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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. Also, this is for 1) people who don't want to shell
out two hundred dollars for a subscription to Publisher's Weekly
2) Book lovers who are averse to reading reviews 3) Readers who
are not incited to mouth foaming at the mere mention of Toni Morrison,
Salman Rushdie and Don DeLillo and most importantly 4) for people
who trust us.
Maybe.
Note: (RB) = Robert
Birnbaum; (RLW) = RL
Whalen; (JT) = Janice Tsai; (MB) will someday equal Matt Borondy;
and soon enough there will be other abbreviations to deal with.
November 23, 2003
Small Town
– Lawrence Block (381 PP, William Morrow)
If you can get by the fact that is an extended love song to New
York City (believe me, that's not so easy for an expatriate Chicagoan
in New England) then this multi-character story with a ne'er-do-well
writer accused of murder at its center, is a solid well crafted
crime narrative by Mystery Writer of America Grand Master Block.
Lots of adventurous sex, cinematically rendered, is a bonus. (RB)
Porsche: The Road from Zuffenhausen
- Dennis Adler (329 PP, Random House)
On the highways and byways my experience is that only Porsche drivers
compete with Camaro jockeys as the most senselessly aggressive.
Which is why I almost dismissed this 300-page sales brochure for
the legendary Teutonic engineering marvel. The black 356 Cabriolet
with the red interior and bonnet that adorns the cover is truly
a thing of beauty, and half of this book focuses on that Porsche
model series. (RB)
The Real Fidel Castro
–Leycester Coltman (335 PP, Yale University Press)
There are a handful of biographies of Fidel Castro—Tad Szluc's,
Georgie Ann Geyer's vivisection, Guerilla Prince, and Robert
Quirk's
Fidel Castro—which seems an oddity given Castro's
persona and place in late 20th century international affairs. British
diplomat Leycester Coltman was head of the Latin American Department
of the British Foreign Office in the late '80s and Ambassador to
Cuba from 1991 to 1994 and purports to know Fidel Castro well. Ronald
Hilton of Stanford University maintains, "Finally a word
of commendation for this book. There are others about Castro …
but Coltman's is unique in that he knew Castro better than any of
the other biographers and can therefore tell us about 'the real
Castro.' We await the reactions of Cubans, especially of Fidel himself.
He may not wish to talk about it, but WAIS has several Cuban specialists
who could ask him. Will the book be permitted to circulate in Cuba?
Ask him that too." (RB)
Blood and Champagne: The Life and Times of Robert Capa
– Alex Kershaw (297 PP, St Martin's Press)
There is a scene in Oliver Stone's Salvador (I'm biting
my tongue here) where John Savage is playing a war-zone photographer
and while he is the process of being strafed by a government aircraft
talks about getting a photo like Capa's famous
dying Spanish Loyalist soldier. Such was Andre Friedmann alias
Robert Capa's mystique that decades later he is the archetypal wartime
journalist. It helps, of course, and to have horsed around with
the likes of Hemingway and Ingrid Bergman and John Huston and to
have died in Vietnam. David Thomson's New Republic review,
I
Leica Danger, which is a treat unto itself, begins, "Robert
Capa's has always been a knock-out story, and nearly fifty years
after his death, it is as poignant but more pointed than ever. Only
40 when he stepped on a mine in what was then Indo China, he had
followed the wars of his times in Spain, in China, in Normandy and
on the way to Berlin, in Israel as well as Vietnam. Beyond any dispute
he was brave, reckless and led by an instinct for those split seconds
when the dawn was enough to get an exposure and the explosions were
spaced that a photographer just might survive. He was also a man
whose charm burned like a cigarette, he was a steady womanizer,
beloved by the men of action soldiers, writers, hotel porters and
riff-raff too." This is a story too good to pass up. (RB)
Schott's Original Miscellany
– Ben Schott (158 PP, Bloomsbury)
Start with a book that's epigram is Virginia Woolf's, "Let
us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is
commonly thought big than what is commonly thought small."
And whose postscript is Samuel Johnson opining, "There is nothing,
sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying
little things that we attain the great art of having little misery
and as much happiness as possible." Now set aside that this
slender tome is of a greatly Anglophonic bent –no surprise
as its author is a twenty-eight-year-old Londoner—and its
truly miscellaneous contents will astound, mystify and amuse. War
cries of Scottish clans; the longest word in English (1185 characters)
and other long words including the ever useful and elementary school
spelling bee stumper antidisestablishmentarianism: bon mots of Dorothy
Parker including her epitaph, "Excuse my dust," and on
and on. And pocket sized to bring to gatherings and situations in
need of sparking digressions. Loved this book. (RB)
Mountains Beyond Mountains
– Tracy Kidder (317 PP, Random House)
Considering the onslaught of examples of crass humanity that batter
us daily—the Rush Limbaughs, the Ten-Commandment-waving Alabama
judges, our shadow government, heck our daytime government—the
story of a doctor who spends his life in Haiti, a country not exactly
anyone's designated paradise, trying to cure infectious diseases,
might be seen as far fetched as any fairy tale. But that's what
Paul Farmer does and that's what Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy Kidder
writes compellingly about. The title is taken from a Haitian proverb,
"Beyond mountains there are mountains." Which describes
the good Dr. Farmer's Sysiphisian task. (RB)
Living to Tell the Tale
– Gabriel Garcia Marquez, translated by Edith Grossman (484
PP, Knopf)
If you need me to tell you who Garcia
Marquez is and why Part I of his memoir, translated by the inestimable
Edith Grossman (whose new translation of Don Quixote is recently
available), is an "important" book, you have come to the
wrong place. In his hodge-podge of a review Ilan Stavans does deliver
an interesting tidbit, "According to reports, entire truckloads
with copies [of the Marquez book] were sequestered in Medelln, then
resold in the black market. This, to me, is inspiring: trafficking
with books in Colombia." No hay problema. (RB)
I Sailed With Magellan
– Stuart Dybek (306 PP, Farrar Giroux Straus)
Stuart
Dybek's (The Coast of Chicago) name comes up from time
to time in the conversations I have with writers—Amy Bloom
and Stewart O'Nan, to name two—and now he offers his first
story collection since 1990 and completes the trilogy he began in
1980 with Childhood and Other Neighborhoods. Eleven interconnected
stories set in Chicago (you know the city in Heartland where Sammy
Sosa plays ball) what else do you need to know? Dybek has been referred
to as this generation's Nelson Algren (The Man With The Golden
Arm), he teaches at Western Michigan University and has been
published in all the usual literary venues and then some and won
some awards. Oh yeah, he writes poetry too. (RB)
November 6, 2003
The Furies
–Fernanda Eberstadt (451 PP, Knopf)
Ms Eberstadt lives in the French Pyrenees with her family. And
she writes terrific novels—When The Sons of Heaven Meet
the Daughters of the Earth, a sequel to Isaac and His Daughters
and Low Tide—her latest is set in New York City in
the mid and late '90s. What else do you need to know? (RB)
The Early Stories (1953-1975)
- John Updike (838 PP, Knopf)
What's to be said about such a tome? A literary public service
to the multitudes of Updike devotees? An homage? A thumb in the
eye of the NY Times critic who recently cast aspersions
on short-form fiction? No matter, except that perhaps maybe the
New Yorker may come to feel it no longer necessary to publish
five or six Updike stories a year? (RB)
Spirit of Harlem: A Portrait of America's Most Exciting
Neighborhood
– Craig Marberry & Michael Cunningham (209 PP, Doubleday)
Okay, I am fond of ethnographic books that combine man-on-the-street
testimonies with photo documents and portraits. That's what documentarians
Marberry and Cunningham (Crowns: Portraits of Black Church Women
in Church Hats) have presented here. Though not having the
scope (or ambition) of Brenner's Diaspora or Meiselas'
Kurdistan book, Spirit of Harlem swings in its own way.
Here is Gordon Parks from his forward, "Since I first chronicled
Harlem for Life magazine in 1948, the leaves have fallen
hurriedly as autumn leaves. Harlem despite the passage of time has
smiled on …Marberry and…Cunningham…their collection
of narratives and photographs plunges deep into the heart of Harlem,
sometimes discovering sunken treasure, sometimes the scattered remnants
of dreams broken. What they bring to the surface is something precious
and real about a place that has long bewitched the world…."
One of my favorite bits from this book is Harlem hat seller Junior
"Bunn" Leonard's statement, "If I took my hat shop
downtown, I could get two three times what I get in Harlem. But
it's not about that. I'm grateful. I am content. It's like the old
West Indian people say, 'Eat little and live long.'" (RB)
Cubanisma! : The Vintage Book of Contemporary Cuban
Literature
–edited by Christina Garcia (378 PP, Vintage)
Anyone who knows me for longer than a nanosecond becomes aware
of my nearly life long interest in Cuba and things Cuban. Only a
few intimates are aware of my antipathy towards soft-cover books.
Occasionally I am placed in the dilemma of having to acknowledge
those crimes against bibliophilic purity or pass up a chance to
contribute to a greater good. Such is the case here. Perhaps someone
of a scholarly bent will research my gut feeling that Cuban literature
has more anthologies,
per capita, than any other culture. In any case Christina Garcia,
a Cubana who wrote one of my favorite books (Dreaming in Cuban),
collects an outstanding array of writers from the legendary polymath
Jose Marti to poet/physician Rafael Campo. And with a deft touch
organizes the anthology's sections using musical genre names (danzon,
rumba, son, mambo and salsa). As a wonderful bonus, Senora Garcia
provides a useful personal discography of Cuban music. ¡Me
gusto! (RB)
Love
- Toni Morrison (202 PP, Knopf)
The publication of a novel by Ms Morrison or even her grocery list
creates a wonderful opportunity to gut check a random assortment
of critics and reviewers here's Laura
Miller and Michiko
Kakatuni and Adam
Begley. Personally, I thought Begley hit a bulls-eye with, "'Novelist'
is too fragile a title for Toni Morrison. She’s more like
a continent, or at least a landmass—solid, impregnable, a
blunt fact. Book reviews won’t budge her: One can’t
imagine her noticing them. Her indifference—even if it’s
only an imagined indifference—exposes the triviality of literary
journalism … Judging the merit of a new Toni Morrison novel
in a newspaper or magazine is, in most respects, an inconsequential
gesture: Thanks to the Nobel Prize she won a decade ago, her monolithic
embodiment of the term 'African-American woman writer,' and her
three undeniably important novels—Sula (1973), Song
of Solomon (1977) and Beloved (1987)—the business
of locating her proper place in the pantheon belongs to future generations."
Of course, a bulls-eye in criticism is awarded when the archer's
view is identical with one's own. Right? (RB)
Mailman
– J Robert Lennon (483 PP, WW Norton)
Lennon's (The Light of Falling Stars) new and fourth novel
came up as an enthusiastic recommendation when I talked with Jonathan
Lethem recently. If that seems like an insubstantial reason to notice
a book, I'll be happy to entertain others. This novel is about a
small-town mailman and, in fact, it is dedicated to Lennon's mailman.
What a gesture! I really appreciate my UPS guy, but all I can do
is give him a few bucks at the year-end holidays. (RB)
Best American Short Stories, 2003
- edited by Walter Mosley, series editor Katrina Kenison (360 PP,
Houghton Mifflin)
It is the season of awards and anthologies—in baseball it's
been called the silly season—and one of the most respected
and dependable annuals is Houghton Mifflin's Best American Short
Stories (continually being published since 1915). This year's
entry is guest edited by Walter Mosley, who opines, "Whenever
anyone asks my opinion about the difference between novels and short
stories, I tell them that there is no distinction between genres.
They are essentially the same thing, I always reply…"
It includes twenty stories, some by well-known writers (that I won't
bother to list except for Dorothy Allison) and some by writers I
suggest you get to know— Mary Yukari Waters, Susan Straight,
Ryan Harty, Dan Chaon, Kevin Brockmeier—among others. (RB)
The Night Country
–Stewart O Nan (229 PP, Farrar Straus Giroux)
I am not a big fan of the spooky tale, the horror story or the
ghost narrative, but as I ended up talking with Stewart O Nan in
a public conversation at Brookline Booksmith, I read the prolific
O Nan's latest novel. It's the story of the aftermath of an automobile
crash in a small Connecticut town that kills three of its five occupants.
And, of course, it takes place on Halloween eve with the ghosts
of the three dead teenagers narrating the action. It's a story well
told. (RB)
What We Lost
- Dale Peck (229 PP, Houghton Mifflin)
Ah Dale Peck! What to say about his new literary offering? Nothing,
that's what. Those who care about such things, no doubt, are aware
of it through the dubious offices of James Atlas' piece in the New
York Times Magazine called "The
Take Down Artist" or Peck's infamous review of Rick
Moody that Atlas quotes to begin his profile or maybe Steve
Almond's guest column (Oct 30) at MobyLives called "Pecked
to Death."
Me, I am talking with Dale Peck soon, so stay tuned (RB)
Vernon God Little
– DBC Pierre [Peter Finlay] (277 PP, Canongate)
I noticed that Michicko
Kakatuni crapped all over this Booker Award winning novel.
Big surprise! To read her relentless indictment one is left with
the notion that either the Booker Prize jurors are rabidly anti-American
or buttheads. Reading her critique does leave me wondering what
she thinks of Jonathan Swift (not that Pierce/Finlay is in that
league) as I have found Ms Kakatuni's sensitivity to satire and
even humor limited. Anyway, you decide. (RB)
The Movies of My Life
– Alberto Fuguet (287 PP, Rayo)
Chilean writer Alberto Fuguet, who spent some of his childhood
in Southern California, has been, in typical NY Times hyperbolic
style, described as the "Eminem of Chile" (why do these
lame descriptions never work both ways, as in Eminem is the "Fuguet
of Chile"?). He is credited with being the leader of an international
literary revolution, McCondo, that purports to repudiate magical
realism. This is, on the face of it, a silly mission -- as there
was no such movement (or so would say Carlos Fuentes and recently
wrote Francisco Goldman in his NYT
magazine article on Garcia Marquez:
"Yet last year an article appeared in under the headline 'Is
Magical Realism Dead?' that claimed to introduce a new generation
of Latin American writers writing in a new gritty urban way that
was represented as a trailblazing rejection of García Márquez's
'magical realism,' alluded to as 'fairy dust.' But that article,
which incited a flurry of similar ones in the U.S. media, was based
on a fraudulent assumption…. Virtually no major Latin American
writer has written magic realism after García Márquez,
though he has had no end of popular imitators and artificial sweeteners."
But I digress. The Movies of my Life is the story of a
thirtysomething seismologist in Chile who has a strong fondness
for American culture and has his story told through the fifty films
that the protagonist Beltran Soler has seen during his youth, "Life
in California was so uneventful that we turned to movies to give
us everything we couldn't find in the neighborhood; in Chile, however,
everything was so intense -- so completely strange and inexplicable
-- that people went to the movies only when they wanted to kick
back and relax." If you respect Michael
Dirda's judgment, he concludes, "Stick with this novel.
For its first 60 pages or so, The Movies of My Life feels
both symbolically heavy-handed and slow moving. But like Don Quixote,
Alberto Fuguet's book picks up as it goes along. Once Beltran Soler
starts telling the story of his childhood, first in California and
then in Chile, you'll want to read all the way to the end."
(RB)
Ghosty Men: The Strange but True Story of Collyer Brothers, New
York's Greatest Hoarder, An Urban Historical
– Franz Lidz ( 161 PP, Bloomsbury)
Sportswriter and NPR commentator Franz Lidz, who wrote the memoir
Unstrung Heroes that became the basis for Diane Keaton's bittersweet
film, has continued what he calls his ongoing "memoir in
disguise." Lidz tells us the story of two brothers, "the
Hermits of Harlem," who lived in a mansion at 128th Street
and Fifth Ave in Harlem for forty years, who prowled the city streets
at night to fill their mansion with all manner of things: broken
baby carriages, abandoned toys, two pipe organs newspapers and on
and on—ultimately 180 tons. (RB)
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