Have a Reality Sandwich: Revisiting “Naked Lunch”

14 June 2024

Naked Lunch

William S. Burroughs

Grove Press, 1959; 193pp. Restored text ©2001; 280pp

Caution alert: this review contains disparaging language and drug lingo based on the text of the book

The text I used includes Naked Lunch¹ (the novel) plus:

“Original Introductions and Additions by the Author”:

Depositions: Testimony Concerning a Sickness (1960)
Post Script…Wouldn’t You? (1960)
Afterthoughts on a Deposition (1991)
Letter from a Master Addict to Dangerous Drugs (1956)

“Burroughs Texts Annexed by the Editors”:

Editors’ note
Letter to Irving Rosenthal (1960)
The Death of Mel the Waiter (undated)
Outtakes (11 items)

According to Burroughs, “The title means exactly what the words say: NAKED Lunch—a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.” (His upper case, from “Deposition,” p 199) — sort of a “reality sandwich.”

The book is composed of loosely connected vignettes, intended by Burroughs to be read in any order, following a junkie who takes on various aliases as he meanders around the world — though you’d be hard-pressed to know this without a Cliff’s Notes at your side.

Oddly, although the novel is written in a sort of non-linear, magical realism / Joycean / free-form style, mostly unintelligible, there are short parenthetical notes (usually to explain a slang cultural term) in the text that are perfectly understandably phrased. Since the novel went through numerous revisions and edits over the course of 7 (?) years, it’s possible that WSB added these in later versions. They certainly seem out of place (because they’re grammatically understandable), though helpful. As with Salman Rushdie², it helps if the reader has a bit of familiarity with the culture or can decipher the slang in its context, like “fuzz” “flatfoot,” “pod” and the phrase “spoon and dropper” (presumably the spoon to cook cocaine and the eye-dropper used by addicts as a makeshift syringe). Considering that Burroughs identified as gay, there are a numerous disparaging homosexual terms (fruit, queen, fag, etc, presumably allowable for insiders, like Gertrude Stein also, to use. See, e.g. the 1st page, depicted below).

Basically, you’re getting first-hand info, advice and descriptions from someone who probably knows more about the nature of drugs, the drug experience, and treatments than anyone in the world as well as hiding from the fuzz. But, of course, it’s coming from a drug-addled writer on the lam.

In the additional texts for this edition, WSB writes in a very intelligible, almost clinical style. This leads me to wonder if he was purposely writing in a free-form Faulknerian stream of consciousness style or simply laying down the text of the novel during his continual 40-year drug-induced state.

“The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets.” [Dr. Benway, a character in Naked Lunch, p22. Ironically, this could have been written by a commentator in 2024.]
“If you wish to alter or annihilate a pyramid in a serial relation, you alter or remove the bottom number. If we wish to annihilate the junk pyramid, we must start with the bottom of the pyramid: the Addict in the Street, and stop tilting quixotically at the “higher ups” so called, all of whom are immediately replaceable. The addict in the street who must have junk to live is one irreplaceable factor in the junk equation. When there are no more addicts to buy junk there will be no more junk traffic. As long as junk need exists, someone will service it.” [“Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness,” part of authors “Additions” to Naked Lunch, 202]. Burroughs goes on to say,” Addicts can be cured or quarantined…when this is done, junk pyramids of the world will collapse.”

[One doesn’t know how much credence to give WSB’s drug treatment claims (see below) but we have to concede that he’s probably tried them all]

In “Letter from a Master Addict to Dangerous Drugs” (addressed to a doctor, Aug 3, 1956) Burroughs gives a rather surprisingly comprehensive and academic-sounding list of major drugs of his time (223-229). The letter is actually a proposed article on the effects of various drugs he has used in the course of 10 “cures” (reprinted from The British Journal of Addiction, Vol 53, No. 2)

Opiates (morphine, Demerol, methadone, et al)
Cocaine
“Speed ball” – shooting cocaine at one-minute intervals alternating with shots of heroine/cocaine
Cannabis indica (hashish, marijuana)
Barbiturates
Benzedrine
Peyote (mescaline)
Banisteriopsis caapi (harmaline, banisterine, telepathine): Yagé or ayahuasca (“the most commonly used Indian names for a hallucinating narcotic that produces a profound derangement of the senses. Closely related to LSD6.”)
Nutmeg [really?]
Datura – scopolamine
Morphine addiction

List of possible treatment drugs he has used—but not necessarily endorsed

Reduction cures; Prolonged sleep; Anti-histamines; Apomorphine – best method of treating withdrawal that he has experienced: doesn’t eliminate withdrawal symptoms but reduces them to an endurable level; Cortisone; Thorazine; Reserpine; Tolserol; Barbiturates; Chloralhydrate and paraldehyde; Alcohol – absolutely contraindicated; Benzedrine; Cocaine – “goes double” re alcohol; Peyote, Banisteriopsis caapi

¹ not The Naked Lunch (though that may have been the original title)

² Rushdie’s (1988) The Satanic Verses is written in what is sometimes called “magical realism” — blurring the lines between fantasy and reality, a la Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Marquez. However, WSB’s style is more akin to a 1950s beatnik cafe poetry reading, like Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (one of his drug compadres) with disconnected phrases, hipster street allusions, drug, prostitute and police slang. In short, it’s not an easy read.

The text on the left is the opening of the book, exactly as published. The text on the right was taken somewhat randomly from p 49 (“hospital”). Click on items for better readability

Burroughs doing his ill-fated “William Tell” stunt

Meanwhile, the 1991 DVD version by David Cronenberg (115 min.) depicts how “Bill Lee, part time exterminator and full-time drug addict plunges into the nightmarish Interzone³, a netherworld of sinister cabals and giant talking bugs”—especially bugs in the form of typewriters. This gross-bug-as-typewriter theme is carried out throughout the movie but is not in the novel. The movie version does capture the drug culture aspects of the book but doesn’t particularly relate to the book’s barely readable stream of consciousness style—perhaps for good reason. In his DVD Commentary, Cronenberg says that he made up a lot of the material—like the vicious bug-typewriter talking from its ass. Thus, someone watching the video would not get a very good idea of how the novel goes about. Crone does point out instances that are based on actual book incidents and he says he “mingled” aspects of his own life in the movie. All in all, the movie is very easy to follow, once we understand that the main character is hallucinating a lot of the time—which can’t be said for the novel. The DVD has a special feature of Burroughs actually reading from his novel; interestingly, the reading doesn’t correspond to the published book in many places, which I attribute to WSB revising the book over the years. The movie was shot in Toronto and other Ontario locales, esp. for the Tangier scenes. Apparently they couldn’t manage a Tangier location because of the Gulf War at the time, but the cinematography is very realistic-looking for the period.

Overall, the screenplay is loosely based not only on Burroughs’ novel, but also on other fiction by him, and autobiographical accounts of his life. However, Cronenberg said it was necessary to “Throw the book away” as a direct adaptation would have been far too expensive and would be banned around the world.

³The Tangier International Zone — aka the “Interzone” — plays a key part in Burroughs work (as well as other expats). It was a 147 sq. mi. international zone centered on the city of Tangier from 1925 until being reintegrated into independent Morocco in 1956 (with some interruption). It was governed under a unique and complex system that involved various European nations, the U.S. (mainly after 1945), and the Sultan of Morocco, himself under a French protectorate.

Wonderful political satire (but not for Trumpers)

18 Oct 2023

Make Russia Great Again

(novel)

Christopher Buckley

Simon & Schuster, 2020. 274pp

This is a wonderful political satire skewering the Capitol’s Trumpist elites (many of whom despise him) in the run-up to the 2020 election — but almost too wonderful since many of the outrageous Trumpisms seem like they could be pulled from the daily news.

Buckley is an accomplished humor/satire writer, author of 19 books (including Thank You for Smoking) and he was chief speechwriter to then-Vice President George H. W. Bush so he knows something about the D.C. scene.

Character insulting the story’s narrator, Trump’s chief of staff: “Herb, Herb, Herb. You’re missing it. Did you sleep through all your classes at Trump University?” (146)
Someone describing Trump’s modus operandi: “It’s not enough that I win; others must suffer” (152).
“coastal, wine-sipping, bed-wetting elites” (199).
Re Trump: “an upside to his stable genius was that he had so many brilliant ideas, he simply couldn’t keep track of them all” (134).
Description of a White House chief of communications: “Greta was a highly attractive female: tall, dark haired, cheekbones like knives, great gams, high heels…and a balcony you could play Shakespeare from” (14).

There’s a particularly delightfully unique stylistic running joke. Whenever the book’s narrator wants to insult someone or use a demeaning adjective, he packages it with “I don’t want to say _____” and then uses the more polite term:

“I had a pretty good idea that the video of Mr. Trump—I don’t want to say ‘boning’—partnering in joy with Miss Sri Lanka…” (144).
“I felt that the early speech drafts were—I don’t want to say ‘harsh’— a bit over-edgy” (173)
“I made a mental note to be more—I don’t want to say ‘sycophantic’—proactive when it came to massaging the egos…” (14)

The narrative is essentially the tale of Herb Nutterman a former hospitality executive for various Trump properties, who somehow gets hornswoggled into being Donald Trump’s chief of staff after everyone else either gets fired or resigns. He’s continually caught in inescapable intrigues and revenges among other White House staffers; various Cabinet members; Vladimir Putin and a notorious Russian oligarch; news media; and the U.S.-Vatican embassy — where he is talked into dressing up as a monsignor in order to make an anonymous meeting in Rome. As they used to say, “hi-jinks ensue.”

Spoiler alert: one ongoing plot complication has Putin losing the latest Russian election…much to the dismay of the person who wins.

As is my custom, I need to point out at least two typos: pp 180 and 237

Heller – Portrait of an Artist

1 Sept. 2023

Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man

Joseph Heller

Simon & Schuster, 2000. 233 pp

I don’t really have much positive to say about this novel other than:

It’s by a notable, arguably one of the most famous modern-day authors¹, who died in 1999, just prior to publication
There are some great moments but I can’t think of a good reason to recommend anyone reading the book. (I had to punish myself using my old never-leave-a-great-author’s-book-unfinished mantra)

The problem is that the story…stories that is, wander all over the place: starting, stopping, going on way too long at times and way too short at others. Maybe this is just Heller’s unique style: stream of consciousness, non-chronological order and with little if anything to connect one anecdote to the next — often criticized as overlong and rambling. For what it’s worth, this seems to mimic what has been reported as his actual work process.²

Basically I will divulge that it’s the story–sorry, stories–of an aging, acclaimed formerly best-selling novelist who is trying to start a new project, partly to keep his wife appeased and partly because, well, he says he just wants to. In the process he ends up annoying just about everyone, especially his agent and other confidants.

His story ideas tend to borrow heavily from both his own prior works and Greek tragedies, which he proposes to “re-purpose” in some way.

There is one title (he mainly just has titles) that is intriguing to all concerned: A Sexual Biography of My Wife: A New Novel.

Sometimes his novel openings last just one paragraph while other times they literally drone on for a dozen boring pages.

But the big problem is that Heller can’t seem to write coherently as to basic paragraphing and dialogue snippets. Maybe that’s the effect he’s going for, a la some kind of magical realism. Unfortunately, this makes it nearly impossible to follow who’s talking, who’s typing, and whether any given story is one of the book’s authors writing a novel (e.g., Eugene Pota…which also turns out to be an acronym for Portrait Of An Artist) or someone writing about Pota highlighted in the book, or Heller himself. I’d say it was clever and imaginative, except it’s mostly just annoying. (Sorta like the odd comma placement in the book’s title)

That said, there are some memorable lines. Somebody named Gene (we’ve forgotten who it is, maybe a screen writer) goes to the doctor (Sol) who recommends neck surgery for a stiff neck

“Sol, do you know how they say ‘Fuck you’ in Hollywood?”
“How?”
“Say, ‘Trust me.'”

Gene resists the doctor, saying

“Don”t get me any appointment yet, not with any orthopedic surgeon.”

Sol replies:

“A neurosurgeon then? Would you prefer that? If you want a second opinion I can give one right now by repeating what I’m saying.” (181)

Later on, Pota is talking to his agent who asks:

“Why are you so determined to keep on writing anything at all? When you don’t have to. Force of habit?”

“I have,” confessed Pota, “nothing else to do. The phone isn’t ringing much anymore with calls I don’t want to receive. There are no faxes coming in with requests for interviews I don’t want to give, no invitations from people I don’t want to see for parties I don’t want to go to. Damn it, I miss those interruptions!

So this is a novel mainly about a novelist who starts writing and discarding various novels but in the course of which various other novelists pop up now and then, possibly writing about the novelist.

Many of the scenes and novel pages are often just a few words.

Spoiler alert:

Oh shit, sighed the elderly author, and chuckled to himself once more.

He was not surprised, and he began to think seriously of writing the book you’ve just read.

The End.

I found this book tucked away at a library discount book sale and picked it up as a sort of tribute to the author whose other books¹ I have proudly stored away in my personal library.

¹ Catch-22; Something Happened; Good As Gold

² “Heller did not begin work on a story until he had envisioned both a first and last line. The first sentence usually appeared to him ‘independent of any conscious preparation.'” In most cases, the sentence did not inspire a second sentence. At times, he would be able to write several pages before giving up on that hook. <Plimpton, George (Winter 1974), “The Art of Fiction 51: Joseph Heller” (PDF), The Paris Review, no. 60, archived from the original (PDF) on June 26, 2007>

Delightful teen religious lampoon

8 Aug 2023

Godless

Pete Hautman

Simon & Schuster, 2004. 198pp. Young adult fiction. With “Educator’s Guide.”

Although this is categorized by the publisher as “young adult fiction” it’s really a wonderful, insightful and wryly amusing adult novel about a group of teens in a small Midwest town during a typical slow-paced summer. They hang out at the local water tower and with nothing better to do found a prank religion called The Church of the Ten-Legged God (CTG). Led by Jason (aka The Big Kahuna), the “Chutengodians” band together, giving themselves church’y titles: Henry is the High Priest, Magda is the High Priestess, nerdy Shin is the First Keeper of the Sacred Text and Dan is First Acolyte. They celebrate the Sabbath on Tuesday, “because nothing else ever happens on a Tuesday” (40).

Fair warning, despite the teen prankishness, this is a really something that hardcore religionists would consider a “blasphemous” tale, not only because of the made-up religion but because of the various characters’ attitudes toward religion, esp. small town religiosity. Former altar boy and lapsed Catholic Jason expounds on the miracle of Holy Communion, “when a priest turns little white disks into the flesh of Jesus Christ…actually a sliver of Jesus meat…so even though communion is a form of cannibalism, nobody gets grossed out” (38). Later, “Being Catholic is hard. Being ex-Catholic is even harder” (39).

The beauty of this novel is that it moves along briskly, from teen high jinks to barely concealed puppy love and moves on to terrifying adventures inside the water tower, all the while keeping the reader aware that the young anti-religionists realize that their god/church is a joke . . . yet somehow not. Jason parades his agnosticism boldly at the weekly TPO—Teen Power Outreach—”a weekly brainwashing session” for teens in the church basement… “a bunch of pointless yakking” which Jason keeps interesting by messing with the “head brainwasher.”

Jason: So how do priests breed if they can’t have sex? Do they send out buds like amoebas? (16)

But the author maintains the mannerisms (bullying, being grounded, being rejected by your crush, for example) and lingo of teens throughout:

“Brianna jumps in with her usual incisive comment: ‘You’re soo lame Jason.’” (18)

Then,

“Hey,” I say. “What reeks?”
“You,” he replies

At one point during the formation of the gag religion, Jason says,

“I feel like Moses on the mountain. You know what we need? Some commandments.”
“I got enough trouble dealing with the first ten,” Henry says (62)

Commandments:

Thou shalt not be a jerk
Get thee a life
Thou shalt not eat asparagus

The novel begins with a comical punch in the face and ends with an ironic confession: “I have a religion with no church, no money and only one member. Maybe one day I’ll find a deity I can believe in” (198).

My main problem now is figuring out what section of my home library to file the book: “Paperback Fiction by Author”? “Religious Fiction”? “Books With the Word ‘Godless’ in the Title”? “Religious Humor”? (Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, The Clang Birds, God’s Other Son, Lamb, etc). And just as problematic: Does this essay go in my “Books In Action” blog or my “Incidental Theologist” blog? I guess if you’re reading this, you know the answer.

All Quiet on the Western Front – revisited

18 Jan 2021

All Quiet on the Western Front

Erich Maria Remarque

Ballantine paperback, 1996, original ©1928, 296pp. Translated from the German (Im Westen Nichts Neues…Nothing New in the West) by A. W. Wheen. First published in serial form in Vossische Zeitung magazine See also, Harold Bloom, Modern Critical Interpretations, editor/intro 2001: 9 critical essays. (citations not from All Quiet are from the Bloom book)

(Remarque (1898-1970) was actually born Erich Paul Remark*)

Note: I’d been studying the origins of “The Great War” about a year ago, just out of curiosity since the only thing anyone seemed to remember was the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, and I wanted to actually explore how it came about. Shortly thereafter, I was able to get a DVD of the 1930 film version and promptly declared it one of the all-time great movies. Then the 2022 film version came out, which I found somewhat disappointing: lots and lots of trench fighting — in fact, this seemed to be the main point of the first hour — but little illumination about the psychological dimensions of soldiers in trench warfare and without the stark beauty and revelations of the 1930 film. I realized I should probably actually read the novel to see if it was as good as the 1930 movie.

Whether this is “the greatest war novel of all time” can be debated but clearly it is great and certainly one of the most renowned. It is undoubtedly pacifist, though “a clear pacifist statement is lacking, but it may easily be inferred” (Wagener, 130).

Basically, the book deals with the last two years of WWI from the perspective of the common soldier in the trenches. However, it is not a historical novel per se since it does not mention battles by name, and doesn’t give exact dates or geographical locations. However, slight indications of place and time allows us to locate the novel on the Flanders front. The narrator, Paul Bäumer, as an individual soldier can indeed only see his own section of the front—a worm’s-eye-view (Murdoch, 145). There are no heroic deaths (which was one of the early criticisms leveled against the novel), no ground is won, no victories are claimed and some of the deaths are literally accidents of war (Murdoch, 148). As Bloom notes, the style is mostly terse and the protagonist, Bäumer, “lacks significant personality, more of a kind of everyman, as drab as he is desperate” (Bloom, 2). The 1931 film version invests the character with more integrity and stubborn honor than Remarque had been able to suggest (Bloom, 2).

The narration is totally the testament of Paul Bäumer who enlists with his classmates—more or less pressured by patriotic zeal—in the Imperial German army for “the Great War.” The men are enthusiastic at first but their world breaks into pieces in the bombardment of the trenches, where most of the action takes place. Spoiler: It is not until the very last page, presented almost as a coda in two short paragraphs, that the narration changes to the author’s voice:

“He fell in October 2018 [one month before the Armistice], on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front…Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm as though almost glad the end had come.”

And thus we see that the title is essentially ironic.,

Interestingly, in terms of the book’s format, this last page has no page number. In the movie version, Paul’s death is presented quite strikingly and suddenly as Paul, safe enough in his trench, goes to reach out for a butterfly—one of his passions—and is so mentally engaged in the act that he seemingly forgets about the enemy’s guns.

One of Remarque’s continuing themes is that the soldiers have the kind of special bond that hardship brings, almost like convicts:

It is a great brotherhood, which adds something of the good-fellowship of the folk-song, of the feeling of solidarity of convicts, and of the desperate loyalty to one another of men condemned to death…seeking in a whole unapathetic way a fleeting enjoyment of the hours as they come…it is at once heroic and banal (272).

His other big theme has to do with generations—perhaps related to Gertrude Stein’s earlier phrase “the lost generation.” The soldiers in this narrative were essentially pulled away from their schools and homes before any roots had been laid down:

And men will not understand us—for the generation that grew up before us, though it has passed these years with us, already had a home and a calling ; now it [the older generation] will return to its old occupations, and the war will be forgotten—and the generation that has grown up after us will be strange to us and push us aside (294).

Paul and his cohort are not at all shy about bodily functions:

“We have learned better than to be shy about such trifling immodesties….Here in the open air, the business is entirely a pleasure…The soldier is on friendlier terms than other men with his stomach and intestines. Three-quarters of his vocabulary is derived from these regions. Our families and our teachers will be shocked when we go home, but here it is the universal language…their comfortable performance is fully as much enjoyed as the playing of a safetop running flush…We feel ourselves for the time being better off than in any palatial white-tiled ‘convenience.’ There it can only be hygienic; here it is beautiful” (8-9)

In the closing chapters, the narrator knows the war is lost for Germany:

For one hungry wretched German soldier comes five of the enemy, fresh and fit. For one German army loaf there are fifty tins of canned beef over there. We are not beaten, for as soldiers we are better and more experienced; we are simply crushed and driven back by overwhelming superior forces (286).

Overall: you won’t learn much about the origins and politics of The Great War, but this is a fascinating deep dive into the minds and hearts…and heartbreaks…of the common soldier who becomes increasingly dis-invested in a war against people he doesn’t know, doesn’t hate and are simply on the other side of the trench.

The spelling of his last name was changed to Remarque when he published All Quiet* in honor of his French ancestors and in order to dissociate himself from his earlier novel Die Traumbude (The Dream Room). His grandfather had changed the spelling from Remarque to Remark in the 1800s. He was close with his mother and he began using the middle name Maria after World War I in her honor.

Though he served in the army and was often close to the front line, Remark never saw combat action, a point that some of his critics cite as problematic in his book.

For an extensive (perhaps overly detailed, battle-by-battle) account of the origins and scope of WWI, see Keegan, John. The First World War. Vintage Books, 1998. 475pp

Generational backbiting has never been so intriguing

8 Sept. 2022

The Latecomer

Jean Hanff Korelitz

Celadon Books, 2022. 437pp. (Sort of a literary/thriller novel but without the crime)

Not sure how I heard about this 2022 novel but it proved to be fascinating and wonderfully written with several intriguing twists, including one that occurs after the presumed climactic scene…of which the only giveaway is that you realize there are still 100 pp left — and you hope it’s not all just denouement.

It’s the story of a well-to-do non-practicing Jewish family in New York spanning 3 or 4 generations (depending on how you count). There’s Salo and Johanna, the parents of in vitro triplets — “Harrison (the smart one), Lewyn (the weird one), and Sally (the girl)” — who literally can’t stand each other and will do just about anything to avoid any interaction (though two of them end up at Cornell).

“They went back inside where they commenced not speaking to one another” (318)

Elsewhere, the writing is colorful and often quite amusing without being what I call “performance prose” (overblown, meant to impress):

“She has a quiver full of Fuck You’s and enough spleen to send each and every one of them on its merry way.” (296)

Their father becomes increasingly distant as he tends to his secretive art collection and the kids eventually head off to college, at which time Johanna makes the decision to have a fourth child…the “latecomer.”

As the liner notes say, the novel builds slowly and deliberately and touches on privilege, race, art, religion, modern education and family dynamics.

The odd thing, though, as you begin reading, is that you wonder who is telling the story. At first it appears to be a conventional third-person omniscient narrator…except the events are told by a first-person omniscient character who refers to “our mother” and seems to have insider knowledge of both the actions and thoughts of the triplets. We eventually come to realize that the narrator is actually the fourth-born child who has arrived 17 years later and is finally introduced at the end of Ch. 8. This narrational device calls for some magical realism-tolerance from the reader, but, happily, once you accept that, the novel proceeds nicely with various elements of family intrigue, romance, backbiting and revelations.

It takes five chapters for the triplets to arrive, all of which works to give us a sense of reading an “epic.” And each chapter is titillatingly titled and accompanied by a sub-caption teaser:

Chapter Eleven

The Precious Object in the Secret Box

In which Harrison Oppenheimer is enlightened at the Symposium
and gathers with his tribe in a New Hampshire parking lot

So overall this is a great read—you’ll just need a bit of patience at the start to see where it’s going. My big question as I was going through was “Who is the most hateful person?” — and I mean that in the most delicious way possible. There’s something to hate and love about each person (except perhaps one) and, I have to admit, I was voting for that “perhaps one,” hoping against all hope that the person would get their just desserts, even inventing my own desired payback revelation—which, to my delight, turned out to be just the case.

One other point of interest: You don’t really notice it at first, but the cover shows three bright red roses…and then, after you’ve read for a while, you see there’s a fourth, tiny rose…and then you see that they’re all placed in very thin vases, except they’re really test tubes.

Side notes:

It would be helpful but not essential to have some sense of NYC and Ithaca geography, since specific locales are used throughout the plot.
Also, there is an odd typo in which someone receives “a standard envelope in standard fawn” (326). But what’s an envelope fawn?

Kanff is also author of the NYT bestseller, The Plot as well as the 2020 HBO series “The Undoing”

Being a Grocery Clerk in the Pandemic

30 June 2022

Life on the Grocery Line

A Frontline Experience in a Global Pandemic

Adam Jonathan Kaat

Inspired Forever Books, 2021. 169pp

This sounds like a great idea, a really great idea: Describe the day-to-day, behind-the-scenes experience of a new clerk at a high-end grocery store in Denver. It moves quickly into the pandemic as our new guy has to learn the ins-and-outs of clerking and all of sudden deal with business during the emerging pandemic.

We first learn that our clerk has resigned from his boring corporate job doing spread sheets and “answering shitty emails” all day and turns to clerking for relief.

It’s hard to know how old he is but seems to be early 30s…a strange choice, to be entering a new career as an express lane clerk, but there it is. Nevertheless, it’s fun to see how he and his fellow clerks view their customers as self-absorbed, self-indulgent, over-privileged, snotty “Lindas” and “Daves.” All right, we give him the hyperbole and metaphor for a while, though soon it appears that every customer is a Linda or Dave. But, an authorial style problem emerges as it seems everyone calls each other “Bro” and “Dude” and “Man” and “Homie” — customers and employees alike of all ages — and the customer all call each other “Babe” and everyone says “fuck” and “shit”— again, customer and employees alike! Incredibly, our clerk engages in surprisingly detailed and very personal conversations with the customers in the checkout line about all kinds of topics…I timed one at three full minutes of discussion! (159-161)

In another scene, a Linda & Dave couple in the express lane engage him in a discussion of “the apocalypse,” the term he uses to refer to possible lockdowns. The lengthy checkout line discussion starts going downhill real fast when he jokingly mentions an innocent lyric from a Barenaked Ladies song—which incites a torrent of “f” and “sh” words from the husband against our narrator, ending with the clerk’s comment line: “Alright, your total is six hundred thirty nine dollars and thirty-two cents. Tips are nice but not mandatory” (68). Linda then puts her credit card in the reader and our guys says “Have a great day.” “You too,” she says.

Wait…$639!? OK, maybe, but who talks like that to a grocery clerk? And who tips a clerk?

In yet another scene a customer is complaining about the price of some steaks ($26). Clerk pulls the items out of her grocery bag and points to the price tags: $26.

She says, “I think they were on sale.”

He responds, “Well I can knock a few bucks off of them.”

“Yes, please do.”

Wait…grocery clerks can take 10 bucks off your purchase on their own say-so?

[side note: I have heard chat room comments that this is so, but have no other confirmation, though my local Kroger clerk and bagger both said they’d definitely have to call in a manager for that]

The dialogue, apart from all the “fucking” and “shitty,” etc. poses another problem. Our narrator seems to have a wooden ear for snappy dialogue with oddly formal phrasing like saying “goodbye” with, “Listen, man, I will see you” (151) — instead of just “See ya later” or “Listen, man, I’ll see ya.” Then there’s, “Sounds good. It will be ready for you” (141) or “That is my bad” instead of simply “My bad!” (30). And “Text me when you’re done. We will all go to dinner” (18).

“Performance Prose”

Perhaps the main style problem is that the narrator, presumably a college grad and admitted corporate drone with visions of a higher calling, starts lavishing his otherwise droll observations of the sordid back-room machinations of grocery stores with adjectival verbosity and overwrought, heavily garnished Faulkneresque phantasms of what I have dubbed “performance prose” (such as I just did there).

Our newly hired grocery clerk describes leaving work:

I walk out the door, jump onto my bike, and ride out into a bleak spring day with a rust-colored sky and an odd stillness to the city as the sun sets behind apartment buildings and trees. The amber of a new phase of my life glows on my face as i churn my legs faster and faster and the cold spring wind rips past me (55)

Self-aggrandizement of my importance matched with self-immolation of the soul are all I can get during these thieving political times. (135)

Now, there are some truly sparkling prose moments as well:

By the time I sit down at the outdoor break area I have only 10 minutes left, and a heavy spring snow is falling like ashes from god’s cigarette (166).

In sum:

So what we have is a startlingly good premise, with interesting insights into high-end groceries, but in need of some serious copyediting. I’m not sure who Inspired Forever Books is…their website seems to indicate that they publish books based on “projects that are meaningful to us,” so “your books becomes our passion”” but I’m guessing…and this is just a guess since they don’t reveal much on their pages unless you sign up for a consultation…that it’s a kind of self-publishing operation where they “agree” to take on your publishing project and probably sell you editing and proofing services.