| My Adderall Diaries Review, Rough Cut |
[Dec. 15th, 2010|12:08 pm] |
Stephen Elliott is the guy that you meet that makes you come to your senses when you're young and trying out the underbelly of the visible world: He appears like a stop sign with the added advice "do not proceed beyond this point." Because it is clear that Elliott has gone beyond that point many times. It is not always pretty, though it is interesting.
Mr. Elliott likes to connect to cultural signposts, I guess in the process of trying to become one himself (he's made it!) -- though his whole schtick is too outre to allow most to measure their lives by the metrics that his often dysfunctional existence affords. (But who am I to criticize, as I read his memoir looking for dropped crumbs to lead me to a common ground where we both might have found direction in the lit world of the first decade of the 21st century.)
It's all very gritty, very real, natch, coming close to the "I've had it tough -- feel sorry for me" stuff, but stays just on this side of the line.
Briefs:
A bit too authentic to be on the NYT BS (the irony isn't lost on anyone) list, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
An interesting enough bio/memoir to the extent that I really didn't care too much about the murder story. It had been covered thoroughly in the media and serves here mostly to trigger Elliott's thoughts and memories about his own situation and past and the family he left behind for the streets and juvenile homes.
I can understand why Eggers gave him a break, i.e., bringing him into the McSweeney's family; seems one of their commonalities is a mother who died tragically and too soon.
Or did Elliott con him with James Freyesque tales of J.T. Leroy imaginary doings? (Don't ask Elliott's father to get to the bottom of this. Anyway, by the end of the book I wound up believing Elliott is, in fact, a reliable narrator.)
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I found the question I kept asking myself was "Is he totally honest?" Elliott doesn't admit the real sleaziness...that I know the street type perpetrates on people. I'm not talking about the basic activities of ripping off friends and relatives, but a deeper personality flaw that allows them to perpetrate the most terrible personal slights and insults without the need to feel any remorse whatsoever. Perhaps that's not in Elliott's bag of tricks.
But he is really "out there." So why, I ask, does he show he's connected to the zeitgeist by using a Paris Hilton "Day Of The Locust" type scene that, sorry to say, fell flat for me? The paps (oh yes, it's Felliniesque -- not that there's anything wrong with that), the wild crowds -- been there, done that. This is a little like the folks that stand next to a star in a pic to show their hipness, if not their connectedness. Is Elliott writing down to us, or does he just not know (isn't sure about) his audience? Do you know anyone who gives a toss about Paris Hilton or thinks it's cool to use her as a cultural signpost. I mean other than Gawker commenters and TMZ addicts? Really.
He takes one on a fascinating trip, not unlike what Eggers did with A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius. But I refuse to get too wrapped up and in fact the infrastructure that DE had (the fangirls and boys, now nearing middle age and who would be scandalized by this tome) is not there. The other bad boy in the DE stable has been washed out, banished as it were -- he, the real upscale middleclasser who shall not be named, as Elliott's father claimed the author was -- from the magical lit kingdom of McSweeney's.
Actually though, for those literatis who like their bad boys real, Elliott's your man as opposed to that once clown king of the Eggers empire.
Actually, Elliott and I share a lot and as I read I'm relating to his story so well that I don't even notice the writing -- it's after he mentions Eggers and I think, Oh, this is like reading a letter from a friend; then I slap myself and come back to my senses. (I'm telling you I slapped myself but it is a lie. Okay, there, I just did. Do you believe me? This is what Elliott's story starts to feel like after a while: believe it or not.)
At times he reminds me of Oscar Levant. As pals with Gershwin, he was a neurotic storyteller. Eggers is Elliott's Gershwin. Eggers as a presence lingers in the background. Even Elliott's quoting of Zen and the Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance is somehow McSweeney'sesque. I wondered some times as I read if Elliott was so messed up how could he remember so much? Of course Levant called one volume of his recollections Memoirs Of An Amnesiac. Elliott can always blame the made up parts (if any) on James Frey syndrome. After all, it's the "in" lit ailment.
I continue reading. I hit page 88 and he has now indeed described himself as "like a real J.T. Leroy" right after he mentions sleeping in his car in the Castro district.
(I arrived in SF during my cross country trip; in a lot at Haight Ashbury, very briefly; wired on diet pills from a girlfriend while buddies made do with No Doz... hit the streets in search of psychedelics and -- horrified -- found only psychos in the form of speed freaks and broken down hippies. Even though I was fresh out of high school I had enough experience, having gotten burned buying off the street in Greenwich Village* to know that this scene was hopeless. The summer of love bus had long since passed through, leaving a nasty oil slick and human pollution. It was a hitcher on the way to Monterrey who scored us good acid from his friend who had just been at the Monterrey Festival.)
*Hilariously one of us on the bus back home to the NJ suburbs from Port Authority tasted (not smoked, literally "tasted") some and sagely (and in fact I think there was sage in the ounce bag) intoned "This is good stuff" with the same wrongheaded knowingness as the Steven Fry character in Blackadder as he approvingly samples the "fine wine," a gift from the new world, utterly unaware that he is imbibing Baldrick's piss.
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Chapter 6
Elliott offers another of his tales of dotcom boom and bust -- perhaps to show us that he has visited the real world, even if he can't exactly live it it -- with the added frisson this time that the company's powers that be threatened to kill him. I start to think at this point that you can take the advice that his buddy Eggers gave about parts of his own memoir and just skim or skip a few parts.
But I am now realizing that I'm starting to like Elliott and that he has worked the street con on me, but in the pages of a book. And he has made himself appear a victim of the dotcom world and evil suits and I really haven't doubted him.
I'm with him, gently conned into being his friend (an interesting variation of the reader-writer contract of give and take) when suddenly...Shocking! Is it a lie that he truly wants to know why Katie (who he presents as an innocent and purifying agent for his soul) is with him? As one who has been in a writer's entourage, close to the "star" at times, it is altogether clear to me that Elliott's lit celebrity has gotten him a compliant groupie.
And he might say he loves Katie, but in context he seems to be using her, especially as her pivotal role is within Elliott's consideration of veracity of narrative. If he had perhaps attacked verisimilitude he would have noticed that he was more concerned with Katie as a functionary in his story; she is in his life because he created a simulacrum of which its model in the real world might be jealous. (Yes, I did start reading more closely with Chapt. 6.) His angst about the role of Katie in his life strikes me as a bit disingenuous, the character "Katie" just adding a bit of clutter and unnecessary angst to the proceedings. (I will go back and reread this to make sure my impressions are correct -- remember, this is only the rough cut review. Anyway, I may just cut this whole part for the crime of fatuousness. My theory is: if you can't stand your own writing, why should you expect anyone else to?)
Amusingly Elliott wonders if he is lusting after another woman for anecdotal purposes, but doesn't consider this possibility for Katie. Huh?
The rest of the story is about an actual dotcom murder/trial and Elliott's relationship with his father. The father consideration is important stuff, sure, but that's another review, and really, where angst gets heavy and real. That whole end of things needs a part two review. Or here, but in the final review version.
Let me check out by saying that The Adderall Diaries is a book I read hoping to find a few answers to my past. In the end I found myself in my present, looking at my future through the lens of Elliott's story. I can't ask much more of any book. |
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