THE CAR

TRIVIA

What's in a Name

Every single long piece of writing that I’ve done has a character named Marcus. In Bear Maze!, it was Marcus who shit himself on the flower expedition. In Karma Decay, it was Marcus that misconstrued story time. In Maligned, it was Marcus that Ignaz tried to convince that he should treat prostitutes compassionately so that they didn’t die. All secondary characters, all unimportant and expendable. But for the Car, Mark shed off the unnecessary ‘us’, upgraded from the changeable letter ‘c’ to the constant letter ‘k’, and took the helm of the story in his own hands—or the steering wheel, rather, for he is the Driver that follows the Road.

I’d like to say there’s a reason for all the Marcuses and Marks, but I’m not sure there is. It’s just one of those things that I found myself doing, and, once I noticed, it became intentional. I don’t really know any Marks—no one names their kids Mark, these days. They’re all older than me. I had a soccer couch named Mark, but our team sucked and there will never be a movie made about our inspirational relationship. And I worked at a place with six employees, once, a tomato factory—one of the salesmen was named Mark, and the other five colluded to fire him when sales were down, which was shortly after I started. Wasn't much time to bond there, either.

I do prefer, in general, to use names of nobody I know. Unless I’m specifically writing about a person, and don’t feel like being subtle. It’s happened once or twice. In the Car, for instance.

God Drives the Car and the Devil Rides a Bike

When I was selling my books at a local fair, there was an elderly woman that was looking the Car over, as I awkwardly sat on the other side of the counter. I was having doubts from the beginning about trying to sell my books in my hometown—the population there is decidedly old, and there are a lot of elements in my books that I assume are simply unpalatable, especially for those with more mature sensibilities. But I did it anyway, because it's not like they'd have much of a chance to read them and demand a refund before I packed up and retreated back to obscurity. I am Jude the Obscure, after all, my gift and my curse. So it felt like a safe wager.

So she has the Car in her hands, and she adjusts her thick glasses to read the small print on the back, and I wait in silence. And then she asks me, "There isn't any satanism in this book, is there?"

That's still a difficult question. Naturally, I said, "No there isn't," as quickly and sincerely as I could, actually sold her the book, and I haven't seen nor heard of her since. I wouldn't recognize her on the street and I doubt she would recognize me—I got a pretty dramatic haircut immediately afterward, just to be safe. But now I'm actually thinking about it—is there any satanism in this book?

For her, the answer is probably yes. I mean, these are the same people that think Pokemon and Harry Potter are destroying the fabric of our society. If those are the standards that I'm measuring my books against, then my books are something worse than satanic, whatever word that might be. But I was disingenuous—I answered from my own perspective. If I believed in anything, it might be the power of the devil, but I don't. And it's possible I made a devil out of chairs and cars, through the course of the book, but if she's going to be offended by those then she's going to be bedridden sooner than she might think, and could probably use some reading material while she's there.

I left her an assurance, though. I write little epigrams on every book I sign, and for hers I wrote, "Nothing satanic. Jude Fawley." If she's going to believe everything she reads, that should hold her over for a while.

I should say, to all whom this may apply--thank you for your support.

I also sold a fair amount of Bear Mazes to highschoolers, the other sizable demographic of the town. The poor bastards. But like ExxonMobil or Walmart would say, a dollar's a dollar.

An Apology

The few reviews I’ve gotten for the Car haven’t been looking very promising. If you want to see them, selections of those ambivalent impressions are displayed proudly and prominently on the Car’s main page, because why not?

I know that, as an author, I’m supposed to just take all criticism in silence and move along, but—as these people have pointed out—I’m a bad author, so why would I competently do what an author would do? I’m just not that good.

The common complaint is that they didn’t get it, or didn’t know what it was about. As one reviewer noted, “maybe [she’s] stupid,” for not getting it. But for the moment I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt, and perhaps explain what went wrong.

The non-linearity of the Car is just a more clear facet of a deeper, underlying theme of the book—the pointlessness of everything. It’s a nihilistic book about religion. Linearity is not the only thing it declares as pointless—it disregards death, compassion, morality. It does that by equating idolatry with a passion for cars, or by putting the climax at an anti-climactic spot—I feel like my critics would have been more comfortable with the Car if its violent resolutions happened at the end, where they typically belong, and not in the middle, where I put them. Instead I devoted the end to more human subjects—childhood, existential anguish, belonging. Ruminations that don’t necessarily belong in a typical plot-driven novel—I wanted them to be the focal point of the Car. So I made it that way.

The Car is a lot like Maligned, a book which has suffered similar complaints—a lack of a plot, of development and resolution. I feel like the point I'm trying to make is a lot more tangible with Maligned—it is very strictly a book about people’s lives. If Ignaz Semmelweis’s life didn’t have enough character development, or an interesting enough plot, I would humbly advise Maligned's critics to take it up with his ghost. Maybe I could have bent the narrative a little bit, to get more out of it, and maybe I could have been a better storyteller—that’s a possibility I’m always actively trying to explore—but by and large I followed the history. I wrote a book about humans, and humans are often anti-climactic.

So there’s my defense, my Socratic apology. I don’t know if it absolves the Car of its sins, the sin of being confusing or the sin of lacking much world building. But at the very least, it explains what I was trying to accomplish. Reflecting on it, it does seem a little artsy and pretentious, and I acknowledge that, but at the same time the Car is my favorite book I’ve written. It's got a good heart.