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Book Rate
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.
Note: (RB) = Robert
Birnbaum; (RLW) = RL
Whalen; (JT) = Janice Tsai; (AK) = Angie
Kritenbrink; (MB) equals Matt
Borondy; (DM) = Drew
McNaughton, and soon enough there will be other abbreviations
to deal with. Links go to Amazon.com.
Last updated: October 8, 2005
Dictionary Days: A Defining Passion
– Ilan Stavans (Graywolf, 228 P.P.)
Professor Stavans
is an oddity I suppose, fluent in 6 languages, a Mexican Jew teaching
at New England college who is also the host of WGBH –TV’s
La Plaza. And he has a substantial oeuvre of books including his
own work, translations, a cartoon history of Latinos in America,
a number of anthologies and edited volumes of Pablo Neruda, Isaac
Bashevis Singer and Calvert Casey even some fiction as in a book
of his own short stories. His newest tome presents us with 13 essays
on his lifelong obsession with dictionaries as he declaims on a
host of lexicographical topics. No question of Ilan Stavans’s
erudition but I must confess a certain ineffable irritation with
is professorial style. But hey, that’s probably just me. (RB)
Stevenson Under The Palm Trees – Alberto
Manguel (Canongate , 105 P.P.)
A Reading Diary: A Passionate Reader’s Reflections
on Year’s Books – Alberto Manguel (Farrar, Giroux
and Straus, 203 P.P.)
The welltraveled writer Alberto Manguel has written at least two
books that every lover of books should be at least acquainted with:
A History of Reading and Reading Pictures. Now
comes his latest work which eloquently connects the reading (or
at least his version of it) and that mess happening outside your
door step — some people call reality. Stevenson on the
Palm Trees is called a “literary murder mystery”
with RL Stevenson as the protagonist. This nicely designed and compact
book includes woodcuts that Stevenson created for another purpose,
and Manguel provides interesting anecdote about them. A Reading
Diary is Manguel’s account of his rereading of a book
a month reportedly because as he was reading Goethe’s Elective
Affinities — he was struck by how that book seemed to
mirror current real world circumstances. Suffice it to say that
I find Manguel’s point of view simpatico — it is a huge
pebble in my shoe that I have not been able to find the tape of
my Oct 2001 conversation with him that I has been misplaced somewhere
in my ramshackle archives. (RB)
Among the Flower; A Walk in the Himalayas –
Jamaica Kincaid (National Geographic, 189 P.P.)
Frankly, if someone chose to publish Jamaica Kincaid’s grocery
list I am certain that I would be thrilled to read it. While one
can safely assume that most writers are exemplars of some kind of
originality — in thought, in action, style, something —
Jamaica is a boulder among pebbles in this regard. I was pleased
to drive over to Bennington, VT, to speak with her for an “interview”
that was subsequently published in the Believer (and if you will
allow a commercial message, now anthologized in forthcoming Believer
book in October) and was shown around the lovely, verdant garden
that surrounds her house on a nice rise overlooking more verdancy.
She alluded to the exhilaration that a recent trip to Nepal had
provided her. This book is one of the fruits of that journey—going
to Nepal with three botanist friends on a seed-gathering trek. As
my own interests in horticulture are limited to an occasional smelling
of the flowers I would expect that anyone who has a deeper interest
may be additionally rewarded reading Kincaid’s memoir, but
that is beside the point of her brilliant opining. Which I will
leave for you to discover. (RB)
Finding Manana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus –
Mira Ojito (Penguin Press, 302 P.P.)
Like Israel, everybody seems to have an opinion on Cuba, perhaps
in large part because of a long standing, ill conceived official
policy towards that remarkable and magical nation and the squeaky
wheel behavior of the nearly million exiles in Southern Florida
and other expatriate pockets spread around the US. Not to mention
the mythology connected to martyred revolutionary Che and the music—the
music which has carried consciousness of Cuban culture far and wide.
All that aside, in a recent conversation with Alma
Guillermoprieto we shared the idea that the people who were
really qualified to talk about Cuba were exiles who came here during
the infamous Mariel
boatlift NYT correspondent Mira Ojito is a marielita and Oscar
Hijuelos commends her memoir, “not only brings light to an
important chapter of post revolutionary u Cuba but has much to say
about the generation of Cubans living in America so deeply affected
by the boatlift and its aftermath…” He ought to know.
(RB)
Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as
Cartographer – Peter Turchi (Trinity University Press,
245 P.P.)
In an era when the fashion among talking heads with even an iota
of acquaintance with contemporary literary fiction is to dump on
the writing programs and allege the deleterious effects on literature
— you breathe more deeply, I don’t intend to deal with
that issue here. I bring it up because Peter Turchi happens to helm
the highly regarded MFA program at Warren Wilson College. This book
is a handsome package, already been acknowledged in design circles,
is tasty stew of personal observation, history and a guide to writing
and as the title intends seeing the writer as a kind of mapmaker.
Turchi’s sensibility is well represented by the Milan Kundera
epigram he selects:
A novel examines not reality but existence. And existence is
not what has occurred, existence is the realm of human possibilities,
everything that man can become, everything he’s capable of.
Novelists draw up the map of existence by discovering this or that
human possibility.
Also intriguing is Antonya Nelson’s view that “in his
refusal to simplify the written document or the creative impulse,
Turchi honors the intersection of idea and execution.” To
my mind that’s a good trick if you can pull it off. (RB)
The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil
- George Saunders (Riverhead, 134 P.P.)
George Saunders hasn’t published a new book since 2000—not
that he hasn’t been busy. He’s done some modest
proposing about Iraq and published
stories in the New
Yorker.
His newest tome is a novella (whatever that is ) satirizing the
kind of mind set that creates notions like “ manifest destiny”
and fills in the dots of God-is-on-our-side thinking. Here’s
Phil’s speech upon the triumphant oppression of the Inner
Hornerites:
“‘My people,’ he shouted in a stentorian voice.
‘I shall speak now of us. Who are we? We are an articulate
people. A people of few words. We feel deeply yet refrain from embarrassing
displays of emotion. Though firm we are not too firm. Though we
love fun we never have fun in a silly way that makes us appear ridiculous
unless that is our intent. Our national coloration though varied
is consistent. Everything about us is as it should be. For example,
we can be excessive when excess is called for and yet even in our
excess we show good taste. Although never is our taste so super
refined so as to seem precious. Even the extent to which we are
moderate is moderate except when we have decided to be immoderately
moderate or even shockingly flamboyant at which time our flamboyance
is truly breathtaking in a really startling way. When we decide
to make mistakes our mistakes are as big and grand and as irrevocable
as any nation of colossal errors. And when we decide to deny our
mistakes we sound just as if we are telling the truth. And when
we decide to admit our errors we do so in a way that is truly moving
in its extreme frankness. Am I making sense? Am I saying this well?’”
Neat illustrations too. (RB)
Spanking the Donkey: Dispatches from the
Dumb Season – Matt Taibbi ( The New Press, 331 P.P.)
Matt Taibi writes for one of those nasty New York weeklies that
pride themselves on being edgy and nasty—which they attempt
to accomplish by unleashing writers who normally would be occupying
themselves drooling off in some corner or smearing feces on the
walls of their confinement. That’s when they are not off sucking
up to some publicist at lunch. Mr. Taibbi has distinguished himself
to me by his admirable and eloquent razzing of the New York
Times thrice Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s latest
tome.
Thus having shown himself able in piercing the miasma of sanctimony
and hubris that envelopes much of public discourse, one may find
other of Taibbi’s fulminations worthwhile — such as
his campaign diary (has it been almost a year of the 2004 election?).
Probably there has been no more original approach to electioneering
coverage since Timothy Cruse’s Boys on the Bus and
Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail.
(RB)
Man without a Country – Kurt Vonnegut (Seven Stories,
192 P.P.)
I regularly drift off into dreamlike ruminations that take their
model from recent pop cultural trends as in “what would Jonathan
Swift say?” or “How would Voltaire see this?”
This comes from my sense of the paucity of certain kinds of minds
honed to a tensile sharpness. Jon Stewart may occasionally come
close, but few thinkers have carried on the lampooning, satirist
tradition over the long haul better than Kurt Vonnegut has. Having
some years back promised never to write another book, the publication
of this quasi memoir might in some quarters (certainly in mine)
be cause for joyous celebration. Given that braying and bleating
as I have risen to deafening levels reading Vonnegut is better than
donning earplugs—quips like “I asked former Yankees
pitcher Jim Bouton what he thought of our great victory over Iraq
and he said, ‘Mohammed Ali versus Mr. Rogers.’”
The book is made up short essays and speeches composed over the
last five years and plentifully illustrated with artwork by Vonnegut.
(RB)
The Killings of Stanley Ketchel – James
Carlos Blake (Wm Morrow, 320 P.P.)
A few years ago I chatted with Michael
Connelly, who tipped me off to James Carlos Blake. In quick
succession I read In the Rogue Blood, Wildwood Boys
and A World of Thieves. Since then I have read whatever
he has published whenever he does with the same relish I approach
Elmore Leonard and Alan Furst—two writers who do a couple
of things really well—in Leonard’s case that’s
lay out dialogue that sings and rarely if ever hits a false note.
And with Furst it’s to mine the seemingly bottomless reservoir
of history between and including the world wars for riveting narratives
and such. Blake has gift for settling in the American past—sometimes
wandering the mid 19th century and as in the case of Stanley Ketchel
the early 20th century. The protagonist is a middle-weighty prizefighter
who becomes a champion and having no more challenges looks to take
on the reigning heavyweight champion of the world, the colorful,
colored and controversial Jack Johnson. In the hands of the masterful
James Carlos Blake the sweat and the blood of the raw and brawling
world of which he writes comes flying off the page. (RB)
Mencken: The American Iconoclast: The Life and Times
of the Bad Boy of Baltimore – Marion Rodgers (Oxford
University Press, 645 P.P.)
One may suppose it is testimony to the impact and stature of a figure
that people and scholars devote themselves to researching and reiterating
the lives of various worthies as with Josef Stalin (not to suggest
that our subject shares much with Korba) there continue to be books
published with the grand intentions of explicating the seemingly
inexplicable mysteries of this cultural giant. Terry Teachout offered
one a few years ago that received a mixed reception which may be
the risk one runs in chronicling the life of man who no doubt attracts
the attention and admiration of some scholarly oddballs. Now, Marion
Rodgers, having published two earlier books, makes claim to her
work being the definitive biography (why else publish it?). (RB)
New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid
Observer – Bill Maher (Rodale, 230 P.P.)
Though I am no fan of TV talking heads, Jon Stewart and Leslie
Stahl excepted, I am pretty clear that Bill Maher got something
of a raw deal for his thoughtful clarification that the 9/11 terrorists
might have been many horrible things but they weren’t cowards.
(“We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from
2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when
it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly.”)
For such unpatriotic opining Maher's Politically Incorrect
show was as the old folks say ”shit-canned.” At any
case, I was surprised to learn that Maher has authored two previous
books: Does Anybody Have a Problem with That? and When
You Ride ALONE You Ride with bin Laden. Maher at least has
the good humor to open his latest—ok, let’s for the
sake of this scribbling call it a book—with the first new
rule: no more books by talk show hosts.
This latest, uh “book” has some gems—Maher after
all went to college and also has some smarts. This is sometimes
a potent combination. For example: For your Reconsideration. The
caption below a photo of Italian movie goofus Roberto Benigni holding
2 Oscars reads:
"Take one back. Every year. Along with handing out the Oscars,
The Academy should take one back. Get someone up there to say. We
blew it. Roberto Bernigni—give it back! We just got you out
of your seat because we wanted to see you dry hump Judy Dench.”
Or this:
Gone Fission:
“Sometimes sorry doesn’t cut it Pakistan says it’s
really, really sorry for selling nuclear weapons to anyone with
cash and/or a thing for Allah. That’s nice. When one of their
customers turns Washington into a debris field, it’ll be comforting
to know that Islamabad feels Islama-terrible. I know putting loose
nukes in play isn’t a serious Muslim offense, like women wearing
pants, but here in the land of the Great Satan, it’s the second
most horrifying thing we can imagine.”
Yeah like that. (RB)
Karl Krause: Apocalyptic Satirist, The
Post War Crisis and the Rise of the Swastika – Edward
Timms (Yale University Press, 638 P.P.)
A literary chauvinist, in trying to describe the barely-known-in
America Karl Krause, would no doubt reach for the convenient handle
of “Austrian Mark Twain” or “Middle European Mencken”
(much like it’s anyone’s call referring to Mick Jagger
as “rock and roll’s Martin Amis” or Martin Amis
as “literature’s Mick Jagger”) rather than acknowledging
that Twain or Mencken might be “American Karl Krauses.”
Here’s a random sampling of some of Karl Krause’s aphorisms
(“An aphorism can never be the whole truth; it is either a
half-truth or a truth-and-a-half.”):
Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave.
or
Do not learn more than you absolutely need to get through life.
or
Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise
to prove that they are not idiots.
or
How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell
lies to journalists and then believe what they read.
If I haven’t irrevocably confused you suffice it to say that
Krause has not gotten his due in what arguably is one of the world’s
vital cultural arenas—I’m referring to America, ladies
and gentlemen. Anyway, this digression aside Edward Timms published
the first volume of his inestimable biography some 20 years ago
(Karl Krause: Apocalyptic Satirist: Culture and Catastrophe
in Hapsburg Vienna). This second volume takes up the Krause
story in November 1918 and Timms argues that “Krause’s
lifelong critique of the media, combining Orwell’s political
radicalism with Joyce’s linguistic playfulness, incisively
anticipates the propaganda techniques of our own age.” Which
should make Krause an important figure to be acquainted with, no?
(RB)
Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance Through
20th Century Europe - Victoria de Grazia (Harvard University
Press, 586 P.P.)
There are a spate of books that try to explain the American Imperium
in traditional geopolitical terms. Professor De Grazia ventures
into less verifiable and more imaginative speculation with this
claim,” The most significant conquest of the twentieth century
may well have been the triumph of American consumer society over
Europe's bourgeois civilization.” While, it is arguable that
trying to explain cultural imperialism puts one on less firm landscape,
the good professor appears to be nimble and sure-footed enough for
the task:
“But all empires rely for their power on the means that
are historically available to them. If we hold to orthodox definitions,
we miss the specific powers accumulating to the leading capitalist
state in the twentieth century. These powers derived not just from
being front-runner in the consumer revolution, but from recognizing
the advantages that derived from that position and developing these
into a system of global leadership. Five features mark the uniqueness
of the Market Empire rule, the first and most fundamental being
that from the outset it regarded other nations as having limited
sovereignty over their public space. Once the classical liberal
principle of free trade had been accepted, it was to naught that
nations abroad protested that American foreign trade violated local
cultural traditions. What is more, the Market Empire recognized
that its trade could be a cultural infringement, yet found numerous
ways to justify it. So peoples elsewhere would be benefiting not
just from the traffic of goods, but also from the principles embedded
in them. Say the commodity was Hollywood cinema: its promotion would
stimulate not only more trade, but also a lively local market in
new identities and pleasures. Consequently, the foreign power that
tried to close off trade with tariffs, quotas, and the other barriers
showed itself to be not just protectionist in the conventional economic
sense, but culturally intolerant and backward. The paradoxes of
this position are only magnified by the fact that irresistible empire
throughout most of the twentieth century, the United States home
market was the hardest to crack in the capitalist West.”
Yeah, how dare those dumb Canuks and Frogs not accept the gifts
of our glorious culture? (RB)
The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of
Freedom to The Heart of Despair - Martin Meredith (Public Affairs,
800 P. P.)
When I was in grade school, the maps in our social studies classes
couldn’t keep up with the postcolonial liberation of what
was still being called the “Dark Continent.” Independence
seemed inextricably linked to freedom and progress. Anyone vaguely
aware of the state of Africa must know that the benighted continent
seems to have sunk into an abyss of tyrants, inter tribal genocide
and inexorable disease and poverty. Well-traveled Africa scholar
Martin Meredith writes:
“As the haggling in Europe over African territory continued,
land and peoples became little more than pieces on a chess board.
"We have been giving away mountains and rivers and lakes to
each other, only hindered by the small impediment that we never
knew exactly where they were," Britain's Prime Minister, Lord
Salisbury, remarked sardonically to a London audience . . .. By
the time the Scramble for Africa was over, some ten thousand African
polities had been amalgamated into forty European colonies and protectorates.
Thus were born the modern states of Africa.”
And by way of explicating his own interest, he notes:
“In 1964, at the age of twenty-one, I set out from Cairo
travelling up the Nile on a journey to central Africa. In many ways,
my African journey has continued ever since. As a young reporter
on the Times of Zambia, I was fortunate enough to witness the surge
of energy and enthusiasm that accompanied independence. Across Africa,
it was a time of great hope and optimism. But the dreams soon faded.
Africa was a continent too deeply affected by mass poverty, by meager
resources, by disease and illiteracy to allow for easy solutions
to its development. It was also a continent prone to civil strife
and instability. As a foreign correspondent based in Africa for
fifteen years, my experience was related mainly to wars, revolution,
and upheaval. In relentless succession, African states succumbed
to military coups and brutal dictatorships, to periods of great
violence and to economic decline and decay.
During the 1980s, the crisis grew worse. As a research fellow at
St. Antonio’s College, Oxford, I sought deeper perspectives
on Africa's malaise. I also spent much time observing South Africa's
drift towards revolutionary violence spawned by the apartheid system.
But while South Africa managed to escape the threat of revolution,
transforming itself into a stable democracy, most of Africa has
continued its tragic slide.
Now that fifty years have passed since the beginning of the independence
era, it seemed to me that what was needed was a panoramic account
of the fortunes of Africa, explaining what happened, and the sense
of foreboding it arouses.”
Africa has been much on the world’s mind this year as the
G-8 summit that devoted it primary attention July 2005 shows as
well Live 8 concerts held throughout the world. I guess
that’s something, though I wish, hope, pray fulminate about
the continuing slaughter in Dafur—which I suspect won’t
be the last African genocide. (RB)
The Power of the Dog — Don Winslow (Knopf,
541 P.P.)
I have written an 80 word exercise on this riveting novel at The
Morning News:
“Don Winslow’s third novel, The Power of the Dog,
is a white-hot, high-velocity narrative through the narco-trafficking
of the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, credibly implicating
the various drug- and law-enforcement agencies in Mexico and the
U.S., the mob (Irish and Italian), and the Vatican (and, if you
are a believer, God). Winslow’s got the writing chops, and
then some, to keep this big brawny tale speeding forward. And, as
with any good story, I was sorry it ended.” And if I you don’t
want to take my word for it here’s James Ellroy, “The
Power of the Dog is the first great dope novel since Dog
Soldiers thirty years ago. It’s frightening and sad,
with a superbly sustained intensity. It’s a beautifully compressed
vision of hell, with all its attendant moral madness.” Or
another of my favorite writers, Robert Ferrigno, who opines, “The
Power of the Dog is a great read. Intricate, powerful, and
fierce, it takes the reader into the moral labyrinth of the
international drug trade and the men who lose their souls along
the way. Winslow’s knowledge and insight have never been more
fully realized. I believed every word of it.” (RB)
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