Matt Bloom’s Online Works

A beautiful blend of prose and poetry, The Road is the story and the intricately painted image of a postapocalyptic world in which hope is no longer a luxury.

The world is as dark as the ash falling from the sky. The earth is scorched and dead. A man and his son are traveling along a road on their way south because they don’t think they can survive another winter in the north. There are few survivors of whatever has destroyed the Earth as we know it, and the protagonists have reason to fear the others. Cannibalistic blood gangs travel the roads, too, in search of prey. Almost any place that might once have had food and clean water has been ransacked years before. In place of a long-absent wife and mother, the duo have only each other and the specter of death to acccompany them. They don’t know what they will find at the southern coast. They only know they must carry on, “each the other world’s entire.”

To say that this is a sad story would be terribly off the mark. It is bleak and it is dire, but McCarthy takes us right into the heart of the darkness and gives us ample time to adjust to it. As the protagonists have. This world is all the boy has ever known, and that is true for us, too. McCarthy doesn’t expose us to the pain of transition, the pain to which the father grows ever more numb over time. Instead he invites us to vicariously live for that which is absolutely essential to the human spirit – love, hope – and to root for the characters as they fight to find and maintain the fuels that are essential to the human body. McCarthy gives us life in its purest form, and reminds us how vulnerable everything else in the world is.

I liken this story to the section of It’s a Wonderful Life where George Bailey gets to see how his hometown would be without him in it. If you take the basic idea of that part of the story, expand it to the length of an entire novel and broaden the theme so it applies, not just to a small-town banker, but to the entirety of the human race, then you’re on your way into McCarthy’s world. What would we be without the comforts of civilization? Well, some of us would be monsters – openly, without the shame that being a monster within a stable society brings. But some of us would still have the ability to love, to show compassion and mercy. These things are worth rooting for. It is upon these traits that humanity bases its justification for society. Not our intelligence, our ability to amass wealth and power, nor on our insatiable taste for comfort. Just as we have no interest in seeing Potterville succeed in place of an economically inferior Bedford Falls, we have no desire to watch civilization be rebuilt in such a world as in The Road unless the good guys win. We are reminded what we are supposed to value in the human race. McCarthy shows us just exactly why the man and his boy are “carrying the fire”.

The Road has some of the most beautiful language I’ve ever read, which is a real feat considering the wasted world McCarthy is describing. The story is compelling and the relationship at its focal point moving. Its lesson – if McCarthy even meant for the story to have a lesson – is poignant, especially in these times of economic recession. We must take joy and find peace in that which always has real value. Where we love and are loved, where we find reason to carry the fire, no matter the state of the world around us, there is our hope.

Happy Good Friday,

Matt

Mil Millington is a very funny Brit.

Things is a novel about just exactly what the title indicates, with a few small twists involving the disappearance of the narrator’s boss and his subsequent discovery of multiple criminal conspiracies to which he, along with his sudden promotion, is now an accomplice.

Pel Dalton and his German girlfriend Ursula have two children and live in one of worst neighborhoods of their English university town. They fight about car keys. Pel becomes the new acting Computer Team Administration, Software Acquisition and Training Manager in the university Learning Center after the former CTASATM Terry Steven Russell quits unexpectedly. Meanwhile Pel and Ursula decide to get a new house, and they fight about that. Pel discovers that TSR was into some illegal stuff that he doesn’t fully understand but decides to just wing it. He and Ursula fight about her parents, about roofers and gutterers, about a (hilarious) skiing injury. Pel is in the paper in connection with the underhanded activities in which the university is involved. He fights with Ursula about cheating on her, which he has not done. It’s merely hypothetical, but she’s pissed anyway. Ursula almost gets them both killed. Pel gets in so deep with the intrigue at work he doesn’t know what to do. How will it all turn out?

Well, not very interestingly, to be honest. As a storyteller, Millington is so-so. What makes the novel entertaining isn’t the plot. It’s not even really the characters, either; Ursula, for example, is a one-stringed guitar that plays only a series of shrill, screeching notes. Pel has about as much depth as, well . . . a comedian doing a stand-up act. What holds the story together is a serious of hilarious conversations between the two psychopaths at the fore, and between Pel and the other normal to semi-normal characters in the story. The best way I can describe the style of nonstop quirky humor is to call it literary stand-up comedy. It reads like a routine that uses a thin storyline just to give it structure. In other words, it doesn’t matter to the joke that there’s a horse walking into a bar. It’s what the bartender asks it that makes you want to hear it.

Don’t read Things for a great story involving mystery and intrigue. You’ll be disappointed. Read it because you never thought you’d laugh out loud at something you read and you want to prove yourself wrong.

Happy Reading,

Matt

I am a bit hesitant to admit it, but I picked up my first Updike book only a week ago. Too many less talented writers got my attention before that, I assure you. Halfway through it I awoke last Tuesday to learn that the acclaimed writer had passed away, defeated by lung cancer at the age of seventy-six. What began as a recent work of a living legend became suddenly the bookend of a life’s work (barring posthumous works to come, of course).

As I believe no true artist would want his death to affect his audience’s evaluation of his work one iota, I will share my thoughts on Terrorist (2006) completely, honestly and – as I would have under any circumstances – respectfully.

Updike had an awful lot to say in this novel. His characters represent American society in two distinct, yet often overlapping spheres: those who feel they belong here while criticizing the culture in which they exist, and those who don’t belong; who don’t want to; who won’t compromise who they are to take part in it. Representing the first group are a number of characters, though Jack Levy is the foremost. He is a non-practicing Jew in his sixties, from whose perspective the country has gone to Hell in a handbasket. As a guidance counselor he sees high school seniors make foolish choices and laments bygone days when people respected teachers enough to be guided. He complains of a culture that only offers the only opiate of entertainment and little of substance. He represents a sedentary, lifeless middle-class that exists only to consume. Jack’s Lutheran wife Beth is the bloated product of literal consumption, lazily conscious of her sad condition but oblivious to its cause. Beth’s sister Hermione (yes, just like in Harry Potter) is the one-dimensional, conservative Undersecretary of Homeland Security, who has a front-row seat to the grossly unrealistic task of fighting something as nebulous as terror itself. Jack relates to neither one so well as with his woman-on-the-side Teresa, an Irish-American artist whose promiscuity and sense of self-importance long ago displaced her ability to connect intimately with the world around her. We could call these four Team America – the force of disallusionment that has taken over Updike’s homeland – with Jack as its leader.

Representing the other sphere almost entirely on his own is Ahmad Mulloy Ashmawy, an eighteen-year-old fundamentalist Muslim, son of a Muslim man he never met and Teresa Mulloy, Jack’s lover. Ahmad speaks of America as a country of devils who seek to replace God with idols of sex and material comforts. He takes note of the buildings decaying all around him in northern New Jersey, the result of the infidels’ neglect of the neighborhoods where marginalized people like him live. He rejects the college path Jack urges him toward in favor of a simple life in which he can listen for the will of Allah, as free from distraction as possible. He relates to his closest friend, Joryleen, only in that she speaks her mind as freely as he does, and cares as little what others think. Together, along with a few Islamist plotters, they are the Anti-Americans: disdaining the paths their conservative parents would choose for them in favor of what they believe in. For Ahmad, that means going to whatever lengths he believes Allah calls him to, regardless and even disdainful of his society’s ideas of right and wrong.

All of this is very interesting, yet as a story, Terrorist is a flop. Markedly little happens in the book. Jack tells Ahmad to go to college, Ahmad gets a job driving a truck instead. Jack sleeps with Ahmad’s mother for awhile. Ahmad’s boss gets him in on a plot to blow up a tunnel. I don’t feel like I’ve given anything important away yet; the only thing I won’t reveal is whether Ahmad goes through with it or not. That’s it. That is basically all that happens for 300 pages.

I think the real genious of this work would have been better expressed in an essay. All of Updike’s characters pontificate with language and voice better suited for nonfiction. In my opinion, the dialogue reads like Updike talking with Updike, and under the right lens, such a thing is fascinating.

I will admit that it was a treat to read a seventy-four-year-old celebrated writer’s reaction to an event that shaped my world view at a young age. I feel as though I better understand the disgust and helplessness felt by many older Americans in the wake of 9-11, while I simply struggled with disbelief and the formation of my political identity along with the rest of my generation. After half a century of both victory and loss in war, of scandal in the American presidency, of economic recessions, of constant televised news of rape and murder in our bedraggled communities at home and footage of starvation and discord around the world, and of working toward the betterment of the world in the midst of it all, American senior citizens simply watched their world crash in a single day. The leaders of 300 million survivors then took responsive action so quickly that by the time questions were being asked, answers were already being provided, whether right or wrong. It seemed wisdom was made obsolete.

Jack Levy – Jacob Levy – had not only over sixty years of life experience, but ancient history in his blood to boot, and it doesn’t seem to him that it matters to anyone. Updike showed us, through the interplay between his terrorist and Jack, that Ahmad is more in line with our youth-praising culture than he appears. Believing he has nowhere to turn for wise counsel, he turns only to himself, to his own view of his relationship with Allah, and assumes a position of authority in his terrorist plot.

I wonder if Updike died believing he, along with the rest of his generation, had lost his stake in his society. I don’t know. I do know, however, that what we believe as a society tends to become a reality. So do we believe that our baby boomers have a part to play, here and now, in determining the best course for the future? Will we allow a position of authority for them, as earned by experience and the measure of wisdom gained by it? Or will we shut them out in accordance with the idea that their ideas are entirely antiquated and ours are better?

I’ve begun my experience with Updike at the end of his career. I look forward to going backward, and discovering what his takes were on the world when he was closer to my age. May his work continue to inspire good discussion, long after his time with us.

Bill’s been in Hollywood for years. He hasn’t found work in awhile and his agent, Deb, is very apologetic about that. But she has a new script she wants Bill to take a look at.

“Revolutionary stuff, right? Philosophical. People like to think. This’ll get people thinking, keep ‘em guessing. Because it’s so self-conscious, so real. Reality is doubting reality.”

“So I’m playing myself and doubting that I’m real, right?”

“Better.” Deb raised an eyebrow. “Read it again. See, you’re not just playing yourself, you’re playing yourself, playing yourself. You’re in the movie as yourself, and in the movie, you’re hired to play yourself in a movie.”

Bill laughed. “That’s what I thought it said. It seemed so silly, I thought I was reading it wrong.”

“Oh, no,” Deb said, looking very serious . . .

Find out how Bill and Deb blur the lines between reality and fantasy, between lucidity and confusion, between what is serious and what is very, very funny. “Blowing Up the Space Needle”, brought to you by apt.

Yes, Matt Bloom is officially in bed with Big Fusion.

As if there were such a thing. If only there were such a thing. In reality, nuclear fusion is one of most misunderstood, least publicized and least funded branches of modern science. This is a travesty because it is the one great hope of our time. Nuclear fusion will mean clean, abundant, inexpensive energy, and it will revolutionize the world.

The only problem is, nobody’s talking about it.

Here at readmattbloom.com, we are. As much as we can. Just click on the Promise of Fusion tab at the top of the page to read, view and link to an abudance of information of what fusion is, what it means for the future of our world and why we need to take steps now to make it a reality.

Matt turned 26 yesterday, on the 27th of September, 2008. He intends to spend his latter twenties writing, just as he did in his early twenties. The schedule is as follows:

At 27, he will have run out of any and all humor for a time. Matt will be writing dirges and odes to things that always have been and forever will be devoid of life. This will be called his “blue period”, though ironically, he will not use the color blue or the word blue in anything he writes.

At 28, he will have found his sense of humor again; however, he will write nothing but slapstick. His readers will roll their eyes, but they will not be able to help appreciating the lightened mood. After all, this will be the first time in over a year he will have produced fiction in which all his characters do not die.

At 29, Matt will slide ever-so-subtly into political drama. He won’t know what’s happening until he begins to receive modest critical acclaim in the genre. At this point, he will realize this is his forte and he will venture to write a political drama on purpose. It will be epic, and it will be awful. He will be well through this phase before 30.

At 30, Matt will be doing heavily experimental work. You will not understand it. You will find him unrelentingly pretentious, but he will earnestly believe he is producing the most humble, down-to-earth work of his life. He’ll snap out of it, but no promises he’ll write anything accessible until he is 40, at which point his genius child will completely steal his thunder by inventing something indispensable to the world at large.

In short, enjoy readmattbloom.com while you still can.