Most Useful Information April 2024
A donkey with a PhD, a conspiracy theorist selling yogurt, hot sauce in the eye, and public toilets.
Pre-Useful Information
For those of you who like Most Useful Information but think it should be way shorter, I wrote an “extremely abbreviated review” of Season 20 of Project Runway for The Drift. Read it here. Or buy a copy from your local Barnes and Noble.
Jeff did illustrations again. They’re great, aren’t they?
What’s the point?
If you’ve ever read Most Useful Information before you’ve probably read about a restaurant I spent a chunk of time working at. Next door to that restaurant is a bookstore. For a long time the bookstore was owned by a grumpy, funny old guy named Bob. Sometimes Bob would walk into the restaurant with a paper coffee cup. He’d hand me the cup, ask me to pour beer in it, and walk off. Down the hall he’d go into the bathroom and take a shit. On his way out he’d grab the paper coffee cup filled with beer. My buddy and I were always kind of surprised. Partly because there was a bathroom in the bookstore he owned. Partly because our bathrooms were pretty gross in a busy hallway. People always walking by, knocking on the door, standing outside talking, waiting to get in. No public toilet is ideal for a number two, but especially not that toilet.
Mostly we were surprised because also next to the restaurant was a cafe with the most comfortable and afternoon-poop friendly bathroom. The bathroom was tucked away. Not in a busy thoroughfare. It had a deadbolt. Not a shaky thumb-lock. The music was comfortably loud. You couldn’t hear anyone outside. They couldn’t hear you inside. The lighting made everyone look good in the giant mirror above the sink. It wasn’t just a good bathroom for dumps. It was a fun place to be.
Easily the best bathroom in Moscow, Idaho. One year for Art Walk (some summertime event where businesses showcase art by local artists) a friend of mine hung up a few photographs from Ecuador in the cafe bathroom. Fart walk.
My work buddy and I would go there for our shift shits. Why didn’t Bob?
I told my friends it was the best bathroom for dumping while out and about. We all started using it. We moved out of town, but whenever we were back in town we’d text a picture of ourselves in the bathroom. On one visit I stole a fart walk photograph. Now it’s above my toilet in Richmond.
Last October I visited my hometown for the first time in years. One morning I went to the coffee shop, sat on the toilet, looked at myself in the giant mirror above the sink, took a dump, took a pic, and sent it to Jeff. But it wasn’t the same. The music wasn’t as loud. They’d expanded the building so more people were walking back and forth. The sink didn’t drain well. It smelled bad. I don’t want to disparage the cafe. A good friend owns it and has improved it significantly since I stopped pooping there regularly. The bathroom isn’t the same though.
This is, specifically, what they’re talking about when they say you can never go home again.
I mention all this because all these books are about returning home.
Enjoy!
Glory by Noviolet Bulawayo. First published in 2022.
Jidada has had the same dictator for decades. He was one of the revolutionaries that chased colonizers out of the fictional African country. Like any good dictator, he killed any co-revolutionaries who didn’t agree with him. Like any good dictator he killed anyone who was related to or sympathetic towards any of the -co-revolutionaries unhappy with him,. Like any good dictator he ruined the school system, the healthcare system, and the country’s infrastructure. Poor people became poorer. He accrued unimaginable wealth. Like any good dictator he called himself god. He’s an old, senile horse.
His wife, a donkey with a PhD, tries to control him and the country. There’s a coup. The horse and donkey flee the country while a new dictator takes over. The new guy is even worse. Everyone involved in the government is a clown. They are craven and incompetent and in charge. After the coup citizens have a lot of hope. Nothing changes, except everything gets worse. Citizens are disappointed.
Destiny, a goat, returns to Jidada after ten years. She left spur of the moment. Didn’t tell anyone. Ever since her mother has been wandering around looking for her. The neighborhood recognizes Destiny. They tell stories about her childhood and her family. When she finds her mother, her mother tells her about the horrors she experienced when the old horse dictator first took power. Most of her family was murdered. She hid and watched. Her father who helped with the revolution was tortured and murdered. She hid and watched. Destiny tells her mother about her own beating by military men ten years ago. It’s why she left.
Everyone in the book is an animal. Like in Animal Farm. Glory opens with a celebration of the ruler’s birthday. The ruler is god so it’s a holiday. The celebration is interrupted by a protest led by women who storm a stage naked and disgrace the ruler. In Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong’o the despotic ruler is god celebrating his birthday. At the celebration it’s announced he is going to build a tower to heaven. They invite investors to help fund construction of the tower and throw a huge celebration for the investors. The celebration is interrupted by women running on stage. First, the women moon the audience. Second, they all poop on stage. I could be wrong but Wizard of the Crow might be another useful reference point for Glory.
Most of the book is told through gossip and hearsay and social media posts. It says something about how information is shared and understood. Most of the book makes the people with power look like clowns. Are they actually clowns, or does gossip, hearsay, and social media make everyone look like a clown? The book is very funny. Most compelling is when Destiny’s mother tells her family story and the post-revolutionary horrors. Perhaps because it’s surrounded on both sides by silly clowns in power acting like total dum dums. Or maybe because it is stated directly person to person, not gossip, hearsay, and social media.
The coup in Glory is based on the 2017 coup in Zimbabwe. I don’t know how much it mirrors real life events. Hannah Arendt said of Hitler, “No matter what he does and if he killed ten million people, he is still a clown.” Glory flips it around. No matter how clownish or cartoonish it’s still murder. It’s still horrific, heartbreaking, and tragic. When you watch your childhood home set fire with your entire family tied up inside there’s no comfort in a clown lighting the match.
Hangman by Maya Binyam. First published in 2023.
The nameless narrator of Hangman is on an odyssey. An odyssey to find his sick brother. He doesn’t know it though. What he knows is one morning his bags are packed and travel booked. He boards a flight to the unnamed country of his birth. He’s been away for decades. During the flight the man sitting next to him dies. The flight attendants put a bag over the dead man’s head so nobody has to see a dead person on the flight.
The plane lands. He’s promised free travel vouchers for having to sit next to a dead person. He exits the plane. Walks down a hallway. Walks down some stairs. He doesn’t know where he’s supposed to go and hopes if he waits around long enough someone will pick him up. Someone does. His cousin. They leave. No free travel vouchers.
The novel continues. The narrator remains unnamed. As do all characters (like last month’s Ice). The cousin tries to get the narrator to invest in the cousin’s house. Otherwise he can’t afford it and he’ll have to move. The narrator leaves without investing. He loafs about, listening to people talk and going wherever people take him. He’s on a quest, but he doesn’t want to use agency or action to complete it. He wants to float by.
With half a heart he looks for his brother. Back home his brother would call regularly asking for money. He’d give him money. His brother would stay sick. Need more money. Half-heartedly, he’s looking for a way to escape meaning. He says, “I tried to make my speech have no meaning.”
Pages later a man trying to sell him yogurt tells his life story. His father disappeared when the yogurt man was a child, “I said I was sorry. He told me I didn’t need to be sorry, because before his father disappeared, their family had no meaning.”
People around him are looking for meaning. The yogurt man was happy for something to mean something.
The yogurt man also hated authority and believed conspiracy theories. The main conspiracy:
The existence of a parallel universe that pressed against our own. This other universe was governed by opposites. In our universe, the movement of one’s life was determined by choices. Every day, all day, people were provided with two options, from which they picked one. Although people believed their choices to be governed by free will, they were in fact socially incentivized in order to ensure that people adhered to the status quo. Eventually, these incentivized choices accumulated and grew to form a pattern, which would in turn influence future decisions and give people a sense of what they liked. What they liked determined their relationships, habits, etc., and ultimately produced a specific narrative quality that they came to regard as their identity, but which was more often a reflection of the community in which they lived.
In the parallel universe we always choose the opposite. Sometimes we can glance our parallel selves in mirrors. Somehow this confirms, for the yogurt man, that the planes that flew into the twin towers on 9/11 weren’t flown by humans.
After talking to the yogurt man the narrator heads in the opposite direction of the town his brother lives in and walks toward nothing. His two quests cleave. He overhears two graduate students argue about life and morality. One is handsome. He somehow ends up in a house he used to own where the mother of his son is a housekeeper. The mother of his son drives him around. They run into their son, who was the handsome graduate student he eavesdropped. He ends up at his brother’s wake. He didn’t know his brother died. But it turns out to (maybe?) be his wake. He (and I) didn’t know he’d died. His “body smelled like it didn’t exist.”
At the wake everyone sits around quietly:
I thought to ask about their lives, but I was sick of hearing about people’s lives, which were made up of stories that were probably not even true. People liked to talk, because talking made them feel like their experiences amounted to something, but usually the talking turned those experiences into lies. Most of the things that happened in life had no meaning, but eventually all the meaningless things combined to produce an emotion so strong that people felt the need to find an explanation for it. So, at the end of their lives, they described the events of their lives through the lens of happiness, or sadness, or resentment, even though the same things happened to basically all of us.
The yogurt man told the story of his dad leaving through the lens of happiness. The yogurt man’s conspiracy theory boiled down to people make choices and believe those choices accumulate into an identity, but that is a lie. Their identities are social constructs. The narrator’s view is that life is made up of meaningless experiences that accumulate to an emotion and the emotion gives off the sense of meaning, but it is a lie. I also think this is what a novel is. Accumulated events that feel like they lead somewhere and build to something, but they don’t really. The experiences are meaningless because everyone experiences them. Everyone is born. Everyone dies. Everyone feels pain. Everyone loses a loved one. Everyone feels happiness. These things happen with such frequency in so many places that it loses significance. Loses meaning.
What’s real, though, is the “emotion so strong.” The narrator doesn’t question the reality or significance of the emotion. The problem is when people try to explain the emotion they end up lying. Language can’t do it.
I think this is my favorite book in a while.
Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta by James Hannaham. First published in 2022.
Carlotta Mercedes is on an odyssey. She was arrested nearly 22 years ago when she went to a liquor store to buy something for her best friend, Doodle. It was Doodle’s birthday. Carlotta, who was known as Dustin Chambers at the time, ran into her cousin, Kaffy, at the liquor store. Kaffy wasn’t there to buy liquor. He was there to rob. He wasn’t there to shoot the owner in the head, but he did. She survived but with permanent brain damage. Carlotta, like everyone in Brooklyn at the time, had a gun on her. She was an accomplice. Sent to prison upstate. Ithaca. Now she’s coming home.
It’s 4th of July weekend. She and America are free. She dances in Times Square. There are kids around. There’s a McDonald’s. Times Square wasn’t a place for children and fast food when she went to prison. Things change. Back in her old neighborhood there are a bunch of white people around. Things change.
At her grandmother’s house there’s a party. A young girl, Tameeka, sings karaoke. Tameeka sings, “I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free.”
There’s a piece of notebook paper that says, “Welcome home Dustin” in sharpie. No one notices or cares that Carlotta is home. Most of her family calls her Dustin. Her mother has dementia. Her son is a good Christian boy who refuses to go by his given name, Ibe, and instead goes by Iceman. Iceman thinks the devil is living inside Carlotta. Until later when he decides he is going to evangelize Carlotta to Christianity.
Carlotta has to visit her parole officer. Her parole officer gets her a job interview. She gets a job driving a van, but doesn’t have a driver’s license. Back at home there’s another party. This time it’s a wake. She meets an eyepatch guy with a nice car. He says he’ll teach her how to drive. They drive around. They see Doodle and pick her up. Carlotta tries to drive the nice car. She grinds gears and kills the engine. Eyepatch is irate. Carlotta takes hot sauce out of her purse and squirts it in his good eye. She and Doodle run away.
Carlotta tells Doodle her prison traumas. Doodle tells Carlotta her out of prison traumas.
The Odyssey and Ulysses are templates for Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta. The last chapter is a monologue without paragraph breaks. Like Molly Bloom. Eyepatch is cyclops. Police sirens are the sirens. So is “Birthday Cake” by Rihanna. “At the top of the stairs, she put herself together, inhaled like a Hoover, and descended into Hades Fuck.” She descends further into hell when she goes down to the subway. The subway takes her to Coney Island. What happens at Coney Island takes her back to prison.
Throughout Carlotta finds people taking for granted their freedom. People glued to their phones don’t seem free. Her brother never leaves his bedroom. He plays Super Mario Bros. It’s offensive to Carlotta, “Even though he free as a street dog, he had chose to sit up here all the time an not go out nowhere.” Social niceties constrain freedom, “How y’all call this freedom when can’t nobody say the truth that’s right in fronta they face?”
Everyone takes so much for granted that she starts to wonder if that’s freedom’s true nature:
Maybe that’s what freedom is, the freedom to waste your fuckin freedom… Hell, I wonder how free anybody who out here pissin away they freedom anyhow? Gotta work ten jobs an still can’t afford no rent, gettin kicked round by the man, gettin kicked round by your own damn man, your family up in ya face tryna tell you how to live your life all the time —Be a woman! Be a man! Wear this! Don’t wear that! Watch the same fuckin TV shows I watch, even though I know they suck! Listen to the same bullshit ev’body listenin to!
When people have freedom they piss it away, but most “free” people don’t have freedom because of the expectations thrust upon them. Whether it’s social expectations or rent. People are always demanding something. The demands constrain. Imprison.
Early in the novel Carlotta reflects on never learning Spanish despite her mother being Colombian. She says her mother, “hid the language away for herself.” Spanish was her mother’s first language, but she hid that part of herself from Carlotta and others. When Carlotta was in prison she was hidden away from her family and friends. After reuniting with Doodle, Doodle stumbles over asking what term she should use to describe Carlotta. Doodle wants to be respectful and loving but struggles to understand her changed friend. Carlotta can’t tell her what politically correct term to use. Instead she says, “I’m just Carlotta. That’s all I’ve got.” A more precise term would constrain, hide away part of Carlotta. She doesn’t want to hide anything.
I just wanna be me, I just wanna be a human fuckin person like ev’body else, without nobody tellin me not to do who I am, holdin me gainst my will, don’t wanna be no statistic or no tragedy or no symbol of nothin goin wrong in society. Cause I’m what’s right, honey. I’m what’s goin right.
The novel slips between third person and first. When in first person Carlotta has a distinct irrepressible and irresistible voice. The style enacts Carlotta’s journey of the self, and how hard it is to find and express the self, and how hard it is to find someone to listen to that self expression. The style also makes it a joy to read, showing the pleasure of hearing someone else’s hard won voice. Being able to express herself in her own voice, on her own terms is what freedom comes to mean. Freedom comes through love.
Finally it feel like somebody seen me, the real actual Carlotta me, the me inside me, for the first time after forty-hmm-hmm ears a pain, somebody knew, somebody saw who I was an loved me for the first time, an I knew it wit my whole body an my whole brain, an, honey, I got up inside myself, an I walked through every cell a my life an I knew that wit love ev’thing gon lead somewheres good even after all the bad, so I’ma get up on all fours for Freedom, an I’ma close my eyes an relax, an open myself up to it like Ise a music box, like I be showin Freedom a li’l twirlin dancer inside a me that’s made a diamonds an gold an I’m seein it myself too for the first time in a long-ass time, an I’ma say Yes honey, I do, honey I’ma say Yes motherfucker, said hell to the yes I’m sayin Yasss.
Hangman thought language was inadequate for expressing the self, or the strong emotion we often confuse for the self. It was too limited. Too constrained. Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta is a compelling case for language as the only thing capable of expressing such a strong emotion. It removes constraints. Maybe they don’t contradict each other. Maybe they’re both true, somehow. I don’t know.