Jeffrey Keeten's Reviews > Therapy Mammals

”Awaken at four in the morning, a car alarm, a stifling heat, we knew we would not sleep. I led her naked onto the fire escape. The metal was cold beneath the sheet, a slight wind leftover form nighttime shade, nothing moving but the sound of blind creatures foraging for existence in the rubbish below. We made love under the slumbering dwellers--no, that is not the memory that cradles my nostalgia. We fucked there, giggling at our deed, not needing the proper mattress or higher thread count, only the chaos and mess of youth. I think how I got from there to here, a ruined marriage, a dying career, a contemptible investment, and I know I am missing something vital that Laura and the children can sense each time I force my presence upon them.”

If someone does not dig too deep into Tom “Pisser” Pistilini’s life, they might think he has it made. He has a lovely home, a terrific job as a weatherman for a local TV station, a beautiful wife, his two smart quirky kids are attending an elite school, Laura’s pancake business is taking off, and he has a solid group of good friends. The icing on the cake is that he is setting a record each day for predicting the weather correctly. He is doing something superhuman. He is the Pele of weather predictions.

What people don’t know, but might be suspecting, is the facade of his life is rattling and shaking in even the mildest of breezes. He is going to cooperative marriage therapy, which is just a PC way for his wife to have an affair with his neighbor. He has introduced a feral cat to his backyard to mitigate the chipmunk invasion. Those cute, but curious, critters are ruining his illegally (another issue for him) implanted lagoon. His son is dressing like an old woman, which they have to let him continue to “express” himself. His daughter has shown up on a compromising tape that may crater her future. He is invested in an immoral business that caters to murder culture enthusiasts. He is sleeping in a tent in the backyard. His friends are fleeing the stench of defeat that is leaking from his pores. The station has hired a hot Latina to be his assistant/replacement. Tom may or may not have murdered one or two people. Otherwise, everything is good.

Basically, his life isn’t swirling down the drain. It is being thrust down the drain by an industrial grade power flusher.

To cope, he is taking a blackmarket testing phase drug called Luderica. ”It contains chemicals used in pesticides, synthetic opioid, and dideoxyclosanide--a crucial ingredient in dandruff shampoo and gunpowder. Because it cannot be prescribed, I have no choice but to purchase the pills through backchannels, an anti-psychotic, anti-depressive, anti-everything…”

Tom is quickly becoming more and more desperate to keep juggling all the ravaged pieces of chipmunks, plates of pancakes, and chainsaws in the air. As his life begins to tumble down on him, he becomes increasingly unstable, or is it more normal? As the ropes wrapped around his arms, legs, and torso snap, he becomes free to fight back like anyone would who has very little left to lose. As he implements his plans for enacting urban terrorism, with a heavy dose of flying by the seat of his pants, he becomes a man whom Edward Abbey would have gladly embraced as one of his Monkey Wrench Gang members.

Jon Methven, through the guise of Tom’s problems, takes on the absurdity of our lives. The things we find to be so important are revealed, under any kind of scrutiny, to have no real value. Tom is searching for ways to uphold his fake life when he should be working diligently to destroy it. Not only did I enjoy this book, but I found myself setting other books aside to spend more time chuckling, cringing, and muttering encouragements for Tom to find his way back to where true happiness can begin.

I asked Jon if he would accept the challenge of answering some Keetenesque questions. He graciously accepted.

Jeffrey Keeten: As I was reading your book, I couldn't help comparing your style to Joseph Heller. The suburban enclave elements had me thinking also about John Cheever and John Updike, who both revealed in their writing the hidden deceitfulness, naked envy, and even immorality that is lurking beneath the facade of upper middle class existence. I can tell by our interactions that you are well read. Could you please talk about some of your literary influences and how you managed their influences in your writing?

Jon Methven: Along with Cheever, Margaret Atwood, John Irving and Richard Russo all turned me into a voracious reader. I’ve read everything Irving and Russo have written, and I’ve always been captivated by their ability to meld characters and stories. Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, for me, is a brilliant book. More than the humor or absurdity, every sentence is crafted with a GOTCHA moment—I’ll be reading and expecting one outcome, and Heller shifts the language to a different result. For years, I carried that paperback with me on subways, opening it to random sections and reading and rereading passages. Kurt Vonnegut and George Saunders helped me to expand my appreciation of what literature can be, and how to develop a unique writing voice. For modern writers, it’s hard to provide only a short list of admiration. But here goes: Jonathan Franzen, Carl Hiaasen, Ottessa Moshfegh, Rachel Kushner, Jennifer Egan, Chris Bachelder, Christopher Buckley, Gillian Flynn. And, beyond literature, I spend several hours a day reading magazines, essays, and staying up on the latest headlines. You never know where the next story driftwood will come from, or what will make you a better writer.

Jeffrey Keeten: As I was chuckling over the rise and fall of Tom "Pisser" Pistilini, I kept thinking about Michael Douglas's character Tom Foster in Falling Down and, of course, Peter Finch's character Howard Beale from Network, who both famously reached a point of I can't take it anymore. As we see Pisser evolve into Pistol, he hits the juncture where he realizes the absurdity of his life and begins to do things that would be considered abnormal, but frankly compared to his life seem like rational responses. The way he rails at the community on the GOPA message board, and of course, the "weaponizing" of his household with feral cats, BB guns, and crossbows is considered dangerous to his community, but oddly to this reader, he doesn't seem that crazy. Do you think that most of society is starting to question the absurdity of their own situations?

Jon Methven: One of the people that Tom Pistilini admires is Ray McClutchen, the self-help guru having an affair with Tom’s wife. He admires him because, in spite of everyone dealing with the meaninglessness and complexity and absurdity of life, Ray sees it as a half glass full. That means a lot to Tom who wants to be one of the good ones, a person who believes in the spirit of life in spite of how all life ultimately ends. I am probably a half-glass-full idealist, so this may seem naïve, but I don’t think society is questioning the absurdity of our situations anymore than past generations. The sky has always been falling. It may seem more so in these times, but I think that’s not the case. I think the world, and humanity, is on the upswing.

JK: Tom is unwillingly in a cooperative marriage as the third wheel in an affair between his wife and his neighbor. A harkening back to the commune experiments in the 1960s, which eventually all fell apart as unsustainable. It is clear that Tom not only loves his wife, but is still passionately lustful for her. "I want to tear off her panties with my teeth and let them dangle from a fang 'while we argue.'" Tom and Laura are at a point where divorce isn't even an option due to the high water level of debt they are floating in. Divorce rates are still high in this country which also contributes to more people living in poverty or at a severely curtailed lifestyle level. Obviously, you have spent some time thinking about the future of marriage. What do you feel the future of marriage is?

JM: More than a statement on the importance of vows, for me Tom and Laura’s marriage is an examination of how absurdly liberal and politically correct his life has become. He gets together weekly with his wife, her pseudo-lover (Ray), the pseudo-lover’s estranged wife (Olivia), and a therapist (Devin) to applaud the Cooperative Marriage, which is a fancy way of condoning the assumed adultery going on between Ray and Laura. While they discuss the school and sip Prosecco, he imagines himself punting Olivia’s severed head across the room. That’s how many of us feel in social situations, but there are these rigid rules to which we’re expected to conform. But your question—what do I think the future of marriage is? I have put some thought into what it means to be married, and if two men or two women are able to be married, why can’t three people get married? Why can’t we marry our pets? Why can’t we marry artificially intelligent robots? Can we marry extraterrestrial life, if and when we discover them? And if all of this is marriage, what’s so special about it? While not knowing the answer to this question, my life has benefitted from being married, having a spouse who is my partner through the absurdity, by raising children, learning to listen, and developing humility.

JK: For Cheever and Updike, alcohol was the go to drug for most of their characters to keep them numb enough or loose enough to continue to uphold their preposterous lives. Alcohol is still the bedrock of the Slancy community, but Tom is also supplementing alcohol with a drug called Luderica. The Opiod epidemic has not proven to be the perfect complacency drug, but I'm sure the pharmaceutical companies are working day and night to come up with the perfect sheep drug. Luderica, too, fails to produce the results intended, but hey, Viagra started out being a heart pill. I personally think even without the influence of Luderica that Tom was going to snap. I really feel that, overall, society is much more anxious, depressed, stressed, and unhappy than ever before. What do you think is going to eventually have to happen for Americans to find a way to be happy? Or is that an impossible dream?

JM: I would agree that people are stressed out frantically looking for answers, and our pharmaceutical industry has tapped into that angst for revenue. I think happiness, in the context of taking a pill or having a drink, is probably an illusion. Because in that sense we’re thinking about how we can acquire happiness on the cheap, or have access to it at all times. That’s not how it works. Maybe happiness is being content with how things are, in the midst of unhappiness. Maybe—while it’s a cliché—being grateful for what we have is the way forward. I like books. Reading, writing, and talking about books makes me happy. I like lakes and nature (despite living in NYC). Taking care of the environment seems like a step toward happiness. I like my kids, my wife, my family. Putting in my full effort with them makes me happy. So maybe the Ray McClutchen answer is that if I spend enough time concentrating on what is closest to me, I’ll inadvertently acquire happiness.

JK: I want to say how refreshing it was to read a novel dealing with so many real society issues with such honesty, humor, and raw power. You didn't flinch away from PC issues or shy away from those subjects that most writers run away from. You revealed the warts of a "successful," upper middle class existence and showed that failure is sometimes the only road to future success. So what is next for Jon Methven? Are your crossbows and BB guns and feral cats in position?

JM: That’s kind of you to say and I’m delighted you enjoyed the novel. I usually have a dozen television pilots, film scripts, essays and novels ongoing at any one time, 90% of which will fail. And then I’ll pick up the pieces and try something new. I completed a novel about the NFL, titled GRIDIRON HUSTLE. When the league’s expansion into London is derailed due to an international sex scandal, the league must venture into the U.S. prison system to field a missing franchise. And I’m nearly done with a novel titled HUMAN WINE, about an extraterrestrial species siphoning human stress as an energy source.

Thank you to Jon Methven for answering my questions and also for sending me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

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