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No easy life

I was aiming for an upbeat post this week, a break from financial tomfoolery and doomed teen romance. Maybe a fast-paced psychological thriller, or some indulgent chick lit buried at the bottom of my shelves. …Or maybe I could just decide to read about the death of Osama Bin Laden and screw all that.

I picked up No Easy Day—the Pentagon-condemned military memoir by Navy SEAL and Bin Laden mission participant Matt Bissonnette—out of, well, sheer curiosity. So rarely are we afforded the privilege of transparency when it comes to the military that it seemed an awful waste not to take advantage of this book’s release. Moreover, the Pentagon’s overwrought reaction to the whole thing made it sound as though Great and Powerful Secrets were contained within.

If I’m being perfectly honest—with you all, with myself—I found No Easy Day less interesting than I probably should have. Bissonnette (who wrote the book under the pen name Mark Owen) is clearly an experienced and talented SEAL, but a professional storyteller he is not. The book, which skips around between the Bin Laden mission, preceding missions, a bit of military history and Bissonnette’s own experiences in training and combat, is straightforward and matter-of-fact, filled with the kind of practical detail that would be entirely mundane if it weren’t related to wildly important foreign policy decisions, and some of the most secretive and technologically advanced military missions in recent history. It’s sort of like Sookie Stackhouse (the narrator, not the TV iteration) quit her job at Merlotte’s, became a Navy SEAL and then wrote a book about it. While No Easy Day provides a wealth of information about the preparation that went into Operation Neptune Spear (seriously), it also provides a substantial amount of background on things like…what Navy SEALs wear, how they pack their gear, the intricacies of helicopter rides, the use of hammocks, and so forth.

Smells Like Teen Spirit

I am so behind! I am reading books faster than I can write reviews of them, so I’m going to double up today. They’re by the same author, so it’s hardly even cheating.

Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns are, respectively, the second and third books I’ve read by John Green, young adult author extraordinaire. The first, The Fault in Our Stars, I reviewed back in May.

As novels go, John Green’s are “for teenagers” by virtue of two main factors: 1) They’re compulsively easy to read, and beg to be consumed in a single sitting, and 2) They tend to be about people in high school. Otherwise, the (often dark) themes Green explores in his books are wholly adult, in a way that reminds you how one’s teens are truly the last barrier between the innocence of youth and the encroaching cynicism of old age.

Really liberal arts

I originally wanted to name this post Sex and Drugs and House (itself inspired by this*) but couldn’t because I already had a post with that name. Because I am awesome. (To the non-clicker-throughers, that post is a review of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. …Just so you don’t miss the opportunity to understand that I am mad cultured.)

[*Note: For some reason that now escapes me, my friends and I were like, obsessed with this song for a period in college, in a way we had probably convinced ourself was 100% ironic but was maybe only 89% so. Nearly ten years later, I get a headache after listening to it once. Sigh, age.]

Anywho, the reason for my naming conundrum is that sex, drugs and various houses basically sums up in full the plot of Bret Easton Ellis’ The Rules of Attraction, which should come as little surprise to fans of BEE, who, fun fact: is kind of obsessed with, and legitimately wanted to write the screenplay for Fifty Shades of Grey. (How fucked up would that movie have been! In the best way!)

Okay, so the novel centers on, and primarily alternates between the perspectives of, Sean, Paul, and Lauren: the hapless slacker, the bisexual hopeless romantic and the somewhat sensitive slut, respectively. All three are upperclassmen at Hamden, a New Hampshire liberal arts college that is clearly meant to stand in for any New England liberal arts college.

Sean, Paul and Lauren have various love triangles and pseudo-relationships—including, arguably, the most important one: between Sean and Paul—but ultimately their “feelings” serve as a backdrop to the overall picture of life at Hamden: an endless parade of parties and alcohol and weed and maybe some cocaine and maybe some pills and mostly just figuring out who you’re going to go home with tonight and avoid in the cafeteria tomorrow. Rarely are Ellis’ characters in class, or discussing knowledge, or participating in extra-curricular activities. These things are just tedious stopovers on the road to Fucked Upness, a nightly destination. Any seed of real interpersonal connection—between friends or lovers—is doomed, steamrolled by convenience, impulsivity, alcohol and sheer youth.

Overall, I found The Rules of Attraction painfully honest, and consequently bleak. (I read it in less than six hours, so this whole post comes with the stipulation that I enjoyed it.) I wasn’t personally as promiscuous or chemically open-minded in college as the characters in Ellis’ novel, but then again I went to a Jesuit school—where every year the pro-life club put up dozens of tiny crosses with baby shoes to represent all the aborted fetuses—so maybe there wasn’t room for all that sexing and boozing with Jesus in the way.

Generally, I don’t find Ellis’ characterization of college as a period devoted to—for some people—the pure pursuit of pleasure to be all that far off. After all, Sean, Paul and Lauren aren’t emotionless (although Sean’s last name is Bateman and we are briefly introduced to his brother Patrick, I don’t think there’s meant to be any significant relationship). Rather, the trio struggle with their emotions: what they are, how to act on them, whether to act on them. And with some regularity, it’s much easier for them to simply exist in the moment, to do what everyone else is doing and go where everyone else is going, to drink the fullest beer and sleep with the closest freshman. I’m not saying that’s what college is all about but….it’s not necessarily not what it’s about.

One thing I did enjoy about The Rules of Attraction: Ellis’ characterization of the liberal arts school ethos felt, to me, equal-opportunity. Which is to say that both men and women hurt people and were hurt, used people and were used. No one escapes this novel without looking occasionally pathetic; a few characters are consistently so. But these are some of the most progressive schools in the country, and it’s nice to know that women have earned the right to be over-intellectualized hedonists, too.

I tend to think that you have to like Bret Easton Ellis to read him, which is a bit of a paradox since how could you know until you try? Well, The Rules of Attraction might be a good place to start. No one’s murdering anyone, and there’s only like a teeny bit of possible rape (like the smallest bit!) Mostly it’s a commentary on the bizarre state of innocence today (or in 1987, when it was written) and how uniquely freeing it is to be in college, life’s peak balance between privilege and responsibility. It’s true that Sean, Paul, Lauren and their fellow students aren’t the most likable people in the world, but when’s the last time you overhead a conversation between NYU students that didn’t make you want to scream? Don’t read this book for your college experience; read this book for them.

TITLE: The Rules of Attraction
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AUTHOR: Bret Easton Ellis
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PAGES: 326 (in paperback)
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ALSO WROTE: American Psycho, Less Than Zero
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SORTA LIKE: American Psycho meets I Am Charlotte Simmons
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FIRST LINE: “and it’s a story that might bore you but you don’t have to listen, she told me, because she always knew it was going to be like that, and it was, she thinks, her first year, or, actually weekend, really a Friday, in September, at Camden, and this was three or four years ago, and she got so drunk that she ended up in bed, lost her virginity (late, she was eighteen) in Lorna Slavin’s room, because she was a Freshman and had a roommate and Lorna was, she remembers, a Senior or a Junior and usually sometimes at her boyfriend’s place off campus, to who she thought was a Sophomore Ceramics major but who was actually either some guy from N.Y.U., a film student, and up in New Hampshire just for The Dressed to Get Screwed party, or a townie.”

PS: There is a movie adaptation of this book starring James van der Beek and it’s on Netflix. I haven’t watched it, but I suspect it’s probably amazing/awful and only NC-17 because of the gay stuff.

PPS: The aforementioned link to Brave New World is extra appropriate considering this plot summary I gave of it: “The novel is set in a future society where women no longer give birth biologically; couples aren’t married, ‘everyone belongs to everyone else.’ On the social level, this means that everyone sleeps with everyone else, women and men are discouraged from forming relationships longer than a few months (and should never be exclusive).” Sounds like college to me.

Game on

P.S. Thanks to Marisa for the recommendation!

The year is 2044, and things are not looking so great. Most of humanity is destitute, including overweight teenager Wade Watts, who lives with his aunt and hundreds of other people in “the stacks,” long rows of mobile homes stacked on top of one another and precariously held together with scaffolding. Wade’s only recourse from the shitty regular world is the OASIS, a massive online game that he, like most of the rest of the global population, is jacked into for the majority of each day. Wade attends school in the OASIS, which is also home to some ten thousand planets, housing everything from offices to complete replications of scenes or environments from Star Wars, Dungeons & Dragons and more.

The OASIS was created by James Halliday, a Steve Jobs-like genius whose love of his creation is matched only by his love of all things 1980s, a nostalgia that extends to any cultural artifact from the time: movies, music, comic books, videogames, etc. Upon his death, Halliday releases a video will that promises ownership of his company (and a $200+ billion fortune) to whoever can uncover an “easter egg” he’s buried in the game.

Naples-gazing

The best part about reading Eat Pray Love in 2012 is getting to tell people you’re doing it: Now that the book has been out for nearly a decade, most people with even a passing interest have already picked it up, and so I was treated to all manner of reactions—ranging from the intrigued to downright disgusted—when I shared with various friends that I was finally reading this runaway bestseller.

As with Never Let Me Go, EPL moved to the top of my pile once HBO started playing the movie, although I’m not entirely sure why I hadn’t gotten around to it sooner. Sure, the book gives off a generally annoying self-help vibe—I left The Strand’s $1 price sticker on the front of mine all week, lest anyone think I’d paid full price for the thing—but there was a time when you couldn’t sit through a subway ride without seeing at least one person reading it. That alone is usually enough to pique my interest (see: Twilight, The Hunger Games, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 50 Shades of Grey.)

More importantly, EPL’s concept is undeniably appealing: Who wouldn’t want to Eat, Pray, Love their life? Sure, maybe I’d forego the crippling depression that motivates Elizabeth Gilbert to start her journey, but I’m definitely on board for the rest of it: taking a year off to relax/eat in Italy, relax/pray in India and relax/relax in Indonesia. I’d perhaps alternate the order, or the goals (my memoir would be called Eat, Eat, Eat) but the overall idea—a fully financed year of self-discovery in three unique cultures—is awesome. In fact, The Great American Bookstore Tour is sort of my own mini-EPL (the truncated domestic version available to those of us who didn’t get six-figure advances on our travel memoirs.)