Trashed by Derf Backderf
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Once the scene was set, I got into it. The anecdotes were good, and it was kinda a mix between Harvey Pekar and Bukowski if I can be so bold as to make two obnoxious references in one sentence.
Quick tangent.
I wonder why it is that when I hear someone say Charles Bukowski is one of their favorite writers, I instantly have an opinion of that person. And that opinion is almost always, “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” I don’t think it’s just about people who like Bukowski, it’s about people who like him A LOT and cite him as a favorite author. As a founding member of the Bad Dad Club, I feel like this Bukowski love is an opinion often expressed by members of the Bad Dad Club. Male and female, by the way. Don’t get me wrong, I really like a lot of his work. It just seems that there’s a certain type of person who really likes Bukowski, and really needs you to know they really like Bukowski. Someone in sciences needs to get into literature and start doing some studies.
Anyway, Trashed.
The start was rough. And I think it’s because the dialog was kinda clunky. Stuff like:
“Hey, isn’t that old man Jenkins? Who runs the general store?”
“Yes, it is. And of course his wife is with him, who we also know.”
There’s this thing I tried to express before in a review of a play, about dialog and how it works and doesn’t work, and then I read this article about Mad Max: Fury Road that crystallized the whole thing for me.
Here’s what director George Miller says about dialog. And he says it with the fancy “ue” ending as he would catalogue or egg nogue:
At a simple level, you’re not trying to use dialogue as exposition, you’re using it as part of behaviour, and language itself is distorted.
Thank youue.
Dialog can be really grating as exposition and really effective as characterization. Dialog tells you a lot, not through the information contained in sentences, but the language used and the way things are said. I think this is especially true and noticeable in film, plays, and comics because they have the expository visual tools to carry some of the load as well, so when dialog is used as exposition, it’s extra painful.
I was about to say that I give expository dialog in written stories a pass because pure prose doesn’t have the visuals to rely on, but that would be a lie. I don’t give anyone a pass on this. I won’t call Trashed lazy because it’s not lazy, but when I write expository dialog, it’s laziness. Always. It’s a failure of imagination to show and demonstrate something in a better way. And because it’s something I’m sensitive to myself, it’s something that sticks out for me in other works too.
Oh, also, this book has information about trash sprinkled throughout, and this info confirms two long-held suspicions of mine:
1.Recycling don’t do shit.
Seriously. The amount of trash, and especially the amount of toxic material in landfills, is going to bite us in the ass. And the way landfills are run doesn’t help. Garbage is compacted into large cubes, which are stacked on each other and compressed, and when it’s all said and done what they’ve got is a huge pile of cubes buried in the ground and compressed so tightly and without air moving through, and therefore biodegradation isn’t really happening. And what’s more, newer landfills are equipped with drainage for the toxic, poisonous liquids that escape, and in a recent test it was found that 100% of these systems leaked.
Also, children result in mounds of diapers. Like, huge. And those don’t biodegrade at all. You could recycle your entire life and still not make up for those couple years of Pampers.
The problem has a lot less to do with lack of recycling than it does with consumerism and planned obsolescence. I’m not going to get all corporate warrior and shit, but if you get rid of your phone because a newer version is out, you are fucking up big time. Those components are terrible for the environment, they don’t break down, and the less of it we consume, the less is manufactured.
Recycling is a drop in the bucket compared to consumer waste.
Now, I’m not a person who thinks that we shouldn’t bother with something just because it’s small stakes. It takes a lot of small changes to make a big change. What I’m saying is that you can’t put out the green bin and be all “I’m a good steward of the environment” and then throw a flatscreen in the dumpster the next day.
Get products that last, repair and refinish stuff when you can, and just generally avoid throwing shit out. Focus more on reducing the number of bags at the curb, not where those bags are going.
2. Europe is smart and America is dumb.
Again, I’m not one of these assholes who’s like “If Trump becomes President, I’m moving to Sweden.” Because no I’m not, and you aren’t either.
Did you guys know that Denmark has fucking incinerators that generate heat and power? From trash?
Okay, there are some issues. Not so much environmental, like you’d think, but social. People in Denmark recycle very little and are not incentivized to reduce waste because waste is what powers shit, and screw it, we’re good! So there is a movement afoot to continue reducing waste and recycling even though these incinerators are kinda awesome.
But, I’ll say this. Most waste in the U.S. is shoved in the ground and poisons the area. Wait, let’s back up. Most waste is trucked to a facility where it’s then trucked via semi to a dump. Goodbye to the local dump, hello to the mega dump. Which isn’t the worst thing, IMHO, because there are some desolate parts of this state that nobody would miss. But the problem, as I see it, is that we’re trucking around garbage. That’s a crazy waste of resources. To put that much time and effort into something we’re trying to get rid of is pretty crazy.
So while Denmark might not be totally in love with its incineration process, it’s a fuck of a lot better than taking trash for a drive.