I was sixteen and had just finished reading Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives in rapid succession. My literary ambitions outweighed any talent I thought I possessed: I intended to be crowned the new king of horror, and my novel (the title of which I’ve since forgotten)–amounting to nothing more than Rosemary’s Baby-meets-The Stepford Wives–was going to win me a legion of followers and make Stephen King shit his pants.

I spent much of my sophomore year imitating Levin’s style on a huge Brother word processor. That machine was loud: after running a spell-check and saving a chapter to a floppy disk (probably labelled simply BRANDON in my obsessively tidy handwriting), I’d begin methodically feeding sheets of paper into the word processor. It was time-consuming. My bedroom would be filled with an incessant, rapid-fire klack-klack-klack as I printed out my chapters. (My bold-faced chapter numbers sounded like klackklackklack. Klackklackklack. Klackklackklack.) Between the klacking sounds, I heard a mechanical whir-clunk when the typewriter shifted to start the next line. And after every page–blessed silence.

Then I’d start up again. And again. Sometimes for only fifteen minutes, other times for almost an hour. And there I was, sitting at my desk, staring as my novel took on paper and cursing under my breath whenever I caught a typo, a missed word, a missed punctuation mark.

It drove my mother temporarily insane. But she failed to realize that she was listening to the klack-klack-klack of a classic in progress. Some of those machine-gun-like noises made up the dedication: For Mom. Those were the sounds of Stephen King’s funeral dirge. I was going to usurp his throne and take over the bestseller lists. Several hours of annoying klacking seemed like a small price to pay.

The next day, after school, I trudged over to a copy store and carefully placed several pages of my novel face-down on a copy machine and began pumping in nickels, dimes, quarters. The clerk later informed me that he had a machine where I could just plop my–"What is this, a book report?"–work of horrific art in a tray and have it copied pretty quickly. I took his advice, and soon left with three copies totalling just over three hundred pages.

Then, imagining exclamations of praise and shudders of revulsion, I handed out two copies–one to my mom and one to a friend–and told them to prepare to be utterly horrified. I did research for my novel. This is scary. It has witchcraft in it. The occult. Satanism. People die in it. And the ending! Wait’ll you read–

Alas, it wasn’t to be. Mary hated it: "I can’t believe you made me read that. You gave me nightmares." My mom, perhaps simply feeding my new ego, said she liked it–until the end. "Your ending needs work." My grandmother told me the same thing. But they didn’t understand! It was supposed to end like that! You’re supposed to imagine what happened at the end! That’s the point!

Grandma: "Well, I know. I could tell. But we don’t want to imagine the ending. You have to write it."

But I wasn’t daunted. I spent six months typing that damn thing out, and another week or so listening to klack-klack-klack in order to make my masterpiece a reality. I tidied up the ending–"Much better," my mom told me after I made her read my novel again–I flipped through the phone book and, after selecting a literary agency, carefully klacked out a cover letter. I quadruple-checked the agent’s name and mailing address. Then I picked up a jumbo envelope from the grocery store and, after making sure everything was perfectly in order, stuffed my novel inside and went back to the copy store. I mailed my novel to the literary agent, again imagining praise and lost sleep. He was about to read the first work by the new Stephen King.

Several weeks passed. I eagerly awaited the agent’s response. My hopes dimmed. I got caught up in schoolwork and started my first job, at Wendy’s, working from five to eight in the evening. I almost forgot about the literary agent and put my literary aspirations on hold while I asked people if they’d like to Biggie Size their orders.

Then I got a letter in the mail. I immediately recognized the return address: it was from the literary agency I’d sent my novel to.

I tore open the letter and quickly read it. Then embarrassment flooded my cheeks. It was a stock rejection letter.

But the literary agent had enclosed a handwritten note. I was a good writer. I had a lot of talent. He was pretty impressed. My novel wasn’t what he was looking for, and the ending needed work, but he enjoyed my novel. Finish school, go to college, then start publishing.

I threw away the letter and the note, feeling a strange sense of pride. My novel may have been awful, but it was nice to know, after so many stops and starts, I could actually finish one. Maybe that was the point all along.

At the office, where I’m probably the only eligible bachelor, and where the lady of the moment is Amy, because of her very recent engagement to her live-in boyfriend, I’m often asked when I’m going to get married. My response, invariably, is, "If I’m lucky? Never."

Carl Weisman, author of So Why Have You Never Been Married?, answers the question of why bachelors (like myself) refuse to get married (particularly to women like you). As far as I’m concerned, he nails it–and makes me feel a hell of a lot more secure in my decision never to marry (or, at worst, to stay solo until I’m in my mid-thirties).

Weisman, 49, conducted a survey of 1,533 heterosexual men to research a book aiming to give women an insight into why some smart, successful men opted to stay single–and help lifelong bachelors understand why they are still the solo man at parties.
He concluded that most men were not afraid of marriage–but they were afraid of a bad marriage.
"Men are 10 times more scared of marrying the wrong person than of never getting married at all," Weisman told Reuters in a telephone interview.
"This is the first generation of people who have grown up with bad divorces. People assume there is something wrong if you don’t marry but these are men who have made a different choice and not given in to social pressures."
[ ... ]
"It’s so important to these men to get it right. My best advice to single women after bachelors is to be patient. If you’re in a hurry to get married you’ll be frustrated," he said.

That confirms my suspicion that most women marry simply for the sake of getting married. (If you’ll permit me a little more cynicism: that’s a nice way of saying they’re desperate.) I don’t believe love plays a large factor in marriage decisions. Moving on:

Weisman said his research blew away any idea that single men were unhappy.
"A compelling issue was how many of them had found contentment in a never-married life," he said. "They had created lives full of careers, friends and ambitions. It was not like they walk around all day worried about not being married."

Very, very true, at least for me. Unhappy? Not about being single, anyway. In fact, the biggest irony is how many married people actually discourage me from getting married. Male co-workers often tell me, "Don’t ever get married, Brandon. Stay single!" Even my mom discourages it, but that’s because she doesn’t think I’d ever be happy in a marriage. "You’re my son–I know you better than you know yourself. You don’t even want kids. And I just don’t think there’s a woman out there who could satisfy you."

I’m not sure if I should be depressed or happy about that.

Maybe I’m subconsciously channelling Friedrich Nietzsche (who, in Ecce Homo, wonders how anyone can read during the day), but I’m finding it almost impossible to concentrate on Dante’s Purgatorio if I read it during the daylight hours.

I tore through several cantos on the night I picked it up, then stalled the next morning, lamely finishing one canto and wondering why I was so distracted. Then I took the book to the office, thinking I would get in a canto or two during lunch, but it say in my work area, untouched and uncommented upon by my co-workers. (I admit that, every time I looked at the Purgatorio, I told myself that Dante’s fundamentalism would put today’s Christian right to shame.)

I read a new translation of one of the canticles every year, so I can vouch for the Jean Hollander/Robert Hollander translation. I initially bought the book on the strength of its extensive notes, but the translation itself is quite readable, even if the language doesn’t evoke as many images as does the Inferno. The Purgatorio is more intimate than the Inferno, which might explain my frustrating lack of concentration. Dante makes a point of addressing the reader numerous times, and given the poem’s relative calmness, as compared to the violance and rapid-fire pacing of the Interno, Purgatorio reads like an interlude of sorts: if you managed to survive the horrors of hell, you’ll need purgatory to get the stench of sulfur off your skin.

But if the Inferno is awash in utter helplessness and despair, then the Purgatorio offers some much needed light and respite. Any arduous journey would likely force introspection, and that’s ultimately what the Purgatorio is: Dante and Virgil often analyze their motivations and the consequences of some of their choices. Whether you believe in God or not, Dante is one of those artists who is truly universal. Sure, the Divine Comedy is a product of its time, when high art was supposed to glorify the ways of God, and with the Purgatorio, Dante not only sings God’s praises with unmatched clarity and devotion, but he also makes you question whether or not you even you’re even ready for paradise. Don’t feel too bad if you can’t immediately answer that question–even Dante, perfectly aware of his own flaws, was full of self-doubt.

And that, I suppose, is what makes the Comedy one of the most human works ever written.

I’m glad, though not particularly surprised, to see my own nominations–Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End and Tom McCarthy’s Remainder–as two of this year’s contestants. Get reading, kids.

So I watched the film version of American Psycho last night and I might be one of the few people who’s twisted enough to think it’s one of the funniest movies ever made (If irony and sharp satire isn’t your thing, or if you’re a feminist, you might not want to put this in your Netflix queue.).

Then I followed it with Jessa’s interview with the Book Guys and, after listening to her cute voice and infectious giggling, wound up feeling like a dirty misogynist for getting such a kick out of a movie about a Wall Street yuppie who dismembers the women he sleeps with. ("Sorbet?") Still: I went to the bookstore this afternoon and, upon walking through the double doors, felt like lurking in the Sexuality section and approaching every attractive woman and saying, "Your name is Christie. You will only respond to Christie. Understood?" (Now you know why I’m hopelessly single.)

In the end, I decided against that and instead re-bought my lost copy of Tom McCarthy’s Remainder.

Of all the books I’ve read recently, Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore is, without doubt, my favorite. This is my first outing with Murakami, and the only thing I’m certain of is that he’s incomparable; I can’t think of anyone, living or dead, who writes the way he does.

The book itself is bizarre, spooky, and mind-bending–talking cats, mackerel falling from the sky, and even Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame all figure prominently in the plot. Imagine that feeling you get when you first wake up from one of the weirdest dreams you’ve ever had, and you’re pretty close to knowing what reading this book is like. Murakami has an ethereal, light-as-a-feather writing style, which contrasts nicely with the story’s darker elements. Sure, one could easily label Kafka on the Shore as postmodern, but it’s not of the Thomas Pynchon or James Joyce variety; Murakami is fun.

Chuck Palahniuk

Literary deal-breakers are nothing new to me. It used to be that I wouldn’t show the slightest interest in a woman who didn’t read, but I’ve since refined that philosophy a bit. My last girlfriend loved Chuck Palahniuk, which didn’t set off warning bells at the time. Now, it would. She was psychotic. (The fact that I hate Palahniuk matters little, since I only read Haunted after borrowing it from her. He’s an awful writer.) She even had the crazy-girl gleam in her eyes, something which I’d always found disturbing. Thankfully, mind-blowing sex temporarily washed away the feeling that she’d slit my throat, or worse, while I was sleeping.

In the end, we broke up after a few months, not over Palahniuk, but because she was always telling me to read Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty trilogy. Not only do I find erotica to be utterly dull, but Rice looks just like my grandmother. And that’s extremely creepy.

Fourteen chapters of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden still has me wondering why he won the Nobel Prize in 1962.

Sure, he’s considered an essential part of the American canon, but let’s face it: he was a bad writer. (To his credit, Steinbeck didn’t think he was very good either: when asked if he thought he deserved the Nobel Prize, he replied, "Frankly, no." And I don’t think he was being ironic or humble.) But East of Eden, for all its flaws–the awkward prose and the heavy-handed philosophizing–is both intimate and passionate; it’s a book Steinbeck wrote for himself, an epic that probably required every ounce of artistic strength to create. It’s an unself-conscious work in which Steinbeck, as an artist, bared his soul, a book where the story–a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis–serves as a vehicle for self-expression.

East of Eden shows us a man who rigorously defended his opinions, who abhorred injustice, who believed that people, even those we might call "monsters," are inherently good. Throughout the book, Steinbeck acknowledges that the world is changing, often for the worse ("It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken"), yet he clings to the conviction that a collective mindset can never replace the individual:

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.

I don’t exactly like East of Eden, but it’s hard not to respect an artist who truly had something to say.

I’ve been doing a good job of not buying any new books until I’ve read (almost) everything in the fabled to-be-read stack. (Confession: I bought, read, and enjoyed Paul Auster’s The Brooklyn Follies last week.)

As much as it pains me, Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven will have to wait. The same applies to Marcel Proust. I’m still slogging through three massive books: John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day.

You could say I bite off more than I can chew. I wouldn’t argue. As a co-worker once asked me, "You’re twenty-six–do you seriously read these kinds of books?" Well, yes, I do. I hadn’t realized there was an age limit. Laughter. "And your brain hasn’t exploded yet?" Well, that’s another story.

Anna Karenina is coming along pretty nicely. East of Eden–not so much. And I like Against the Day, but every time I try reading it again, I get overwhelmed: Oh, shit, I’m only on page two hundred fifty! And I haven’t picked it up in weeks! I’ll never finish it! Then I realize that there’s really no comfortable way to read such a huge book, and I settle on something else.

However, I take small comfort in the fact that it took me almost an entire year (last year, to be exact) to read Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Still, I tend to over-react.

Or maybe my brain really has exploded.

A few days ago, I realized there isn’t a single likable character in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Konstantin Levin is a dull man, with his high principles regarding farming and marriage; with all his bitterness and unrealistic expectations, it’s no wonder he can’t find a wife.

Count Vronsky is your typical jock: good-looking, well-groomed, and outwardly impressive, but beneath the polished military medals lies an arrogant, dim-witted man. Alexei Arkadyich? He’s simply dreadful, with his reedy voice and sociopathic personality; his wife can cheat on him as long as she doesn’t make him look bad–which is to say, as long as high society, with its insatiable love for scandal and downfall, doesn’t find out he married a slut. And Anna, our independent, high-minded heroine, is becoming increasingly jealous and needy, the sort of spectacle that invites more disgust than sympathy.

Strangely enough, I’m still enjoying Anna Karenina. It’s a book steeped in irony. Perhaps, under the serious veneer, Tolstoy was chuckling ever so softly at the human condition. These characters, with all their flaws–too many, you could say–and their endless contradictions, both moral and psychological, are some of the most realistic characters I’ve ever read about. Tolstoy not only describes their behavior and motivations, but delves into the reasons behind their choices. Not all of it makes sense–Levin, despite being madly in love with Kitty, despite actually having a (slim) chance of marrying her, refuses to see her, or to even acknowledge her existence, because he’s still pissed about being rejected by her–but at the same, it makes all the sense in the world. This is how people really behave–instead of being heroic, instead of having one set of morals, they keep us guessing, sometimes changing the rules in the middle of the game; they infuriate us with their flawed reasoning; and sometimes they can’t explain their behavior at all, often resorting to the age-old I just felt like doing it.

Sometimes the most unlikeable characters in literature turn out to be the most realistic. In the case of Anna Karenina, it’s easy to imagine that this is how people would act under the same circumstances.

About halfway through Steven Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts, I decided it was one of the best books I was going to read this year. It’s a total mindfuck of a novel, a literary thriller (forgive the paradox) that’s equal parts Mark Z. Danielewski, Haruki Murakami, and Jaws. Read this book read this book read this book–that’s what I feel like saying to anyone and everyone who will listen.

Then I worried that I might be a little out of my depth. Experimental isn’t a term I generally like, mostly because it’s so ambiguous, and unless you actually like the kinds of books where language serves a purpose other than storytelling, that term can be off-putting to the general reader. I’ve been asking myself if The Raw Shark Texts really qualifies as an "experimental" novel, and like the word itself (when taken in a literary context), the line is blurry at best. The structure of the novel is pretty straightforward, and the plot can be summed up in a few words–amnesiac man chases/runs from shark–but the experimental part comes in the way Hall uses words to illustrate certain aspects of the book. A quick flip through The Raw Shark Texts reveals QWERTY keyboards, smudged text, and the ever-present shark (or Ludovician, as it’s referred to in the story). Experimental, but not taken to Danielewski-like extremes. The Raw Shark Texts is unpretentious and very readable.

But it’s not just the experimental aspect of the novel that makes it stand out from the stale thriller fare that’s often on hand. The Raw Shark Texts is brimming with a certain character normalcy rarely found in these kinds of books. Aside from the fact that he’s being relentlessly chased by a shark he knows nothing about, there’s nothing truly exceptional about Eric Sanderson–he’s just an average guy, with average-guy worries, average-guy habits, and an average-guy sense of humor. He hasn’t had sex in quite some time, and he literally can’t remember the last time he had sex. He falls in love pretty easily, and reacts to emotional manipulation (which there’s plenty of in this book) in much the same way a child would. And that’s okay. Eric is a character we can relate to, one we love reading about and can’t help but root for.

Underneath the thriller-genre veneer–mysterious characters have a way of popping up at unexpected, often dire moments, characters who always know more than they’re letting on–The Raw Shark Texts’s true creativity lies in the details. Hall recycles just about every thriller genre cliché he can (locked rooms, underground passageways, an amnesiac protagonist, and a deceased lover who may or may not have come back in the form of a mysterious, sexy woman), but none of it seems regurgitated. We know what’s going to happen, but Hall brings his own touch to the novel; he gives us a style that’s intellectually stimulating, rather than a by-the-numbers narrative. The hook is great, and Hall reels you in with memorable storytelling, some truly frightening moments, a healthy dose of weirdness, and characters that could actually be the people next door.

Ultimately, The Raw Shark Texts proves that genre matters little. If it’s good, it’s good–and this book is better than good. It’s one of the best books you’ll read this year. Or in any year.

In real life, I only have one friend who’s truly literary–which is to say, she doesn’t read the kinds of books you’d normally see on the New York Times bestseller list or as an Oprah recommendation.

She has good taste. She’s read and enjoyed Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment (and in that respect, Nicole, I am not worthy). She knows who said, "Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That’ll teach you to keep your mouth shut." In short, she and I have scarily similar taste in books.

She was also the one who, several months ago, casually mentioned she was reading Chuck Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. I casually picked up the book yesterday–and promptly read one hundred fifty pages of it over the course of the day and night. Klosterman’s discourses on popular culture–ranging from Pamela Anderson to Saved by the Bell to the artistic brilliance of Billy Joel–are equal parts exasperating, funny, angry, and witty. He’s also a damned good writer. I recommend. So does Nicole, I’m sure.

I planned on flying to Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia over the course of my vacation. Then I realized that travelling over the Memorial Day weekend was going to be nearly impossible: many of my airline’s flights were booked, overbooked, delayed, cancelled, and–well, you get the idea.

I may still try to fly somewhere later this week. But living in Florida is a vacation in itself; beautiful Tampa Bay is only a short drive away, and I’m within shouting distance of Busch Gardens. I also kicked around the idea of driving to Orlando (Disney World! Sea World! Universal Studios!), but with gas tipping the scales at almost four bucks a gallon, that’d be the height of insanity. (Note to Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman: now might be a good time to tap those oil reserves.) In any case, I’ve stocked up on beer, pizza, ice cream, and Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. That doesn’t give me anything to complain about.