Matthew Klam

Lunacy in Midlife

Rich Fischer is a cartoonist and author of comics. These aren’t funny comics, or action comics, but serious comics otherwise known as graphic novels. So with his life, which is sort of cartoonish in its exaggeration, kind of funny at times, but mostly tortured by creative angst, by a marriage that feels hollow and stifling, and by a love affair that intensifies his feelings of inadequacy and failure. In other words, Rich Fischer spends all but the last few pages of Who Is Rich? in high dudgeon over his life, his wife, his two small children, his super rich lover, and his students, one of whom is embarking on a potentially spectacular career, one Rich believed he might have had, if only. You might duplicate the experience of reading the novel by planting yourself in front of a mirror, dredging your life, and raging at yourself. Hopefully, you’ll come away from the introspection with as least the foundation of optimism as does Rich.

At the opening of the novel, Rich returns for another stint as an instructor at a workshop for writers, artists, sculptors, and cartoonists, located in New England, on the ocean, at a college in its last throes. You only have to flip the opening page to see what Rich, also our narrator, and you are in for: “On the faculty were many friends I’d come to know over the years as intellects, historians, wordsmiths, talented performers, storytellers with big fake teeth, addicts, drunkards, perverts, world-famous womanizers, sufferers of gout, maniacs, liars—embittered, delusional, accomplished, scared of spiders, unable to swim loveless, and cruel.” Notice how the thought descends. So, if it sounds as if you are entering a madhouse, well, maybe; or maybe it’s just what plumbing your being for inspiration does to you. In Rich’s case, it’s partly this, for in fact he has done just this in writing his successful first graphic, long out of print, and partly him smacking into the wall of midlife crisis. He loves his wife; he hates his wife. He loves his kids; they drive him nuts. He, maybe, likes domestic life; it impedes him from writing and drawing. He loves his rich lover; he resents her for his own feelings of inadequacy.

This is something of an emotional riot of a novel that can, if you let it, jangle your nerves. Matthew Klam writes with verve, lots and lots of it, enough to give you a headache. It’s an intense experience, and that might be understating it a bit. For those with creative ambitions, you might like to see how failing at that ambition can consume you. For people who suspect creative types are noninstitutionalized oddballs, you may find confirmation here. And for folks who once thought they might have had it in them, well perhaps you’ll discover renewed solace in your life, something Rich Fischer appears to be scrambling to find for himself.

Oh, yes, the title: it draws a contrast between super rich lover Amy and near bankrupt Rich. If only Klam were right about who is really the rich one outside the pages of a novel.
… (more)

Lunacy in Midlife

Rich Fischer is a cartoonist and author of comics. These aren’t funny comics, or action comics, but serious comics otherwise known as graphic novels. So with his life, which is sort of cartoonish in its exaggeration, kind of funny at times, but mostly tortured by creative angst, by a marriage that feels hollow and stifling, and by a love affair that intensifies his feelings of inadequacy and failure. In other words, Rich Fischer spends all but the last few pages of Who Is Rich? in high dudgeon over his life, his wife, his two small children, his super rich lover, and his students, one of whom is embarking on a potentially spectacular career, one Rich believed he might have had, if only. You might duplicate the experience of reading the novel by planting yourself in front of a mirror, dredging your life, and raging at yourself. Hopefully, you’ll come away from the introspection with as least the foundation of optimism as does Rich.

At the opening of the novel, Rich returns for another stint as an instructor at a workshop for writers, artists, sculptors, and cartoonists, located in New England, on the ocean, at a college in its last throes. You only have to flip the opening page to see what Rich, also our narrator, and you are in for: “On the faculty were many friends I’d come to know over the years as intellects, historians, wordsmiths, talented performers, storytellers with big fake teeth, addicts, drunkards, perverts, world-famous womanizers, sufferers of gout, maniacs, liars—embittered, delusional, accomplished, scared of spiders, unable to swim loveless, and cruel.” Notice how the thought descends. So, if it sounds as if you are entering a madhouse, well, maybe; or maybe it’s just what plumbing your being for inspiration does to you. In Rich’s case, it’s partly this, for in fact he has done just this in writing his successful first graphic, long out of print, and partly him smacking into the wall of midlife crisis. He loves his wife; he hates his wife. He loves his kids; they drive him nuts. He, maybe, likes domestic life; it impedes him from writing and drawing. He loves his rich lover; he resents her for his own feelings of inadequacy.

This is something of an emotional riot of a novel that can, if you let it, jangle your nerves. Matthew Klam writes with verve, lots and lots of it, enough to give you a headache. It’s an intense experience, and that might be understating it a bit. For those with creative ambitions, you might like to see how failing at that ambition can consume you. For people who suspect creative types are noninstitutionalized oddballs, you may find confirmation here. And for folks who once thought they might have had it in them, well perhaps you’ll discover renewed solace in your life, something Rich Fischer appears to be scrambling to find for himself.

Oh, yes, the title: it draws a contrast between super rich lover Amy and near bankrupt Rich. If only Klam were right about who is really the rich one outside the pages of a novel.
… (more)

Típica historia de un adulterio estival entre un humorista gráfico venido a menos y una superrica con ínfulas de salvadora y con problemas psicológicos que acude a un cursillo sobre cómics impartido por él en una universidad de la costa este de la que nunca habremos oído hablar, que no creo que sea la historia de una crisis sobre la mediana edad, de ninguno de los dos.
Él, que no deja de meter la pata de formas realmente alucinantes y peligrosas para su vida como el descerebrado que es, lo deja claro cuando cuenta parte de su vida durante la adolescencia, no acaba de desagradarnos, no sé si por la sinceridad con la que se examina o por las tesis que nos plantea y que no dejan, muchas de ellas de ser verdad.
En cuanto al argumento, las cosas acaban por irse resituando, todo sin grandes alharacas, y se vuelve al primer camino por el que se transitaba al principio, y que no deja de ser una forma de poner los pies en el suelo pero no como resignación sino como un reconocimiento e identificación de lo que necesita ser renovado.
Hasta aquí lo que vemos en la superficie. Pero tras esto llega el fondo y verdadero contexto de un mundo en el que un hombre con un trabajo, digamos digno, con una esposa en las mismas condiciones, y dos niños pequeños, tienen serios problemas para vivir con comodidad. Mientras otra pareja con una situación económica como para vivir por lo menos 100 vidas y con total desprecio por la de los demás, ha llegado ahí tras la suerte, escondida no solo en este sistema económico del capitalismo más salvaje sino por ser capaces de comportarse con total impunidad, al menos el marido.
“Vivíamos en un sistema económico y planetario en guerra, víctimas de una farsa política. Durante el invierno había habido momentos en los que quise interrumpir nuestra aventura amorosa epistolar para desatar una virulenta diatriba de impecable erudición sobre la historia del capitalismo desestructurado, el imperialismo estadounidense durante el siglo XX, los obreros de EEUU obligados a competir con trabajadores esclavos de Asia, las superpobladas y rentables cárceles privadas, Donald Rumsfeld, los hermanos Koch, la organización Ciudadanos Unidos y la próxima extinción del mundo, pero nunca llegué a hacerlo.”
Ella, otro espécimen propio del neoliberalismo, una mujer que, reconociéndose de origen humilde, cree que su esfuerzo y sus propias agallas, la han situado en una situación de privilegio, gracias al sueño americano. Sin embargo no deja de ser una favorita del mundo de la venta de bonos de empresas carroñeras, y después del capital de riesgo, ayudando a arruinar a empresas solventes mediante técnicas de bloqueo de capitales para llevarlas a la ruina. Mientras tanto, “apoyaba al Consejo para la Defensa de los Recursos Naturales, Personas por el Trato Ético a los Animales, la Organización Nacional de Mujeres y la planificación familiar, pero también creía en la teoría del goteo y despreciaba a los ociosos que se reúnen en círculos a tocar el tambor y quejarse de la codicia empresarial en propiedades privadas.” Es decir, progresista en lo social, conservadora en lo fiscal, aunque lo segundo anulara a lo primero”.
Gente que produce cosas, pero es pobre, y gente que no produce nada más que pobreza y subdesarrollo, pero que es multimillonaria. Y por el medio, otra gente, creativos de publicidad, documentalistas, etc., que se dedican a realizar películas sobre “alcaldes negros corruptos de las principales ciudades del país” o “documentales sobre pandillas de prostitutas adolescentes de los barrios pobres de Filadelfia”.
No sé si el autor se da cuenta del contexto, pero es lo que más miedo da de toda la historia. Un capitalismo neoliberal que atrae a aquell@s que tienen agallas para pasar de todo y por encima de tod@s y que aplastará el mundo.
Así que, quién es Rich o, mejor, quién es rico? No lo sabemos.
Por eso el final de la novela no es tan desasosegante como podría haber sido si el autor quisiera hacerlo derrapar completamente. Pero quizás defraude un poco.… (more)

Self-indulgent asshole: I’m completely fine with that for a main character. His anxieties and feelings on parenting are, frankly, spot on at times. That, and the level of basically choosing to ignore what’s going on in the world as being above it, and not having the time in your artistry to concern yourself with that, smacks so much of privilege I’m familiar with in my daily life that it’s uncanny. Many other observations follow this level of wit, but…

It’s just that I enjoyed [b:Summerlong|23213831|Summerlong|Dean Bakopoulos|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1414450670s/23213831.jpg|42756250] & [b:The Arrangement|30841908|The Arrangement|Sarah Dunn|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1492240256s/30841908.jpg|51441226] as a similar, I don’t know, glimpse of middle-age, middle-class parenting and marriage. Maybe it’s the stream-of-consciousness, but I don’t know. I’ve enjoyed many books with this (even with unlikable characters)…

But Rich is too much. I’m setting this aside. It’s not going to formally be a DNF, because it’s kind of easy to read. It’s just so off-putting.

8/15 I give it 2 stars for the writing and observation....but now this DNF is official.… (more)