Thomas Mullen

(First, apologies for the lack of posts all summer. My family and I have just relocated from Washington, DC, to Atlanta, and my life has been consumed by realtors and title attorneys, box cutters and bubble wrap. What little time for writing I've been able to squirrel away has been devoted to editing my forthcoming second novel, The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers. I promise to be a better blogger this autumn. And to drink less coffee, and to think purer thoughts, and to call my mother more often...)

When I opened the New York Times Web page the other day on my pirated and very slow wireless signal (still setting up the new Mullen office), I saw the photo of that familiar bandana-ed head above the headline "The Magic of David Foster Wallace." I thought, oh joy, a new DFW book is coming out! I had no idea! So I clicked on the headline and was stunned to learn that Mr. Wallace, 46, took his own life last weekend.

DFW is the Sonic Youth of contemporary American fiction. Just as the unusual and challenging but brilliant sounds crafted by Thurston Moore & Co. inspired a litany of "alternative" bands who achieved more crossover success than they themselves ever did, DFW's dense and unusual but horizon-expanding books probably kept away a good deal of casual readers even as they laid the groundwork upon which many of today's most heralded writers stand. His influence on the last decade-plus of fiction cannot be overlooked; it is hard to imagine the novels of Dave Eggers or Jonathan Safran Foer, to name only two, existing in their current forms without Wallace showing up to show us how many different forms great fiction can take.

I read Infinite Jest during my first year out of college. I was living in Boston and I clearly remember lugging that enormously heavy tome with me on the Boston buses, to the orange line at Sullivan Square, through the bowels of the T, to my horrible first job, and over to the Common on my lunch breaks. I somehow managed to read the 1,000+ page monster in only one month, a surprisingly short period mainly because I made a point of taking it with me wherever I went that April (I still remember the month!) and cramming one or two pages of reading into every elevator ride, on-hold call, and burrito-microwaving I could. I loved it. Loved it so much that not only did I march out to buy his other books, but I flipped to the back jacket and made a point of buying the works of the writers who had blurbed it, most of whom I'd never heard of in 1997 but have since taken their rightful places as Literary Bigshots (nice to meet you, Mr. Franzen and Mr. Eugenides).

Infinite Jest had a huge influence on me, and it affected my writing in, I admit, ways that were not entirely good for me or my early readers. I was one of the nameless thousands who wrote terrible imitation Wallace for at least a few years: run-on sentences that were equal part erudite academic jargon and hipster slang, intentionally difficult sequences of narrative disconnection, three adverbs when two or even one would have sufficed, occasional uses of acronyms and strange terms without explaining what they meant until like the thirtieth page, the use of the word "like," etc. etc. (This influence probably is not at all apparent in my first novel, but it sure is there in my earlier, failed, unpublished first novels.) So many of us have imitated him, and none of us could get it right. None of us had his energy -- that's what caught you and made you want to keep going, until, almost without realizing it, you were as addicted to his prose style and pace and skewed viewpoints as his characters were addicted to drugs and sports and money and sex. I've been thinking a lot lately about Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys, a very different novel, but along with Jest it was a hugely inspiring book for me during that scary first year after graduation. In Wonder Boys, protagonist Gray Tripp is a drug-addicted novelist who has written a 2,000+ page book that is nowhere near finished; when asked why it's so long, he says "I couldn't stop." In a similar but far less scatological way, that sums up the experience of reading Wallace -- you read him and read him because you couldn't stop.

It's weird too that my first-ever blog post last spring was about writers who died young and/or suffered from mental illness. I did not realize we would be adding another exalted name to those unfortunate ranks, certainly not one I was such a big fan of. I didn't see this one coming. But at the same time, sadness and depression were always a big part of his art (one of his best stories was called "The Depressed Person"), so it isn't surprising to find that they were part of his life as well.

Someone once said (Tolstoy, probably) that when a writer is tackling the ending of a book, he or she should aim for "unpredictable inevitability." The reader should be surprised by the ending, but at the same time, on reflection, it should feel inevitable, that it never could have happened any other way. I wish this had happened any other way. I wish that the man who wrote such inspiring fiction was still doing so and, more importantly, was as happy as I was when reading his work.

Just last week, before hearing the news, I had been talking with a writer friend who mentioned that he enjoyed reading Haruki Murakami much more in college than he does now, and I mentioned that I'm the same way with Don Delillo. We talked about how there are some writers who seem to appeal more to the intellectual side of our brain and less to the emotional, and how these writers resonate a bit more with the college and academic crowd but ring less true as we grow older or leave that cloistered world. Which isn't a negative judgment or a positive one, and maybe isn't fair or right, but hey, the fact is, I so loved Infinite Jest when I was 22 that I reread most of its 1,000+ pages, but as I read Wallace's other fiction (his first novel and his short stories) over the next decade, they didn't quite grab me as much, and a few years ago I mentally assigned him to that College Cultist section of my bookshelf. I bought Oblivion, his final book of short stories, a while ago but still haven't cracked it open. (His essays and journalism, however, are another matter -- absolutely goddamn worship-inducing fantastic.) I'm rethinking this appraisal of Wallace now, and remembering the ways he let his tiny moral and emotional streak poke out of all that postmodern haze every now and then. Sometimes we make people laugh or we show off our intelligence because we're insecure, and then we suddenly open up, and we hope people didn't miss that key moment.

Wallace did write a Big Important essay in which he called on young writers to stop with the solipsistic/narcissistic gimmickry and instead to dare their fiction to tackle the Big Important Moral Issues of the age the way 19th Century novelists did, but he's been criticized for failing to do this with his more recent fiction, a criticism I agreed with. But I certainly plan to pull those giant books (in more ways than one) off my bookshelf again and take another visit to DFW's odd and troubling and brilliant and inspiring universe. There was always a lot of sadness in there, and reading him will never be the same, just as listening to Nevermind was never the same after Kurt pulled the trigger. The sadness will feel stronger. But all the sad and difficult stuff, as any writer of postmodern inclinations will agree, only makes the sudden, surprising moments of sweetness and light that much sweeter.


link to this | File:  Writing 

I was born in 1974, which means that the summer Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom hit the screens, I was 10, the perfect age to appreciate -- indeed, adore -- that film. I saw it in the theaters six times. I wanted to be Indiana Jones -- I even received, for my birthday that summer, an official Indiana Jones fedora, which I wore pretty much constantly until I tragically lost it at the end of the summer (evidence is mixed as to where/when I lost it, but one theory is that I left it at the theater at viewing #6). I would have loved a bullwhip as well, but my parents wisely drew the line at weaponry, though I was able to find some rope in the garage that I could coil up through my belt loop.

People in my generation -- Generation X, as it has so condescendingly been labeled -- have been put in an odd position the last few years by Hollywood and its marketing, money-craving genius. First a few years ago, with the dreadful new Star Wars trilogy, and now this summer, with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, we are being granted the unusual opportunity to relive (or at least revisit) the experience of seeing the films that we so adored as children (or at least newer sequels/prequels to such films). This has proven to be rather "illuminating," to borrow the line from the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade -- an experience both fun and depressing. Kind of like growing up.

It is hard to overestimate the impact that Star Wars and Indiana Jones had on the collective childhood of Generation X. I do not think I was unusual in that I owned nearly all the Star Wars toys and spent countless hours with them, imagining new stories and adventures for Luke and Han, silently (or loudly) creating my own sequels in the backyards and family rooms of my family and friends. Indy didn't have the same relentless toy marketing as Star Wars, but damn those films were awesome -- I am somewhat unusual in my generation in that I liked the Indy movies even more than Star Wars. In addition to my fedora and makeshift bullwhip, I collected the Topps trading cards for Temple of Doom, I memorized all the film's lines, I owned the John Williams score on cassette and listened to it so much that even today I can hum you the entire film. Indy and Star Wars were the stories my generation was raised on, the atheistic religion we were baptised into, the background against which all other stories would be judged -- and our own stories would be created. When I was encouraged to enter a creative writing contest in the sixth grade, I wrote an Indiana Jones adventure. I lost the contest. But I probably had more fun than the winner did.

Of course, such naked adulation only sets you up for disappointment. Five years later, when Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade hit the theaters, I saw it on opening day (an early matinee, just after getting out of my last day of ninth grade, a terrible year for growing up). I thought the movie was lousy. It lacked the cool darkness of Temple of Doom, which had so appealed to my preadolescent mind; worse, it had replaced young Short Round, the sidekick with whom I had so identified, with Sean Connery's doddering old Henry Jones. And I was flabbergasted at the dogfight sequence in which Indy guns down two German planes -- hadn't we been told, in Temple of Doom, that Indy didn't know how to fly? Such narrative inconsistency stunned me. Only when I saw Last Crusade for a second time (a few days later) did I change my mind and realize, hey, that's a pretty good flick. The action sequences were as well orchestrated as the first two films', the lines were great, Indy kicked butt, and I wound up seeing Last Crusade at least two more times on the screen. I didn't run around with a fedora and fake whip anymore (hey, I was 15 now; even if I'd still wanted to wear the fedora -- which I probably did -- I knew I would have gotten my ass kicked). But at least I felt that Spielberg hadn't let me down.

And so, 24 years after Temple of Doom (and 19 years after the most recent Indy adventure), Spielberg & Lucas & Ford have graced us with installment four. I saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull last week, and I was underwhelmed. My wife liked it, but -- and she might disagree with me on this -- she never loved Temple of Doom the way I did. Maybe I was only repeating the experience of seeing The Last Crusade in '89, setting myself up for disappointment. Maybe I just wasn't in the proper mindset. But the dialogue seemed leaden, Ford seemed bored (which is even worse than seeming old), the CGI special effects were downright goofy (did we really need anthropomorphic ground hogs, or magic monkeys, or an amada of killer ants?), and too many sets looked like the half-hearted Hollywood stage sets that they surely were. It felt like the masterminds of the first three films were going through the motions, eager to cash their million-dollar checks. But maybe not. Maybe the fault was mine: for being older, for not being 10 anymore, however much Hollywood would like me to remain a bright-eyed ten-year-old forever.

The fact is, it is impossible for me, now, to love a movie as much as the ten-year-old me loved Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Even some of the critics who have given lukewarm or negative reviews to the new film still say that at least it was better than Temple of Doom. Indeed, many critics and fans claim that Temple of Doom was the worst of the Indy films, but the fact remains that I was 10 when I first saw it and I will never be 10 again, therefore no sequel can possibly do it justice. When I watch Temple of Doom these days (which I do at least every few years), I do see that the plot is as threadbare and ridiculous as Crystal Skull's, that the action sequences are full of events that defy the laws of physics (leaping out of a plummeting airplane and landing on an inflatable raft? not to mention the entire mining car chase scene), that the heroine is a sexist stereotype and that, yes, wow, there are some pretty icky racial stereotypes throughout the film. But the 10 year-old me was deliriously, gloriously blind to such flaws.

So even while I make note of all Temple of Doom's flaws, it is impossible for me to view it with fully adult eyes -- I know the darn thing so well and equate it so strongly with that period of my childhood that I can't give it a sober assesment. It's like being asked how pretty you think your mother is compared to other women her age. Um, how can I judge that, and how is my judgment fair? The re-creation of the Indy and Star Wars films puts us Gen Xers in an unusual position -- even if the new movies are indeed as good as or even better than some of the earlier ones, they can never seem that way to us, because they're still kid films, and we're not kids anymore. Just as I can't watch Temple of Doom with fully adult eyes, I couldn't watch Crystal Skull with kid eyes either. Sitting through the new movie is less like watching a new film and more like watching an old home video of the 10-year-old me: it's awkward and embarrassing, and I cringe now and then, thinking, "Wow, did I really look like that? Think like that? Dream like that?"

A friend of mine says summer action blockbusters like Crystal Skull are great so long as you "check your mind at the door" and have fun with it, but I've never known how to do this. My brain is kind of attached to the rest of me, to my capacity for wonder and excitement and thrills. I tell stories for a living, so I like to think I have a pretty healthy and vibrant inner child, but that still isn't enough to inoculate me against the kinds of gaping plot holes and clunky dialogue that might have washed over my younger self.

Just as a slightly older generation of writers like Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem drew its childhood inspiration from Spiderman and Hulk comics, Indy was huge in my formative storytelling brain. I can't help wondering how different a writer I might be if I hadn't been raised on the Indy films, and whether that's a good or bad thing. Even today, I'm typing this sentence beneath the watchful gaze of my framed Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom poster, which has been at my side throughout the writing of my first two novels (the second one coming soon to a bookstore near you, as the previews say). In it, Indy's holding a machete and standing in a temple entrance, looking not so much tough or angry as ready. Ready for whatever obstacles might come his way: stampeding Thugees, Chinese mafia, sophomore year of high school, first dates, college. He might not be the same guy after he's been confronted by and somehow survived these various cliffhangers, and his past might not make as much sense in a more adult future, but I'm still glad he let me tag along as his sidekick.


link to this | File:  Films 

Someone recently asked me if I had any "summer reading" picks, which got me to thinking of the whole concept of a Summer Read, or a Beach Read. People tend to think of trips to the beach (or any other vacation) as the time to pick up something trashy, or fun, or simple, or lesser than what one might ordinarily read. Which goes a long way toward explaining the kinds of books you'll usually find at airport kiosks. But I'm the guy who was once teased for taking The Brothers Karamazov to the beach, so I'm not your typical beach reader. I just enjoy reading novels too much -- and feel too aware of all the great books out there that I haven't gotten to yet -- to want to waste my time with O is For Overdone or something like that.

(And hey, I do have my guilty reading pleasures -- anyone who's as big a sports fan as I am spends way, way too much time reading about sports online. So don't think I'm trying to act all superior here. I too enjoy reading good junk, just not when it comes to novels.)

So, with those disclaimers dispensed with, if someone nonetheless asked me for some Summer Reading picks, here's what I'd recommend. I've broken them into two groups: Books That Are Sort of Like Thrillers, Only Way Better, and Books That Are Really Short:

Books That Are Sort of Like Thrillers, Only Way Better
There seems to be a growing subgenre out there of literary authors taking the basic ideas of hardboiled detective fiction and doing something crazy with it. Here are a few of my favorite examples:

Citizen Vince, or The Zero, by Jess Walter. My new favorite writer. Citizen Vince is about a smalltime New York hood who's been relocated to Spokane, WA, as part of the Witness Protection Program. In the days leading up to the 1980 Carter/Reagan elections, he is given his first-ever voter ID card as part of his new identity; meanwhile, he begins to fear that the mob has tracked him down. He becomes obsessed with both national politics and his own survival in a funny, entertaining story that would be particularly good to read in this election-year summer. Walter is a writer who deserves a lot more attention -- extremely readable yet brilliant, with characters you want to hang out with all day, at the beach or wherever. And if you like Citizen Vince and/or want something a tad more challenging and thought-provoking, I highly recommend The Zero, Walter's latest, which was nominated for the National Book Award. Sort of a cross between the film Memento and 9/11, it follows a police detective with serious memory problems who finds himself entangled with a shadowy government antiterror agency just after 9/11 -- he has gaps in his memory, so he keeps "appearing" in scenes but can't remember what he's supposed to do in them. Funny, smart, awesome.

Motherless Brooklyn, by Jonathan Lethem. A man with Tourette's Syndrome tries to investigate the murder of his friend and mentor, who was a smalltime Brooklyn gangster. As you can imagine, it is difficult to stealthily dig for clues when your condition requires you to shout "Eat me, Bailey!" every now and then. I, like many people, first "discovered" Lethem with this book, and I'm so glad I did.

The Intuitionist, by Colson Whitehead. In a somewhat alternate reality, elevator inspectors are as important as cops. When an elevator crashes on the shift of the world's first black female elevator inspector, she needs to investigate who is framing her and why. A clever racial allegory and a darn good yarn.

The Yiddish Policeman's Union, by Michael Chabon. Not much to say about this mega-best-seller that hasn't already been said. It's a 1940s style noir detective story set in a hypothetical present that imagines what would have happened if Alaska, rather than Israel, had become the post-WWII homeland for the Jews. The Coen Brothers are already slated to direct it, according to various Internet sites whose reliability I can't in any way vouch for.

In The Shadow of the Law, by Kermit Roosevelt. If you liked the movie Michael Clayton, you'll love this. It doesn't fit into the pseudo-hardboiled genre like the above books, but I wanted to give it a shout-out anyway. This first novel follows a number of lawyers, novice and veteran, ethical and shady, in a bigtime D.C. law firm as they get involved in two major cases. That sounds like a standard thriller, but what puts this far outside of Grisham or Turow territory is the attention paid to the different characters and their dilemmas, as well as Roosevelt's keen eye for exposing the sad ironies and moral tragedies inherent in the modern practice of law.

Books That Are Really Short
There is something to be said for being able to write a powerful, intelligent, artistic work in only 200 pages or so. I haven't come anywhere close myself. Also, there is something to be said for having a (physically) lightweight book in your beach bag or hiking sack or carry-on. Here are some that get it done with minimal blathering:

Bright Lights, Big City, by Jay McInerney. With so much '80s nostalgia in the air, it's a wonder this one isn't back on the bestseller lists. This is a seminal first novel about a young man losing his bearings in NYC, before novels about young men losing their bearings in NYC became standard requirements for writers who have MFAs and live in Brooklyn. And it's one of the only books I've read in a single plane flight.

The Passion, or Sexing The Cherry, by Jeannette Winterson. I haven't read her in years, but Winterson's first two novels are gorgeous stories that meld fairy tales with examinations of love and gender and history. I'm willing to bet Jonathan Safran Foer is a huge fan (and that is in no way a shot against Mr. Foer).

Anything Written By George Saunders. I can't even begin to describe how cool his short stories are, so I won't try.

The Committments, by Roddy Doyle. The best novel about music ever written. It's about a group of teens who form a soul covers band in 1980s Dublin. Hilarious, raunchy, and so, so smart about music and what it means to people. And you can read it in about the time it would take you to listen to Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club four times.

The Stranger, by Albert Camus. Guaranteed to win you as many weird looks at the beach as The Brothers Karamazov, but at only 1/10th the weight! Plus, it has a murder on the beach! If you want to mix existentialism with your mai-tai, this is it.

Happy Summer, everyone!

link to this | File:  Book Reviews 

OK, as promised, here's a link to my first-ever TV interview. The fine news anchors of WIVB, Buffalo's CBS affiliate, chose my book as their April choice for their monthly book club.

I happened to be in Upstate New York to take part in the "Tale for Three Counties" community reads project, so I met anchors Lisa Scott and Victoria Hong at a coffeeshop and chatted about the book. A surreal experience indeed. People trying to enjoy their cappucinos kept looking over at us with expressions like, "Who's that guy who thinks he's so important?" I felt kind of bad about that, as it felt very much like the coffeeshop I frequent here in DC, and I'm sure I would have given the same looks if someone had shown up with a video camera and microphones. They do serve up a damn fine cappuccino at Cafe Aroma, so if you're ever in Buffalo and need to kill some time and get a nice buzz going, that's your place.

Whenever I see incredibly friendly and energetic morning anchors on TV, I assume that they can't possibly be that energetic and friendly in real life, off camera, and that it's all an act. Well, I'm happy to report that they really are that energetic and friendly, or at least Lisa and Victoria were. And, in a relatively rare event with book/media things, they'd even read the book! And liked it! (Authors quickly get used to doing interviews with radio or magazine folks who clearly haven't read it and are only working off notes based on the book blurbs; that's just the way it usually works, so it was refreshing and flattering to be interviewed by people who'd actually read the thing.)

I haven't watched the interview myself yet, as it seems kind of narcissistic, but I suppose I will eventually. Hopefully I didn't look at the camera, or play with my hair too much.

link to this | File: 

What do soldiers read? Pretty much anything they can get their hands on, I've been told, as they don't have many options. Usually that means magazines, as English-language books in Iraq and Afghanistan are fairly scarce.

But a few writers and publishers are doing their part to increase the supply of good reading material among our troops abroad. It all started with a certain Col. George Reynolds, an avid reader who was one of the first people to send an email via my Web site (which you too can do by clicking here). Col. Reynolds also sent an email to a buddy of mine, Paul Malmont, whose action-packed first novel, The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, tells the tale of 1930s pulp fiction writers who get caught in a wild pulp tale of their own (it's a Book About Writers for people who don't read Books About Writers). After corresponding with the Colonel, Paul had a great idea: Why not send a box of his novels to troops in Iraq? And why not talk other writers into doing the same thing? By coordinating with the good Colonel, this is what happened. As a result, a dozen or so writers (at my last counting, but I could be way off) have sent off boxes of their books, and a number of publishers have ante-ed up as well.

So, if you're a writer, consider contributing by sending an email to Paul -- he's the contact for this awesome endeavor, which the Army anointed with the official and totally cool name of Operation Warrior Library. And if you're a reader, email a writer you like and ask him or her to contribute. (Other contributors include such personal favorites of mine as Glen David Gold and Alice Sebold.) It's a great, nonpolitical way to support our men and women who are out there risking their lives. Whether you're an Obamamaniac who wants the troops brought home today or a McCainiac who wants to leave them there another 100 years, sending them some quality reading material will, hopefully, provide them with some amount of respite from their challenging days and nights.

And you might even get a cool thank you gift: After receiving a couple boxes of my novel, Col. Reynolds sent me a crisp Iraqi dinar, complete with smiling image of Saddam Hussein.


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