The Parking Gods Always Provide

It's an axiom of urban living that everything works fairly well, even if you have no idea how it will. Or maybe I just lead a sometime-charmed life.

Take, for example, my current parking situation.

When I moved back to D.C. last spring I rented a studio apartment in a building with a parking garage. Last fall I found a bigger place to move into. It was perfect, except that it had no dedicated parking space. I had no idea about the street parking situation -- I knew I would need a residential parking permit, but I didn't know whether street parking would be easy, or even possible -- but I took the new place without investigating the situation. I trusted urban fate, figuring the parking would somehow work out.

The first thing I discovered was that, except for a few hours on late Friday and Saturday nights, street parking in my neighborhood is abundant. This was a shock. I live in D.C.'s U Street neighborhood, one of the places everyone in D.C. goes to party, even George Stephanopoulos. I expected the parking to be competitive (hordes of women abandoning their cars in the street, running after Mr. Stephanopoulos, trampling everything in their path, casually using up all the available parking in the process), but generally, at any given time of day, there are vast open spaces on every block. Unless it is late Friday or Saturday night, you can park wherever you want.

The second thing I discovered was D.C.'s street cleaning program, something new since I last lived here. Once a week each block gets swept by a street cleaner, and never are both sides of a street swept on the same day. This means once a week you must move your car for the street sweeper. Sometimes you have to move your car twice. If you parked along a curb swept on Tuesdays, for example, and on Monday you move your car across the street, you've likely moved it to a curb that will be swept on Wednesday, which means that on Tuesday night (or early Wednesday morning) you must move your car back to where it was Monday.

You get the idea. It's basically a fancy way of freeing up parking spaces by making everyone move their car every week. It's probably why there's so much parking in my neighborhood, for those with permission to park here. But it is a mild pain in the neck, and a burden for absent-minded people like myself.

I should say, for the record, that my friend Doug thinks there are no actual street sweepers, and it's true I have never seen one.

Anyway, I also learned that if you forget to move your car the city doesn't actually tow it. Another shock. When I went to law school in upstate New York, you had to move your car across the street once a week and if you forgot, you had to take the bus out to the remote fenced-in lot with the attack dog that charged the fence and tried to kill you, and the huge bald guy with tattoos, who sort of resembled the dog, now that I think about it, and who mightily restrained the dog while he accepted your cashier's check for $100 and returned your car. I wanted to tell the huge guy with the murderous dog that this whole move-your-car-or-get-towed-and-pay-$100-to-get-your-car-back thing seemed like a giant state-sponsored scam, but I thought better of it.

But in D.C. they slide a $30 ticket under your wiper and call it good. Which ticket, you can pay on-line.

Civilized, right?

I was relieved to discover this, because I had looked into renting a space in a garage. Not only are there no garages in my neighborhood, but the monthly fee was several hundred dollars, much more than the $120 monthly cost if I ignored the street sweeping signs completely and let my car collect weekly $30 tickets (although presumably at some point even the D.C. government's patience would be exhausted and they would tow it, but I am not so absent-minded as to let that happen and anyway I digress).

Stick with me, dear reader, for I am about to make my most magical discovery about parking in my neighborhood. It turned out that I didn't need to park on the street at all, because on the other alley on my block (my block has two alleys, one on either side of the historic theater that fronts U Street) there is an apron of asphalt against the wall of the fancy new condo building that, I discovered, unknown to anyone, was owned by the city. Just that small patch. Because it had no signage, you could park there without fear. The city couldn't tow you, or issue a ticket, because parking there had never been prohibited. And the condo building couldn't move your car because they didn't own the land.

For months after this discovery I had luxury parking in one of D.C.'s most popular neighborhoods, a secret space in an alley on my block that no one else (it seemed) knew about.

Of course it didn't last. Too soon after I discovered the secret parking on my block, it disappeared. The chili dog stand next to the historic theater put up signs, threatening to tow anyone that didn't obtain a permit from them. No more secret free parking.

But then another magical thing happened. I discovered a nearby block (I'm not saying where) along which the street sweeping signs have disappeared. Probably because there are no signs anymore, on this magical block the D.C. police don't ticket cars during street sweeping days. It can be difficult, but if you find a space you can leave your car there forever and not get a ticket. I tried it during my recent 2 1/2 week vacation. Sure enough, when I came back, my car was right where I left it, no tickets fluttering under the front wiper.

I guess the other rule of urban living is that nothing lasts. Soon, I'm sure, signs will appear along the magic parking block and my secret no-hassle long-term parking will disappear.

But by then I'll have figured something out, even if it's only how to remind myself to move my car on street sweeping days.

Trying, Trying . . .

I have a new essay up at the Nervous Breakdown.

Pocket Music Review # 1

"City Hall" by Vienna Teng

"City Hall," the fifth track on Vienna Teng's 2006 album "Dreaming Through the Noise," is a moving and beautiful piece of songwriting. It does so many things: tells a heartfelt story, memorializes an historic event, and raises a chorus for a political cause, all within the form of an infectious pop song.

Vienna's albums, "Warm Strangers" and "Dreaming Through the Noise," are a blend of jazz, pop, chamber music and folk. She's like a more jazzy Sarah McLaughlin, with classical training and better lyrics. (There's nothing inscrutable and wildly romantic about vampires striking suicide poses, for example.) I'm sure her first album is also fine, I just can't vouch for it because I haven't heard it yet. You can also find, on YouTube, some glamorous and often hilarious footage of her life on the road, taken on this summer's tour by Vienna and her friend, the underwater marine photographer Eric Cheng. It all looks remarkably like driving cross-country with a buddy to change jobs or go to school, except that every other day you put on a show.

Here is Vienna Teng performing "City Hall" at the Living Room in New York:

Pocket Book Review # 8

Babylon and Other Stories, by Alix Ohlin



"Babylon" is a fine, fine collection of stories propelled by Alix Ohlin's deadpan, offbeat humor. The stories fit her style perfectly; they all seem to be about things flying apart. And there is a wonderful combination of absurdity and drama in them. What's strange but also compelling about Olin's stories is the way the comedy doesn't release the tension, but tightens it.

In "Land of the Midnight Sun" a Russian boy named Yuri just shows up one day on the front step of the house of Maxine, a high school student home alone doing her trig homework. She answers the door, a car honks and drives away, and there he is.

"I am exchange student," Yuri says. "I live in your house one year." Yuri explains that, after one year, Maxine can live in his house in Russia if she wants. "It is glasnost program," he says.

"It's like nobody tells me anything," she says.

She shows him around the house. When she explains that everyone calls her younger brother Bat, because his room is like a cave, Yuri says, "You are talking of the mouse with wings."

What follows is a charming coming of age story that ends with Maxine, years later, visiting Moscow, married and struggling to remember the encounter she and Yuri shared at Carlsbad Caverns, where they went to see the bats fly out in droves before sunset.

She remembers how she and Yuri "had walked up the hill out of the darkness of the Caverns," Olin writes, "his fingers brushing against hers, furtive, barely there, yet electric. They emerged into the sudden, blinding desert sun and it shocked her, as if they'd been expecting midnight."

Doomed Story Sketch # 1

Lesser-Known Facts About Casablanca



On the surface Casablanca tells the story of a doomed love affair between a casino owner and the wife of a French resistance leader. At its heart, however, the movie is a complex allegory about the ennui of small business ownership in Morocco in the late 30's.

While the film starred Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, the producers' original choices for the roles were William Holden and Shirley Temple. Holden, however, was only 24, and therefore too young to be credible as a former Ethiopian gun-runner and Spanish Civil War combatant. Temple, who was also 24, was long past her prime and anyway there were no dancing numbers.

The "world war" that provides the backdrop for the story is not the actual world war fought in the 1940's between the Axis and Allied powers, but a fictionalized account of that war that is identical to it in every respect.

While many people know that the airplane on the runway in the final scene was made of cardboard, and that the airplane attendants were played by midgets to keep the scene to scale, fewer know that midgets also played the parts of Sam, Victor Lazlo, Ugarte, Louis Renalt, Major Strasser, and all the casino patrons.

Humphrey Bogart's character, Rick Blaine, keeps a Russian dancing bear in his apartment above the bar. In one scene cut from the film just before its release, Ilsa walks in on Rick as he is teaching the bear to stand upright on a wooden circus ball. Rick, more than a little embarrassed, asks her to please leave him alone. The scene ends with the bear tilting its head and offering Rick a sympathetic pout.

Unsure of how to end the film, director Michael Curtiz shot alternate endings in which: 1) Ilsa starts toward the plane but changes her mind and doubles back, then decides she will get on the plane after all and, flustered, apologizes for being so indecisive; 2) flat-out refuses to get on the plane and throws a screaming tantrum; 3) gets on the plane but has a panic attack, thereby forcing the plane back to the terminal; 4) happily announces that she'll be glad to get on the plane and thanks Rick for his understanding; and 5) writes down her address for Rick and asks him to please visit after she and Lazlo are settled in New York.

In Lisbon, over cocktails on a beach veranda, struck by the close call he and Ilsa have just had, Victor has a sudden change of heart about devoting his life to the French resistance. Ilsa admits that, to be honest, she is also very tired, and that Lisbon is not so bad. They repeatedly postpone their flight, sleep later each morning, and after a week cancel the flight altogether. Victor uses the money to make a deposit on a small bungalow. They find a restaurant in the city that they like and begin to dine there regularly. Ilsa takes a small job to pay the rent. Slowly, over time, Victor loses touch with his contacts in New York. Years later, on a vacation to Casablanca, Ilsa runs into Rick, at his cafe of all places. He is with another woman and treats Ilsa as a casual acquaintance; embarrassed, she pretends she cannot quite remember who he is.

Update!

I write in Praise of Stephen Elliott's Poker Report.

I interview Roy Kesey for Hobart.

I am quoted in Esquire: How About a Little Hope?

Pocket Book Review # 7

Saving Angelfish, by Michele Matheson



“Saving Angelfish” is a character study of a Hollywood junkie at the end of her rope. Michele Matheson describes the low life in L.A., the desperate days of her junkie heroine, in prose that is childlike, innocent, angelic, and that conveys the allure and impossibility, the otherworldly kick, of a good high.

This book is not heavy on plot. The main line of suspense is whether someone or something will arrest Maxella Gordon’s downward spiral. Matheson spares no details in describing Max’s gutter life of heroin dependency and sickness. I never read any William S. Boroughs but, honestly, I have a hard time believing he could have written anything more raw than this.

I was lucky to meet Michele at this summer's Tin House workshop. She is charming and hilarious and, not that this is a standard for literary reviews, but she deserves all of her success. Hurry up and buy her book already!

Kapuscinski's Legacy

On cue, as if the splashes in this blog had made a ripple in the world, the editors of Tin House have published dueling essays about Ryszard Kapuscinski in their current issue.

Steve Almond, lined up to defend our intrepid Polish foreign correspondent, doesn't dispute the errors in Kapuscinski's reporting. Instead, he celebrates Kaupscinski's dedication to the noble mission of increasing the West's understanding of Africa. Fair enough.

Binyavanga Wainaina makes a narrower, and to my mind stronger, point. He first notes Kapuscinski's ability to turn out brilliant work. In "Another Day of Life," comprised of early Kapuscinski reportage from Angola, Kapuscinski is "a writer of profound and careful wonder."

But then Wainaina reads "The Emperor," about Ethiopian dictator Haile Selassie, and it all goes downhill. "The Emperor" is filled with factual errors, the most notable being Kapuscinski's description of a Selassie aide whose job is to wipe the pee from the dictator's dog off the shoes of visiting dignataries. In fact, Selassie treated his guests with respect, and would not have let his dog degrade them. So, what are to make of a writer who, apparently deliberately, gets this wrong?

There are other mistakes, if you can call them that. Kapuscinski says Selassie was "no reader" when in fact he studied the Ethiopian and Western canons and held a profound esteem for reading and learning. Kapuscinski says he never signed anything when the opposite is true. Wainaina demonstrates that Kapuscinski has given the reader a caricature of Selassie, the African Dictator Stereotype in place of the real and more complex person. Wainaina argues that "Shadow of the Sun" is similarly beset by cliches about Africa and its people and it is hard, in the end, not to wonder how much a simplistic and inaccurate impression of Africa adds to our understanding.

Almond and Wainaina both tacitly acknowledge the power of Kapuscinski's writing. Whether he was nailing it in "Another Day of Life," or phoning it in in "The Emperor," the man could write. Kapuscinki's writing is always spare and beautiful, devoid of sentiment, full of grace and power, and it casts a spell. I read "Shadow of the Sun" mesmerized by that spell. It's interesting to note the power of good writing to seduce the reader.

The question that comes to my mind is, "What was Kapuscinski thinking"? Granting that he got so many fundamental facts about Africa -- his life's subject -- wrong in "The Emporer" and "Shadow of the Sun," the natural question is, What was going on upstairs?

Wainaina says Kapuscinski's mistakes reveal his state of mind. He suggests that Kapuscinski may have believed the cliched myths he propogated about the African rulers he profiled. Wainaina describes the idealistic rulers of African nations who, in the 80's and 90's, "self-orientalized" and came to "believe their own bullshit completely." (I'm paraphrasing slightly). "Their parliaments and other institutions that regulated them let them get away with murder," Wainaina says, "by mindlessly validating not just the good they did, but everything they did."

The implication is that the Kapuscinski of "Shadow of the Sun" is one of these enablers, a writer whose critical days are behind him and who is only calling in the company line.

I'd like to know. I wish it weren't too late to sit down with the old man, read him one of the passages that Wainaina quotes, and ask him what he thought. Was history in Africa really, as he said in "Shadow of the Sun," "free of the weight of archives, of the constraints of dates and data"? Had history really achieved, in Africa, "its purest, crystalline form -- that of myth"?

Pocket Book Review # 5

You Are Not a Stranger Here, by Adam Haslett

Judging solely from the story "Vincennes," which he read at last year's PEN/Hemingway event in Washington, D.C., Adam Haslett is working on a second collection of amazing short stories. In the meantime you can read "You Are Not a Stranger Here," his first collection, published in 2002 and out in paperback from Anchor Books. All of the stories in this collection are confident masterpieces of the form, the kinds of stories Chekhov might write if he woke up to find himself among us.

Which, you have to admit, would be pretty weird, for Chekhov to rise from the dead and start writing Adam Haslett stories.

Will all of these pocket reviews be of paperbacks? you ask.


Mostly, yes. These are reviews of whatever I happen to be reading, with little more design or intention than to put down whatever thoughts I have about them, and I read mostly paperbacks. Also, these are "pocket" book reviews, so it makes more sense they would be of paperbacks.


How did we get off on this tangent?


Good question. But I will say that the word that comes to mind after reading "You Are Not a Stranger Here" is "fine." These are fine short stories. Fine, fine.

Pocket Book Review # 4

Travels With Herodotus, by Ryszard Kapuscinski



When he was a young correspondent, Ryszard Kapuscinski left Poland for his first foreign assignment in with a dog-eared copy of Herodotus’ “The Histories” as his only field guide. Kapuscinski’s idea for this memoir -- the last of his collections of essay and reportage -- was to describe those early travels with the father of literary travel writing, to place his early experiences in the shadow of Herodotus’ stories.

It was a lovely idea, and reading Kapuscinski is always a delight. But I have to say that this one didn’t quite seem to work as well as Kapuscinski might have intended. The early chapters, when Kapuscinski first sets off, are delightful, and of course Kapuscinski quotes the best parts of “The Histories.” He also finds some connections between Herodotus’ classic and his own adventures. But if you’ve read Herodotus before, and “The English Patient,” and seen the movie, the idea and the material will seem a bit familiar.

In the end, though, Kapuscinski turns the story toward something more personal, and more meaningful. As if he were Homer, conjuring his muse to sing, Kapuscinski writes a kind of love song to what it means to be a foreign correspondent, that is, a journalist charged with traveling to and reporting from a foreign place. The last chapter of the book is wonderful, and Kapuscinski’s final descriptions of Herodotus are the closest he comes to autobiography. When he describes Herodotus as “a vivacious, fascinated, unflagging nomad, full of plans, ideas, theories,” he is, of course, talking about himself.