Attention. Deficit. Disorder. - get the novel by Brad Listi - By N.L. Belardes

*UPDATE: THIS IS NOT A NOVEL ABOUT HYPERACTIVE YOUTH IN NEED OF PSYCHOTROPIC DRUGS>THE TITLE IS A METAPHOR FOR LOVE IN RELATION TO ONE CHARACTER WHO IS OUT OF TOUCH WITH HIMSELF... The author is just playing with the idea as a metaphor for a social ailment based on a man's non-ability to love, and the tragedy that results...


Now read on...


I always had trouble paying attention to the idea of love. Didn’t matter whether I was in school watching a teacher’s lips move relentlessly during a lecture, or if I sat at the dinner table when my Mexican father was busy talking about truck driving while carving a chicken. Unless I’m interested, if someone starts talking, my mind is going to wander.

I was sent Attention. Deficit. Disorder. (2006) by Brad Listi—a novel about paying attention. The manila envelope had been squeezed into my mailbox. I knew what the package was. Erin Hosier doesn’t mess around. If she says she’s sending a book, she sends a book, pronto.





I ripped open the envelope, opened the book, read the first page then dropped the novel onto a stack of books in the queue. I considered reading a few other novels first, but it wasn’t long before I picked the book up and started reading.

My weekends are usually busy. I attend events. I write. I blog, snap photos, spend time with my family… and in between, I read. In a recent lull from attending events I rode in Chingpea’s car and started giggling. I had just read 100 pages of Listi’s novel. As we passed Jamba Juice the main character got his face punched into a pulp. Bloodied, he bought a ratty Teddy Bear—both pummeled. Bad luck turned comedy.



It was funny. It was the character’s birthday. And I couldn’t stop reading the book. It was just a short car ride. But I couldn’t put Listi’s story down. I watched some football. I read some of Listi’s book. I didn’t know which to give my full attention.

So I laughed throughout Attention. Deficit. Disorder. It’s a tragic work of art…and funny. Funny how we need to laugh in the face of our own inability to understand ourselves and our tragic situations. It’s damn hard to admit anything is funny during hard times. Listi’s novel reminds that tragedy can be both avoidable and unavoidable, and that humor follows us everywhere, even to the point of where we think we understand ourselves.


Even the guitarist from Dirty Spanglish wants to understand himself

An old girlfriend commits suicide. You haven’t spoken to her in a few years. Doesn’t matter. The reverberations from such an act spreads like a grassfire to everyone that person ever touched. Everyone feels burned. That’s what begins Brad Listi’s novel. He’s burned about a tragic death; he feels guilty as if he played some dark part of the suicide. He’s wounded but doesn’t pay attention to the wound right away. He knows he’s affected and realizes that he really needs to explore himself, his life, and his ability to love. He yearns to define his life, and in doing so, the very words that creep out of his mouth are sometimes scrawled as definitions. Disorder is written in a passive voice—the narrator’s reflections—pondering life as if he’s got a dictionary in his hip pocket. Yet it’s his closed senses, his inability to pay attention to himself that just might be his disorder.



There’s an unspoken air of the novel that whispers, “I learned to pay attention, here’s why: I’m a burning man. Eventually I felt the fire.”

We scoot down the dark passageway of Disorder. His exploration takes us across the country, into foreign lands where we even meet an ancient silent figure who once represented all that is most tragic in life: a man who lost something precious, something he could have really bragged about.

Do we learn more from such tragedy?

Sometimes.

I want to tell more about this book, but it's better studied and enjoyed. The path the protagonist takes helps us in our own journey. Telling you the burning path he's on and where he ends up would just give away the sense of discovery in such a novel. He's a pizza man who plays the stock market while numb to love and romance. Sure, it's a male perspective. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby is as well.

Trust me. In Listi's novel, you'll get somewhere...



Brad Listi is a creative writing professor at Santa Monica College. He runs a cool website of writers: thenervousbreakdown.com. Bakersfield should use his site as an online model since the Blackboard shriveled up. Attention. Deficit. Disorder. has been as high as #8 on the LA Times Bestseller list.

Buy Attention. Deficit. Disorder. through Bakersfield's Independent Bookstore: Russo’s online…

BONUS: I know all you readers are loyal to nlbelardes.com. I would like to ask a favor of you. Please check out this Elvis story on thenervousbreakdown.com written by Becky Palapala and leave a comment or share your Elvis story. I know you have one. I even added my own Elvis story to her comments:

I was working in downtown Las Vegas as a storyboard artist for the cheesiest light show on Earth. We worked for a while in The Big Red Garage--a little windowless room next to propane tanks wedged in the bleeding heart of the garage where animators and I worked.

Sure, the propane was bad, but then so was not being able to see out. So we took walks. We wandered up and down Fremont Street. We pigged out at the Golden Nugget. We all had free passes to the buffet.

And then one day, one dismal regular kind of Las Vegas day I walked down Fremont Street. It was getting dark--all the denizens were out. I stepped onto the street right near the Big Red Garage and suddenly heard the screech of tires. My heart squished itself into a terrified goo as I looked up and saw a screaming Elvis, terrified himself that he was about to run over me. I shit you not. It must have been the same look Elvis had realizing he was about to die on the crapper...

Read on to see her comments, and to add your own to her story... (I leave a second Elvis story there)

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Thursday, September 14, 2006. You can leave your response.