Day 1,988, Quasi-Quarantine: The Pack Gets Off To A Positive Start Despite Uneven Effort

 

Staying almost impossibly on brand, the Wolfpack made things unnecessarily hard on themselves last night, outlasting East Carolina, 24-17, after opening up a 17-0 advantage.

Some thoughts:

• It's always good to go 1-0.
• In year 13, coach Dave Doeren is still abysmal at game management. Which -- judging by his title -- is a pretty big part of his job description.
• State's front seven is going to be pretty difficult to deal with.
• One game in, the Pack has serious concerns along the offensive line. Again.
• NC State should never play East Carolina. There is literally nothing to gain from this for the Red and White. Make it stop.

Onward. Go Pack.

Day 1,984, Quasi-Quarantine: "CivilWarLand In Bad Decline" Is The Promising But Immature Debut Of Notable Satirist

 

“How can you take the word of a man with biscuit crumbs under his nose and a habit of walking around holding his hand over his anus for fear of violation?”

Alternating between hilarious and unrelentingly depressing, "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline" marks the memorable debut of perhaps America's pre-eminent satirist, George Saunders.

“The moon comes up over Delectable Videos like a fat man withdrawing himself from a lake.”

The writer depicts a bleak future that features the uncanny valley of consumerism, relying on spineless main characters who see ghosts but exhibit little agency. "Isabelle" is dark but pretty, "400-Pound CEO" was cruel to the point of being difficult to read, and "The Wavemaker Falters" repeatedly withholds any chance of redemption.

“Family. It’s not perfect. Sometimes it’s damn hard. But I look after her and she squeals with delight when I come home, and the sum total of sadness in the world is less than it would have been.

“Her real name is Isabelle.

“A pretty, pretty name.”

"Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz" was my favorite, displaying a sly beauty that most of the other entries seem to lack, opting for cruelty for cruelty's sake instead. 

“Connie’s a prostitute, I’m a thirty-year-old virgin, but all things considered, we could have turned out worse.”

Saunders's work -- characteristic of many debuts -- is a little confusing and a lot depressing, creating space for him to find his true voice in future books like "Liberation Day," "A Swim in the Pond in the Rain," "Fox 8," and "Lincoln in the Bardo."

Nearly 30 years later, "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline" is demented, hysterical, and challenging -- if startlingly prescient.

“‘The writer can choose what he writes about,’ Flannery O’Connor once said, ‘but he cannot choose what he is able to make live.’”

Limerick Friday #637: Farewell To A True Blood -- Day 1,974

Had to swallow a tough pill

Struggling to understand it still

You looked out for the new kid

Saved my whole year, you did

Rest in peace, my friend Phil

Living in baseball hell

Turning every W into an L

Every move backfires

Turning contenders into liars

Will any Mets rise for that final bell?

Look for beauty in small things

And any happy tidings

They're there if you look

Sometimes in a book

And remember there are no kings

Getting punked day after day

Need any hope, just a ray

The coach is a lame duck

The GM is clueless as fuck

The 'Fins just can't find their way

It's that time of year

When the salt air feels near

Saying goodbye to summer

Is always a bummer

But the beach helps me hold back each tear

Last time ...

Day 1,971, Quasi-Quarantine: "On The Hippie Trail" Doubles As Coming-Of-Age Story For Naive, Budding Globetrotter

 

“Travelers learn that fear is for people who don’t get out much; that culture shock is the growing pains of that broadening perspective; that we’re all children of God – and that by traveling, we get to know the family.”

Some 45 years after the fact, Rick Steves has transcribed and edited the notes from his journey from Istanbul to Kathmandu. "On the Hippie Trail" documents the trials and tribulations of he and his friend Gene as as they travel thousands of miles overland.

Just 23 at the time, Steves's observations are often overly romanticized and/or immature. A mid-trip decision to go from spending as little as possible to treating themselves as well as possible goes unexplored, and a choice to mainly wear only one shirt and a pair of shorts for weeks and weeks also seems ... bizarre.

“The road to India is a long one. The pavement stops with Europe – but that’s where the drive becomes a ride animated by exciting potholes.”

Many of the observations have not aged well -- the author apparently shat in a ceremonial garden at one point -- and the sudden availability of plenty of money certainly represented a glossed-over departure.

In a post-script, Steves attributes the experience to leading him to become a travel writer. While the poignant moments are few and far between, "On the Hippie Trail" sheds light on a forgotten time when the world felt less dangerous and more like an amusement ride -- and how exploring it can inspire personal growth.

“Before he left, he told me, ‘A third of the people on this planet eat with spoons and forks like you, a third of the people eat with chopsticks, and a third of the people eat with their fingers like me … and we’re all civilized just the same.’”

Day 1,971, Quasi-Quarantine: "Where The Line Bleeds" Documents Twins Trying To Find Their Way In Opportunity-Bare Gulf Coast

 

“Away from the citronella candles and electric bulbs illuminating the trees into the surrounding darkness, Eze walked into the ascending crescendo of the raucous night, calling back over his shoulder, ‘Well, come on, I got something to show you.’”

Jesmyn Ward's debut offers glimpses of the writer to come, as "Where the Line Bleeds" balances tremendous character-sketching with some clear over-writing, memorable renderings of atmosphere and place balanced against plot shortcuts and confusing shifts in perspective and time.

While the story hovers around the relationship between twins Cristophe and Joshua and how they manage fractured dynamics with Cille and Sandman, their estranged mother and father, Ma-mee is the core of the book. The blind grandmother tries to hold the twins and extended family together, with most of them figuratively blind to the toll it is taking on them.

On the strength of subsequent works like "Salvage the Bones," "Sing, Unburied, Sing," "Let Us Descend," and "Men We Reaped," Ward has become one of my favorite novelists. This work from 2008 documents that artist on the verge of emergence, after she works out some issues with how things escalate in confusing ways, the passage of time, and the omission of the voice of a key character in Laila.

"Where the Line Bleeds" shows a novelist finding her voice, a hint at Ward's eventual ascension as one of our most revered chroniclers of the South.

“His brother, their wounds, Ma-mee dimming like a bulb, his parents’ places unknown and orbiting them like distant moons: it was enough.”

Limerick Friday #636: Nothing Is Great, And Everything Feels Bad -- Day 1,968

Find hope where it belongs

Despite all of the world's wrongs

Heard "Ohio" played off the shelf

And it made me ask myself

Where are this generation's protest songs?

"Ted Lasso" for golf is "Stick"

Owen Wilson does his normal schtick

But it's the summer's feel-good show

If you just let yourself go

And forget how much our country is sick

Football's coming fast

The summer nearly passed

I can't get unhooked

But the 'Fins already seem cooked

Who will play cornerback at last?

A demented, racist coot

And a pedophile to boot

As he wandered around the roof

Hoped someone could make him go poof

And cut out the problem at its root

A dismal June and July

And August makes me want to cry

The Mets are choking something rare

And really don't seem to care

Where does rock bottom actually lie?

Last time ...

Day 1,964, Quasi-Quarantine: Neglect, Grief Propel Devastatingly Emotional "Foster"

 

“I am in a spot where I can neither be what I always am nor turn into what I could be.”

Claire Keegan is a master at packing an emotional wallop in a short number of pages, and she's at her very best in "Foster." The author of "Small Things Like These," "Walk the Blue Fields," and "Antarctica" beautifully renders a neglected child who is sent to live with relatives in rural Ireland while her mother has the latest in a series of children.

“It is something I am used to, this way men have of not talking: they like to kick a divot out of the grass with a boot heel, to slap the roof of a car before it takes off, to spit, to sit with their legs wide apart, as though they do not care.” 

The unnamed child quickly develops a deep attachment to her aunt and uncle, who have suffered an unspeakable loss that they've left unspoken. Focusing their grief and love on their niece, the Kinsellas show her the attention she has never received in her home.

Much is hinted at and little is explicitly stated in "Foster," but a heartbreaking final scene elevates this short story into an unforgettable tale.

“‘You don’t ever have to say anything,’ he says. ‘Always remember that as a thing you need never do. Many’s the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.’”