It's been sometime since I've read a small press book and had the opportunity to offer a review. Quite honestly, in these times, I've had trouble sustaining what was a pretty robust reading/reviewing regimen. I've had trouble sustaining much interest in my own writing "career." It feels like months ago when I began reading Avner Landes' Meiselman: The Lean Years (Tortoise Books). I finished it this week and sit down now to offer a review on what is a troublingly windy day here in Michigan.
Some who follow my blog know that I have committed to reviewing small press books exclusively. I submit to small presses and have had books come out from small presses. I am a small press author and seek to support the venues that have supported (and might yet again support) me. The reading and reviewing of small press books has been no begrudging journey. I love cracking open a new small press book because I never know what I'm in for... and that's in the best possible way. Small presses are where you will find the cutting edge, the new, the experimental and, in my opinion, the literary.
As The Big Five presses remain enamored of profit, they become more and more like Hollywood... less likely to take on something fresh and more likely to take on the formulaic, the tried, the true... The Smurfs VII: Papa Smurf Gets His Groove Back.
In this paradigm, the literary, the experimental, the quietly-important, the something new under the sun, and the truly brave often find their champions in small presses. Not only do I admire small press publishers for taking the risks with their time and finances as they do, but I also admire the writers who write the books that small presses publish.
I’ve read and reviewed so many amazingly brave books over the last year or so. I call them brave because it already takes enough courage to sit down to write conventional fiction, but to sit down hour after hour and write a book that you know won’t likely find an audience… but it’s still a book that compels you? That’s true writerly bravery.
I think of The Field is White (KERNPUNKT Press) by Claire Akebrand about a snowbound Mormon missionary in Sweden (review: here) or Homeless’ This Hasn’t Been a Very Magical Journey So Far (Expat Press), which follows a depressive on a ridiculous road trip with a cartoon cat (review: here) or Silt (Alternating Current Press), an historical novella set in 1856 Cincinnati (review: here)
As I read these books, I often find myself smiling, thinking, “How’d they do it? How did they ever believe in these ideas/books enough to finish them? Knowing the high potential for a lukewarm to cold reception, how did these writers bring themselves to the keyboard each day?”
That’s what I love about all of this… reading books that I never would have written myself with ideas that I would have dismissed as outrageous or sales suicidal. And yet they do it, and they are good, and people should be buying and reading them. I’m awestruck by the act of writing, but even more so by the act of writing the oddity.
And that, finally, brings me to Landes’ Meiselman: The Lean Years… another brave and compelling and odd book. The book tells the story of a week in the life of Meiselman, an events coordinator for a library in the Chicago neighborhood of New Niles in the early 2000s. He’s bringing in a controversial writer to read at the library during a period in Meiselman’s life in which he has decided to be a more assertive, perhaps even more aggressive male… because, mid-thirties, he’s concluded that being a doormat hasn’t given him the respect he feels he deserves.
The world of the novel itself is refreshing, set at a time before the dominance of social media. The lack of technology is additionally fueled by Meiselman’s frugalness on display when his wife asks for a dvd player, and he responds, “How many movies do you plan to watch?” He certainly wouldn’t be the type to rush out for a cell phone. I relish a world in which authors don’t have to write about characters staring into their palms and checking Facebook.
Landes’ is a master at creating and sustaining a fully-fleshed out character. Some other reviewers have compared Meiselman to the protagonist of A Confederacy of Dunces and, while at first I agreed, I grew to have sympathy for Meiselman that I never really did for Ignatius J. Reilly.
Meiselman has quite a series of mishaps and adventures, including petty workplace politics and jockeying for position, bringing his wife’s underwear to his Rabbi, discovering a neighbor’s body, and a very telling, brief reunion with his big shot big brother… a cringeworthy encounter that reveals so much about the headwaters of Meiselman’s neurosis. It is also the scene from which my sympathy for Meiselman truly began.
Meiselman is in many ways all of us, if we allowed our most shallow, our most vulnerable, our most taboo and our most neurotic thoughts to be on full display. Almost like our own is available to us, Meiselman’s mind is opened to us through the narration as though a frog pinned to a dissection pan. It begs from the reader the reaction, “What would people see if my own thoughts and longings were so openly on display?”
Like many of us, Meiselman’s intentions aren’t nefarious. When he pursues a pink-haired younger woman who has been reading Shakespeare for her college course, he acknowledges to himself that she’s attractive enough, but what he craves from her isn’t sex, but instead is adulation and respect. He revels in the idea that he could somehow be a mentor for her. More than anything, he wants her to be in attendance for his story’s climax, when he will “debate” Shenkenberg, the visiting author.
At one point, Meiselman purposefully bumps into the pink-haired woman outside the library and discovers that she’s acquired a library card:
“Now that you’re a card-carrying member you should think about taking advantage of our wonderful programming. The name Izzy Shenkenberg ring a bell?” he asks, handing her the flier in his hand. When she does not reply, he continues, “Controversial writer. I’ll be hosting him for a reading this coming Sunday. Then we will have a debate-slash-dialogue. Fireworks expected.”
Meiselman’s ego and self-doubt are fully on display, as he talks about how he, not the library, is hosting Shenkenberg. His talk of “fireworks expected” is hopelessly pitiful, but also hopelessly human.
That’s the beauty in the novel, if we are honest with ourselves. It’s not just Meiselman on display, but many of us. The book takes place while social media is in its nascent phase, but what will be our openly pitiful display of desire for relevance, as evidenced on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, is foreshadowed by Meiselman’s own arrogant and pitiable thoughts.
While reading, I guessed at the many ways the book would end… especially Meiselman’s much anticipated encounter with Shenkenberg. Most of what I imagined didn’t come to fruition, but instead was ended much more artfully and fruitfully by Landes.
Will we see Meiselman fall on his face? Will we see him triumph? No, much truer to life he does a little of both. But even in his triumphant moments on stage with Shenkenberg, Meiselman realizes:
“Yet, sadly, gone are the days of Lincoln-Douglas when people could endure the exchange of profundities for hours on end. As much as Meiselman wants this to never stop, since at the next event Ethel will be back on stage, and he will be the one running up the aisles passing notes, nobody asking what he thinks of the state of Jewish fiction, or what role Jewish writers have in bringing peace to the Middle East, the audience will turn resentful if he and Shenkenberg go on much longer. Free food is, by now, all that is on the minds of audience members.”
Before I wear out the patience of your reading capacity, let me just add that one of the truly wonderful moments in the book is to realize that Landes wrote a book within the book… or at least pages from Shenkenberg’s book. Shenkenberg reads aloud from his work, and one pauses a moment to smile and think, “Good god, Landes wrote this, too.”
That full circles back to my earlier thought, my earlier joy with taking on the reading and reviewing of small press books. As I read, I get to ask silently of the author, “How did you do it? How did you keep returning to your computer screen? How on page 200 didn’t you ask, ‘Why am I writing this? How will I get anyone to read this fever dream?’ How did you bring this from questionable premise to seemingly ludicrous scenes to finally literary treasure. How did you take it from farce to fiction that ends so perfectly?”
And even in writing this review, I become Meiselman. I recognize Meiselman in myself. How much of this review is my own pontificating? How much is an attempt at celebrating my own words as much as Landes’? Am I being honest with myself if I don’t admit that in the writing of this, I haven’t numerous times imagined the likes, the retweets, the comments… the echoing cheer of “what a review, what a review, what a review!”... my own anticipated and expected fireworks.
You will experience a true treat in diving into Landes’ Meiselman: The Lean Years. And, if you allow yourself, you’ll experience the recognition of a little Meiselman in yourself.
If you’re going to give this book a spin, don’t go to the Amazon dealership… try first to buy it directly from the press: here
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