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I Could Be Wrong,
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Nowhere Near Normal,
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by David Boyne
A REVIEW BY ANN BANCROFT
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You want the Truth¨?
Can you handle it?
Of course you can. Perhaps youÕve even gone looking for it now and then. You might have shelves full of books on Finding Happiness or Communing with God, or youÕve sat in painful positions in cold, silent rooms for a solid week to get a mere glimpse of Truth¨. Only to return to your once-in-a-lifetime Life to resume flipping off the driver who cut in front of you, ignoring your spouse. The usual.
Who knew? You didnÕt need to do any of those things. All you need to do is read, instead, this delightful, deceptively simple and subversively profound collection of essays.
Truth¨ will be revealed. You will laugh. You will See and, afterward, be more likely to make the most of your once-in-a-lifetime Life. At the very least, youÕll have learned the critical life-art of driving a sofa (Feng Shui This, Bub!).
If itÕs just a quirky, fun read you seek, never mind the whole Truth¨ thing, youÕll find that here, too. Guaranteed.
These brilliant stories, or essays if you insist on calling them that, go off on tangents. They will grab you and insist that you come along for explorations of everything from the terrors of kindergarten (The First Circle of Hell) to the bitter-sweetness of parenting (For My Collection) to the shocking discovery of the purpose of Life (Quo Vadis, Dude?).
And if that were not enough, David Boyne also presents practical advice on mastering the essential art of recalling one's dreams (Row, Row, Row Your Boat) dealing with shark attacks (Who's In Charge Here?) and deciding what to retrieve, or to leave behind, in oneÕs Past (Sailing Alone Around the World).
The stories in this way off-the-beaten-path travelogue take you through a beautiful, spongy, delightful mass of gray matter. They are wry, tender, and carry just a hint of the acerbic. They intoxicate.
Now that I think of it, this book should come with a Warning Label:
Reading these stories may cause outbursts of laughter and inappropriate questioning. Being under their influence may impair your ability to take things seriously and to realize that objects in mirrors are way closer than they appear.
It happened to me. It could happen to you.
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A Review of David Boyne’s HAPPY ACCIDENTS
by Traci Foust, author of Nowhere Near Normal: A Memoir of OCD
It’s obvious that San Diego writer David Boyne has been in some kind of accident, clonked over the head with a dose of hard reality and is now living in the streets of Astoria—or maybe a semi-nice walk-up in Queens—as the muse of Russell David Harper and Chip Kidd. To be clear: Boyne has hit the mark with Happy Accidents. In this first of a four book collection covering objective—sometimes delicate—subjects as step-parenting and America’s obsession with consumerism (see what I mean about the Russ Harper part?) Boyne takes the reader to that scary, gorgeous, hopeful/less place called What The Hell Were You Thinking? It’s where he lives. From the sincere writing and down-to-earth tone it’s clear he’s been a resident for some time and knows his way around without a map, thank you. (Actually, Google shows this area to be somewhere in the vicinity of Flushing and Sinji’s Yoga Studio in West Hollywood.)
In a similar narrative voice as Bob Powers who waved goodbye to American manners in Happy Cruelty Day and the harmonious blend of Tom Robbins in Wild Ducks Flying Backward, Boyne takes the reader through his no holds barred style of nothing is obvious—but everything is there. In the essay Hurry Up and Wait, Boyne opens by asking a set of seemingly unrelated questions : Why we suffer, why we tell stories, why we wait— then lays bare all the examples of what the reader will experience should they choose to come along for this imaginative ride (as if we have a choice after such titles like Black Teeth and Bubonic Plague.) …
I confess I also liked watching the voluptuous dyed-blonde barista because the tight black tank top she wore was all used up in covering the wave of her breasts, with no material left to keep from public display, the wide expanse of her rounded belly and the ski-slope curve of the small of her back and the top of the swell of her ample hips—and how all the taut, tan skin in view was adorned with a colorful, dense, complex tapestry of tattoos.
This goes further than just the irony of the complex being the simple. See Also: If it walks like a duck… These essays are poignant, funny and intellectually charged. Threaded with the susceptible civic tightrope of where we are walking today, it’s clear Mr. Boyne needs to take a trip to Washington and begin a set of new documents for the likes of those who would thrive in a Lorne Michaelesque democracy—written for the smart people, by the smart people.
If you’re looking for an In Persuasion Nation complexity of authentic humor, look no further—a pretty little calendar narrative with Dave Matthews up-thumbing each carefully plotted ending?
This isn’t that.
This is real writing, really good writing, often showing Boyne at his best when he steps back just enough from the make-nice platform giving his reader room to tie themselves to their own tracks, yet all the while you get this feeling he is standing right behind you, his lyrical prose threatening a nudge, maybe even a push ..not with both hands lest a complete fall shove you into the obvious, maybe just a finger or two, just enough to make sure you’ve been moved.
In My Opinion
©2011 David Boyne
Recently, I had a conversation with another writer. This conversation took place exactly where the cliché would have literary conversations take place, over stale cheese and cheap red wine.
For several minutes I held up my end of the conversation by listening. The other writer, a dark haired woman who was an admirably talented and prolific fiction writer, told me in great detail of the many long hours she had been spending of late not on writing her new novel but on marketing her already published work. It seemed that her days and nights were being spent doing interviews, meeting with her agent and publicist, overseeing the sending of press releases, and struggling to come up with something immensely important which I had never heard of, a Branding Statement.
It was then that I made two mistakes, the same two mistakes I have been making since kindergarten. First, I spoke. Second, I said aloud the thoughts that were at that very moment romping across the daisy fields of my mind.
“Gee. You should write more and market less. I bet you’d be happier.”
The other writer went silent. She smoothed a wave of dark hair behind an ear. She took a sip of wine. She walked away.
The next morning, after showering and vigorously brushing and flossing and gargling away the taste and odor of stale cheese and cheap red wine lingering on my breath, I sat at my desk and I promptly procrastinated. That is, instead of writing an essay, I read email.
There was a letter from the dark haired writer. My first thought was, “Ah! Could it be that she considered my opinion, acted on it, and is happier? Perchance she is writing to express her gratitude?”
These thoughts wilted when I read the title of her letter. (Consummately professional writers such as the dark haired woman will title their emails, knowing that a title is one technique a pro uses to spin their message.) The title of the dark haired writer’s email was, “You said some things that weren't so nice.”
I tilted my head. I said, “Wha-huh?” I double-checked the From line, thinking I had mistakenly opened an email from a past girlfriend. But no.
Forewarned by the title, rather than read the full letter, I scanned it. The dark haired writer, being admirably prolific, had written 310 words, and, being admirably talented, she had made her meaning unmistakable. Even when scanned in a thousand-foot fly-over.
Admonishing myself never to reply to an email before having ingested at minimum 20 ounces of hot black coffee, preferably shade-grown fair-trade organically grown coffee, I went to the kitchen to prepare a pot.
Watching the coffee brew, I asked myself, “David, why are people so intolerant of other people’s opinions?”
I answered myself, “Beats me.”
Pressing the issue, I asked me, “Really, what is so threatening about an opinion? After all, isn’t it no more than the controlled release of hot (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit) air?”
I did not have a clever answer to my questions, so I covered by thoughtfully thinking, “Hmm.”
My overbearing self took the opportunity to monopolize the conversation, beginning to lecture me. “Opinions,” I thought at myself, “Are not just spoken. Opinions are also expressed in writing—in essays, rants, sermons, and lectures. And what about facial expressions? Does any word convey an opinion as eloquently as a smirk or frown?”
“You’re right,” I thought, impressed by myself.
“Of course I’m right,” I told myself, and continued, “Now think of it: What is a painting, a symphony, a political campaign, how a person walks or parents or dances, if not an expression of their opinion?”
I took my advice and thought about it. My head started hurting. I told myself, “Please. Shush. Quiet. No more bipolar dialogue. I’m having a caffeine deprivation headache.”
The coffee finally brewed, I drank it. Almost immediately I felt a surging courageous intensely alive energy coursing through my bloodstream. Yeah, baby!
This was more like it.
My thoughts ran wild. I chased after them. They quickly led me to the realization that the 310-word email the dark haired writer had sent me was no more than… her opinion.
That thought led me down a spiraling rabbit hole of more thoughts. Eventually, thinking I had struck bottom, I thought to myself, “Hold on! Is everything I write nothing but my opinion?”
Yes.
All the essays I write and post on DavidBoyne.com are my opinion. After all, the name of the site is not ElmerKlutzworthy.com. And all the writing, the shameless exposing of myself in public that I do on my blog site, ICouldBeWrongBut.com, is also my opinion. I then realized that the books I have on Amazon, HAPPY ACCIDENTS: 12 Essays Exploring the Irony of the Ordinary and, TRAVELS IN MY 3 POUND UNIVERSE: How Life Head Locks, Bitch Slaps, Pile Drives, and Top Rope Bull Dogs Us, both available now for only $3.95 each—are nothing more than my opinion on everything from waiting in line for coffee, to step-parenting, to the art of running away, to whether or not the earth is now or has ever been a communist. I mean, flat.
Suddenly I was smacked down hard upon this bedrock thought: “My entire Life—not just my writing—really is nothing more or less than the continual expression of my opinion!”
My thoughts then veered sharply to current events in the Mideast. I struggled to catch up, thinking how people in Tunisia and Egypt were peacefully overthrowing dictators. And in Libya, people were violently overthrowing mass-murdering madmen. And it dawned upon me that all the surging courageous intensely alive energy coursing through these amazing people was for one central ambition: To express their opinion.
Without being arrested, jailed, tortured, murdered.
I recalled how just the day before while listening on my car radio to a variety of opinions about the incipient civil war in Libya, a BBC reporter told of interviewing a Libyan man who had until three days earlier been a taxi driver but who was now hurriedly learning how to use an AK-47. The Libyan man had said, “I cannot believe this! I am making fun of Qaddafi! I have never been so happy in my life!”
There, in my comfortable little house with the huge mortgage, drinking my hot black shade-grown fair-trade organically grown coffee, with a high-speed and uncensored connection to the World Wide Web, and with friends to share stale cheese and cheap red wine with while talking about whatever crossed our minds, I heard in my memory the words of the Libyan man ready to use an AK-47 rifle to try and keep from being made dead for what I am accidentally blessed to take for granted: expressing opinions.
My Irish-Catholic upbringing had taught me a prayer to express profound amazement with God’s creation. I whispered it now, “Holy fucking shit.”
No amount of coffee could make me as brave as that man.
Which made me wonder what should we do, how should we respond, when we encounter an opinion?
I could be wrong, but I think there are three perfectly good choices for responding to an opinion, any opinion. First, whenever an opinion crosses the mote and scales the wall into our sovereign dominion, that is, our Life, we can simply Dismiss it.
The second perfectly good choice is to Consider the intruding opinion. Then Dismiss it.
The third perfectly good choice is to Consider the opinion. Then Make it our Own. (Which, in China, is what they do with copyright and trademark laws, clearly considering these nothing but opinions.)
Heap scorn upon people who express opinions not your own? Please, go right ahead. After all, you’re just expressing your opinion.
But arresting, jailing, torturing, or murdering someone for expressing their opinion?
Fuck you.
Revved up with these streaming, over-caffeinated thoughts, I returned to my desk ready to dash off a reply to the dark haired prolifically marketing writer.
But.
What would be the point? Whatever reply I might make would only contain more of my opinions, the very things that had created problems for her. Still, a tiny red devil perched on my left shoulder urged me to reply by quoting Picasso: “The people who make art their business are mostly imposters.” Yet, a tiny white angel hovering on my right shoulder cooed into my ear, "Oh, please. Picasso was such a mean bastard. And in my opinion, David, you are a much nicer bastard."
But there was no getting around it. The only thing that would reunite me with my temporarily misplaced happy buzz was to express my opinion. After all, I am alive. I think, therefore, I opine.
Having Considered the dark haired writer’s 310-word opinion I now Dismissed it, by pressing the delete key.
Then I began to express my opinion. By writing this essay.
Sometime during the creative process, my brain went Wham! Bam! I had an idea. I would steal the dark haired writer’s opinion about marketing versus writing and without so much as a Thank you ma’am!—make it my own.
Knowing this essay would be published on the World Wide Web, I crafted it so as to cleverly embed several hyperlinks to my websites and publications in the text. Thus, in my un-humble opinion, I achieved a proper mix of much writing (1632 words) and not so much marketing (only 17 seconds to insert a few hyperlinks).
I uploaded my uncensored opinion to the World Wide Web, confident that while I might receive an angry email or two, no one would arrest, jail, torture or murder me.
A closing word, to my friend the taxi driver in Libya: I think of you and hope you are happy and still laughing at Qadaffi. And alive.
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It's All Your Fault
(from the book, Quo Vadis, Dude? 13 Explorations of How Life Headlocks, Bitch Slaps, and Samoan Drops Us, by David Boyne)
©2010 David Boyne
"Be the change you want to see in the world."
—Mahatma Gandhi
Once upon a time, I was a world-weary fifteen-year-old. My first mid-life crisis, which had come at age seven when I became convinced I would be dead by 14, was safely passed. But the shock and awe of still being alive—was shocking and awesome. In response, I had my second mid-life crisis, and became convinced I would be dead by 30.
Confronted with the hard reality that I must continue to live until I died, I became desperate to find a posture, or failing that, a philosophy. My hope was that I could use that posture or philosophy like a map, and it would guide me, if not through the rest of my once-in-a-lifetime Life, at least across the terrifying terra incognita of my well fed, well sheltered, well doctored, absently parented and indifferently educated adolescence.
It was then that I made a Major Discovery: The absurd philosophy of Marx.
I refer of course to Groucho Marx, not to Karl Marx, an equally absurd but utterly humorless philosopher.
One of Groucho Marx’s greatest treatises became the anthem of my adolescence and did in fact guide me through the dark age of my high school years.
An excerpt for your enlightenment:
Read the full essay, It's All Your Fault, in the Amazon Kindle book, Quo Vadis, Dude? Essays Exploring How Life Headlocks, Bitch Slaps, and Samoan Drops Us, by David BoyneClick this link to BackTalk db!
Books Stink
©2010 David Boyne"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it."
—Oscar Wilde"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."
—Harper Lee
There are People who love Books so much they go into rapture over the way a Book smells. These are often the same People who go into rapture over the way a Baby smells.
Please. Give to me a Break.
Books stink. Babies stink. Books and Babies stink because they are organic, and anything organic is doomed to become home sweet home to mold, spores, fungi, parasites, and communicable diseases—as they age. (Age is a polite word for ‘slowly rot away.’)
That I speak Truth® is easy to verify.
Given that I was born in 1957, the same year that Atlas Shrugged, On the Road, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas were born, all you need do is find a first edition of any of these Books, open it up, hold it real close to your nose, and take a good long deep breath. Then, come up real close to me, lift my arms, and take a good long deep breath.
As soon as you stop retching and gagging, sell that first edition copy and use the money to buy a six-month vacation at Cape Grim in Tasmania to clear out your lungs.
Another problem with Books and People is: They take up a lot of Space.
Books are made of Trees. Once upon a time, Trees were the hair of this planet. But then People began giving Earth a buzz cut, turning its Trees into Books and board meeting minutes, and using the stubble left on its scalp for gazillions of cattle to graze upon. These generations of gazillions of grazing cattle all farted up a perfect storm—which became a major component of the greenhouse gas emissions causing global warming. When the cattle grow big enough and fat enough, they are turned into double cheeseburgers that People eat to grow bigger and fatter.
Which leads to another problem with Books and People: They weigh a lot.
Getting Books or People from Point A to Point B takes a lot of energy. This energy is usually released by burning stuff. Aside from combustible fuels, transporting Books and People also requires an assortment of metals, ceramics, glass, plastics, steel-belted synthetic-rubber wheels, petroleum-derived lubricants, and collision and liability insurance.
However, once you put all your Books or People into one Basket, the odds of something going terribly wrong increase dramastically. Think, Alexandrian Library, or, Titanic. (Either the bloated ship or the bloated movie proves my point.)
While no man is an Island, every Book is entire of itself, neither a piece of the continent nor a part of the main. A Book stands (or more typically, lies) Alone, Separate, Unconnected. And even when not lying around taking up space and slowly rotting away, a Book can only be used—either as a doorstop or to be read from—by one person at a time. Serial monogamy, literally. (butta boom)
For all of these reasons, many People say, “The Book is Dead.”
To which I say, “Amen!”
But to the People who say, “Print is Dead.”
I say, “Fuggedaboutit!”
Crying out, “Print is Dead!” is like seeing a light bulb and wailing, “Light is Dead!”
When you read words, words, words—whether those words are in a Book, on a screen, zooming across a zipper under a giant billboard on Times Square, traced in wet sand, or peed in white snow—it’s all Print. It’s Language. For those reading this essay, the Language is English, an open source code of which more than 900 million People are active programmers.
So what do I care about Books? Why are Books and Reading even on my mind, when I could be using my limited mental energy to fantasize about a long weekend locked in a room at the Plaza Hotel with Marisa Tomei?
Glad I asked.
Recently, I purchased an electronic reading platform.
My Electronic Reader, not being organic, will never become home sweet home to mold, spores, fungi, parasites, and communicable diseases, and hence, does not smell. Yes, my Electronic Reader will one day break or become obsolete, but it will never age, being retired to spend Eternity in the company of cockroaches in a landfill.
My Electronic Reader doesn’t take up much space, measuring only 7.5" x 4.8" x 0.335". In that small space I can fit 3,500 Books. Given that the average American reads only 9 Books a year*, they would need to live 388.89 years to read the contents of one Electronic Reader. Which reminds me how, when I was growing up, I had an elaborate fantasy of being rich enough to have in my home a large, wood paneled library, complete with a Tree-burning fireplace and floor-to-ceiling shelves of Books. I still have that fantasy, but instead of thousands of Books on the shelves, there is now just one Electronic Reader, and Marisa Tomei and I stay warm by sipping cognac and burning Books in the fireplace.My Electronic Reader is easy to transport. When loaded with 3,500 books, it still weighs in at only 8.5 ounces. I have in fact placed it in a jacket pocket, forgotten it was there, and hiked six miles to and from the summit of Iron Mountain in Poway, California. After the hike, while re-hydrating with pints of India Pale Ale at Stone Brewery, I happened to find the Electronic Reader in my pocket, took it out, and read a few chapters of Buddhism: A Concise Introduction. This allowed me to decide that I could never be a Buddhist, since they do not re-hydrate with beer.
And talk about being connected—a piece of the continent and a part of the main! Should I finish a book while in bed at 2 in the morning and wanting to dive right into another, I can shop for, buy, and download one to my Electronic Reader in 60 seconds. Should I read a brilliant quote of Buddha, or Mark Twain, or Britney Spears that I feel compelled to share with a friend, I can send it to them directly from my Electronic Reader. When I read a word I don’t know the meaning of, I simply place the cursor next to it, and my Electronic Reader, which contains The New Oxford American Dictionary with over 250,000 entries and definitions, displays its definition. This saves me from having to get out of bed, go find the 30-pound printed dictionary, recall the rules of alphabetizing, and spend many minutes turning moldy, smelly pages to finally locate the word, but then be unable to read the micro-sized type of its definition.
When I was a kid, I did not experience the odd pleasure of being read aloud to until Peter Lariot, my sixth grade teacher, read A Wrinkle In Time to our class. Both my parents still refuse to read aloud to me, but with the press of a button I can have my Electronic Reader, which contains both a male and a female voice synthesizer, read aloud to me.
One of the mysteries of modern Life is that the female voice of my Electronic Reader is the same omniscient, impatient, slightly bitchy British voice of my GPS, the one forever reminding me I am Lost by scolding, “Recalculating!”
God I love that woman.
*http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_Books_does_the_average_american_read_per_year
Taking out the 25% of Americans that didn't read a Book last year {washington post article), the average is ~15 Books a year (per reader). Doing a little bit of math (putting in the zeros and doing an average) we end up with about 9. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/21/AR2007082101045_pf.html http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2007/08/link-mad-response-american-reading.html Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_Books_does_the_average_american_read_per_year#ixzz16sxIeMEn
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