Meet Matthew Cooke, a Stranger reader who has vowed to do everything The Stranger suggests for the entire month of February. Look for his reports daily on Slog and Line Out. âEds.
And so we enter... end game.
The last weekend of my âYesterdayâ tenure is upon me, and while Iâm obviously relieved, Iâm also wondering how Iâll react when itâs finally over. Will I happily ride off into the sunset? Or will I be like an athlete who tries to retire, only to realize how much he misses the adrenaline rush? Iâll end the suspense. The answer is: sunset.
But letâs not get into that now; I still have to suck it up for a few more days. Thus, I put on a clean shirt and headed to the ritzy Sorrento for a Friday night reading. Yep, thatâs right. The wacky, anything-goes, gay-as-gay-gets, voice-of-the-young-and-the-drunk Stranger was sending me to a goddamn reading on a goddamn Friday night.
But Frizzelle is a savvy salesman. He wrote a couple posts on Slog, promising âhot gay sex,â âdrugs,â and âsuicide by self-immolation,â which is a little like âsex, drugs, and rock ânâ roll,â no? I admit he sold me. I actually considered inviting a couple friends; we could head up to the fancy hotel, have some drinks, see and be seen... cool shit, right?
Well, sort of.
The Sorrento's upstairs room was a fantastic venueâa brass chandelier dangled from the domed ceiling, holding court over the roomâs baroque character, while scalloped curtains framed picture windows with views of the downtown skyline.
Adam Haslett, the author, was hoarse from a travel-bug ailment, so he only read about a paragraph before Frizzelle started his interview. But it was enough to pique my interest, and made the bookâs intent clearâdissecting class structure, income disparity, and the mindset of powerful manipulators with all the money and no perspective.
After my fiction-defending hissy fit earlier this week, I was interested to hear Haslettâs response to a question about why he wrote a book of fiction, even though the economic subject matter seemed better suited to non-fiction. Composing the inner voices for his characters, Haslett said, where their deepest, darkest thoughts reside, was hugely important in helping him understand the baffling sociopathic conduct of CEOs heading up financial giants like Merrill Lynch and AIG. His response was richer than that though, full of nuance (he said something about the power of literature as the âultimate outsider,â which I loved).
Frizzelle kept driving the questions in a populist and/or prurient direction, trying to make good his promise of a hot Friday night. He asked about the novelâs gay sex, the âassholesâ in the banking industry, and leaned towards broad and unanswerable queries like âwould Wall Street be the same if it was run by women, or gays, or black people?â
I donât mean to slam him; he actually makes for an extremely engaging interviewer. But honestly, he didnât need to dumb it down for this crowd. Most of them seemed like wonky progressives, happy to dig into fiscal policy minutiae.
I am not wonky however, especially on a Friday night. So I appreciated Frizzelleâs determination to keep it light. Even better, however, would have been if The Stranger had suggested a bisexual mud wrestling match or a concert performed by circus midgets... something brainless and ridiculous. Itâs my last weekend... give me something zany to write about, for Christâs sake!
Still, I will approve the recommendation. There was booze and a view, and Frizzelleâs presence was relaxed and appealing. Next time, however, consider a weeknight.