Thane Tierney

Fiction

Portrait of the writer as an artist

Review by Thane Tierney

It’s a tempting, if somewhat hazardous, pursuit to try to pull back the authorial curtain to see if you can divine the actual novelist standing in the flesh of one of his characters. But that temptation was never stronger than in The Petting Zoo, the final book by Jim Carroll, who died in 2009.

If you don’t recall Carroll from his poetry collections (including Living at the Movies and Fear of Dreaming), or his '80s-era punk rock albums such as Catholic Boy and Dry Dreams, you’re almost certain to remember Leonardo DiCaprio’s portrayal of the writer in the movie adaptation of his groundbreaking memoir, The Basketball Diaries. This book, his only novel, has been a work-in-progress for the better part of two decades, as Carroll often recited excerpts from it at poetry readings going back to the early '90s.

Bouncing aimlessly between the poles of a mild case of Asperger’s Syndrome and ADHD, the story’s protagonist, painter Billy Wolfram, came to the notice of critics at a nearly age, but he’s reached a crisis of confidence. While attending an opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Wolfram is thrown into a dissociative episode after seeing a Velázquez painting, and gets tossed into the loony bin for a brief stay. Seems that the Velázquez has called into question everything he thought he knew about art, and the painter finds himself in a state of paralysis . . . not a happy circumstance when one has a major show—with major expectations—in the offing.

As the clock ticks down to zero hour, Wolfram retraces his history, trying to regain his mojo and get back into the zone he had found so effortlessly throughout is career. He’s aided in his quest by a talking raven, who appears (much as in Poe’s famous poem) unbidden, and seemingly placed by the hand of God both to mock him in his current state and to spur him on to greater insight.

The parallels between Wolfram and Carroll are unmistakable, almost to the point of being unsettling: the Catholic upbringing; the occasionally surreal trips down New York City’s mean streets; the connection with rock and roll; the unsparing self-criticism that pervades his thinking. Carroll had never been anything less than brutally honest in his art-as-confessional-booth persona, both in real life and in this novel, made all the more poignant by the fact that he passed away while applying the final brush strokes to its literary canvas. So we’ll never hear Carroll’s thoughts about how much of himself he poured into Wolfram, or whether he considered the novel’s painter an alter-ego.

But when the final chapter is written—and this one appears to be it—Carroll can rest assured that his art will continue to inspire, and provoke, readers for generations to come.

Thane Tierney lives in Los Angeles and collects contemporary art when he’s not writing.

It’s a tempting, if somewhat hazardous, pursuit to try to pull back the authorial curtain to see if you can divine the actual novelist standing in the flesh of one of his characters. But that temptation was never stronger than in The Petting Zoo, the…

Fiction

Only in your dreams

Review by Thane Tierney

What if your dreams came true? Not the ones where you win the lottery or dance in the moonlight with Ralph Fiennes, but ones where you see a guy is going to get hit by a bus . . . and he does. Would you uproot your existence and gamble your relationship and future on a few moments of REM-sleep that might be prophetic?

David Winkler, the protagonist of Anthony Doerr's richly textured first novel, About Grace, has just this issue. He "sees" his beloved infant daughter Grace drowning, and tries to save her the only way he knows how: by walking away from her, her mother, his country and his life. Doerr sets his leading man's pinball in motion, making us care more about the arc of its caroms than the score it generates. By turns weak and heroic, insightful and tone-deaf, Winkler is always compelling in his search for a past he desperately hoped to avoid. When he finally makes his return to Alaska to discover Grace's fate 25 years after he first left home, Winkler must face the result of his choice.

Water inhabits the book as it does nature; inexorable, perilous, essential, mutable in its many forms. It seeps into the cracks of Winkler's psyche, bridging his past and future. From muggy Caribbean dog days to bitter Alaskan winters, Winkler grapples with the substance in a manner befitting his background in hydrology. It's not surprising that he finds water so endlessly captivating; as it often does in nature, the substance acts as a mirror for life itself.

Doerr, who won acclaim for his 2001 short story collection, The Shell Collector, again takes a poignant look at the power of nature and the relative frailty of human connections. Accomplished and sensitive, About Grace should draw more praise for this talented young author.

Thane Tierney is a record executive in Los Angeles.

 

What if your dreams came true? Not the ones where you win the lottery or dance in the moonlight with Ralph Fiennes, but ones where you see a guy is going to get hit by a bus . . . and he does. Would…

FictionHistorical Fiction

Spinning fiction from fact

Review by Thane Tierney

Phil Fitch has reached a crossroads in his post-'Nam existence: he can play out a string of low-wage, brain-numbing jobs, or take a crack at two hundred large and retire in comfort. The only hitch is, he's not gambling on slots in Vegas. He's hijacking a plane. In the unlikely event he isn't killed by cops or a faulty parachute, he'll be on the lam forever. After being laid off from his janitorial gig and losing his wife, that doesn't seem like such a bad option.

Roscoe Arbuckle is tired of being called "Fatty." He's exhausted from riding the celebrity roller coaster from obscurity to renown and back again (with some breathtaking peaks and valleys in between). He wiles away the days hooked on morphine carefully administered by his valet, the only remnant of his fame. Like a trained seal, he performs his final trick: telling his life story in doses as carefully measured as the drug.

Phil and Roscoe are people you've heard of, but don't know. The former is infamous plane hijacker D.B. Cooper's alternate identity in Elwood Reid's tautly strung novel, D.

B. (Doubleday, $23.95, 288 pages, ISBN 0385497385). The latter is best known as "Fatty" Arbuckle, film comedy megastar of the 1920s, rendered vividly in Jerry Stahl's highly entertaining I, Fatty. Both Reid (author of If I Don't Six and Midnight Sun) and Stahl (whose Permanent Midnight became a Ben Stiller movie) prove themselves capable practitioners of what might be called fauxography, the part-biography, part-fiction trend that has grown out of the '70s "new journalism" movement. Authors have long been putting words in their characters' mouths, but imagining the life of a real person has its pitfalls. Though weaving fact and fiction can often make for a truer, more revealing portrait of a person than bare fact alone, other people's memories are just waiting out there to indict and contradict one's work. (Just ask Pulitzer prize-winning biographer Edwin Morris, author of Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan.) Fortunately for Reid and Stahl, the subjects of their novels are either little known or little remembered. Each author has breathed the second and third dimensions into these real-life figures, allowing them to emerge from the page into our consciousness.

Fitch/Cooper, a shadowy figure at best, only gained fame as "D.

B." Cooper due to a reporter's error. The known facts are that a man calling himself Dan Cooper hijacked a Northwest Orient Boeing 727 on Thanksgiving eve in 1971, parachuting out with his $200,000 ransom over Washington state. Reid speculates that Mexico would be the logical place for a man with a large cache of purloined cash and a "wanted" poster. As Cooper immerses himself into the easy life south of the border, his former FBI nemesis attempts a more conventional retirement. When circumstances dictate Cooper's return, Reid expertly renders their pas de deux, ratcheting up the tension to a surprising conclusion.

Roscoe Arbuckle, on the other hand, was, in his day, about as high-profile as they come. Meticulously researched by Stahl, I, Fatty traces Arbuckle's life from unwanted child to silent film superstar to unwitting fall guy for a movie industry demonized by the era's moralists. Told in the first person, it's the kind of celebrity "autobiography" one could only dream of in this era of gatekeeper publicists and spin control. Stahl unravels the film legend's life with a clear-eyed and unsentimental perspective. In one passage, he's asked by a nurse if he is Roscoe Arbuckle. "Well," he replies, "I'd hate to look like this and not be Roscoe Arbuckle." How could you not be charmed by that? Arbuckle's charisma overshadows the fact that he looks like a sideshow freak, is physically and psychically dysfunctional, and spends the last third of the book enduring the effects of two murder trials. He is eventually found innocent of the charges, but this particular phoenix arose from the ashes with both wings charred. Spinning the last of his tale, he wistfully accepts his fate: "I ask you again, what was anything a fat man accomplished? A pile of leaves waiting for a wind." Cooper may still be at large, or he may be among his own pile of leaves somewhere in a Washington forest. It's uncertain whether either he or Arbuckle lived out their days as their fauxographers would have it. But both of these highly engaging novels allow the reader to suspend disbelief and make one wish it were so.

 

Roscoe Arbuckle is tired of being called "Fatty." He's exhausted from riding the celebrity roller coaster from obscurity to renown and back again (with some breathtaking peaks and valleys in between). He wiles away the days hooked on morphine carefully administered by his valet, the only remnant of his fame. Like a trained seal, he performs his final trick: telling his life story in doses as carefully measured as the drug.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Ivy Pochoda

Interview by Thane Tierney

After prowling the sweltering streets of Red Hook, Brooklyn, in her 2013 novel, Visitation Street, Ivy Pochoda hops to the opposite coast for Wonder Valley, a Los Angeles portrait as tough and beautiful as desert grasses. The author talks about her accidental Wonder Valley home, New York versus California noir, the ties between writing and playing professional squash and more.

What initially attracted you to the Wonder Valley area, which is both rather remote and obscure, even to longtime Angeleans?
Well, I had intended to rent a house in Joshua Tree for the weekend which is a rite of passage it seems when you move to LA. But I guess I wasn’t exactly paying attention to the map, since the house (which was an amazing place that was entirely covered in Gaudi-style tile) was nearly 30 minutes east in Wonder Valley. I’d never been somewhere like it before. I’d been in New England wilderness, but desert wilderness was wilder and fiercer. I was immediately enthralled.

All of your characters seem somewhat damaged, and there are no clear-cut “heroes,” yet most of them wind up being sympathetic. Do you think there are legitimate white knights among us, or are we all encumbered by baggage that only becomes visible when our lives begin to unravel?
Hmmmm . . . I don’t know. I think that there are certainly people who are driven to help or bring about change more than others. But that does come at a price and often means sacrificing some other part of yourself. And sacrificing yourself for others, being a white knight as you say, definitely changes you for better, but often for worse. So I guess I do think we are all encumbered in some way. How could we not be? We are all products of our past experiences. That’s what allows us to read and interpret the world. And it’s often hard to manage these experiences. They are what inform our decisions, good or bad.

What prompted you to use the naked man as the starting point for your book? After all, these people could have initially intersected at the airport or at an AA meeting or at some sort of event that brings people from disparate backgrounds together.
I was, as always, inspired by Don DeLillo’s Pafko at the Wall (the prologue to Underworld) in which he uses the famous “Shot Heard Round the World” as a nexus around which to focus not simply the entire city and its various inhabitants but also the entire global nuclear anxiety. So I wanted to kick my story off with an event, something to which all of Los Angeles, at least for one moment, might pay attention. And it’s based on something I remember from my teenage years—a friend of friend, who, after a rather late night, ran naked across the Brooklyn Bridge with fatal consequences.

There’s a very visual, almost cinematic, element to Wonder Valley. Do you imagine joining (or hope to join) some of your writing peers such as Michael Connelly and T. Jefferson Parker on the big screen?
The fact that you call them my peers! I can retire now. Joking aside, that’s something I’d like to do, but I’m conflicted about. I’m not a screenwriter by nature. I love the strange, deep texture of a novel—the way there isn’t pressure to make things HAPPEN ALL THE TIME! I like the languid, lazy river quality. And I don’t want to lose that. I don’t like rules. However, given the right project (my own I’d say) I’d definitely give it a whirl. But I’m not one of those Hollywood-or-bust types.

You played squash professionally. Does your experience as an athlete inform your writing, or was squash just an activity you used to escape from the drudgery of sitting in front of a screen?
Other way around—I used writing to give meaning to the repetitive drudgery of training! But the two activities definitely complement each other. There’s an immediate gratification when you win a squash match, but finishing a novel is a slow burn with a huge payout. There are similarities, too. Writing and professional sports both teach you self-reliance and self-motivation. No one is going to make you write, and no one is going to make you train. And you only have yourself to blame for your own laziness.

You moved from Brooklyn nearly a decade ago, which, much like the West Adams area in which you live now, has some rough edges but is gentrifying. What do you find different about life on the West Coast, and what effect do you think being a transplant has on your insights into Los Angeles?
LA remains a mystery to me in many ways. And I like that. I feel that even driving my normal routes, I can manage to look at everything with fresh eyes. And perhaps since I came out rather recently and don’t have much to do with Hollywood or the beach, I have less of a preconception about LA. I’ve had to stake out my own neighborhoods which are not the ones most people traditionally associate with Los Angeles. My city seems to stretch farther to the east and to the south than is typical.

Visitation Street was East Coast; Wonder Valley is West Coast. What differentiates New York and California noir, and do you have a preference?
I’m not really a huge student of noir. But I think that the abundant sunshine in Los Angeles certain provides a brilliant contrast with nefarious doings. We expect darker behaviors in a place like New York. But out here, noir is stealthy and surprising. I happen to really like California noir for that reason—the contrast between place and subject matter is incredibly appealing. The sunshine is deceptive and definitely capable of making you crazy.

What are you working on next?
I’m thinking of writing another LA novel. I have to write about the place I live. I’d wanted to write a novel set in Maine where I spend time in the summers. But it’s not as immediate to me. So LA, it is. Perhaps something set close to my home in West Adams.

 

Thane Tierney lives in Inglewood, California, and spent several years commuting daily on the 110 from his home in Inglewood to his office at Warner Bros. Records in Burbank. He never saw a naked guy jogging on it.

After prowling the sweltering streets of Red Hook, Brooklyn, in her 2013 novel, Visitation Street, Ivy Pochoda hops to the opposite coast for Wonder Valley, a Los Angeles portrait as tough and beautiful as desert grasses. The author talks about her accidental Wonder Valley home, New York versus California noir, professional squash and more.

Fiction

Perestroika in Paris

Review by Thane Tierney

We humans like to imagine that we know what our animal friends are thinking, but in Perestroika in Paris, Jane Smiley actually burrows into the craniums of a menagerie that includes a horse, a dog, a raven, some rats and the humans they interact with, resulting in a remarkable novel that splits the difference between Charlotte’s Web and Animal Farm.

At the outset, a careless trainer leaves a stall unlocked, and the curious filly Paras (short for Perestroika) wanders away from the racetrack and into the City of Lights. Paras knows the things a thoroughbred would know—her lineage, for instance—but not much else. In the city, Paras meets a worldly dog named Frida, who has been forced to fend for herself since her owner went missing. Like any street survivor, Frida knows how to avoid the gendarmes and which tricks will con treats from the citizenry.

The adventure shifts into high gear when the pair is introduced to a raven, Sir Raoul Corvus Corax, whom Smiley imbues with intelligence, twitchiness and a certain French je ne sais quoi. With winter approaching, Frida and Paras face some crucial decisions regarding housing and food. While neither is equipped with the capacity for long-term logistical planning, their animal instincts kick in, propelling them to a surprising conclusion.

To call this book “charming” might be damning it with faint praise, but Smiley has created an otherworldly universe in which her makeshift animal family supports one another in an environment that, while not necessarily hostile, is certainly hazardous. Perestroika in Paris takes its place alongside the likes of Through the Looking-Glass, in that it will reward both precocious young readers and their parents with a sense of wonder and whimsy.

We humans like to imagine that we know what our animal friends are thinking, but in Perestroika in Paris, Jane Smiley actually burrows into the craniums of a menagerie that includes a horse, a dog, a raven, some rats and the humans they interact with, resulting in a remarkable novel that splits the difference between Charlotte’s Web and Animal Farm.

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