Poor White text via Project Gutenberg

You can get Poor White here.

I read three chapters last night--Hugh McVey, a lankey Missourian, moves east to Ohio to find a connection with people around him. It's yet to work out. I've only read this and Winesburg but Anderson, and to a lesser degree James Thurber and Kurt Vonnegut, capture Indiana-Ohio male loneliness well. And Anderson wrote in a period of rust-belt prosperity too. Thurber wrote from the safety of New York. Vonnegut saw the tail end of it.

That's all I got right now.

I could've read Sherwood Anderson but went with Real Genius (1985)

i.

Martha Coolidge's film works best when Chris Knight (Kilmer) and Mitch Taylor (Gabriel Jarret) deal with the alienation of work in a specific field. Creative writing students and scientists connect only at that point of alienation it seems; they both think in ways that dumbfound businessmen and communicators of the world. The two montages--an inappropriate number: You should have one or three, a golden ratio--of Knight and Taylor's adjustment seem particularly relate-able. To ride easy on talent only to be forced to use it. I hope I don't sound arrogant. My old roommate Ethan was a chemist. Most of our conversation revolved around tv shows and movies, but we also shared in the triviales of publication, funding, and "the right programs." Things other people in other fields don't worry as much about, maybe.

It's when the film gets silly does it suck. Building a five-megawatt chemical laser seems ridiculous but it is handled well. Val Kilmer and his friends jump the shark when they break into a secret military base to sabotage said-chemical laser and point it at Prof. Jerry Hathaway's (William Atherton) house, which they destroy by filling it with popcorn. The film's tonal shift from college-growing pains to espionage lacks the bite of wild tonal-shifts found in Korean movies like Old Boy--that we benefit from a culture that dictates form might be why we fail at shifting tones as easily.

I like Real Genius a lot though. William Atherton's character reminds me of Whitney Terrell. Not that Whitney's a villain. Both men exude a toughness/cockiness and Knight and Taylor both crave for his approval on different levels through the film. Knight barbs him but needs to graduate. Taylor, intimidated/admired that Hathaway picked him out, finds a mentor in him. All this shit gets thrown out the window when the duo creates a death machine. The white males in UMKC's program felt that way about Whitney--the desire to one-up him and receive approval. I was the poet so I was a bit outside of the admiration.

ii.

Robin took me to Arthur Bryant's for my birthday. The two things I know about Calvin Trillin are these: (1) he's from Kansas City (2) he called Arthur Bryant's the best restaurant in the world. I kind of agree on the latter. The sauce is excellent, a gritty-bitter difficult to emulate, but Gates has better fries and meet--except maybe burnt-ends, which Bryant's does a better job of.

The original is located at about 18th and is probably the furthest east any upper-middle class white people travel within the city. I don't think Trillin brings this up but I hear this addage from said white people: "Arthur Bryant's is the only place where you see all walks of life together, eating, joking, living happily," etc. etc. etc. This disregards the fact that black people cook and serve the food for white people. I never see any accountants with blackberries hanging from their belts eating with trumpet players in bright yellow suits.

An old guy and his wife ate at a table near us. Lewis and Greg were also there. The old guy wore what looked like a bushwhacker hat--Lewis joked that this guy's attire was fairly accurate of what white people think of east Kansas City: The whole place is a safari to them, the outback to them.

It's funny to see other white people order at Arthur Bryant's and Gates. They hold up the line, ask for extra-crispy fries or light sauce on short-ends. They then get what everyone else gets or nothing at all--like the soup nazi episode in Seinfeld.

iii.

Sean and Amy gave me Poor White, Anderson's novel after Winesburg, Ohio. I've read just a little. A young man lifts himself up from his bootstraps, becomes a great inventor. Anderson's prose works much like Winesburg's here. The omniscient narrator operates in exposition with few scenes. It seems to make more sense than in Winesburg--Lewis pointed out those stories are narrated by a periphery character who seems to have an exceptional amount of dirt on the whole town. A more sinister Della Reese or Bruno Ganz noting the inhabitants. Poor White's narrator is no angel or side-character. There's also not much going on so far. It lacks the paper pills, the strange images of Winesburg. The quiet desperation as well. Maybe it'll pick up.

I went back to Dayton last week a broke-ass. Friends paid my bills at places--mostly cheap beer and chicken wings in hot sauce. I tried to leave as small a foot print as possible.

Dad and I get drunk at BW3s every trip I'm back now, it seems. It's cheap and near enough to the house he lets me drive. I'm much taller than my dad--he's 5'10, about 180. More stubborn than me and tough, an inner-city public librarian. We both drank until near blackout. He never drinks at other times, I think.

I told friends I'd make it rain for them one day. A reference to Fat Joe's song, because I'm still white and lived in a town that was technically a suburb. My Dad's response: "Are you the Kwisatz Haderach?" His question a reference to Frank Herbert's Dune and it's white male messiah with a poison knife. A messiah whose eyes turn blue after he's chosen.

Writing's been tough the last few weeks. I feel it might be coming back.