing Progress Report

[mallorys_camera]

Reading Lee Stringer’s GRAND CENTRAL WINTER: Stories From the Street. Lee Stringer is a surprisingly unsentimental crackhead who spent eleven years living homeless on the streets of New York City. One imagines that if Samuel Delaney were to meet Lee Stringer, he’d fall instantly in love – even now that Stringer has pulled himself up by the bootstraps and resides – resides! – in the town of Mamaroneck just north of the Bronx, one senses that his fingernails are dirty.

The book itself is slight, a series of vignettes that don’t seem to be arranged in any particular order. As much as anything it reminded me of early George Orwell. I found myself wanting more. I was never entirely convinced that economy was a deliberate editorial choice: though Stringer puts on a jaunty face throughout, never ever feeling sorry for himself, I imagine the truth is there’s a monotony to surviving on the streets, a day-in day-out drudgery, that doesn’t really loan itself to the kind of vivid memories a writer can pillage.

There are some really brilliant observations in the book. My favorite:

I wear an official Street News ID badge when I work. It doesn’t carry any legal weight. It’s meant to connote that we vendors are involved in a legitimate enterprise. But the premise of Street News – helping the homeless – presents people with a more compelling reason to buy the paper than to read it. And an entirely different thought process goes into that decision. One that, in unfortunate contradiction to the badge, positions the seller as a ward of the buyer. It’s a conundrum that, try as I may, I can’t seem to find my way around.

Also gobbled down – and trust me, “gobbled” is the operative action verb here – Pat Conroy’s new novel, South of Broad. It gave me a stomach ache. This book is a big, bloated horror with enough flowery landscape metaphor to launch a whole new literary convention – not purple prose, pink prose; just a shapeless, plotless mess, a cardboard stage for paper dolls left out in the rain.

Yet Conroy writes compulsively readable prose. From the simplest syntactical point of view, Conroy can write; his objects follow subjects and verbs in a lyrical fashion. Indeed Conroy may be the perfect writer for anyone suffering from that form of Alzheimer’s that erodes memory into simple 5 minute plug-in modules: as long as you confine yourself to the pleasures of a single page, it’s an entertaining read.

Also watched The Hangover. Can you tell that it’s five degrees out – minus twelve with the wind chill factor? That there’s a foot of snow on the ground and I’m not leaving the house, not even to walk the dogs? I was disappointed in The Hangover because it was not funny. Not even a little funny. And I’d really loved Role Models.

Also wrote something like 3000 words yesterday, like the insane little hypergraphic I am:

12196 / 120000

Gonna have to produce something like 2600 words a day to finish this first draft in 6 weeks. Hardly seems doable. The ghost of Dr. H – perpetually lodged in my amygdala – is shaking his head: Patrizia, Patrizia… once again you are setting yourself up to fail. Still, six weeks from now my life becomes infinitely more complicated. I’m not sure I’ll have the time for spec projects six weeks from now. Gotta make those ice sculptures while the snow is on the ground.

Comments

[jdquintette.livejournal.com]

: though Stringer puts on a jaunty face throughout, never ever feeling sorry for himself, I imagine the truth is there’s a monotony to surviving on the streets, a day-in day-out drudgery, that doesn’t really loan itself to the kind of vivid memories a writer can pillage.

Though my own experiences living on the street ended twenty ears ago, I don't recall them s "monotonous." In fact each day generally brought such a host of often unique horrors, abuses and life-threatening nastiness that the only way I could deal without coming apart was to forget them as quickly as possible. In retrospect I think of rabbits, who supposedly have just about no long-term memory at all, because they have so many predators that actually remembering each close shave would result in a nervous breakdown and loss of ability to cope.

If I was a betting man, I'd wager that the original manuscript was much longer, and the editors tossed the endless horror stories as relentlessly unreadable.

When I went into therapy in 1991, the first thing the shrink did was ask me to tell my whole life story in as much detail as possible. It took three sessions and was incredibly depressing. It contained a lot of anecdotes I'd retailed before as funny stories and party pieces, but the full narrative was a real bummer and something no one would want to read, believe me.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Seriously, you should hunt down this book. You would like it very much. And I'll bet you're right that the horror stories were edited down.

[bel-ebat.livejournal.com]

not purple prose, pink prose; just a shapeless, plotless mess, a cardboard stage for paper dolls left out in the rain.

i love that.

i am going to look into the first.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Definitely requires you to think. Might want to put it off till yr next break from law school.