review of noah cicero's "best behavior"

i am going to post three book reviews in the next week. this one is on noah ciceros new book.  on march 28 i will post about sam pinks "person".  on march 31 i will post about steve roggenbucks "download helvetica for free". <<<>>>

noah cicero's new book is called "best behavior."  i remember reading on his blog either in the winter of 2008-2009 or in the summer of 2009 that parts of it were about recognizable internet literary people.  i think he was writing the book around those same times, and that a lot of the events of the book took place around those times.  it was pretty easy to discern the characters who were tao lin, brandon gorrell, zachary german, james chapman, the guy who owns melville house, and ellen kennedy was mentioned i think (these are all logical guesses, not certainties).  they all have different names, the same thing that kerouac did in his books and the same thing that a lot of other writers have done.   there are many more characters who are just "ordinary" people from "middle america."

i read this book when it was published on his blog a year or two ago.  i only vaguely remember reading it, but I must have because i am in the comments section of that blog post.  i might have been on drugs.

i was going to try to put my favorite quote from every chapter in this blog post but i am tired and i dont know if that is really legal although i guess no one would care.  here are a few parts i liked a lot:

"Our parents...went where the jobs were.  They took the job and worked to get raises.  Things were different now.  Now, in that strange place called America a person could choose what their role in society would be."  It's followed soon by..."She didn't feel like doing the bills.  She feel like giving anyone her money.  But she rationalized that electricity and heart are important things and must be maintained to live a good life."

That reminded me of myself.  His girlfriend's dilemma.  His dilemma.  That is my dilemma.  It's all of us, it's our dilemma.  It's not even a dilemma.  It just sucks, and it sucks because it tells us its awesome.


(playing with weird Monopoly pieces)
"....You're doomed with the dog.  You should be that hat."
"I don't want to be a hat.  A hat isn't even alive.  I want to be an organism."

You can just read the book.  This book is really funny and sad at the same time.

"I brought my cheeseburger to a table.  It tasted somewhat like a cheeseburger.  I wasn't sure when the cow was killed, where it was killed and what kind of cow it was, what the cow ate, but I was sure it was killed a long fucking time ago, it was probably a miserable cow, and the cow ate bad tasting grass that had little nutrition."

This is anarcho-primitivistic maybe or veganisitic maybe, although I don't think Noah Cicero cares for either of those philosophies too greatly.  It's funny and sad at the same time.

"American Protestanism...Their Jesus isn't an ancient Jew that lives in the desert and shits in an outhouse.  Their Jesus isn't a homeless Jesus.  Their Jesus is this hard working man who has short hair and combs it to the left."

This is Weber pretty much, but said from the perspective of the character who is supposed to be James Chapman, I think thats who that character is supposed to be.  also weber wouldnt say this because weber wasn't american and i dont think he would care and he lived a long time ago although i guess he would care.  It's also uses concrete reality and dark humor to illustrate its point much better than any boring social science article.

"It never occurred to me to be a big writer.  When I was in high school I remember really liking the story of Emily Dickinson...her poetry...It was alright, whatever, Emily Dickinson.  But I remember walking around my neighborhood thinking about Emily Dickinson walking around lonely in her house.  She was walking around her garden being scared and nervous about everything...I didn't think about Stephen King.  I didn't imagine attending a movie premier of my book, or doing long signing tours across the world."

That is told from the perspective of the character that is Brandon Scott Gorrell, I think is who it is supposed to be.  It was a great line.


This book reminds me a lot of the narratives of Kerouac, in that theres travel as a central "plot" element and writers/artists as some of the central characters along with "normal" people as other central characters.  It breaks it down a lot though.  Rather than travelling across the U.S. on an epic journey, we get eight-hour bus rides between Youngstown, OH and NYC that have a lot of NYC writer-drama and Youngstown worker-drama.  Drama isn't the best word. I shouldn't have used that word.  The scene when "Benny" the narrator comes to New York and is in Times Square was very remininscent of the "Paper America" scene from On The Road where the narrator of that book is in Times Square.

The story is told in sharp sentences that still manage to ramble, like Hemingway.  It deals with a dream after the fact.  It's like waking up from a dream.  The background is that the narrator thought he would/could possibly be a writer, as a "profession."  Five years after the publication of his first book, thats still not the case.  This isn't surreal though.  There is real.  He wanted to feel at home in NYC.  But he can't.  He feels at home in Youngstown.  But he doesn't really feel at home there.  He doesn't feel at home anywhere really.  And that is what makes this an American narrative. The three drawings in it are great. one is by sam pink.  one is by ellen kennedy.

I read this is in a day, as I usually do with Noah Ciceros books.  I remember in the summer of 2007 I discovered Tao Lin and then Noah Cicero and all these other writers.  I was very depressed very lonely very alienated very suicidal very sad very anxious very detached.  The Human War spoke to me.  The Condemned spoke to me.  These writers and books spoke to me.  They had similar issues.  Their ideas got them through them.  It wasn't self-help cliches.  This is kind of a behind the scenes look at that scene, and that one writer, by that writer by that scene.  I met noah cicero briefly over thanksgiving this past year.  his girlfriend lives next door to some old friends of mine.  he seemed different than i imagined.  its hard to imagine what people will sound like in real life.  its a "theatre of culture" we live in, and this book is trying to escape that, i think.  i don't know what else to type.  it was both good and great to read this.