Part 27 - a smackdown in Under Armour.

Oh Shane, my section is precious. I read it greedily over my bowl of morning oatmeal (oatmeal - not a luxury, but unfortunately I still don't find it particularly tasty), and would have laughed several times out loud, was it not for my mouthful of breakfast. And what a miserable morning it is; I had been looking forward to our field trip to Staten Island but standing around in a suburban wasteland in rainy 45 degree weather sounds terrible.

Which reminds me I need to buy some Under Armour leggings for my trek this upcoming January. I think we've bonded before over our hatred of cold weather and every additional year I spend away from subtropical climate, I am reminded that I am a creature of warmth.

None of what happens in my five pages makes sense, but I was so desperate for a change of pace - something other than the lovesick pining of a 24 year old girl - that every single delicious detail was savored, licked and swallowed whole.

Our Rowan awakes, groggy and in pain, finding herself gagged and tied at the wrists and ankles, in the shack where the generator is in the back of the Greenhouse. She finds a Korean gardener guarding her ... um, weren't they all supposed to Chinese gardeners? are we all interchangeable in 1960's America? And who else! It's Reshevsky! Dum dum dum de dum... ominous 'I knew it!' music plays... He barks at the gardener, telling him that the orders have changed, and he, Reshevsky is supposed to be in charge of the girl now. While this exchange takes place Rowan kicks herself for betraying herself to Reshevsky while simultaneously worrying about Matt. Was he being tortured? is he bound and gagged? is this supposed to turn into a weird erotic novel as I had proposed it would in the beginning?

Just as Rowan begins to worry about Matt she overhears Reshevsky imperiously tell the Korean to go tend to the other man with the questioning (and the Korean obeys, just as 'his peasant ancestors no doubt obeyed their Emperor').

Its interesting to note that Rowan never doubted that Matt was also in custody. If I suddenly found myself poisoned, gagged and held prisoner in a shack I have a feeling I would think everyone was in on the plot - but then again maybe I've never been in love with Matt Cater.

Reshevsky then proceeds to remove her gag and in the manner of the James Bond villain proceeds to tell her everything about the evil plot. What a wonderfully convenient plot device, especially as we only have 30 pages left in the novel. One tasty little morsel we discover is that Reshevsky wishes Kee would use scopolamine (a truth serum!) on Cater, rather than traditional pain.

Reshevsky, like all gentleman villains, of course confesses he thoroughly enjoyed Rowan's company, and considered her a real friend. And like all gentleman villains, he has a dark past which has forced him into his current role - apparently he dabbled in espionage (much like someone would perhaps dabble in recreational drugs?) when younger... he flippantly references some sort of 'treaty'. It was Rowan's aunt who found him, and manipulated him, which would be a fairly standard plot turn, if it not for the fact that Reshevsky reveals that her aunt is a heroin addict! A junkie! This was the cause of one of my near-breakfast accidents with the oatmeal.

Ah ha! it all comes together ... the found needle... her aunt's odd emotional turns... Could it be? Have her aunt and Kee been shipping heroin, or perhaps poppies, out of the greenhouse? Are they the modern Taliban?

It was that needle that Rowan found that made her aunt want to kill her (although exactly why Rowan needs to be tied up, and Matt tortured and interrogated is still beyond me - its not like Rowan had figured anything out). It seems like Kee and the aunt have a habit of eliminating characters though - Ah Sing's disappearance was credited to Kee, and in a crossed out section I'm able to make out that Milly's predecessor (who is that by the way?) also had a habit of 'listening at keyholes', thus necessitating an elimination.

Anyway, this is fun stuff. I'm looking forward to your next section. I have no clue how on earth Rowan's aunt, who is apparently a junkie gardener trying to smuggle things clandestinely from her greenhouse, would even bother with the trouble of killing Rowan.

Part 23 - porcupines and a Eureka moment

Shane,

Its now my turn to be off the radar for a while. We're heading up to the Adirondacks for a 5 day camping trip in the High Peaks region. So, not so much booze-soaked, as say sweat and dirt covered, and probably craving an ice cold beer by day 2. Hopefully I'll see a couple of porcupines. Have I mention I'm now obsessed with trying to find real porcupines? Growing up in Hong Kong the extent of my exposure to animals was the occasional field trip to a 'farm', and coming across cows (which are amazing climbers by the way) when hiking.And speak of cows and Hong Kong, I came across this wonderfully cute story about a woman trying to save wild cows:

http://www.timeout.com.hk/big-smog/features/22176/hongkonger-yeung-yeung-founder-of-cows-home.html

Your note passing story reminded me of the elaborately constructed systems children concoct for themselves - how everything seemed to be so important, and every step so critical to some final, indeterminate goal. I think I was too much of a conscientious (a word that I'm pretty sure was on most of my school reports) student to pass notes, but I have this awesome memory of building this complicated structure out of rulers, pencils, books etc with the guy who sat

next to me in 3rd grade, so that we could borrow each others erasers/ color pencils/ pencil sharpener, without ever reaching over and using our hands - some type of Fischl-Weiss device.

Regarding the private/ public nature of this blog and this project in general, I often wonder how much of has to do with the nature of typing onto a computer versus say, having to hand-write all our correspondance. I'm going to demand that one of our correspondances be done via snail mail. It'll be an interesting comparison.

But even beyond the mechanics of how this project is done, the whole nature of this project is really about us inserting ourselves into what should have been a discarded, private manuscript. We've given ourselves carte blanche to freely comment (and criticize) this foetal manuscript, snidely projecting our own memories and re-enactments on this proto-book.

But hell, how awesome the ride has been.

Anyway, speaking of rides.... as we begin my section, Kee is is driving Reshevsky and our Rowan down Third Avenue to some club, where throngs of decadent young people undulate to music, and Reshevsky has some table reserved for him with champagne (sounds like a typical night at one of those terrible Meatpacking bars). Rowan is clearly very happy to have her champagne flute constantly refilled, and as the night continues, she finds Reshevsky's company more and more enjoyable, and the decadence of the club more acceptable. It's wonderful how alcohol affects all people the same regardless of what decade they live in . Under the guise of going to use the ladies room, she finds a phone that is shielded from Reshevsky and dials the number that supposedly is Matt Cater's. Unfortunately some breathless sounding young woman answers who is unable to tell Rowan where Matt is, or when he'll be back. And dear old Rowan, manages to even feel jealous for this unknown woman who may simply be his answering service.

Back at the table, she promptly BURSTS into tears in front of Reshevsky and is unable to calm herself down. She then proceeds to break down and after some cursory prodding by Reshevsky, she breaks down and tells him that her aunt won't let her leave, there's some sort of unsavoury business abound and Matt had promised he would help. Reshevsky remains icily calm, and insists that he will try to help her. And as luck would have it, at the very bottom of my last page, he has a Eureka moment - snaps his fingers and says ....

You're up. Don't let me down. I must know what Reshevsky's brilliant plan is.

Part 22 - back from Portland, high school flashbacks and fancy French food

Cee,

Sorry to be off the radar for a few days. I went to Portland, Oregon and, well aware of the social (read: booze-soaked) nature of my trip, thought better of taking any sections of the manuscript with me.

I had a really interesting flashback while writing my last entry that I forgot to mention. This whole

process reminded me of how I used to exchange notes with a girl in high-school. Her name was/is Tobi Wilson. I tried to contact her to see if she saved any of them, but no luck. I remember trying to make these correspondences multi-media works of art, with lists and drawings and gossip and all kinds of ephemera stuck to them. I think I blocked it out of my mind for a long time because it's a bit emasculating to imagine myself passing fastidiously decorated notes around to girls I wasn't intimate with, but as I thought about it longer, I realized such feelings of embarrassment are just layers of affectation I've accumulated since I was 15. I think I was so natural then that it's humiliating to think of how I acted. I picture myself as a chimpanzee in front a crowd of onlooking families at a zoo with a giant erection, and completely unselfconscious. It begs the question whether socialization makes you better or worse. Kind of a Hobbes/Locke

conundrum, I guess.

I'll post the notes if Ms. Wilson provides them.

It was only after a friend of mine read the blog that the private nature of the correspondence resonated with me. I've been writing pretty much willy-nilly and uninhibited, then this guy mentioned something I wrote, and it hit me that I was doing less-editing that I do for say my Brooklyn Rail reviews, which I have to say I pour over with a lot of scrutiny. I recognized it was how I wrote when I was 15....and then I considered what I would do if everyone I knew right now got a hold of my notes from 1991 and how different that is than what I'm doing with this manuscript of the Greenhouse. Hmmmm...

These thoughts are especially true in sections like my most recent, because, though most of this book exists in the public record, the edited section feel very private. The one time my editorial notes were actually reprinted in an art review, I was mortified...though it says a lot that people couldn't distinguish them from art speak. But it still felt like a breach of privacy for some reason.

So to the plot...

Like I said, a lot of it's crossed out; it looks like some kind of pre 9/11 security briefing that was redacted. Lucky for my nosey nature, red colored pencil is semi transparent and most of it is still legible.

As I pick up, James Kee, Reshevsky and our young heroine are dumped into lower Manhattan at Battery Park. They move at a snail's pace up the west

side (how about that for realism), until Reshevsky gets impatient and jumps out of the car, escorting Rowan the last few blocks to Chez Whateveritis.

When they arrive they take a table for two and order a bottle of Graves '62, which from very basic Google-research, is apparently a classic. Reshevksy peacocks his "gastronomic pedantry" as Rowan stews about where in the joint the phone is. Because of her preoccupation, she apparently throws manners and decorum to the wind and acts, according to the Count as a "greedy little girl."

I love how in 1970 all the good food consisted of standard dishes named after a creator or a point of origin. For dinner Reshevsky had Oiseaux De Veux and Rowan picked nervously at a sole almondine. And they shared crepes suzette for dessert. I was thinking about all the throw back dishes: lobster themador, bananas foster, clams casino, etc. etc. How funny what a prescription it was. So far from clam foam with freeze-dried sweetbreads with bruised rhubarb ragout. Clearly all my knowledge of these dishes comes from Fletch...and clearly I shouldn't become a chef.

Anyway, Rowan slips off to the ladies room and realizes the phone is within eyeshot and cannot make the call without giving herself away. Yoo hoo, use your cell phone sistah!!! I don't know what just happened.

The scene ends, not with a major plot twist, but with Rowan deeply offending Reshevsky by suggesting that he's wasting his life being used as a social pawn. Reshevsky proceeds to excoriate her with all the class you'd expect from a count, which inspires a sulky interior monologue that lingers until the last sentence in my five-page section. Sorry, Cee, I wanted to give you so much more than crepes suzette and sulks.

Oh well.

batter up,

shane

Part 13 - cheese and tubing and a daiquiri

hey there,

so things are in slight disarray with the order being messed up this week - but not to worry. it appears the tale of Rowan and her adventures are straight forward enough.

Are you still in New York though? or have you disappeared to the wilds of Wisconsin, eating cheese and galavanting about? I spent yesterday drifting down the Delaware river in an inflatable tube, consuming beer and happily moving about a mile an hour.

What a wonderful way to spend a lazy saturday afternoon - I've become fairly good at not spending money on entertainment now that I'm unemployed - and let me tell you, things are looking pretty nasty out there in terms of picking up work.

But, back to Rowan, because her adventures are much more fun than discussing my future career plans. In part 13, we begin with Rowan confronting Matt Cater about his presence in the greenhouse the previous night. Matt refuses to be caught with his pants down, and actually gets angry (sort of reminding me of the idea that the best defense is a good offense; you know... go straight for the jugular etc. etc.). He almost threatens poor little Rowan, telling her that it's for her own good that she not say anything to her aunt (this confrontation is occuring in the room where Mr Chao fell to his death a week before), however Rowan manages to persuade him to let her in on the secret...but not in the house, they must meet in the Tibetan Museum (we really must take a field trip to this museum). Rowan of course gets angry at the reminder of the Tibetan Museum as this is where Matt had promised to take her, but ended up cancelling and leaving her in the hands of the smarmy Reshevsky to act as her tour guide (who I admit may be the best written character in the novel).

Enter Aunt Lucy, who is clearly unimpressed with the continued attention that Matt is directing at her niece. The two of them disappear off somewhere together. Then the delightfully wicked Reshevky enters, and suddenly the next page of text becomes incomprehensible. It is marked with vigorous pencil scribbles in an attempt to delete much of the ensuing conversation between Rowan and Reshevksky. What was also particularly interesting was the appearance of the word 'out' typed repeatedly in the margins down this entire page - an interesting way of communicating something to your editor.

I did enjoy this masked out conversation though between Reshevsky and Rowan, despite the author's attempt to delete it. Reshevsky gets fresh, pinning Rowan to the tree and accusing her of not having 'much intimate knowledge of the male sex'! Unfortunately the last paragraph of their exchange is genuinely illegible so what exactly transpired that hot morning will never be known. My section ends with the two of them re-entering the house where Matt and Lucy are drinking daiquiris, and enquiring politely about what places in the city Rowan still wants to visit.

so, back over to you. No daiquiris for me this hot sunday afternoon, but if I'm lucky, a beer and some barbeque.

Part 12 - Billy Joel, Schwartzy and nostalgia

Glad to have you back, Cee Mak.

Sometimes when I say your name I add it to the end of a line in Billy Joel's "Movin' Out": he's-trading-in-his Chevy-for-a-Caroline Mak Mak Mak Mak. Your name pops up on my phone, and, blammo, I'm belting out Billy Joel. Don't think less of me, please...just thought you like to know.We sent the letter announcing the gallery closing last week. I'm sure you saw it. Kind of sad, huh? I couldn't help run a montage through my head of all the nonsense that took place over the past two years. It's strange about nostalgia; how you can't force the sentimental component to sink into your conscious in real time, it has to steep. When Caren told me we were hanging it up, I knew the presence of CGFA would germinate into some kind of profound feeling, but as hard as I tried I couldn't discern what shape it was going to take. Only now am I beginning to sense it. It's bittersweet and very defined by the first year, mostly, when the enterprise seemed the most real; art fairs and show changes, the storage facility. Steve Reynolds, somehow. Schwartzy. Drunk man. Xenia. Jeeez, so much stuff.
This month is going to be so strange.

But not as strange as Rowan's....how's that for a segue??

I believe my five pages mark somewhat of an impasse for Ms. Lamb. Though it's not Anna Karenina or Finnegan's Wake, I'd say the Greenhouse has thus far been well-paced and resolute in its modest mission. In this section, though, I sensed a bit of uncertainty and conflict in the author's voice, mainly through how Ms. Lamb is seen through Rowan's eyes. A preponderance of the description of Lucy is dedicated to telling us about her rather than indicating the same through actions. For instance, Rowan observes, "When there were no men around her, some of her bright aura seemed to diminish, the air of ageless loveliness faded, and she became suddenly older. Just more human, closer to the realities of life and death." We've heard this general description several times now, but it feels more clumsy in this section. Such passages add very little to Lucy's character for the purposes of the story, but Lamb keeps going back and gnawing on it again anyway. It seems to me that as the story advances, Lamb is redoubling her effort to build Lucy into a psychologically complex, conflicted and paradoxical character, though, no matter how much she tells us about all her facets, it always comes across as a Jekyll-and-Hyde contrivance.
I feel sympathy for her because, I sense a sincere desire to author a deeper and more meaningful character in Lucy, though the nature of the story holds her back. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the most convincing character so far is Reshevsky, and he's also the most absurd and cartoonish. This is obviously a story that is action and event heavy, and Reshevsky serves those events faithfully. The told-not-shown portions of Lucy's character are forced and repetitive; however, to me, they seem to reflect an attempt by Lamb to explore the more touching sides of the human condition than the goings-on at Pleasant Plains would allow. You know, can't we all sympathize with the notion of wanting our art to find purchase in a more relevant universe...doesn't every weatherman for a FOX affiliate in Lubbock, TX secretly aspire to being Walter Cronkite breaking into As the World Turns in 1963 to tell us the president has died? Doesn't every session drummer for Tom Petty wish he or she (probably he) had written "A Change is Gonna Come?"
Maybe that's too dramatic, but I think there's a part of all of us that happily geeks out with our art and ends up loving the details...hell, I get really into blowing ball-point pens onto 12-inch panels. I spend days on end scrutinizing the fine marks made by drizzled ballpoint pen ink. I even get excited to show my work to visitors to my studio, thinking there's a even a remote chance that I can convey or recreate in them the same enthusiasm I feel constantly. They usually enjoy the trip through my practice, but the iridescence of the pen, the fine lines, the bleed of the resin...that's my nerdy headspace, not theirs. And even despite my overall contentment with what I do, I'd be lying if I said I never emerged from the intoxicating minutiae thinking about the possibility of taking one of those thousands of pens and instead of blowing the ink out of it, I could make it write something half as profound and timeless as the last few pages of the Great Gatsby. I think Antonia is getting the itch to create something more profound, too.
Sigh.

My section is basically a pledge by Rowan to not sit idly while mayhem and mischief consume the farm. She balks at Reshevsky's offers to take her sightseeing, as well as Lucy's suggestions and urgings to cut her stay short. Rowan is going to figure it all out...if it kills her (my words not hers.)

Did you ever see that movie with Jennifer Lopez where she's some kind of karate chopping, spurned ex- wife or girlfriend and she goes out and basically kicks every man's ass in the world who doesn't treat a lady with respect?? I didn't either, but I saw the prieviews...and they're dancing through my head right now.

Kick some ass, Rowan!

Part 2 (written with a twitching thumb and all about Rowan)

Dear Caroline,

It's great to hear from you! How was Berlin? Any lurid stories or great adventures to pass on?

As you can imagine, the psycho-social dynamics here are getting stranger by the day. I'm in employment purgatory. How do you motivate when you know it's all ending? And how does one simply languish when they have any amount of pride in what they do? Oh well, I'll file it away as great raw material...for what, I don't yet know.

Ok, now to the project. First, an observation about my reaction to receiving your email this morning. I initially anticipated having.... I just had the STRANGEST thing happen to me. My left arm went numb...not numb like anesthetized numb, but like pins and needles numb. It felt gimpy and half alive, and my thumb started twitching. Then a bunch of adrenaline flowed through my body and I couldn't tell if I was having a panic attack or if something was really happening. But I looked at my thumb and it was jiggling and thought, "this is NOT psychosomatic, because my eyes are watching my thumb wiggle!!"

....back to my thought: Initially, I anticipated your email arousing my curiosity about the Greenhouse, but, because of your two-week absence, and a general fondness (and probable withdrawal) from our morning conversations It's hard to separate your voice from your account of the story. It's like having your mother read to you at night, you know? Your text is freighted with all kinds of personal associations I didn't expect...

Well, before I die, I should tell you about the story:

My section brings the aunt's character into higher relief. It also lays out more about the protagonist, who we learn hasn't seen aunt Lucy in thirteen years and that this aunt is her last surviving relative. We also learn the protagonist's name - or I assume we do in this section because you wouldn't have avoided mentioning that it was ROWAN MARTIN, as in Rowan Martin's Laugh-In, a show that was at the height of its popularity when this manuscript was written. I've looked over the pages four times to make sure it's true. If and when we meet the author, we need to ask her about that.


The nuzzler, Count Nick Reshevsky (yes, "Count"), makes eyes at Rowan, who we learn looks a lot like her aging aunt. Reshevsky, it seems, is a bit of a hound dog, and his flirtations are completely within his character. After some more flirting and strangely Victorian banter, Lucy admits to having one of the "best (the editor changed it from "most-well known") greenhouses on the Eastern Seabord." Aunt Lucy then makes some disparaging remarks about Rowan's father, an archaeologist, that insult Rowan.

After a chapter break, Rowan is escorted upstairs to her room by a Ms. Chow, where she meets the maid, Millie, and reflects a bit before the scheduled 7 'oclock dinner in the dining room.

The aunt has a bit of a sinister twinge to her, but I can't tell if it's going in that direction or not. Reshevsky sounds like a very one-dimensional Jane Austen-like gentleman with a randy side. Other than that, I can't tell how I quite grasp the tone of the novel.

This is the first book I've ever read without having the slightest clue about what genre it fits into. It really causes you to look at details more closely, doesn't it? I guess it'll have to be as I assume there are no Cliff's Notes for it.


Over and out,
Shane