Mike Nagel used to write a column for this magazine, and I miss it like crazy. Luckily, he’s got a new book to scratch the itch. Culdesac, the sequel to Nagel’s beloved Duplex, is out now from Autofocus.
David Shields says: “Exquisite, deadpan comedy. Broken-glass syntax. Anti-recovery anti-memoir. A minor masterpiece.”
A taste for you below.
Stay tuned for an announcement on the unlucky columnist who will attempt to fill Mike’s shoes, and maybe I’ll see you at AWP.
Sending new year love,
-AV
A brief excerpt from Mike Nagel's Culdesac
There was an ambulance parked outside my neighbor’s house the other day. This morning it was a purple sedan with the name of a funeral home on the side of it.
“147 Fatalities on Dallas Roads This Year,” a light-up sign on US75 reminds unsuspecting drivers. “Buckle Up, Y’all.”
When people say there are no atheists in foxholes, I wonder if they’ve looked around. It all looks like a foxhole to me.
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Not long after we moved into this house, we noticed a crack running through the middle of it. It started near the front door and ran all the way back into the kitchen. J marked the end of it with a pencil. When it grew past the mark, we called our property management company, a small business that shares its name with a crime fighting dog. They sent out a guy with a tape measure and a little black box. He set the box in the middle of the room and stepped back.
“Lasers,” he said.
“Cool,” I said.
Since we don’t own this house, we never found out the results of those tests. We never even found out what the test were for. (“I don’t have any answers!” a student once wailed to J. “I don’t even have any questions!”). Nothing too serious, I hope. I’d like to think if this house was falling apart, we’d get an email about it. As it is, we just keep going about our lives with this thin, black line creeping its way through the middle of everything like that Edgar Allen Poe story. It’s not out of the ordinary. In Texas, every house has foundation problems. It literally comes with the territory. I was familiar with the benefits and drawbacks of pier-and-beam by age nine. Around here responsible homeowners run soaker hoses around their foundations six-to-seven hours a day. Not cheap but cheaper than the alternative. I learned about it from our next door neighbor, a guy who owns a landscaping company.
“Every idiot knows that,” he said, about the soaker hoses.
“Not every idiot,” I said.
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Lately J and I have been thinking about buying a house of our own.
Thirteen years of renting places. Maybe it’s time to own one. We go to Chili’s and discuss our options. City or suburbs. One story or two stories. Brick or wood. Tudor, ranch style, Dutch colonial.
One problem with buying a house is that I don’t really want one. Another problem is how expensive they are. I looked it up. They cost three-hundred-thousand dollars. That seems a little pricey for something I don’t want.
“Where are we supposed to get three-hundred-thousand dollars?” I ask J.
“That’s what a mortgage is for,” she says.
Even though I work for a mortgage company, I don’t know very much about them. I know they’re very popular, and I know they’re very expensive. They were invented by banks sometime in the 1930s, right around the time that William J. Levitt invented the American suburbs and James Truslow Adams invented The American Dream.
“That dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone,” Truslow wrote in The Epic of America.
In my job interview at the mortgage company, a guy in khaki pants asked if I knew what the word mortgage meant.
“Death contract,” he said before I could answer.
You’re more likely to die than pay one off.
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I don’t have any answers. I don’t even have any questions. The crack through the house keeps getting bigger, but I’m not too worried about it. I’m not too worried about anything. I try to accept my circumstances with the nonchalance of a man who doesn’t think any of it is really his problem. The hands-off approach of a lifelong renter.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, I think. And the wisdom to know that I pretty much can’t change anything.
In the morning, I pop a chalky pink blood pressure pill and brush my teeth with an electric toothbrush that harnesses the power of sound. I inject myself with an artificial insulin I’ve heard is derived from pigs. I put on my yellow belt, the color of pure American electricity, and walk to Bob Woodruff Park and back. In the 18 months we’ve lived here, I’ve walked 466 laps around our fantasy-themed neighborhood. 3,527,637 steps. 1,406 miles. Dallas to Toronto and then some.
Culdesac is out now from Autofocus.