The Soft Lunacy: Episodes of Literary Obsession

by Vincent Francone

2016 was a bummer. Lots of famous people died, including David Bowie, my musical hero. Trump was elected president, which is baffling. The year was grim on the sociopolitical front, but also for me personally. My dog died right after Christmas 2015 and I spent most of the next year mourning him. I had to change apartments. My job started to seem unstable. The media churned out a constant supply of anger and bullshit. Facebook, where I spend far too much time, was confirmed to be the dumb echo chamber we all know it to be, though the steady dopamine drip of “likes” continued to blind us to how out of touch we are with anyone outside our cultivated spheres. Culture seemed on the skids. I read with envy and annoyance the positive reviews heaped on books by edgy poets writing poems about f*g. Scores of academics got fat grants to write studies of Star Wars. My students informed me that making them write a five-page essay was cruel, especially when I only gave them a week to write it. Few of my students bought the books I assigned. Our discussions were limited to talking about the scant info they gleaned from Amazon reviews. I can’t blame them. I didn’t want to read the books either. In fact, if there’s one thing that 2016 seemed to represent to me it was the futility of books. So many were published and yet no one seemed to be reading them. In 2016 I read five separate think pieces on the decline of literacy. Some of these were written by academics arguing against long, deep reading in favor of “educated aliteracy.” I’m still not sure what that means. Something to do with being smart enough to get the gist of a book without having to actually read it. In the golden age of television, where Netflix instantly streams first-rate content, who has the inclination to bother with books?

231 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 13, 2019

Reviews

[Simone · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Vince Francone’s latest The Soft Lunacy, one of his essays titled “My Drinking, part 1” (yes, there is a part 2), opens with the fact that one of his students “wants to write her research paper on the correlation between and writing and drinking,” noting that she’s aware of the consumption done by famous authors. If Vince’s work were a drink, it would be Irish whiskey neat—it has heat, it has kick, and it arrives undiluted. Or, maybe it’s a gin martini—dry, transparent, and sharp as f*ck. Or, perhaps it’s just a good ole Guinness—dark, a bit bitter to the uninitiated, yet filled with rich sustenance. Whatever alcoholic metaphor may be most apt, Francone sends the senses reeling.

In his writing, whether it be poems or essays, or even a memoir, there is a concentration on lineage—both familial and literary—as well as cityscapes, particularly Chicago, evidenced in his long ode titled “Chicago,” (a Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award Winner), in which he observes

My father went walking
through Erie and Western,
an upbringing he romanticizes
when back for christenings
and I walk his steps as well. . .

Threaded throughout Francones’ work, besides a frequent salutation to the Chicago terrain, is his engagement with literary texts and an overall lifelong love of books. Francone is a bibliophile, and even in the previously mentioned “Chicago” poem, he manages to pay homage to the Nobel-Prize poet Octavio Paz. His book love is further demonstrated in poem titles like “Variations on Texts by Vallejo and Justice,” and essay titles, “Kafkaesque Company and the Flying Henry Miller” and “Hester Prynne Makes a Great Ashtray.” In The Soft Lunacy he acknowledges that books offer a certain stability in an uncertain world: “I see now that the drive to collect books may have to do with their permanence contrasted with the unreliability of people. . . Books are difficult. Human beings are incomprehensible.” And, much like the books he uses as buoys, Francone’s own work is filled not only with humor and sardonic wit, but also grit and wisdom.

[Jeannine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Francone loves books but he also loves all the bosses, friends, and other lunatics that populate these narratives and reflections, even his ex-girlfriends and terrible unwashed roommates. The wry humor and original voice of years of writing shine through. The story of the train ride in Lisbon made me laugh out loud. The mass mailing factory job stunt reminded me of the same crummy factory job I had one summer in college. The truth is stranger and funnier than fiction. Francone makes me feel better about the time and trees I have invested (or sometimes wasted) in the search for a great story by showing me a few of the books in his collection in this collection.