Jerry Stahl

Well, that was a ride. In "Permanent Midnight" Jerry Stahl consumes industrial quantities of drugs, has a daughter, blows up two relationships, somehow gets clean, and yes, writes a few scripts for ALF. The drug-and-recovery memoir is a well-populated genre -- not that I can stop myself from reading 'em -- and I wouldn't call "Permanent Midnight" the best of them. Not every one of these books has to end in a nice and neat little homily about loving yourself and working hard to overcome show more adversity, but at one point in this one, the head writer at one of the brainstorming sessions in which Stahl participated in looked at him and yelled "That's not a plot, it's just a bunch of sentences!" That's a hell of a thing to say to a writer, but he probably wasn't wrong. Stahl, in the opening pages of this one, more or less admits that his life often comes off as a series of trainwrecks. Years ago, I read the entirety of Stahl's "Perv" on a long flight and that, too, seemed like an endless, if entertaining, series of encounters with the bizarre. At least now I know where the author got his story ideas from. "Permanent Midnight" often seems less like Jerry Stahl's story and more like a drug diary.

Which isn't always a bad thing, honestly, and it's at least kind of understandable: who really expects junkies to live stable, goal-oriented lives? And Jerry, to his credit, can really milk his drug experiences on the page. While some former users offer one, neat description of what it's like to get -- as the kids say -- completely faded on heroin or crack, Jerry gets positively baroque. Eyeballs melt, brains splatter, the paint on walls boils. At one point, Stahl compares breathing while quitting smack cold turkey to "inhaling a cheese grater." Whatever deficiencies he has a writer at the sentence or story level, the man has a real talent for indelible descriptions and cutting jokes. Even so, all of this wears thin pretty quickly. Stahl sometimes seems like one of those guys at your local alcoholics anonymous meeting that wants to quit but really, really misses his drinking days, too. And now wonder, really. The experiences he describes sound unbelievably intense. It's no wonder that clean life can't really compete.

And that's leads us to another problem I have with "Permanent Midnight." There's tragedy to spare in the author's past, and Stahl presents himself as something of a misfit, a guy who never quite fit in, and therefore, the sort of person who'd be naturally attracted to the L.A. cultural underworld. But there's a nasty edge to this books that smacks (sorry) of aging hipsterdom, a bitterness born of watching your cultural moment fade. Really, any book this intense would have to be written by -- or at least about the experiences of -- a young man. But Stahl was in LA when Nirvana, armed with a few monster riffs, some fuzzy solos, and some inscrutable lyrics, ended the career of dozens of hair metal bands, and simultaneously, much of the counterculture that had thrived in their shadow. Stahl wouldn't be caught dead in flannel, and he's not shy about letting you know it. But he seems peeved that the action is suddenly is suddenly elsewhere and that he's not as hip as he used to be, which is perhaps a less than noble sentiment. Honestly, there are numerous episodes in this book that don't really put Stahl in the best light, and whether you like this one might depend on how much you like him. Sometimes that's difficult to do, but at least he cops to being a born degenerate. When hard-working normies make him for a drug addict, he can't help but sympathize -- at least a little -- with their disdain for him. Heck, most of the time, he doesn't walk into a room, he slimes into it. An annoying turn of phrase? Maybe? But let's give the author some credit: he seems to know exactly who he is. I'll recommend this one -- as so many other books I've reviewed here on LibraryThing -- to fans of midlife memoirs. But I found it to be a tough read, and your tolerance -- I can't stop with the drug puns! -- for both the book and the author may vary. show less

In the early autumn of 2016, Jerry Stahl, journalist, television and film writer, went on a bus tour of the Holocaust in Poland and Germany. It was both a professional assignment and a personal pilgrimage to the world in which so many of his family had been murdered by the Nazis. And it was a form of therapy for dealing with his own existential demons, his depression, his grief at his failed marriage, his separation from his daughters, his former life as a drug addict.

He begins by telling show more us how much he hates traveling by bus, especially as a member of a tour group, and that's before he gets to the grim subject of the tour, the worst, most hellish places on earth, the chief scenes of the Holocaust. The tour begins in Warsaw and continues to Krakow, Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Nuremburg, Munich and Dachau.

The wonder of it is that Stahl infuses this travel guide from Hell with a lot of humor. It is very dark humor, to be sure, and much of it is self-deprecating. He tells us how he refused to eat at the cafeteria in Buchenwald, but was not above walking through it and taking photos of those crass enough to eat in such a place. He was feeling all smug and self-righteous, until he walked into a plate glass door and a fellow tourist had to bandage his bleeding forehead.

Stahl was at first profoundly uncomfortable among the other tourists on his bus, he was one of the only two Jews in the group, the only vegetarian, the only guy who didn't drink (not even in Munich in Oktoberfest!), but he came to feel an affectionate bond with his fellow travelers. He has a gift for seeing the best in humanity, even when constantly confronted with evidence of cruelty and depravity on an industrial scale. But he is keenly attuned to the universality of evil and our need to be ever vigilant to its existence and threat, including today and here in the MAGA Land of the Proud Boys and their fascist brethren. He ends on a chilling note, "It is not the Holocaust" that is the exception, it is the pause between holocausts that is the exception". show less

This was a deeply funny look at Holocaust memory and the commercialization of the Holocaust. The idea of a package tour of Holocaust sites is deeply weird to me, and I think Stahl as well, but at the same time totally understandable. His descriptions of the folks on the tour with him are very funny and ring true. His encounter with neo-Nazis in Poland is disturbing, as well as the guy in the camp who clearly doesn't believe any of it actually happened. Not a book to read if you are easily show more offended by humor amidst such a dark subject. People are weird, and Stahl knows it, even about himself. He also gets that the Holocaust was perpetuated by people and some of the same beliefs that motivated them remain in place today. Recommended. show less

I honestly do not know where to begin when trying to describe Nein, Nein, Nein! For starters, did anyone else catch that the title of the book comes from a memory of having sex with a German girlfriend who liked dirty talk with a Jew? Full confession: I didn't know the name Jerry Stahl before reading Nein and admittedly, after looking at his Wiki page, am only somewhat familiar with his work (as in I've never seen the shows, but have heard of them).
So anyway, the plot of Nein: what better show more way to get yourself out of a suicidal funk than take a holocaust bus tour? Stahl can write, there is no doubt about that. He is witty, cynical, sarcastic, and even dare I say, lyrical? But he wanders like a drunk man in Walmart at 3am; one who can't remember what he wanted to buy in the first place. I found myself asking why? most of the time. Why the reminiscence of the German girlfriend with the foul mouth? Why wax poetically about Trump as if he is the next Adolf reincarnate? Why meander through memories of a heroin haze? Maybe because all that is part of what prompted the trip in the first place.
The only way I can really describe Nein is to liken it to a 10,000 Maniacs tune, "What's the Matter Here?" It's got a catchy beat and soon you find yourself toetapping or even all-out dancing to a song about child abuse. Same with Nein. Stahl gets you giggling even though he's telling you his trip to Auschwitz is an effort to avoid killing himself. You smile because it's so uncomfortable. Maybe the squirm is exactly what Stahl is going for. show less