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Ramblings (February 2004)

02/22/04 -- 5:37 p.m.

Finished Goat: A Memoir and feel like most of the praise it received is justified. It starts off so strong that it probably had no hope of maintaining the momentum it initially set for itself, but a pretty strong book throughout. The parts with the fraternity held very few surprises -- by and large, that's what everyone realizes fraternities do. And I'm not sure why fraternity members get so up in arms about the accusation. If marines, fifteen-year-old cheerleading squads, and any other tightly-knit group are capable of hazing, I don't know why fraternities act like they're somehow above it. Maybe it's just the fact that fraternity bylaws, campus regulations, and even the law of the land usually prohibit it, so it's never safe to acknowledge an unspoken truth. The problem is just that few of these groups know how to keep things within sane limits.

Occasionally, I help out in an independent bookstore in Clemson, and it's interesting to see the frat guys and sorority girls come in and thumb through Goat. Sometimes they act disgusted, sometimes they're nonplussed, sometimes they say something along the lines of, "If he didn't know what he was getting into, he was an idiot." Maybe so; it's hard to imagine anyone thinking that they're going to get into a fraternity without some kind of "weeding out of the weak." From that viewpoint, it's hard to muster an inordinate amount of sympathy for Land in the fraternity sections of the book -- it's his ability to link his fraternity experiences back to his initial assault, of portraying the whole thing as a cycle of violence, that holds the power in Land's narrative The fraternity experiences are really part of a larger story, of Land's story, and of how he tends to repeat the same mistakes (he even gives another stranger a ride in Clemson, with less tragic, but maybe more surreal, results). He has a complicated relationship with his brother, who the book portrays as something of an enigma. He admits his capability to fall in love with any girl who pays him the least little bit of attention (college-bound girls would do well to read Goat -- it portrays with frightening accuracy the mentality of testosterone-laced guys towards sexually active girls). Subtly, he makes the sound of car wheels on gravel one of the scariest things ever. And that part with the fox still catches my imagination.

Early in the book, he does a good job of conveying his shock, calling his attackers "the breath" or "the smile" or merely shadows. A police officer is "the brown mustache." By the time the narrative hits Clemson, he's naming names -- and it's a very effective transition.

I think it held up very well for what it was: a memoir by a kid who doesn't claim to have any answer for why things have happened to him, or for why he does things to himself. As a reader who knows both cities intimately, I would have liked to have seen more discussion of those environments. My own impression of the fraternities at Francis Marion was just that they were havens for local good ol' boys or for football players who weren't good enough to get a ride at a school with a football program. At Clemson, the frats are more tightly woven into campus life. I was at Clemson as a T.A., so I got to see from the outside my freshman comp students getting caught up in rush and its demands. As a part-time bartender, I got to see the clear separation between "fraternity bars" and "locals bars," and unless the Bud Lite kegs were blowing at TDs or Tiger Town, there wasn't much need for 3/4 of the student population to leave those two bars. The hole-in-the-wall bar where I worked was the haven for the artsy kids, the campus radio station kids, the English majors, the foreign students, and believe me, it had its own cliques. But nothing like the "anyone who matters is in a frat or sorority" mentality that runs through Clemson's bones.

And yes, I'm acutely aware of the irony of watching Old School while reading Goat.<G>

02/21/04 -- 2:41 a.m.

Watched Lost in Translation tonight and really, really enjoyed it. Enjoyed it as a love letter to Tokyo, a place where I've never been but always been curious about. Enjoyed it as a meditation on loneliness. So many nice things, so many nice images. Sofia Coppola did such a wonderful job of conveying the loneliness of the two main characters in an alien landscape. Both main actors were perfectly cast, especially Bill Murray, who's always had an undercurrent of desperate sadness behind his eyes anyway. I'm glad he decided to go the character actor route in films like Ed Wood and Rushmore, because I doubt anyone would have considered him for the lead in Lost in Translation otherwise. It wouldn't bother me too much if Coppola got a Best Picture or Best Director statue out of this one, despite my geeky fondness for The Lord of the Rings. Mighty, mighty fine little film.

And just to make sure I wasn't getting too classy with myself, I rented and watched Old School as well. I guess it's safe to say that the golden age of good stupid comedies is over (I thought Kingpin [except for Bill Murray's character], Road Trip, Something About Mary, and just about everything Adam Sandler's ever done were just wretched. But I'm always on the lookout for a brainless laugh, so I rent them anyway.) But it did make me laugh in several places, especially the scene with Will Ferrell out in the driveway working on his Trans Am with Whitesnake cranked. I'm not sure why, because I'm usually not even that fond of Will Ferrell's stuff..

02/20/04 -- 10:31 p.m.

Right now, I'm reading Goat: A Memoir, by Brad Land. It's been getting a lot of press lately, with a full-page feature in Entertainment Weekly and everything. It's Land's tale of being carjacked and beaten after a frat party in Florence, SC and then his fraternity hazing in Clemson, SC. This has special interest to me, since I spent my undergrad years in Florence at Francis Marion College (now Francis Marion University) and I received my Masters Degree from Clemson. So without Land even mentioning the frat party that he was leaving in Florence the night of his beating, I can feel the familiarity of the area, and I know just which one it was. Likewise, I'm sure I'll recognize many of the sights and sounds of Clemson when I get to that part of the book

As for Land's memoir? I'm very early into it, but it looks like he has a powerful voice, although one that may suffer from his relative inexperience as a writer. Everything is done is a stream-of-consciousness presentation that is working extremely well for the horrors of the first chapter or so - I'll have to see how it fares the rest of the way.

The part with the fox is perfectly done, in a beaten-within-an-inch-of-your-life, Zen koan kind of way.