City of Roses is a serialized epic firmly set in Portland, Oregon: an urban fantasy mixing magical realism with gonzo noirish prose, where duels are fought in Pioneer Square, and union meetings are beseiged by ghost bicycles.
The book established Whitehead’s intelligence and originality as a novelist, but I wasn’t too excited by the world of elevator inspection, and I was frankly irritated by the author’s choice of Lila Mae as the protagonist. Although it’s technically impressive and theoretically laudable when a male novelist succeeds in inhabiting a female persona, something about the actual practice makes me uneasy. Is the heroine doing double duty as the novelist’s fantasy sex object? Is the writer trying to colonize fictional territory that rightfully belongs to women? Or does the young literato, lacking the perks of power and feeling generally smallened by the culture, perhaps believe himself to be, at some deep level, not male at all?
I think “solidarity” is what Freaky Tales would call it, a movie which, believe it or not, I’m actually going to talk about. But again: I’ve given myself permission to write the longest essay anyone will write about Freaky Tales, as an exercise, experiment, statement, and/or self-indulgence; I like writing, and I am enjoying writing this, so I am. But the more I write, the more that length gives permission to anyone who doesn’t want to read it—even encourages them—to close the browser and move on. You’re not stuck with me, after all, the way you have no choice but to see a mural as you drive past it each day. You can go find something you like better and leave me to my fun.
A sharp eye might’ve noticed some changes to the various outlets listed on the Books page, as other places where: Spectator Books in Oakland has been added, there’s a selection of zines on the shelves there now, so if you find yourself on that side of the Bay, head on over, say hi; and but also, Smashwords has been removed.
Boots Riley
So for me, the question isn’t “Is the public ready?” I start from: the public already knows things are messed up. The public is more open than we’re told. The question I ask myself is: how do I move people emotionally towards imagining something they can do? Not “the” solution, but a solution—something that shifts them from “It’s all hopeless” to “Maybe we can try this.” That’s what I’m after.
Pinkish-orange sodium vapor light strips details from the mural, and color, leaving only suggestions of flowers, gestures toward bees, the dark curl of the boteh over the shut-tight overhead door, and it blows out the brightness of the limousine turning the corner, leaving only a faintest blush to tinge the ungainly length of it slowing to a stop along the loading dock. The rear door pops open on jewel-toned neon and a thumping beat, a blazing fire, that’s getting brighter, don’t need nobody here that don’t believe in me. Gloria in shorts and a blank white T-shirt wrestles out her empty gown, hauling it over her arm as Melissa half-falling follows, and a chorus from within of byes and love yous and see you next weeks cut off by the closing door. Gloria slaps the roof. The limousine smoothly pulls away.
Up onto the loading dock, Gloria losing an armload of gown for every armload she gathers back up. “Need a hand?” says Melissa.
“I got it,” says Gloria, chin propped by the precarious pile.
Melissa opens a smaller door there by the large overhead. The warehouse within is quiet, dim, lit only here and there by this lamp still shining from a stall, that trouble light hung low, but mostly by the warmly golden glow of the great tub out in the middle of it all. Gloria turns about, chasing a trailing drape of skirt, turning about again at the sound of footsteps hastening close, “Chatelaine!” cries someone, Charlichhold, approaching. “Let us help you with your burden.”
“Don’t call me that,” mutters Gloria. “Wait a minute.” Melissa’s headed off toward the unlit stage, where the shadowy bulk of the Buggane’s sat, “Hey,” says Gloria, setting off after her. “Hey!”
“It’s serial fiction done right.”
