Pineapple Street might be the start of making Jenny Jackson our modern Jane Austen

Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson makes the shortlist of my favorite novels read in 2023 alongside two Adrian McKinty books (The Island and The Chain) and Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak. Jackson's debut novel could certainly be accused (and was, by some critics) of being shallow and predictable. But I found the story of two daughters and their sister-in-law in Brooklyn Heights navigating their ultra-wealthy families to be a funny, gripping, and eye-opening coming-of-age tale about finding one's own path despite the not-always-obvious ways that wealth can stunt people's growth.

The New York Times wrote, "The novel often feels catty and shallow, filled with gossip and one-dimensional characters." Yes, there is cattiness and gossip, but maybe that's why I liked it so much! That's the stuff that I found to really work at building our understanding of these characters. And author Chris Bohjalian says it well in the Times: “It’s the novel Jane Austen would have written, if Jane Austen lived in Brooklyn Heights in the 21st century.”

As to the characters:

• There's Darley, the eldest daughter who gave up her career and inheritance for motherhood and isn't always sure she's made the right decision. 
• Then there's Georgiana, the rebellious daughter, whom we meet when the book opens with her selfishly and obliviously bumping an old high-school classmate's drink with her racquet while she beelines out of a coffee shop. She's my favorite, probably because she has some of the same qualities as me, like being the youngest sibling and being passionate about tennis. She starts to date a married co-worker, which turns into a major situation, to say the least. 
• And finally there's Sasha, a middle-class New Englander who married Darley and Georgiana's brother. Those two do not exactly welcome Sasha into their snobby world of riches, and that storyline opens some excellent explorations of class and elitism by Jackson.

The author, too, is kind of a fascinating character, having publishing her first novel while working as a vice-president and executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf. She learned the ropes in the fiction and publishing-house trenches, and I think she nailed it.

5 out of 5 stars

Did Vonnegut foresee Donald Trump's false-idol campaign way back in 1961?

I devoured about a dozen Kurt Vonnegut books when I was a teenager, and they were worldview forming towards my lifelong love of science fiction, political commentary, international relations, and just plain sociology.

Sirens of Titan, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Slapstick are just a few of the best books ever written, and two of Vonnegut's books, Welcome to the Monkey House and Breakfast of Champions, even made my all-time top 60 novels list. And don't forget Harrison Bergeron, easily one of the greatest short stories, period.

Somehow I had missed his 1961 novel Mother Night, written in a very fertile part of his early career, and it stands up very well amongst both his greatest works as well as the test of time.

The layered tale is all about American Howard W. Campbell Jr., who begins the story from an Israeli prison and ends it there as well. He is recruited to be a Nazi spy and goes on to great infamy as a major radio voice in Joseph Goebbels' propaganda machine. Because he is a spy, he is able to escape the post-war Nazi trials and live the rest of his days in anonymity in New York City. He is visited by white supremecists who idolize him, and there isn't a ton of humor in this book, by Vonnegut standards, but the story of the supremacist dentist is among the funniest moments in Mother Night.

Howard had lived a rich love life before the collapse of Germany as well, and a woman calling herself his former wife Helga also visits New York to give him a brief respite of happiness in his old age. Then all goes wrong and he ends up turning himself in. Spoiler alert: the novel does not end well for Howard in that Israeli jail.

Even though Howard is a surprisingly sympathetic character through much of the tale, the moral is that who you pretend to be is who you actually are. Howard tried to hide behind his American spy status, but he truly said horrendous things over the air during the war that make it difficult to forgive him.

Mother Night is a quick read and pretty perfect for these times, when it remains too early to tell, before Donald Trump assumes the American throne, whether certain groups of people will be rounded up and deported or worse. Even if Trump never does all the ruthless and mean things he promised during his campaign, he will never be able to fully run away from who he pretended to be simply for the sake of beating his Republican rivals and Hillary Clinton.

4 out of 5 stars

Placing the Microscope on Our High-School Years with Curtis Sittenfeld

There are those moments during your high-school years when things seem so lucid, so crystal clear, so in-the-moment.

Your friends are five minutes late to pick you up to go to a party and each second seems to drip by in agony and longing. Your eyes constantly search for the girl you would move mountains for, even though she barely knows you exist or, at the very least, is too preoccupied with much older boys.

Curtis Sittenfeld, in her debut novel Prep, is a master at articulating, with such precision (and how difficult it must have been to remember so many details about adolescence?), the way we were growing up. Towards the end, a couple of lines sum up what the book is about:

"I've never paid as close attention to my life or anyone else's as I did then. I remember myself as often unhappy at Ault, and yet my unhappiness was so alert and expectant; really, it was, in its energy, not that different from happiness."

Those words are uttered by Prep's protagonist, Lee Fiora, who leaves home in South Bend, Indiana for the prestigious boarding school, Ault, near Boston, which is no doubt helped shaped by the author's years of teaching at Washington D.C.'s St. Alban's preparatory academy.

Lee mostly stands in the background during her four years at the school, observing others and mostly bouncing idea after idea and thought after thought around in her own very unsure, unformed mind. In that sense, it's a true coming-of-age story, reminiscent of Catcher in the Rye or Ethan Canin's novels, but with an even sharper microscope.

****1/2 out of ***** stars

Chang-Rae Lee Bores Us Endlessly with Tedious Future Worlds

The description on the sleeve and in critical reviews made Chang-Rae Lee's new novel On Such a Full Sea a dead ringer for something I wanted to read.

I should have stuck with reading just the sleeve and the reviews.

Because that's all I enjoyed upon reading the full book. Lee is no doubt a talented descriptive writer, but the story and plot of Full Sea are such non-entities that the whole thing felt like a monumental waste of time (I can't wait to get back to reading the much more entertaining Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson that I put down for this high-art claptrap).

The before-mentioned sleeve describes a world we will venture into that has never been imagined before. And indeed, the premise is immaculate: Chinese cities of the future becoming uninhabitable because of pollution and entire populations being moved over to form new colonies in U.S. cities. The book never really goes into what happened to the people who used to live in the U.S. But the focus is on the newish settlers B-Mor (formerly Baltimore).

The people of B-Mor are North Korea-like workers for the common good and protected for their services (albeit never do much more than sit around and smoke). Their job is to cultivate seafood for rich people out in villages walled off from unruly and deadly free-roaming states throughout the rest of the country.

Fan, the protagonist, is a 16-year-old pregnant girl who mysteriously leaves B-Mor in search of her older brother and boyfriend, who have also mysteriously left. The novel is told from the voices of B-Mor citizens who form a (ridiculous) mythology around Fan. She bounces from place to place (or, as the sleeve will entice you: magical worlds) where truly nothing much happens. This goes on and on.

I kept expecting something to happen, but it never did. For anyone who enjoys a good yarn, this is definitely not the place.

** out of ***** stars (because I'm feeling generous today)

Mind Bending Among the High-School Cheerleaders

Being a reader of lots of classics and most recently a somber tale of laborious life in North Korea, it's necessary to break it up with some good old-fashioned trash every once in a while.

Dare Me by Megan Abbott is actually relatively high-minded writing and in many ways a psychological tour de force. Because it's billed as "Lord of the Flies cheerleader-style," it also qualifies as a trashy novel about high-school life.

The common-sense-stoked person in the video above describes the story well. I particularly like how she notes that Gillian Flynn of Gone Girl-fame recommends the book and that fans of the classic 80s movie "The Heathers" (ha) will approve.

I'll contribute: Addy and Beth are leaders of the cheerleading squad and their BFF status comes under pressure when Beth becomes jealous of Addy's relationship with their young new coach named Colette. A very bad thing happens (actually, lots of bad things happen, soccer and tennis were never this interesting) that nearly unravels the team and certainly unravels the ties between Addy and Beth. The tables get turned again and again and Abbott (pictured) does a good job of keeping the reader on edge, uncomfortable, and in suspense of what will happen next throughout the nearly 300 pages of the novel.

There is a lot of cheerleading lingo and action that could be trimmed from the story, although Abbott is clearly using it to metaphorical effect and to describe the shifting mindset of the squad girls over the course of the novel. I'm not sure if this book would have been as brilliant without that lingo, but either way, this one is a keeper that will be tough to beat for "best cheerleader book, like, evah."

On a rating, I agree with the reviewer above: **** out of ***** stars

Classic Reads: The Ancient Mariner Turns On Generations of Fantasy Readers

If you’ve ever heard the phrase, “an albatross around one’s neck,” which pertains to certain levels of guilt, then you’ve been touched by one of the most famous long-form poems in history, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

The 1798 poem was released to mixed reviews but has since become a staple of high-school and college classrooms. Some of the popularity for that age group is no doubt due to Coleridge’s opium addiction and the wild, fantastical, even trippy visions he presents.

Opium was a difficult topic for Coleridge, who probably wrote the Rime in response to his feelings of haunted remorse from his addiction, which he initially picked up as a pain reliever in a hospital stint.

His high-seas tale is a quick read and was well worth revisiting for me all these years later. It’s the story of an old-gray haired mariner who stops three young men on their way to a wedding to tell them his tale.

The old man and his crew leave port without a care in the world when the wind soon grabs the ship and forces it towards the South Pole. However, a bird, the albatross, appears and seems to guide the ship out of its southerly current and back northward.

The mariner grows tired of the bird’s presence and shoots it, which leads to a feeling of great loneliness in the man. Once the ship reaches the equator, it again stalls. The crew becomes famished and thirsty, and angrily hangs the albatross around the mariner’s neck as a symbol of his guilt.

Still stranded, a mysterious skeleton ship pulls alongside their own and Death boards, killing more than 200 men, all but the ancient mariner, who has to live on to contemplate his sin against nature. 

The dead crew haunts him until, one day, he comments about the wonders of the animals he watches from the ship. The spell is broken, the crew reawakens, and the ship resumes its journey. Another round of fantastical mysticism occurs - arguably not necessary - but eventually the ship is destroyed and the mariner is saved by another boat.

Find the other parts of this ongoing series of "Classic Reads" in the Books section.

North Korea's Alien Tentacles Illuminated in The Orphan Master's Son

The Orphan Master’s Son is the best new novel I’ve read in a few years.

Its disorienting series of flashbacks and flash-forwards is like the movie Memento, and the surreal feeling of being in alien North Korea is overwhelming in an almost science-fiction, 1984-like way.

The 2013 Pulitzer Prize winner starts out a little slow. At parts during the first 100 pages, I wasn’t sure I would make it through all 450 pages. But it picked up quickly as the protagonist Pak Jun Do leaves the orphanage where he’s grown up to become a radio operator on a ship that plucks people off Japanese beaches to torture or kill.

An alleged battle at sea with a group of Americans results in a great national tale of how Pak Jun Do fended off a shark while trying to save one of his shipmates. This heroism leads Pak Jun Do to be selected for a diplomatic mission to Texas, and he later becomes one of the few North Koreans to have a knowledge that what it’s like in the U.S. is quite a bit different than what the loudspeakers regularly report to the citizens.

This is the point when the novel truly becomes a page-turner. The Texas mission is deemed a failure and Pak Jun Do’s fellow diplomats are disposed of in a torturously violent fashion that is typical of this often cringe-worthy tale. Pak Jun Do is allowed to live but sent to work in an unbearably harsh prison mine.

Adam Johnson and the cover of his book

He survives this episode and his toughness is noted, as North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Il, summons him to transform into Commander Ga, who was the country’s tae kwon do hero but has gone missing. Ga’s wife is Sun Moon, the country’s most famous actress, and Pak Jun Do/Commander Ga finds himself in a new, again, surreal world. Sun Moon is initially not happy to have a “replacement husband,” but she eventually accepts that it is what the Dear Leader and her country need from her.

Ga, because of his experience with the Americans, is called upon again in a hostage situation in which an American rower has been plucked from the seas by North Korea. Ga finds a way to outwit the Dear Leader during the handoff of this prisoner, who has been tormented by Kim Jong Il in unimaginable ways.

But then again, the unimaginable becomes the horrific stuff of every few pages in The Orphan Master’s Son. By the end, the weirdness of the country is almost laughable, although in reality it is Holocaust-level heart-wrenching. 

Author Adam Johnson has done a brilliant job of capturing the most unknown country on the planet. The Stanford professor visited Pyongyang and a few other parts of the country while doing his research. Even he admits that it’s tough to know too much about the country since ordinary citizens are never allowed to speak to foreigners. But he has gotten us closer to an understanding, and closer to knowing what a strange, different, fascinating, and seemingly harsh place it is.

***** out of ***** stars

Where Are All the Good Spies?

For some strange reason, I've never been much into spy stories. I've seen very few James Bond films. I've read none of Ian Fleming's novels. I'm not even overly curious about all the recent NSA news.

There have been exceptions, mostly in the movie medium. I like some of the Jack Ryan stuff, of course Alfred Hitchcock's spy-related flicks like Notorious and The 39 Steps, and anything out of Austin Powers' mouth.

So I gave a more serious, Kafka-like novel a try. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carre is widely considered a gem of the genre. It's about British agent Leamus, who falls in a kind of love with a librarian while stationed in Germany. He is then tugged in various directions around Europe by shady and often unseemly characters. It does not end well for several of the players.

The bleakness and lack of character development makes the novel suffer for me, although it does a good job of placing the reader deeply into the world of what it must have been like to be a spy in the middle of the 20th century.

If anyone has any better spy recommendations, I'm willing to give a few more books or novels a shot.

**1/2 out of ***** stars

Morning Glories Takes the Teen Mystery Graphic Novel Genre to a New Level

As I mentioned recently, I've discovered that graphic novels are the perfect answer for a person who doesn't have as much time to enjoy reading as many great stories as he used to (you know, parenthood).

Speaking of great stories, the last graphic novel I finished was Morning Glories Volume One: For a Better Future, from Image Comics. One of the first things I look for in a graphic novel is compelling cover art. This one, at first glance, looks like a simple prep-school story for adults, which in itself can often be a winning formula.

But what really got me more interested was that the characters looked slightly off, mysterious, and puzzling. The lack of description about what this story is all about added to the intrigue.

As one reviewer at Amazon notes, this is Lost meets The Breakfast Club. Six celebrated kids, who happen to all have the same birthday, arrive at a prestigious prep school. On the first day, the teachers and students set about trying to kill them and generally make their lives hell. There is also a monster that sweeps in with no rhyme or reason to stick his hands through the brains of random people at random times.

The interesting thing is that this doesn't appear to be yet-another teenage vampire tale. Through the first volume, I have no idea what it's about. But it's a page turner, and the characters are built so strongly and with just the right of scheming against each other that I'll definitely return to read subsequent volumes of this mysterious thrill ride.

**** out of ***** stars (with the right to give this more or fewer stars based on how the next chapters pan out)

Novel, Part #14

Rock star Rory is in the middle of trying to convince Paul's dad to let him become one of his roadies. For the rest of the start of the book, go here.

But Rory calmly broke in. “I know it sounds crazy, but Paul here is a rare find. The people who tend to cling to these rock n’ roll tours can be real losers and I want to get it right. I want to have a really strong business team around me so I can worry about writing great, entertaining music while being surrounded by people - friends - who I like and can trust.”

I have to admit that Rory was beginning to make an admirably sensible argument.

My dad was still clearly fighting the urge to throw both Rory and his only son out the front window. “But he’s got a job, and he wants to turn his lawn mowing into a business. Why would he want to give that up?”

“Yeah,” added Ernie distantly and dumbly.

We all looked over at him. He sensed our glares and pleading looks, and realized we were actually waiting for his rationale. When this happened, he turned his head towards us and left his eyes on the TV, “Graig Nettles just hit a homer.”

This moment, I forever thought, softened my dad a little.

“We’re doing very well, Mr. Andrews,” Rory resumed. “We can pay Paul better than what he would make owning his own company, he can get to see the world some and see how it operates outside of Papersville, and he’ll get to meet a lot of extraordinary people who may just help him discover what it is he wants to do with himself as he grows up.”

“Yeah Dad, I really think it’s a great opportunity, and Rory’s really got a lot of confidence in me, even though we only met yesterday.”

“I just think I know people pretty well,” Rory added, as if closing the case.

Dad looked like he had plenty of questions for Rory, but he stopped himself short and said, “I’ll have to discuss it with your mother, Paul. It is a very kind offer, Rory.”

With that, we all stood up, except for Ernie, who at least surprisingly looked up. Rory thanked my dad for his time and said he had to head back to New York City tomorrow to plan for a tour starting in two weeks, but that the Andrews could take all the time they needed in making a decision. He was amazingly courteous for a rock star, even my dad must have noticed.

“Pretty neat havin’ that Cocksure in the house,” Ernie said to my dad after it was just the two of them remaining.

“Yes. He certainly wasn’t what I would have expected,” my dad said. “I would have to be crazy to let my son work for a bunch of rock n’ rollers, wouldn’t I?”

“I s’posse you would have to be. Got a point though. Paul would prolly meet some pert interestin’ folks.”

“Hmmm.”

Novel, Part #13

The novel's two main characters, young Paul and rock star Rory, hatch a plan to work in cahoots. For the rest of the start of the book, go here.

Chapter 7

“This might be tricky so try and let me do most of the talking,” Rory said, as we walked up the front lawn of my family’s little house two blocks from the center of town, which consists of a tavern, a grocery store, and the diner we had left five minutes ago. The day after Rory’s concert at the record plant, we had met again for lunch to discuss a plan Rory had hatched, and which I was extremely excited to make happen.

When we walked into the house, it was the same as it ever was on a Sunday afternoon. Ernie Snimes was installed on the couch and my dad was at an awkwardly comfortable angle in his recliner. The Yankees’ game was on and the smell of cigarette smoke hung in the air. For some reason I was a little taken aback by the scene, even though I should have known better. Something didn’t look like it forebode well for Rory’s plan.

Introductions were made and my dad, thankfully, seemed somewhat pleased to have a celebrity in his living room, albeit a minor one in his eyes. Ernie just nodded to Rory and me and mostly kept his eyes on the tube. In those days, to befriend a strange older man didn’t seem as taboo as it would nowadays. Bringing him home to meet the parents was still a little unusual, but not necessarily suspect.

“Mr. Andrews, I got to talking with Paul down at the record plant and I was really impressed with his work ethic. He did a superior job making it the nicest factory lawn I’ve ever had the honor of playing. We talked some more down at the diner and I’m positive I’d like to bring him on to work for me some of the time when it’s possible for him to do so.”

My dad looked interested in the proposal and motioned him to go on. I couldn’t quite tell if Ernie was listening. In fact, I couldn’t tell if even the ballgame was registering with him. He looked, frankly, a little dumbfounded and I distinctly remember that I was kind of wishing he weren’t there.

“What did you have in mind?” my dad asked.

“I do a lot of touring around the northeast and he could help carry my equipment around and load it on and off the stages."

“He’s not even 14 yet! How is he going to help you while he’s in school?”

“I would pay to fly him to our shows on Friday nights. He could travel with us on the weekends, get his homework done on the bus, and I’d fly him back Sunday nights in time for bed and school the next morning.”

This got Ernie’s attention. He looked up and stared at Rory as if he were a ghost. It also looked like his mouth was about to form a “but …” I was looking at Ernie because I couldn’t bear to watch my dad’s reaction. At least my mom was out grocery shopping.

“Now look here …,” my dad started.

Novel, Part #12

The novel's two main characters, young Paul and rock star Rory, continue their conversation over drinks and pie at Admiller's Deli. For the rest of the start of the book, go here.

We ordered two slices of blueberry pie with vanilla ice cream. Rory got a coffee and I had a Coke.

Rory asked, ”So what are you all about?”

“Um, I’m starting Papersville High next month and I cut lawns, mostly my own and Universal’s.”
“OK, so those are the official things. But what do you like? What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. Like I said, I like American Top 40, so I guess that means I like music. I like to read. I finished Gone With the Wind and The Fountainhead this summer.”

“The classics. The Fountainhead, eh? Ayn Rand. So does that mean you want to work on Wall Street and crunch numbers or be some fancy-pants architect or lawyer and make tons of money?”

“No.”

“Well, good. We can still be friends,” he laughed.

“Don’t you make a lot of money?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I like other people who make lots of money. In fact, so many people around me are trying so hard to make a buck off me that it makes it hard to figure out who my friends are. Remember, I may seem like an artifact to you, but to the people on the business side of my life, I’m still a rookie kid who doesn’t know what he’s doing. And I still need friends. I’ve met a lot of fellow musicians and rock stars who I consider friends, but I don’t hang out with them in, umm, natural ways, you know? And when I lived here, I actually got made fun of quite a bit. I didn’t fit in and sort of kept in my own world. I used to draw rock stars and imagine what I would be like as one of them. My older sister listened to good music and taught me how to play guitar. That first guitar – I still have it – has been my best friend for a long time.”

I added, “I don’t have a guitar, and I probably don’t have anyone who would be considered my best friend. I’m not sure I relate to people here, but I’m not sure I’m better than people here either, like I think you probably are.”

“I don’t know about that. In another time and mindset, this place might not be exactly as it seems.”

Novel, Part #11

The novel's two main characters, young Paul and rock star Rory, have just met and bonded a little bit. For the rest of the start of the book, go here.

Chapter 6

During the impressive and melodic solo performance by Rory, I could see that I clearly liked his music and his worldview. He switched from singing about space exploration to global causes to the pains and pleasures of love effortlessly, sometimes in the same song. He even looked over and smiled at me a couple of times. Luckily, my shift was over and it was alright for me to stick around and enjoy the show for free. I think the other people attending had paid to get in.

I took the effort to stick around afterwards to say goodbye to Rory and tell him how much I liked his music, and to maybe have him sign the records some of his friends had given to me. To my surprise, he asked if I wanted to go get some coffee and pie at Admiller’s Deli, not something I would turn down doing with my worst enemy.

After ordering from our corner booth near the window, Rory asked, “That went well, don’t you think, Paul?”

“Yes, I really like your music, Rory,” I paused. “What was that one about staring at Earth about? It was weird, but I can’t get it out of my head.”

“Cool. Yeah, that’s my one take at prog rock. Progressive rock. You know, like the more spaced-out elements of Zeppelin, or like Yes or Fleetwood Mac. I wrote it three years ago when Earth Day was starting up. I thought about what Earth must have looked like to the astronauts on the Moon. You know, this life-giving force of a planet. It must have been impossible for them to miss just how fragile our systems are, and how the green trees feed off the blue waters and the clouds in the sky. Having that image should make everyone on this planet realize that we’ve got to start taking care of it one of these days.

“I actually got my start playing a festival with the Mac when Peter Green freaked out on LSD and started slipping into schizophrenia. I was one of many fill-ins for him. But, man, it was a great experience, and they totally helped me into the biz. And it was just because I had offered to help lift their equipment at a gig down in the city and ended up hanging around with them all night. My parents weren’t too happy, but I even played some of my songs for Christie McVie and Mick Fleetwood and they said they were floored. They must have been because I got to play them again at the big Earth Day Fest not too long afterwards, thanks to Mick pulling some strings. That was enough for me to get all kinds of offers from people who wanted to play in my band and, voila, here I am. Local boy done good.”

“Wow, it sounds so easy.”

“Well, I worked hard on writing songs before all that. And I worked really hard to make sure they sounded perfect once I was more or less put under deadline by the demands of the Mac.”

Novel, Part #10

Our chief characters, Paul and rock star Rory, have just met out on the lawn of the Universal/Decca record plant in Upstate New York. To read the start of the novel, go here.

“My name’s Rory. Rory Cocksure. Made up name,” he said, reading me. “You don’t know my stuff, do you?”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Not into music?”

“Um, no, I like it. I listen to Casey Kasem every Sunday morning,” I said, sheepishly, thinking this might not be the answer this person was anticipating.

But Rory laughed. “Yeah, the music world’s a weird one. Just no telling where things will turn up. I still haven’t cracked the top 40. But some of the stiffs down at the record company asked me if I could write a hit ballad so it might one day run as a ‘long-distance dedication.’ Jeesh. Anyway, look me up later so I can give you my albums once the crew gets here with all the boxes and stuff. I may not be as popular as T. Rex and Steely Dan, but I’m influenced by them a little bit and you may like my stuff. What’s your name?”

“Paul.”

“Paul, it’s nice to meet you. And thanks again for making this area look real nice. I love the smell of fresh-cut grass. And those trees will make a great background. I think my manager is going to film my set, so you should get some kind of billing in the video credits. How about lawn supervisor?”

“Ah. Ummm …”

“Great. It’s a deal then. I’ve gotta run back to the hotel to grab some stuff in a bit. But first, I’m going to sit over there on that rock and meditate and breathe for a little while. So don’t mind me.”

“Uh, no problem. And thanks for the albums and the film credit,” I said lamely.

“Not a thing. I’ve got a good feeling about you, Paul. Oh, and call me Rory.”

Novel, Part #9

Our chief characters, Paul and rock star Rory, meet. To read the start of the novel, go here.

Chapter 5

“Hey kid, you from around here?” I heard a voice say from behind me.

Turning around, I said, “Yes, sir.”

The man looked to be in his early 20s, but I couldn’t completely tell because he looked so different from the kind of person we see around Papersville on a daily basis. He had long blond locks flowing past his denim vest that opened to another flowing area of blond hair on his chest, along with tight leather pants and black boots beneath. And even though I was cutting the grass on the shady side of the Universal factory that day, it was still a surprise to see what could only be a real rock star now standing virtually face-to-face with me. The factory was really just that – a factory. It was not a place ever frequented by the untouchable music legends who appeared in the grooves of what that factory produced.

“Thanks a lot for cleaning it up around here for me,” the man said.

“You’re welcome, sir.”

I’ve got this signing thing here starting in an hour or so.”

“I know. My boss told me to make this area look real nice.”

“Well, thanks again,” the rocker said. “So you’re from around here, you say. What street?”

“East Lake Drive.”

“Hey, I grew up on West Lake. Small world. We don’t have the house anymore. My dad died and my mom is in a nursing home over in Mayfair. I split my time between my penthouse in the city and my ranch house out in L.A.”

“Are you here to visit your mom?”

“Well, yeah. But I’ve got a lot of fans in these parts, so it seemed like a good idea to do a little something special for them. I’m going to sign autographs and then play some songs on the acoustic guitar right here.”

“I’d like to see that,” I said.

Novel, Part #8

We continue taking a glimpse into Paul's early life with his parents. You can read the entire beginning of my novel here.

I mostly listened to songs that were on a new radio program called American Top 40 with Casey Kasem. These songs were lighter than things like Led Zeppelin and Kiss and were tolerated by my mom and dad on Saturday mornings, although I frequently caught them looking at each other hesitantly like they were ashamed at kind of liking an occasional “long-distance dedication” track or something by Bread.

John and Anna Andrews, ironically, met and bonded over a rock song. It sounds cheesy now, but they were at the ice cream shop when one of the rowdier kids at Papersville High ventured to play a brand-new song in the jukebox called “It’s All Right (Mama)” by a still virtually unknown Elvis Presley. Nearly all of the kids in the store got up from their soda pops and started dancing. John quickly saw the pretty girl in the pink dress still sitting shyly at her booth and leaped over to ask her to dance. Turned out she was pretty fancy in her feet. He got her name and asked her to the senior dance. She accepted, even though it turned out that she was still a year away from being in high school. The same Elvis song got played again about halfway through the senior dance, which, although they’ve never admitted it to me, may have sealed the deal on their lifelong friendship and love for each other.

One time I got my mom to go as far as to say, “Elvis was pretty exciting to hear when I was 13.” Of which my dad quickly added, “Even if he was in the minor leagues compared to the top crooners.”

Anyway, I guess Elvis put enough jump in their juices to have me a few years later. But he didn’t put enough in to supply me with any brothers and sisters. My dad’s rationale always was, pretty astutely, that there just wouldn’t be enough of a life in Papersville for more than one Andrews’ offspring. At the time, in 1956, the town was thriving by the standards of most others in the region. But he must have seen even then that New York City and other big towns would lure future generations to megalopolises of opportunity rather than ones like ours with choices limited to papering, record pressing, bartending, or lawn mowing.

Novel, Part #7

We continue to take a look into our protagonist's life growing up in small-town Papersville, New York. You can read the entire beginning of my novel here.

Chapter 4

Even though my dad – and mom, as well, for that matter – were more than happy for me not to start working in the life-deadening paper mills, they were both pretty unhappy about the Universal “predicament.” Many characters that dominated music news in 1973 were unsavory to small-town folks like my parents.

My dad constantly asked me questions like these: “Led Zeppelin? Kiss? Lou Freed? They’re all drug addicts. Whatever happened to the classics like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin?”

“Dad, I think those guys had their share of addiction problems. And besides, I’m cutting grass at a record-making factory. I’m not on stage with makeup and I don’t even know how to play any instruments. So I don’t think you have much to worry about with me. I’m more worried about what I want to do with my life. I would love to start my own lawn business.”

My dad’s friend and our next-door neighbor, Ernie Snimes, always nearby and never failing to chime in, was still dwelling on the current music scene. “Even that Paul McCarterney seems to have gone to pot. Them Beatles seemed like they might be onter sumpin for a while there. But I don’t know now. Seems like juss a lotto noise mostly.”

I usually tended to agree with them, simply to end what could quickly deteriorate into an argument about even larger societal and generational issues. It was clear that Woodstock and everything that was quickly happening since then in the youth cultural scene completely jarred their senses and worldviews. It clearly wasn’t something they would easily succumb to, and I think it was this way for most people in small places like Papersville. I don’t know what the big-city transitions must have been like, but they couldn’t have been nearly as close-minded at the time.

Novel, Part #6

Here's a tiny bit of Chapter 3 leftover from yesterday's post, which details the founding of our protagonist's hometown, Papersville, New York. Read the entire beginning of my as-yet-unnamed novel here.

The rest of the people who lived in my hometown came in the 1940s, when music was moving from the front porch to the big-time. Sheets’ sons took most of the credit for this. They had both attended Yale and took regular trips into Manhattan and even one vacation down south, where they saw the blues movement unfolding. They wisely saw the need for record albums – or what were then referred to as “disc records” – to be more widely available, or rather, available. Sammy and Larry made their senior thesis a proposal to the executives at Universal/Decca Records and pitched it to them in person, without an appointment, on a sunny day high above the streets of Manhattan in a skyscraper office that secretly boggled the minds of the two young entrepreneurs. They didn’t flinch and before three months had passed, ground was being broken on a plant that would supply millions of great songs to generations of young groovers.

Well, anyway, I wasn’t interested in working at the paper mills, and my dad was very understanding of this. It seems he secretly harnessed a grudge against his father-in-law for giving him this life, even though this is something he never would have told us. He allowed me to take my first jobs as a lawn mower and helped me get my first few jobs by doing yard work for several of his mill co-workers. One day I happened to notice a sign on the road outside of the record plant that they were hiring a junior grass cutter. I applied, got the job, and, I suppose, this is where our story begins.

Novel, Part #5

Apologies again for the long interval. Life has been a little busy since resuming normality post my Dominican vacation. To remember where last we were, our protagonist editor of Rolling Earwax magazine was catching up with old acquaintances at the end of the funeral for his long-time friend, rock star Rory Cocksure.

Chapter 3

Like I said, I was 13 in 1973. My ancestors on my mom’s side had come from England in the 1700s and most of them had spread out around the New York City area. My grandfather, already dead by then from years of hard work on the paper line, had moved to Papersville with his father and began working in one of the many mills when he was six. Or so the story goes. He probably walked there barefoot down the railroad tracks in the snow as well. But joking aside, he reportedly did work very hard for not much incentive.

My grandfather was my mother’s dad. He got my dad, John Andrews, a job at his paper mill, and my mom, Anna, stayed home to take care of me and my dad.

Papersville is at the southern end of the Adirondack State Park. Its proximity to the trees was the perfect setting for a half dozen or so paper mills. The trees would come in and, by the time Paperville got done with them, there were trucks headed out far and wide to distribute the stock. About a third of all the paper used in the country mid-century came from our little burg. And nearly all the paper used in the Northeast was from Papersville, a fitting name, you might say. This is no longer the case. There is one small mill left and I don’t think any of it goes beyond the borders of New York State, and maybe not beyond the borders of Fulton County.

Legend has it that the first mill was founded by a man named Samuel Sheets. I’m not kidding about the name, but you’ve got to realize that this was a man who knew what he wanted and didn’t stop until he was the richest man in the county. He had apparently walked from Canada after arriving there from Europe in the late 1800s. He made up his name and used other creative methods for a man with zero power or money to start Top Notch Tree and Paper Company. Why he walked all the way to the southern end of the Adirondacks instead of settling way up on the northern end is a bit of a town mystery. People like to say he had so much initiative and energy that he simply wasn’t ready to stop walking. Only when he realized the forest had ended many miles back and there wouldn’t be such prime land for many miles more did he turn back around to the edge of the tree line and start chopping and hammering to build his mill single-handedly. Sheets didn’t stop at one mill. He continued building and, by the 1920s, out-of-work people flocked to the recently named Papersville to escape the depression that gripped the rest of the U.S. at the time. He created a bustling town that numbered nearly 20,000 people at its height, nearly all of whom worked in the paper biz. And they knew and revered Sheets.

Novel, Part #4

Sorry for the extended break from our story of the dead rock star Rory and his younger buddy Paul. I was offline in the Dominican Republic for most of last week.

Catch the earlier installments here.

Galaxy said the song he wrote to memorialize Rory was all about how some places, and some people, just get “used up” and someone or something new has to replace them or they die. He told me he thought Rory was all “used up.” He thought Rory had had enough of life and that his death would free him to find something new, something exciting like how those images of a new planet were so exciting. He said the look in Rory’s eyes that afternoon when looking at and discussing those photos of Mars was something that was no longer ever there the handful of times Galaxy met up with Rory in the last 10 years or so.

“So I think he’s happy and this was a positive thing,” he finished.

“Interesting,” I said. “I don’t know. Part of me thinks Rory just grew older and wiser and wasn’t as surprised or as naïve about many of the things he used to be that way about. But you may have a point. And that rocky terrain on Mars was definitely mesmerizing.”

Galaxy walked back to the funeral and it was probably the last time I was going to see him. This was probably the last time I was going to see many of the characters that Rory brought into my world. When I walked back, it wasn’t surprising to see that the only funeral-goers remaining were three women, each standing on their own and each crying with some degree of volume. I recognized two as Rory’s ex-girlfriends, one of whom I knew like a big sister. Although I probably should have continued to let Chloe Desmertes have her personal moment, I went up and had a nice long hug with her.