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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; and soon enough there
will be other abbreviations to deal with. Links go to Amazon.com.
Last updated: July 14, 2004
Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans:
The Best of McSweeney’s Humor Category: 1998-2003. Ed.
Dave Eggers, et. al. (Knopf, 2004)
If you are a rabid fan of McSweeney’s and anything
that comes out of it, like I am, you should just run out and get
this book, and ask no further questions. Well, it doesn’t
come out until August, so first you can run out and get The
Believer’s June issue, which is a music issue and comes
with a mix CD, which is great for listening to first thing in the
morning, especially if you are temping. (And especially on those
Mondays when you, not being a morning person, nonetheless get up
to shower, dress, and go to your temp assignment, only to be told
that you aren’t needed any more, the temp agency was called
on Friday, and thanks for helping get the office caught up, so you
go home and listen to it on your computer while getting caught up
on book reviews. But I digress.)
So even if you aren’t a fan of McSweeney’s,
you should check this book out, because it’s funny. Especially
if you are usually not amused by 85% of what passes for funny, like
the almost lifelike Hollywood comedy robot Will Ferrell or, you
know, sitcoms, you will think this book is funny. What, you want
examples? OK, one entry, entitled “Not Very Scary Movies,”
begins with “The Island of Dr. Huxtable.” Or “Group
Mobilization as a Desperate Cry for Help” mocks the whole
flash mob fad that happened for about five minutes a couple of years
ago. There is this whole long thing about Star Wars that my newly
minted husband found really amusing, but I have to take his word
on it because I don’t get Star Wars. Something about a garbage
disposal. He was laughing his ass off, anyway. (AK)
A Secret Word by Jennifer Paddock (Touchstone,
2004)
If I were the assistant manager at the store where Jennifer Paddock
buys her gourmet cheese and wine, I would be really pissed off.
See, that’s where one of her three main characters ends up
– the one we are supposed to feel sorry for, the one who never
“got out” of her Arkansas town and working-class lifestyle
(her husband works at a record store). Paddock seems to try to make
this character look as pathetic as possible, in contrast to her
two middle-class friends, who (of course) move to New York as soon
as they get out of college, one to become (of course) an actress
and the other (of course) a lawyer. Frankly, I would rather work
at the wine and cheese shop. And you never even find out what the
damn secret word is. (AK)
Open Secrets by Alice Munro (Penguin, 1994)
Let’s just get this in the open right away: Alice Munro
is the best short story writer of all time. Please do not try to
argue with me, or I will start to cry. I love how she screws with
my head, walking right up to what you think will be the main climax
of the story, and then jumping back thirty years or half a continent.
Alice Munro never tells you the open secrets in this collection
either, but it’s OK, because you realize that the secrets
she was talking about weren’t the important part of the story
anyway. Instead, the very real lives of her characters take over,
telling their own stories without her consent but surely with her
cooperation.
Alice Munro does everything wrong, really: she describes everything
in too much detail, she writes disjointedly, her titles are terrible
(Open Secrets??), and she never really tells you what it seemed
like she was going to tell you. I read an interview with her once
that said she always kind of meant to write a novel (well, she did
write one novel) but she mainly just wrote short stories because
she didn’t have time for anything longer while raising her
kids. In fact, she has made numerous comments in interviews that
make it sound like she thought she didn’t know what she was
doing at all at first. Let’s all take a moment to thank whoever
we thank for these things that Alice Munro never made her way into
an MFA program, because in doing everything so wrong, she has pioneered
her own incomparable style that is firmly rooted in exploration
of real human characters. (AK)
Ten Little Indians by Sherman Alexie (Grove, 2003)
The latest book of short stories by Sherman Alexie, the favorite
Indian of all NPR listeners, Ten Little Indians explores
the lives of urban Indians in Seattle, from a homeless man trying
to buy his grandmother’s fancydance regalia at a pawn shop,
to a college student looking for an unknown Spokane poet whose book
she found in the university library, to a wealthy consultant taking
a cab ride to the airport, to a strong mother figure who both empowers
and encumbers her son. Alexie’s characters try to negotiate
the delicate tension between their 21st century urban identities,
including reactions to 9/11, and their Native identities, some more
successfully than others, mostly finding some balance and some poetry
in their lives.
Reflecting his background as a poet, Alexie is able to say so much
in so few words, as in the title of the story about the homeless
man, “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” reflects. But it
would be a mistake to look at this story, and the romanticized homeless
drunk at its core, as wholly indicative of the urban Indian experience,
as so many reviewers have – which is perhaps why Alexie created
so many diverse urban Indian characters. The best, most subtly nuanced
story may be the last one, “What Ever Happened to Frank Snake
Church?” which spends a couple of years in the life of a working-class
Indian who comes to terms with the deaths of his parents by going
on an odyssey to bring himself into peak physical condition, reawakening
his high school basketball glory. Alexie’s voice remains strong
to the final page of this outstanding new collection. (AK)
Women Writing Resistance: Essays on Latin America
and the Caribbean ed. Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez
(South End, 2003)
In the tradition of works like This Bridge Called My Back
and the others that followed it, Women Writing Resistance
seeks to express stories of survival of, resistance to, and revolution
from oppression of women and indigenous people in Latin America
and the Caribbean. These often harrowing essays take you to dark
places, but the strong voices of the collected writers also offer
hope for peaceful, if painful, change. The style is not overly dry
or academic, a characteristic often indicative of feminist writing
of all stripes, which often includes personal experience and reflection
mixed with more traditionally analytic academic discourse. This
is a must-read for anyone interested in women’s studies, and
a very doable can-read for just about everyone else. (AK)
The Queen’s Fool by Philippa Gregory (Touchstone,
2004)
This novel has all the qualities I love about really well-written,
high-quality historical romance: a spunky heroine, inside info about
a royal family, a lot of historical information, hidden identities,
numerous love triangles, etc. etc. In this case, a young Spanish
Jew, Hannah Green, comes to live in England with her father, a bookseller,
during the time of the Inquisition, when it was only safe to be
Catholic in Spain and safe to be a Jew or a reader of anything but
religious books nowhere. And if that weren’t enough, Hannah
can see things other people can’t, like ghosts, and the future,
etc., which leads her to a job as a holy fool in the court of Queen
Mary (aka Bloody Mary, the one right before Elizabeth, who also
has a pretty big part in the book) but could lead her into MAJOR
TROUBLE if she uses it in the wrong, i.e. heretical, situations,
major trouble which looms throughout the book. Hannah is the best
kind of spunky heroine, because she is hot-blooded and nowhere close
to perfect or pure, sometimes her spunkiness gets her into trouble,
and sometimes she is just outright wrong. But she never gets into
so much trouble that she doesn’t get to have her sort-of-happy
ending, which you saw coming but were different levels of satisfied
with, depending on your stance on feminism and ability to complicate
it for the sake of pure summer escapist reading. Yeah, this book
is just right on fun, fun, fun. (AK)
The
Hamilton Case : A Novel - Michelle de
Kretser (Little, Brown,
& Co., May 2004)
Hamilton, an English tea grower who only drinks coffee,
has been murdered in 1930s Ceylon. An Oxford-educated, deeply flawed
Anglophile lawyer named Sam Obeysekere (“Obey by name, obey
by nature”) tries to make like he’s Sherlock Holmes
and solve the case, only to have the whole thing backfire on him.
That’s the premise of this fine literary novel by Australian
author Michelle de Kretser, who was born in Sri Lanka/Ceylon and
has one other book under her belt (The Rose Grower, 1999).
A library worker named Judy just walked by and picked
up my copy of the book. “This actually sounds good. Did you
ever see ‘Jewel of the Crown’ on PBS?”
You can read an excerpt of The Hamilton Case,
which has been compared to Daniel
Mason's The Piano Tuner and Kazuo Ishiguro's The
Remains of the Day, online at the Time
Warner Bookmark website. (MB)
Body
Politic : The Great American Sports Machine
– David Shields (Simon & Schuster,
191 PP)
When I read Remote Control and Dead Languages
(and later in the new millennium, Enough about Me) it struck
me that David
Shields
was on to something. Namely a certain useful transparency about
the role of autobiography in the narrative process and product (use
this inelegance). Here's Jonathan Lethem with whom Shields read
on May 6 in Manhattan at the Housing Works at 7 PM and in Brooklyn
at midnight at Spoonbill & Sugartown: "A wonderful book.
I have never been as big a sports fan as I am lately and I think
it's partly due to Shields—Black Planet and now this
book, particularly the meditations on fandom, identification and
the satisfaction of cliches (both in the sports movies and his beautiful
compendium of broadcast speak—the depth lurking in the cliches
when we bring our identifying, yearning selves to them).”
Here's Shields on Charles Barkley from a chapter called "History
in America #34": "He is preternaturally alert to death's
siren, or at least more preternaturally alert than most 40-year-old
multimillionaire ex-athletes are. He wants desperately not to waste
his life: ‘I think you have to live as if tomorrow isn't promised
to you.’ A large part of Barkley's appeal is that he feels
this to the bottom of his bones and people can feel that he feels
that and they want some of that. He's alive, on this planet right
now. He's a brilliant extemporizer, inside the moment satyrlike,
actively searching for the jugular of the truth, and—this
is the key to presenting moderation in an immoderate appetite—nearly
always finding it in humor."
Rest assured there is more good stuff in this tome. Or to quote
the book's epigram by Public Enemy, "Fuck the game if it ain't
sayin’ nuthin." (RB)
American Desert : A Novel - Percival Everett
(Hyperion, 291 PP)
For some of us, there are writers whose newest books occasion an
act of faith. That is, we hunt the book down, plop ourselves in
a comfortable nest, obtain whatever necessities for a brief disconnect
from the external roiling reality and start to read. Some of those
writers for me are Jim Harrison, Amy
Bloom, Rick
Russo, Elmore Leonard, James Carlos Baker, Andrea
Barrett and, yes, Percival
Everett (actually, the list is unwieldingly long). Everett,
who has fifteen or sixteen books under his belt including Erasure,
God's Country, Cutting Lisa and Watershed, has a new
book. What else is there to be said? (RB)
Something From the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America
– Laura Shapiro (Viking, 303 PP)
I am not particularly preoccupied with world of food and food preparation,
but I do admire a skillful piece of social history. A few years
back I read historian and former Schlesinger Library (site of one
of the great collections of cookbooks) curator Barbara
Haber's From Hardtack to French Fries and certainly
found it revealing and entertaining. Haber says of Shapiro's book,
"A stylish and witty history of food and women. She brings
distinction to the ordinary as she brilliantly redefines an important
period in our recent past." Part of Shapiro's investigation
centers on the food industry (keep in mind Spam was introduced in
this period battle to take over the American kitchen via a campaign
to convince American women that they were not up to the difficult
task of cooking). Canned hamburgers, frozen bouillabaisse, dehydrated
wine and a fictitious spokeswoman, Betty Crocker, were part of that
campaign. Laura Shapiro also weaves the story of Julia Child and
Betty Friedan into this tale of the liberation of "the American
kitchen from the grip of the food industry and the constraints of
gender." Amen. (RB)
The
President of Good and Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush
- Peter Singer (Dutton, 280 PP)
The title of philosopher and Princeton philosophy professor Peter
Singer's book on our current President sounds like the punch
line to a bad joke. In any case we can be assured that Singer's
venture into this area will make him a target for an assortment
of hecklers and muggers. Michael
Lind, who seems to feel he has a special place at the table
of Bushian insights, can barely hide his contempt for Peter Singer's
work (oddly he is reviewing the British edition of this book, which
has a very different subtitle than the American edition, Taking
George W Bush Seriously). And then there is this
"review": "It is a higher-I.Q. version of the
many dreary left-wing pamphlets now in circulation, with titles
like Tell Robert Bork to Eat Hot Death! or Rick Santorum
is a Big Smelly Creep and I Hate Him or something equally classy.
" And not content with the above heavy hatchet battering, "If
you share Peter Singer's core beliefs -- atheism, statism, rationalism,
and a well-cultivated indifference to the value of human life as
such -- you will find this book to be wise, fair, and true. Otherwise,
you'll find it inane, slanted, and dishonest." Paul Mattick
in the NY Times observes, "Singer is a generous critic.
In discussing Bush's reverence for life, evidenced in his opposition
to stem cell research, he constructs the most plausible arguments
possible against the sacrifice of unwanted embryos, to demonstrate
convincingly how unsustainable they are. But he can hardly help
observing that Bush's ‘culture of life’ cohabits jarringly
with his enthusiasm for capital punishment and readiness to inflict
civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq. Singer is led, on issue
after issue, to a double conclusion: Bush's views are not intellectually
defensible, and his behavior shows he doesn't believe in them anyway."
So what do these divergent views suggest? Read the book, of course.
(RB)
Amy and Jordan – Mark Beyer (Pantheon)
When Art Spiegelman and Franciose Mouly were putting out their
catalogue of once and future illustrator greats, Raw, Mark
Beyer was part of that cohort. Chip "Patato" Kidd, who
designed this book and is a kind of ad hoc editor for Pantheon's
graphic novels, recently discovered Beyer's whereabouts and convinced
him to resume his art. Or something like that. Thus this wonderful
book of Beyer's work previously published from The New York
Press and The San Diego Reader, in an intelligently
formatted (5 x 11.5) hardcover. This book is a blessing for all
those who admire Beyer, Kidd and the art of graphic narration. Kudos
all around. (RB)
A
Mind for Murder: The Education of the Unabomber and the Origins
of Modern Terrorism – Alston Chase
(WW Norton, 437 PP)
The cloth edition of this very insightful and thoughtful book was
entitled Harvard
and the Unabomber, and unfortunately its publication seemed
to have been overshadowed by the loudly beating war drums of a year
ago. Here's a piece of my talk with Alston Chase:
RB: The long list of things that media got wrong about the
Unabomber is striking. What's your take on why they were so far
off?
AC: A number of factors. On the one hand it was a cultural
factor. The media were all from the big cities and they came to
Lincoln, Montana and Kaczynski lived four miles out of Lincoln and
they thought it was wilderness. Even though he was in sight of his
next door neighbor. And it was by no means a very private place—
that was part of what kept him in a state of agitation. So that's
part of the problem. Also, reporters always like to make a story
and the story at first was, in Time magazine's phrase "the
hermit on the hill"—even though he actually lived in
a creek bottom. You have the story of the good brother and bad brother
that was part of it and it just dominated much of the coverage early
on. And then—and this is a point that Kaczynski made to me
as well in our correspondence —the media came into town interviewing
everything that moved. And so they interviewed many people who didn't
know him and many people who were in logging and mining and occupations
of which he disapproved. So they were not taking these things into
account. Then there was, within a year after the arrest, a very
effective and concerted campaign by Kaczynski's family to visit
the major media outlets and to make the case that he was insane.
They were, understandably, very anxious to help him escape the death
penalty. So there was that. And then there was, the only way I can
put it, was there was the herd instinct.
If there is such a thing as a must read for anyone trying to make
sense of one face of terrorism, Chase's book qualifies. (RB)
The
Old Boys – Charles
McCarry (Overlook, 476 PP)
Other than Alan
Furst's wonderful books, I am not a devotee of the espionage
novel. I have on occasion read Le Carre—his Our Man In
Havana homage, Our Tailor in Panama and also The
Night Manager. And even his most recent, Absolute Friends.
I hear mentions of Robert Littell and Eric Ambler, but for unexamined
reasons I don’t intend for this, uh, genre to take up a lot
of space in my literal and virtual library. All of which is a long-winded
way of saying that Charles McCarry's novels are the exception to
whatever rule I think I have laid out. His newest novel suggests
the return of the enigmatic Paul Christopher and efforts by his
cousin and a group of fellow old boys (aged CIA/ Company operatives)
to save Christopher from his current travails and the world from
being threatened by, oh well, an ailing Islamic fundamentalist with
twelve very portable nuclear devices. This synopsis by necessity
does no justice to McCarry's plotting and language and the real
treat of this book, the Amphora Scroll. This 2000-year-old document
purports to explain Jesus Christ, Joshua ben Joseph, an uneducated
nobody, as the instrument of a Roman intelligence operation run
by one Septimus Arcanus. Brilliant, just brilliant. And fun. (RB)
Caramba!
: A Tale Told in Turns of the Card –
Nina Marie Martinez (Knopf, 360 PP)
In spite of the breathless press release that accompanied my copy
of this book, Peter Mendelsunds' bright, cartoony cover design trumps
the hyperbole of that pamphlet. And John Sayles (not known for engaging
in the log rolling of book blurbing), says, "Magical realism
meets la cultura de K Mart in Martinez's lively and beautifully
observed Caramba." Sandra
Cisneros chimes in with, "is about six characters in search
of a volcano. It's Thelma and Louise on the border."
So, Natalie and Consuelo live in Lava Landing, California, nestled
near the Mexican border, work in a cheese plant and have big ambitions
including wresting Consuelo's father out of "the Perg."
This riotous book is lavishly illustrated with (83) Loteria cards
and an unlikely array of artifacts. Call me silly, but this is a
book that affirms that you can judge a book by its cover. (RB)
A
Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by
Dave Eggers, Simon and Schuster, 2000
Yes, I realize the rest of you already read this book years ago
when it came out. I was somewhat preoccupied with getting a couple
of degrees, and I am now playing catch-up. What can I say that you
haven't already read, except Heartbreaking is a great book to read
while you are temping. I read it every morning and afternoon for
my fifteen minute breaks, and a whole hour at lunchtime, every day
until I was finished. Its style, which reviewers years ago were
calling manic, is the perfect antidote to working in a cubicle.
Eggers even temps during much of the book! If you are going through
withdrawal from Eggers' fast-talking style afterwards, read his
wife Vendela Vida's novel, And Now You Can Go. It's just
as quick, although not quite as "manic," but still a little
nutty. Now on to that stack of Believers that has been
building up since last summer . . . (AK)
A
Room of One's Own by
Virginia Woolf, 1929
I was reading some Adrienne Rich the other day, and she brought
up this seminal work of Woolf's. I suddenly became embarrassed to
realize that I had never actually read it. Luckily, no one was around,
and half.com got it to me in less than a week. Short and pointedly
sarcastic, I found it to be one of Woolf's more accessible essays.
It's exciting to read something so forward-looking; while written
seventy-five years ago, this work calls for attention for women
writers that is now being lavished on some while still being withheld
from others. Although Woolf's arguments are firmly rooted in her
time period, and although my freshmen students always like to think
that Sexism is Dead, that all of the problems between the genders
have been solved, of course we know this is not true, and some of
Woolf's arguments remain timeless. And really, the central image
is so simple and yet so vital to women's (or anyone's) creativity:
a room of one's own, a place to write! and think and not be bothered
with the minutae of daily life. How many women have that luxury
even now? I am lucky to have a partner who supports and celebrates
any creative work I do (and indeed he is lucky he does), and this
is in part, no doubt, thanks to women like Woolf who paved the way.
(AK)
The
Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel
by Robert Hough
Reading The Final Confession of Mabel Stark by Robert
Hough made me a little jumpy around my unusual cat. Like Mabel's
tigers, my cat really likes attention and affection. Like Mabel's
tigers, my cat likes to jump on me and scratch a little. Like Mabel's
tiger Rajah, my cat even sleeps with me at night when my man is
working a late shift. But unlike Mabel's tigers, my cat weighs closer
to five pounds than five hundred. Unlike Mabel's tigers, my cat
has never put me in the hospital. Unlike Mabel, I am not a real-life
early 20th century female circus cat trainer, living on the edge
of danger every time I play with my cat, so my life would probably
not make as interesting of a fictional autobiography as Hough has
created here. So I guess I have nothing to worry about. My cat is
kind of unpredictable, though . . . (AK)
Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species by
Laura Flanders
Watching the 2000 Republican National Convention on TV, I could
not help but notice all of the signs waving that declared, "W
Stands for Women." Perhaps this was the introduction of the
Bush administration's hamfisted practice of writing catchphrases
which make extremely obvious statements that should be hard to argue
with, but in reality mean nothing to the people who wrote them.
I suspect it was not, but it was the one that stuck in my mind,
and in Laura Flanders's mind too, inspiring her to write the enlightening
Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species, which outlines the
lives and specious accomplishments of the women who give a female
face to one of the most anti-female administrations this country
has seen in long, long time. Read it. It will confirm what you already
knew: W is indeed the first letter of Women, but what is more relevant
to the current administration is what was on the back sides of the
Bush placards, the sides we didn't see on TV: what B stands for.
(AK)
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