greg gilpatrick’s other blog

You can get used to luxury.  Stay at The Four Seasons for a week and by the end of it you might think that it's just a hotel.  But when you spend the night in a Motel 6, that's when you realize what a luxury the first hotel was.  I had the same revelation reading Walker Percy's  debut novel. The Moviegoer didn't seem extraordinary while I read

it.  I didn't even think it was out of the ordinary when the voice of Binx Bolling, the novel's first-person narrator, filled my head, describing my daily commute to me.  The way that I started to notice small details around me - it seemed all marginally good books led me to do that.   So, I stopped reading the book about halfway through.  Not because it was bad or boring.  It just didn't seem extraordinary and there more entertaining books awaiting me.  I put down The Moviegoer and started Special Topics in Calamity Physics.   And that's when I discovered how incredibly talented a writer Walker Percy was.   I realized how much I intimately identified with Binx Bolling.  And how much I missed Percy's voice whispering in my ear as I walked around the city.

I sometimes feel that I'm too good a reader for the book I'm reading.  I may not be a better writer than Marisha Pessl but I often felt, while reading Special Topics in Calamity Physics, that I deserved to be reading something better.  The Moviegoer left me with the opposite sentiment.  Though the book is an easy read that does not discuss weighty matters directly, it clearly is a discussion about deep philosophical and spiritual matters.  A visit to Percy's Wikipedia entry tells us that the book deals with, among other topics, Catholicism and existentialism.  Though the novel starts with a quote from Kierkegaard and mentions Catholicism throughout the book ( in addition to many references to Mardi Gras),  I wouldn't dare an attempt to explain the what the book has to say on those topics. However, I did find the novel to have a prescient message about finding a more compelling reality inside fiction worlds - a message that could easily be transferred to today's media-saturated world.

A cross between Silence of the Lambs and Forrest Gump, Caleb Carr's The Alienist places a vicious serial killer in

late 19th century New York City.  A special team of three police officers, a New York Times reporter, and a psychologist (the title comes from that era's term for the profession) pursues the killer through the decrepit tenements of New York  - often with the help of Theodore Roosevelt.  Yes, Teddy Roosevelt.  And if you're thinking that his appearance in the novel is handled realistically...well, I'll just guess that the real Teddy Roosevelt wouldn't have gushed about wanting to defeat those darned Spaniards minutes after closing a horrific murder investigation (Bully!) And that pretty much sums up what is wrong with this book.  While the plot is genuinely entertaining and sometimes even chilling, Carr brings a theme park element to his historical New York setting that is distracting and, at times, annoying. Despite my displeasure with the style and tone of the novel, I can't deny that I raced through all 600 pages until the very end.  The plot does deliver a good mystery that treads the familiar ground of the serial killer story with an original perspective and I suppose that is the most alluring aspect of a thriller.

I'm generally not a fan of comedy albums. To tell the truth, I usually do not enjoy stand-up comedy.  Recently, however, we have been experiencing a boom in intelligent stand-up.  And for many people, Demetri Martin is the most

visible representative of the new alternative comedy scene  here in New York. I've seen Martin perform a couple times and enjoyed myself thoroughly at his detached musings on the world around us.  But I must say that I enjoy listening to this album more than I actually like seeing him perform live.  I think that is because Martin's comedy is almost conceptual and often requires some minor mental gymnastics to appreciate it.  Now, Demetri's style is not necessarily ground-breaking (Seinfeld being the obvious point of reference).  But Martin's voice is unique. I think that is due mostly to his on-stage persona. He seems to view the world with completely fresh eyes, like Chauncy Gardener from Kosinski's Being There.  And like Chancey Gardener, Martin's voice is not completely innocent.  There is a slight hint of maliciousness in the comedy.  And that is why I think the comedy is effective. Because comedy is essentially malicious - to laugh we require something to laugh at. But Martin does it so gently and with so much genuine benevolence, even the object of the joke would have to laugh along.
By the way,  Leo Allen, who stars in my forthcoming short film, makes an appearance on this album and you can hear him at very end of this track.

I had a halloween double feature of Monster Squad and this gem of holiday television.  There is so much to be amazed of in this brisk 25 minute long work of art.  There's so much to like about this cartoon: it asks us to question both  religious intolerance and  fundamentalism, the artwork is simple yet stunning, and the characters have real pathos - I feel true sadness for Linus when he realizes the Great Pumpkin is passing him by for another year.  This show deserves to be seen and thought of apart from Halloween when one can really consider the ideas, characters, and beauty that is inside it.

Blade Runner is one of those movies that, like Citizen Kane,  is such a complete world unto itself that it is a shock to stop and consider that it was created out of the imagination and work of a small group of individuals. This excellent British documentary details the creation of the landmark film and ends with Ridley Scott's answer to that ages old question:  Is Deckard a replicant?

When Author Marisha Pessl recently appeared on KCRW's book program, the interviewer couldn't stop talking about Vladimir Nabokov.  It was one of the strangest interviews I've ever heard.  It must have been frustrating for Pessl, to have expected to be interviewed about herself and/or her best-selling novel to find that the interviewer instead only

wanted to talk Nabokov.  I think I understand the interviewer's impulse.  It is difficult to think about this book without mentally detouring to the other books that Pessl's debut novel resembles.
In my case, I couldn't help but see the many similarities between this novel and The Secret History. Both novels are told from the perspective of a teenager attending a posh private school (high school in the case of Calamity Physics, College in History) where a secretive band of hip students are devoted to a charasmatic teacher.  Like The Secret History, Calamity Physics' plot hinges on a murder in the woods.  Unlike Calamity Physics, The Secret History is a brisk, challenging read with an edge as sharp as a razor.  Pessl's writing is bloated purple prose that, though quickly read, goes on for hundreds of pages without significant plot development to move it along.  
However, as many people have pointed out,  the last 200 pages are the heart of the novel and make it almost worth reading the preceding 400 pages.  If Pessl's editor had taken a razor to her manuscript and cut out the story that lives mostly in those last pages I would be writing a much different review now. 
Despite my appreciation for the novel's last third, I can't bring myself to recommend the book as a whole.  But I recognize that Pessl has talent and I  look forward to reading her next novel in the hopes that she's learned how to hone her style and voice to the point where she doesn't so badly stumble over them.

Okay, this takes a little bit of work to listen to, but it is totally worth it.  Long before reality TV or Borat existed, some producers from Armed Forces Radio network decided to pull a public real-time prank on an unsuspecting man over the air.  They held a contest where the lucky winner was given a chance to host an exploration of the Frankenstein Family Crypt.  What he didn't know was that they had rigged it so that somebody was in there, dressed as a monster, waiting to scare him.  And they nearly succeeded in scaring him to death, the man fainted from fright before they could tell him the truth.  To be honest, this prank probably crosses the line between funny and malicious.  But it is interesting (and I do feel a bit like a sociopath when I say this) to hear real horror.

Unfortunately, I can't find an easy way to link directly to the recording.  Right now, the Public Radio Exchange is hosting a bunch of Halloween-related tracks.  The track is #16 in that playlist.   If you're reading this after Halloween, you can either try to listen to the track through PRX (requires login)or hear just the most interesting parts of it as part of the very beginning of this episode of Love & Radio.