Tag Archives: Rust Belt

Not Just Another Nepo Baby

Reading Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater reminded me of something profound I just made up. Only the delusional or masochistic read Vonnegut hoping to find an intricate plot or a deep analysis of a character’s psyche. If anyone reads Vonnegut these days, they do so for his moral clarity and barbed humor. To that I say sign me up, as long as I can still be masochistic in all the other aspects of my life. What’s that you say, Dear Reader? Ouch, that hurt! Say it again, daddy.

The protagonist and hero in this story is Eliot Rosewater, a trust fund baby who is a “drunkard, a Utopian dreamer, a tinhorn saint, and aimless fool.” He also owns and manages his family’s charity, which is worth millions. He tires of his privileged life in Manhattan and moves back to Rosewater, Indiana, a neglected rust belt community that’s also his ancestral home. He wants to become an artist. “I’m going to love these discarded Americans, even though they’re useless and unattractive. That is going to be my work of art.” Most artists have a God complex, but Eliot is a modern-day Christ figure, and just like Jesus he has a difficult and domineering father.

That father is a U.S. senator, who has “spent [his] life demanding that people blame themselves for their misfortunes.” He disapproves of Eliot and would desperately like a grandchild he could approve of. One that would take over the charity and be less charitable. There’s another person who’d like to do the same. He’s a lawyer and he believes he’s found a way to replace Eliot as the charity’s manager. He just has to prove Eliot is insane, and Eliot is doing a wonderful job of unintentionally helping the lawyer prove his case. So who will control the charity? The welfare of Rosewater’s destitute citizens depends on the answer.

In God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater Vonnegut skewers the purported legitimacy of inherited wealth. “I think it’s terrible the way people don’t share things in this country. I think it’s a heartless government that will let one baby be born owning a big piece of the country . . . and let another baby be born without owning anything.” Published in 1970, the story is as relevant now as ever. The novel is the perfect introduction to, or reminder of, Vonnegut’s simple grace, moral outrage, wicked humor, and deep intellect.

But let’s say you only read novels with intricate plots and complex psychological analyses, then read this instead. It’s the best summation of Vonnegut’s works, and it happens to have been written by that grand curmudgeon himself: “Pretend to be good always, and even God will be fooled.”

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

The Epic of Dogtown

Don Winslow’s City on Fire has quotes from The Aeneid and The Iliad throughout. Those epics are about the siege of Troy, the original city on fire, so the quotes are apt. Winslow’s story is an epic as well, but his Troy is Providence, Rhode Island, the land of “I know a guy.” That’s an unexpected setting for an epic, but it works. Just substitute the ancient Greeks and Trojans for Italian and Irish mobsters in the 1980s. The Irish control the docks. The Italians control the trucks and almost everything else. The merchandise that falls off the boats and trucks supports both gangs and their respective rust belt neighborhoods. Each respects the other’s territory, meaning the Italians rarely venture into Dogtown, the name of the Irish section where slaughterhouses once attracted feral dogs.

A beautiful woman emerges from the sea on a hot summer day. Here’s our Helen, except her name is Pam, because it’s Providence. Danny Ryan knows immediately that she’s going to be trouble. “Women that beautiful usually are.” Just ask the Greeks and Trojans. Danny is in his late 20s, and his father-in-law runs the Irish gang. Danny is “faithful like a dog,” so he isn’t going to be the Paris in this story. That role is reserved for his brother-in-law, who steals Pam away from a high-ranking Italian mobster. Jokes are made at this mobster’s expense, and when “people start to disrespect you in one area of your life, it leaks into others.” The initial weapons are bats, but soon bullets fly and bodies fall. Danny moves up the chain of command. He’s never been tested like this before, and it’s going to take everything he has to get himself and his family out alive.

Mob stories make for great epics. They have all the requisites built in: violence, greed, lust, family, and loyalty. There’s just one problem. Our popular culture is rife with these stories, so it takes a talented writer to craft a captivating one that’s fresh. Fortunately, Winslow is such a writer.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor.

Chinos

Now this is progress.
The trash trucks are new
crisp and clean.
I can see my silver reflection
deep inside the battleship gray panel
protecting the womb where the waste is crushed.

This speaks well of my city -
removing the rust belt that trapped it
inside grungy jeans covered with coal dust.
The city can now put on a nice pair of chinos
and reasonably hope the beige stays clean.

The trucks glide to a tuneful stop
and the refuse managers emerge from the cranium
in crisp clean battleship gray uniforms.
They tenderly lift the comatose
larva-like addicts and homeless
and gently place them in the womb.

Luvgood Carp, Editor-in-Chief

  First Published in BOMBFIRE