I come from the emo-generation.  The generation of skinny pants, My Chemical Romance, and equating choosing a major with an “existential crisis.”  Despite the recent proliferation of angst in American culture, it’s Germany that has made the entire histrionic self-reflective process possible.

The German language welcomes almost as many types of angst as High School Musical 2.  From “sturm und drang” which describes the intensely emotional literature in the late 18th-century to “weltschmerz” which literally translates to “world pain,” German has been able to anticipate the origins of a great many existential crisis.  From Kierkegaard, to Goethe, to Marx, only the Octomom rivals German angst in the number of wacky offspring produced.  In 2009, Evan Wright became the latest American author to import German angst to compose a remarkable work, Hella Nation (Putnam), a collection of formerly published essays from Rolling Stone.

Wright credits “weltschmerz” in his high school and college years with focusing his attention on the alienated.  As a student of history, Wright learned about the horrors of civilization, the futility of utopian projects, and the permanence of violence in human relations.  Flirting with nihilism and drowning in alcohol and narcotics, Wright began his career at Hustler, the armpit of American journalism.  Since then he has earned his place among the most talented chroniclers of contemporary American life. Editors at Rolling Stone dubbed him, “the unofficial Ambassador to the Underbelly,” and his mature reporting has earned him two National Magazine Awards (2).

In Hella Nation, Wright fashions a remarkable picture of Unknown America.  Instead of Joe the Plumber we have Rebecca the Neo-Nazi, Nikki the Rock Star, and Wingnut the Anarchist.

His essays beg comparison to Tom Wolfe’s work, including Wolfe’s collection of essays, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby. Wright’s talent lies in his exploration of the seemingly insignificant details of an event, then expanding them to reveal larger truths about culture. Following the basic writer’s creed to show, not tell, Wright takes another step to show people, places, and circumstances that otherwise would remain on the fringes.

Half cultural psychologist, half-detective, Wright handles his subjects contextually but incorporates the details that make them come alive. In “The Bad American,” Wright’s prose recalls Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, as he traces the historical, social, and psychological forces that contributed to the horrific murder of Konstantin Simberg, an immigrant from the former Eastern bloc.

“Piss Drunk,” an essay about part-time pro-skateboarder and constant alcoholic Jim Greco, evokes Greco’s character through well-placed restraint.  In a passage about Andrew Reynolds, his roommate and supporter, leading an inebriated Greco into the apartment, Wright observes, “Greco’s eyes are rolled back. He has strings of goo hanging from his chin. The two look like they’re performing a set piece from a comedy in which someone has to walk around with a corpse and pretend it’s alive” (45).

Always illuminating, evocative, and well-researched, Hella Nation firmly places Wright into the ranks of established journalists. Pick up a copy at your local bookstore.  Best when served with a plate of eggs, two aspirin, and a slight hangover.

Some of the most influential and enduring literary movements in history have been sustained by the marriage between Mary Jane and discontented scribes.  For example, many of the icons of the Beat Generation used marijuana (among other drugs) to put words on the page.  Before that, Poe engaged in a little opium use.  Absinthe, cocaine, acid–the connection between drugs and creative genius seems well established.

Uptight detractors will insist that correlation doesn’t prove causation, but let’s not let argument obscure the facts–without marijuana, literary genius would cease to exist.

As for me, I’m still waiting for the book publishers to make me the icon of a generation, a mover and shaker in American history.  For now, I am content to read under the influence.

Reading under the influence isn’t as passive as one might think.  First, there’s the getting under the influence part.  Stoners are generally thought of as unmotivated lumps, laughing benignly at monosyllabic jokes.  Not true.  Stoners are a highly motivated group, particularly those residing outside the major metropolises where pot is not easily accessible.  Much coordination, covert phone calls, requests from a friend of a friend, and shelling out major cash for an eighth are only some of the steps that need to be taken to lay the preliminary foundation for a night spent reading under the influence.

Navigating these obstacles, one needs to find suitable reading.  Last night, the only literature available happened to be an economics textbook. A passage from my journal:

Scarcity, ScarCity?  Scar City…a city of scars?

Not enough scars to go around, probably a good thing…there are a surplus of ugly people as is.

I’M AFRAID I’M AFRAID I’M AFRAID I’M AFRAID

Cookies, cookies, cookies and tomato sauce.

Thus you see, reading under the influence is a fine art.  Difficult to set in motion, it results in a swirling cacophony of insights and humor, adding the extra to the ordinary and a little “umph” to the dismal science.

Geography. Gee-Og-Graph-Phee. Four syllables to describe the study of 194 countries, seven continents, and four oceans. Endlessly boring in seventh-grade, geography becomes increasingly interesting when Euro pean history rolls around in the course of one’s study (oh Napoleon). Memorization of capitals and rivers transforms into the study of the human impact on geography. You learn that borders are subject to the unstable dictates of people. Marriage, war, money, and the poor self-esteem of a diminutive Corsica constitute the determinants of geography; borders don’t draw themselves on maps. Geography is incredibly relevant today and the subject of Joseph Nevins’ new book, Dying to Live: A Story of U.S. Immigration In an Age of Apartheid. An associate professor of geography at Vassar College, Nevins pens a passionate manifesto exploring the effects human manipulation of geography has on the populations of the United States and Mexico.

Nevins frames his exploration with the story of Julio César Gallegos, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico. Gallegos perished with seven other migrants on August 13, 1998, 25 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. Dehydrated, undernourished, and suffering from excessive body temperature, the seven migrants died in agony. The media jumped on the story. The largest group of migrant corpses to ever be found within California state borders, their deaths received considerable media attention. However, as Nevins notes, the tragedy that August was much bigger than the individual stories of Gallegos and his companions. He sets out to explain the larger forces that caused the death of Gallegos, “contingent and structural, incidental and historical” (25).

The key factor, however, is geography. Nevins writes, “While shaped to a significant degree by physical forces, geographic space is largely a social creation in terms of what is contained within it, how it is divided up and bounded, and how it is perceived and lived. It is…a product of power relations and all the conflict—as well as cooperation—that they entail” (25).

Dying to Live traverses the economic and political history of the Imperial Desert, the area where Gallegos would meet his death. Tracing broader U.S. involvement in Mexico, ideology, politics, and economics intersect in chapter 3. Chapter 4 details Gallegos’ hometown of Juchipila, Mexico while chapter 5 highlights contemporary political debates. The fifth chapter is where he defends the use of his contentious term “apartheid” to describe U.S. immigration policies. Although he acknowledges the intent is not the separation of races, this is the effect.

He writes, “…a boundary such as that which now exists between the United States and Mexico makes a lot of sense in that it reflects and reproduces the logic of a world of nation-states, which require physical lines that delimit and define national space and, thus, ‘us’ and ‘them’ and ‘our’ territory and ‘theirs’” (77).  He concludes by calling for the recognition of borders as socially constructed entities and asks for a redefinition of boundaries.

The violent drug war along the U.S.-Mexico border discredits aspects of Nevins’ argument.  Operating in the face of inadequate, ill-equipped and corrupt Mexican law enforcement, marijuana and cocaine drug cartels smash their way across borders leaving political credibility, immigration reform, and mutual trust dying in the heat.  Nevins is right to highlight the political and historical circumstances that converged to create an unequal and separate society, but past crimes do not justify overlooking present contingencies.

Dying to Live combines prodigious research, passionate argument, and masterful storytelling to describe the complicated landscape of U.S. immigration policies. While he engages in rhetorical hyperbole time and again (the term “apartheid” is certain to invite well-founded criticism), Nevins illuminates the vortex of structural constraints that contributed to the death of Julio César Gallegos.  Photographs by Mizue Aizeki appear throughout the book and add an element of human empathy that Nevins tries to cultivate in geography through story and argument.  Dying to Live expands minds, ideas of borders, and notions of geography, all without the aid of a certain herbal remedy often found south of the border.  Add Nevins book to your essential reading list.

Click here to buy Dying to Live.