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Book Rate: June 27, 2006
A
digested book "review": cheap shots, glib commentary,
shameless advocacy of insidious ideology of social and economic
justice and idiosyncratic and totally arbitrary choices of books
that come our way via our gallant and steadfast UPS drivers and
other routes...
Maybe.
Posted: June 27, 2006
Note: The following entries come from Robert
Birnbaum and Matt
Borondy
Books covered this week include:
Let Me Finish by Roger
Angell
The Alphabet of Manliness
by Maddox
The Tango Singer
by Tomas Eloy Martinez, translated by Anne McLean
Junk Mail by Will
Self
White Guys by
Anthony Giardina
The Theater of Night
by Alberto Rios
Laurel Canyon by
Michael Walker
Marc Chagall: The Lost Jewish World
by Benjamin Harshav
Drowning in Gruel
by George Singleton
The Power of the Dog
by Don Winslow
The Best of Slate: A 10th Anniversary
Anthology edited by David Plotz
The Believer: The 2006 Music Issue
Let
Me Finish
by Roger Angell (Harcourt, 320 pages)
Many readers know Roger
Angell as the oracular presence at The New Yorker on
matters pertaining to baseball—witness his not-insubstantial
bibliography: The Summer Game, Five Seasons, Late Innings, Season
Ticket, Once More Around the Park, and Game Time—there
is also a little-noted short-story collection, published in 1960.
He has, however, for many years (more than 40) served as a fiction
editor there, guiding and tweaking some of the best fiction writers.
Here at last is octogenarian Raj's (known also as "Rog" and referred
to by David Remnick as "Herr-Docktor") memoiristic bow:
"The title of this book, I should add, isn't about
wrapping up a life or a time of life but should only evoke a garrulous
gent at the end of the table holding up one hand while he tries
to remember the great last line of his monologue."
-Robert Birnbaum
____________
The
Alphabet of Manliness
by Maddox (Kensington, 204 pages)
Maddox, the Utah-based proprietor of The
Best Page in the Universe, which may be the most popular and
entertaining personal homepage on the web, has released his first
book. It reached #1 on Amazon well before it came out in early June,
which is especially remarkable given that it is published by a small
press.
The young metalhead of Armenian descent, whose real name is George
Ouzounian, has expressed an interest
in working in radio, and this book is indicative of his talent
for the kinds of qualities that make that medium work: it's polarizing,
shocking, sometimes funny, and sometimes absurd.
However, what works on the radio and in short articles on the web
doesn't always work in book form, unless the book is broken down
into small, easily digested pieces. Hence the structure of Alphabet:
26 chapters (one for each letter, i.e., "P is for Pirates"),
204 pages, and lots (I mean LOTS) of illustrations.
It would have been nice if the book had been as wide-ranging and
persistently entertaining as Maddox's website. Unfortunately, the
limitations of its somewhat tired "what men are like"
Adam Corrolla-esque theme make it less appealing. At its best, Alphabet
of Manliness flashes signs of the brilliance and originality
that has made The Best Page in the Universe so popular. At its worst,
it comes across as a really lame public-access-channel version of
The
Man Show.
Regardless, it's a fun enough book to check out, from one of the
most unique and popular young voices of my embittered generation.
-Matt Borondy
____________
The
Tango Singer
by Tomas Eloy Martinez, translated by Anne McLean (Bloomsbury,
256 pages)
On the basis of only two books translated into English, Santa
Evita and The Perón Novel, Argentine Tomás
Eloy Martínez has gotten well-deserved attention—he
was short-listed for the 2005 International Man Booker Prize. A
best-selling novelist, he fled Argentina during the dark years there
known as the Dirty Little War, was editor of magazines and newspapers,
and is currently a regular columnist of La Nación de
Buenos Aires, El País de Madrid, and the New York
Times syndicate. Here is the publisher's synopsis of
The Tango Singer:
"It is 2001 and inflation is spiraling out of control in
Argentina when Bruno Cadogan arrives in Buenos Aires. He is on
the trail of Julio Martel, a legendary but elusive singer, who
he hopes will inspire and enlighten his thesis on the origins
of the tango. But the moment he meets El Tucuman in the airport
taxi queue, not only does his new friend find him a cheap room
in an expensive city, but a place in the very building where Borges
set his celebrated story ‘The Aleph'. With El Tucuman's
unpredictable help, Bruno is increasingly drawn to the mystery
of Martel and his strange and evocative performances in a series
of apparently arbitrary and abandoned sites around the city. And
as he untangles the story of the singer's life, Bruno also
begins to believe that Martel's increasingly rare performances
map the dark labyrinth of the city's past."
-Robert Birnbaum
____________
Junk
Mail
by Will
Self (Black Cat, 302 pages)
Junk Mail is an original selection of pieces of nonfiction and
journalism by Brit Will
Self, who is one of the most important, engaging and darkly
funny writers on either side of the Atlantic. Grove Atlantic (of
which Black Cat is the soft-cover subsidiary), characterizes Junk
Mail as "an often irreverent trawl through a landscape
of drugs, culture, art, literature, and current events… We
follow Self into the operation of an upstanding crack dealer, behind
the myth of the ‘pragmatist' approach to drug legalization
on the streets of Amsterdam, and to lunch with Indian author Salman
Rushdie. Whether he is writing about bad boy British artist Damien
Hirst, how literary renegade William Burroughs has changed our outlook
on art and intoxication, or what the current state of transsexuality
has to say about gender for all of us…."
Here's a snippet from his surgical piece on artist (I use
that word advisedly) Damien Hirst in which he puts an exhibition
catalogue under his microscope:
"An urge to bring order to chaos—the search for meaning
in the seemingly random flux of experience—has existed as
a fundamental human motivation through out human history"
What are we to gather from this? That this is an art show that
somehow manages to bracket and contextualize the fundamental conundrums
of all human experience, for all space and time?
"I think not. Rather this kind of bombast is an aspect of
I what I have alluded to above, just as Wittgenstein memorably
remarked on the impossibility of a meaningful musical criticism.
On the basis it was otiose to describe one language in terms of
another, completely, alien language. So the excesses of contemporary
art critics in attempting to define and fix the work of artists
such as Hirst reflects a wrong headed and truly pretentious attempt
by manipulators of language to reduce to formaldehyde, flesh and
bone to some chintzy philosophical abstraction. In literary criticism
we have seen the phenomenon of deconstruction —an attempt
by critics to hijack the mantle of the metaphysician for their
own scrawny shoulders: and this is what we are witnessing here
as well."
Go, Will, go!
-Robert Birnbaum
____________
White
Guys
by Anthony Giardina (Farrar, Giroux, and Straus, 371 pages)
Apparently I am not the only fan of Anthony
Giardina's writing—Tom
Bissell blurbs:
"One might be tempted to call Anthony Giardina, America's
best kept literary secret, but there is nothing secret about this
much talent. He knows so much about human beings and doings it
is almost terrifying, and always thrilling. Thoughtful but never
ponderous, gripping without any gimmicks, and beautifully written
while never succumbing to preciousness, WHITE GUYS is the finest
novel yet from one of our premiere writers of fiction."
In this, Giardina's third novel, Timmy O'Kane—who
has escaped the hard scrabble of a Boston working enclave through
hard work and a good marriage—has an ill-fated reunion with
the former leader of his gang, Billy Mogavero. The novel's
title refers to a nickname given the staid American Literature anthology
that Timmy (a textbook salesman) peddles and as Steve Amidon points
out it, "also perfectly defines the status these boys sought
in Reagan's America."
-Robert Birnbaum
____________
The
Theater of Night
by Alberto Rios (Copper Canyon, 117 pages)
Poet Alberto Alvaro Ríos's newest collection is set
in a community along the border between the U.S. and Mexico, and
the poems trace the lives and loves of an elderly couple, Clemente
and Ventura, through their childhoods, their courtship, and into
marriage, maturity, old age, and death:
A Song of the Old Days
The song on the radio was such a simple one,
A song from the old days.
Nobody else remembered it but her.
It belonged to the two of them,
But not because of what it said—
It belonged to them because of how it felt.
The song on the radio was such a simple one
Even then, even when the two of them
Hummed it into the skin of their mouths.
It belonged to the two of them
Because it lived inside the skin of their lips,
That song that even now spoke him to her.
A song from the old days
Meant something still, meant that once more
For a moment she was singing.
Nobody else remembered it but her,
Remembered the song or what it meant
So that when she sang, it made no sense—
Even she could feel it. When she sang
It made no sense, not to the world nor to her.
It made no sense to say that he was gone.
-Robert Birnbaum
____________
Laurel
Canyon
by Michael Walker (Faber and Faber, 277 pages)
Journalist Michael Walker has written a new book about one neighborhood's
heavy influence on the '60s and '70s music scene, Laurel
Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's Legendary Neighborhood.
Walker's extensive interviewing and personal experience (he's lived
in this beautiful section of L.A. since 1991) make for an informative
and inspiring read, in some ways reminiscent of the work of David
Hadju. The book discusses the Canyon's place in rock history:
how musicians like Joni Mitchell, the Eagles, the Doors, Frank Zappa,
and others (including Crosby, Stills, and Nash) congregated in this
vibrant place during a very special time for music. Cameron Crowe
writes: "It's a beautifully written document of that time and
place when the personalities were as big as the dreams that fueled
some of the greatest masterpieces in rock."
Rock on, Michael Walker...
As a side note, I actually visited Laurel Canyon recently and told
this story in one of our newsletters:
"The Laurel Canyon Country Store is a little place where
hipsters from the sixties used to congregate--Joni Mitchell, Jim
Morrison, Frank Zappa, Crosby, Stills & Nash, and the like.
I'd been reading about it in Michael Walker's new book, Laurel
Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's Legendary Neighborhood,
and somehow I found the store while driving aimlessly around this
sprawling city. I purchased some Brown Cow Yogurt (which is freaking
awesome if you didn't already know) from the checkout girl, who
was reading A Million Little Pieces, and sat outside
the store, where several modern-day hippies were all lounging
around talking on cellphones. It was a real 2006 moment--a place
where local artists used to interact with each other seems to
have become a place where trustafarians go to use up Cingular
Anytime Minutes. So, in order to fit in, I got on my cellphone
and chatted with Mia (the
ComeBack girl) for a while. 'Did you know your book
mentions Whole Foods about 1000 times?' is one question I asked
which, in hindsight, should have been included in the interview."
It's a nice place. Really, you should go.
-Matt Borondy
____________
Marc
Chagall: The Lost Jewish World
by Benjamin Harshav (Rizzoli, 272 pages)
"If I were not a Jew…I wouldn't have been an
artist, or I would be a different artist altogether."—Marc
Chagall, Leaves from My Notebook
Chagall is one of the most popular artists of the 20th century,
and this book is a competent guide to the iconography of his best-loved
work—which, incidentally, displays Jewish symbolism and folklore,
sometimes overtly, sometimes hidden. Yale University's Benjamin
Harshav, who has published extensively on Chagall, offers insights
into Chagall's Jewish roots and provides accessible interpretations
of his major paintings, which are included in this comprehensive
monograph.
-Robert Birnbaum
____________
Drowning
in Gruel
by George Singleton (Harcourt, 307 pages)
I am going to hold my tongue on the matter of the underrated Southern
writer and just inform you that South Carolinian writer George Singleton
has put together 19 stories set in his fictitious town of Gruel,
S.C., following, as the publisher's description outlines:
"…the lives and schemes of its citizens, in search
of glory, seclusion, money, revenge, and a meaningful existence.
Young Gruelites learn lessons when confronted with neighbors who
might not be as blind as they appear, dermatologists intent on eradicating
birthmarks, and fathers prone to driving on half-inflated tires
in order to flirt with cashiers. Meanwhile, the town's older
citizens try to make sense out of dogs that heal wounds, lawn-mowing
dead men, wives who don't appreciate gas masks for Valentine's
Day, and children who mix their mother's ashes with housepaint."
Singleton's stories are ubiquitously present in numerous
magazines and anthologies. He lives in Pickens County, S.C., with
the clay artist Glenda Guion. Last year he has also published his
first novel, Novel.
-Robert Birnbaum
____________
The
Power of the Dog
by Don Winslow (Vintage/Black Lizard, 539 pages)
Such is my great
admiration for this hypervelocity thriller that having sung
its praises in its initial cloth iteration I feel compelled to remind
readers of its pleasures as it appears now in trade paper. Winslow's
previous novels show evidence of a polymorphous sensibility and
command of story, but this, his third, fires on all cylinders. Winslow's
second novel, The Death and Life of Bobby Z, is being filmed,
and reportedly Robert De Niro has signed on for a filmization of
the yet-unpublished fourth book.
-Robert Birnbaum
____________
The
Best of Slate: A 10th Anniversary Anthology
edited by David Plotz (Atlas Books, 279 pages)
I have come to appreciate the audacious antics of bad boy/provocateur
Micheal Kinsely, founder of Slate
magazine, while I find the junior members of the Slate
menagerie a bit long on the cleverness and cheek and not much else.
The contrarian bulletins from the young careerist writers looking
to launch themselves from the Slate podium are at least
artful and frequently diverting. The older war horses, Jack Shafer,
Christopher Hitchens, Mickey Kaus and a few others do what they
do as well as they ever did.
In any case, here's Kinsley
on the origins of Slate:
"The magazine I dreamed of starting was a newsmagazine. On
paper, on the Web, painted on the walls of caves—I didn't
care. My theory was that Time and Newsweek had
basically abandoned their mission. They responded to every crisis
of identity for the past half-century in exactly the wrong way.
From television to the Internet, the newsmags always assumed that
new developments were making their central function of intelligently
summarizing the news obsolete. So, for half a century or more they
have been in retreat from that true function into features, consumerism,
photographs, investigative reporting, health, sex—anything
but telling and trying to explain what is going on in the world
at the moment."
So, ten years boiled down into sixty stories—this is what
the Slate people think is the best. You decide.
-Robert Birnbaum
____________
The
Believer: The 2006 Music Issue
(#35 June/July 2006, 88 pages)
The Believer
has in its short existence published an annual music issue and included
a compilation CD. This third-edition CD, entitled "Famous
Shovels in Twain" and compiled by Matthew
Derby and Brandon Stosuy, includes:
1. "The Blue Sun"—Think About Life
2. "God Knows (You Gotta Give to Get)"—El Perro
del Mar
3. "Cheer"—Neung Phak
4. "Throws Daggers"—Calexico
5. "Fruit of the Vine"—Jim White
6. "Minor Star of Rome"—The National
7. "Mushaboom"—Feist
8. "Laya"—Stephen O'Malley
9. "Junkeee… Julieee…"—Blood on the
Wall
10. "Box of Cedar"—Marissa Nadler
11. "Alalakay"—Mamadou Diabate
12. "Ahora"—Juana Molina
13. "Born in Twain"—Tiny Hawks
14. "Rubies"—Destroyer
15. "All Cats"—Six Organs of Admittance
Thus, the Table of Contents makes some sense: "The
Sinatra Doctrine" by Rich Cohen, "Bulgarian Idol"
by Elisabeth Vincentelli, "Some
Propositions Concerning the Lounge Lizards" by Rick Moody,
"The Vanishing Afro-American" by Howard Hampton, "A
Brief History of Rock Music" by Paul Collins, "The
Buddha Machine" by Daniel Handler, "Singing Together,
Growing Apart: Breakup Duets" interpreted by Mark Swartz with
Frederick Woolverton, Ph.D., Wayne Coyne talks with Ben Gibbard,
Don DeLillo talks with Greil Marcus, Juana Molina interviewed by
Josh Kun, and Stephen O'Malley interviewed by Brandon Stosuy.
I have never forgiven Rich Cohen for the hammy (Machers and
Rockers: Chess Records and the Business of Rock & Roll)
book he wrote on the Chess brothers, but his piece on Paul Ankadoes
raises my estimation of him. Paul
Collins, per usual, entertains and informs, and it would be
tempting to write "Rick
Moody rocks," but let's just say, here, he grooves.
Shizzle the mizzle.
-Robert Birnbaum
____________
Want more? See last week's reviews.
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