City of Roses is a serialized epic firmly set in Portland, Oregon, only with more sword fights: an urban fantasy mixing magical realism with gonzo noirish prose, where duels are fought in Pioneer Square, and river gods retire to comfortably shabby apartments.
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.
“And it all depends,” says the radio, “on the nature of the day. Was it good?” A man’s voice, unpolished, but not unpleasant. “Then it’s all good, for one more day. Kick back. Relax. You’ve earned it. But if it was a bad day?” Groans from an unseen audience. Up behind the radio the wall’s been tiled with old album jackets, color photos of men with horns, or keyboards, muted duotones of women crooning into elaborately caged microphones. “One bad day,” the radio says. “Enough to take everything you’ve taken years to gather, and to build, to take it all and pull it down around you.”
Out in the middle of the room a big round table covered in green felt, surrounded by a motley herd of armchairs and recliners, one of them laid flat. Curled apparently asleep atop it an old man in a brown suit much too big. “Our prosperity,” the radio’s saying. “Our security. The walls around us, the roofs over our heads, the floors beneath the very shoes on our feet, how secure are they? When all it takes is one bad day to lock it all away from us. How real are they, if one bad day’s enough to make them disappear?”
One wall’s mostly free of albums, taken up instead by an overhead garage door, a smaller door beside it creaking open on sullen afternoon. Christian squeezes through, sagging brown jeans, soft green hoodie, tugging the door shut as an afterthought. “In this,” says the radio, “the richest country in the history of the world that ever was.” He stoops, snagging empty cans from the floor, dropping them a-rattle into a blue tub. “Like many of you,” says the radio, “I had my bad day,” and murmurs swell, a general air of affirmation, “oh, indeed I did. I used to be an up-and-coming architect, what they call a starchitect, if you can believe it,” and a pause for almost laughter. “But I can’t show you any buildings I built, because I never built a one. Not while I was an architect. I told other people how to build them. And they’re all garbage.”
“…like Little, Big crossed with Revolutionary Girl Utena.”
“Also there’s some bits that are sexy as hell so like, be prepared for that…”
“I think it’s the only time I’ve fallen in love with a city through a novel.”
