Less than Zero

People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles. This is the first thing I hear when I come back to the city. Blair picks me up from LAX and mutters this under her breath as her car drives up on the ramp. She says, “People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles.” Though that sentence shouldn’t bother me, it stays in my mind for an uncomfortably long time. Nothing else seems to matter. Not the fact that I’m eighteen and it’s December and the ride on the plane had been rough and the couple from Santa Barbara, who were sitting across from me in first class, had gotten pretty drunk. Not the mud that spattered the legs of my jeans, which felt kind of cold and loose, earlier that day at an airport in New Hampshire. Not the stain on the arm of the wrinkled, damp shirt I wear, a shirt which had looked fresh and clean this morning. Not the tear on the neck of my grey argyle vest, which seems vaguely more eastern than before, especially next to Blair’s clean tight jeans and her pale-blue T-shirt. All of this seems irrelevant next to that one sentence. It seems easier to hear that people are afraid to merge rather than “I’m pretty sure Muriel is anorexic” or the singer on the radio crying out about magnetic waves. Nothing else sees to matter to me but those ten words. Not the warm winds, which seem to propel the car down the empty asphalt freeway, or the faded smell of marijuana which still faintly permeates Blair’s car. All it comes down to is I’m a boy coming home for a…

Would you read on?

I gulped this book down in one sitting three years ago on my first read. So much information on this first page. “People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles.” Feels sort of OCD, especially on the refrain and the contrast to other things that seem less important – a tough trip, people getting drunk, an anorexic friend. This dropping of woes so casually sucks me in, I want to understand why none of this bothers someone so young. The narrator is accustomed to privilege – he traveled first class – and the argyle vest smacks of upper-crusty preppiness. Yet there’s this poignancy here that tugs me to flip the page – why is Blair, the girl in clean tight jeans who smokes pot, picking him up and not his family?

Why is our protagonist so alone?

LESS THAN ZERO is a book I reread several times a year. No one does depression and ennui and depravity better than Bret Easton Ellis. Of all his novels, this, his debut, ranks supreme (the others tend to wallow overmuch in sex and drugs and violence). When I emerge at the other end, I feel wiped out and hollow; afterwards, I end up writing reams. I read this when I need to sink to deep lows in my own writing (along with select scenes from THE SOUND AND THE FURY, A MILLION LITTLE PIECES, and THE BELL JAR). My good friend Jimmy the Prince once paid me the highest compliment when he said I write better than BEE. That made me feel almost as good as getting BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT published would make me feel.

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THE WRITING… Still plugging away at the past tense rewrite. First 1/5th finished to my satisfaction, with another 1/5th entered into the computer but still needing another pass. It’s a long-winded process, requiring the mechanical and rather tedious tense conversions before moving on to the more creative ‘flow’ revisions. I tend to make hard edits for the first step, then enter into the computer, print out and make the ‘flow’ hard edits, then input, then printout and pass through 1 – umpteen times.

Rewriting from present to past tense makes a difference in my protagonists’ voices. Phoebe seems more rounded, more complex in past, while Ben has lost a bit of his itchy edge. That’s a supreme challenge in the rewrite – letting the reader feel his angst, his emotions verve all over the page. It’s meant changes in his word choice and dialogue patterns. It’s been… tough.

I think about PURE all the time. A new character, Liam Nolan, teases me with his secrets, his passions, his cabin in the dark wood of New Hampshire.

THE WEEKEND… superb. Good family time: lattes and playgrounds, Gravely Point to watch the jets roar from Reagan International over our heads as we loll beside the Potomac, Asian pear and raspberry gallette with vanilla ice cream (fruit from our garden and prepped by YT), a long stroll through Arlington National cemetery…

LISTENING TO… Viva La Vida by Coldplay. It lacks the darksome scratchiness of X & Y and A Rush of Blood to the Head. Brian Eno co-produced; this album’s got lush, upbeat strings, virtually no falsetto by Martin, and interesting lyrics that harken back to Keane’s Under the Iron Sea. Lost is my new anthem… Just because I’m losing/doesn’t mean I’m lost/doesn’t mean I’ll stop/Doesn’t mean I’m across…
Peace, Linda

Better Living Through Chemistry?

Your Brain on Happiness


As a society, we're into quick fixes. And when it comes to health, those quick fixes usually come in compact form. Very compact - Americans consume more prescribed (and over-the-counter) drugs per capita than do citizens of any other nation.

There are many reasons for this medication of the masses: wide availability, considerable choice, and a medical-based model of health firmly built on capitalistic legs. This nation also is one of the few developed nations which doesn’t operate a national formulary, or list of approved medications. Indeed, US docs choosing pills for their patients’ ailments run the same baffling and overwhelming confusion Russian émigrés encounter when shopping for cereal at the grocery store: too much stuff. But we are a capitalistic people and we like our meds - and we like them new and shiny and expensive. Medical bling.

But I can't help thinking... maybe we're so into synthetic panaceas because of an ennui unique to American culture. The fact that Americans also drive global demand for illicit drugs - marijuana, cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens - further supports my niggling suspicion that something’s not quite right in the land of the free and brave.

Maybe it’s the pace (we work more hours per week than the Japanese now) or the push to always be on top ‘o the heap. To succeed in that awfully narrow way that only our culture defines success: money, power, title, a sweet car, flat stomach, and sexual prowess in bed. The expectation of endless happiness and worry-free living coupled with the imperative to banish sadness, anger, and all those other ‘negative’ emotions because they drain our productivity, self-esteem, and even our youth (yes, anxiety does cause wrinkles) drives us, well, crazy.

Better living is just a pill away.

Perhaps. This week, the New York Times reported on two independent studies with the potential to thoroughly redefine the way we consider and treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other behavioral conditions. One study imaged the brains of over 200 children with and without ADHD for ten years and found ADHD kids had an average 3-1/2 year delay in the development of the brain areas responsible for focus and control. In other words, ADHD children do NOT have a flaw or defect in their grey matter; merely, a delay. The second study, epidemiological in nature, found children with ‘behavioral problems’ in their early elementary years performed as well as ‘normal’ children by the fifth grade.

Maybe these studies are the beginning of evidence that might slow down the Medication Express. Maybe. But somehow, I doubt it because it’s just so much easier to take Ritalin twice a day then to deal with rambunctious children for 3 years while waiting for their brains to catch up…

Writing Notes: Today I started marketing BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT. Yep. Sent to a few agents I met at conferences who requested the first three chapters. They’re perfect. As perfect as they’re going to get this year. Putting them into their fedex envelopes felt good. And scary as hell. Halloween may be over, but the mailbox will be my boogeyman for the next few weeks - and likely not my friend. But it’s time to clear the plate, get ready for PURE, which I’ve been dreaming about, an excellent sign I’m ready to move on to another two-year novel writing binge. Here’s a snippet:

Later, much later, after the shock began to wear off, people asked, “Where were you when it happened?” I remember exactly where I was at that precise moment - doesn't everyone? Tuesday was the one day of the week I didn’t have to rush out early to lecture the spoiled undergrad minions or schlep glassware and slides for Tien's lab, so that particular morning found me in the kitchen with a mug of coffee uncharacteristically lazy and happy due to my earlier twelve mile run. “One of the ten best days of the year,” the weatherman promised as my feet swept my willing body along the Charles River, the dawn cracking into a perfect cerulean canvas. But later, alone in my apartment, for some reason I felt an urge to turn on the television, which I rarely do because it's mindless, loud, and I’m too damn busy. So it was a total fluke I flipped on the tube and watched the north tower flame into smoking clouds. And as it telescoped into itself, collapsing into dusty, horrifying rubble, I vaguely wondered if my father was in Japan…

Peace, and happy writing... Linda