|
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.
August 31, 2003
The Prince of Providence: The True Story
of America's Most Notorious Mayor, Some Wiseguys and the Feds
–Mike Stanton (442 PP, Random House)
Mike Stanton, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 and
heads the Providence Journal investigative reporting team,
spotlights convicted felon and former mayor of Providence, Buddy
Cianci's twenty-five-year career in what one FBI corruption expert
called "The Louisiana of the North." This story has everything:
corruption, wise guys, crimes of passion and unforgettable characters
like "Buckles" Melise (head of Providence's vermin control
unit) and Anthony "the Saint" St Lauren as the supporting
cast in what Stanton's publisher describes as "the longest
running lounge act in American politics." (RB)
Trundling Grunts
-Glen Baxter (96 PP, Bloomsbury)
This book was published in 2002, but I just discovered it. It's
"dedicated to all those who have forsworn suede and eschewed
the goatee in all its forms." We can't write about Baxter
more cleverly than he does himself, "Although Glen Baxter's
drawings continue to be the subject of exhibitions in London, Paris
and San Francisco, he himself has become the subject of medical
speculation following an unscheduled appearance at the recent Bi-Annual
Wimple Burnishing Festival in Oslo. A group of intrepid French journalists,
masquerading as Belgians, entered the W.H.O. office there and secured
a copy of the Green Paper ‘Tofu Walk with Me’ in which
Baxter's condition is described as borderline normal.” Glen
Baxter is also a contributor to The New Yorker. (RB)
Interesting Times: A Twentieth Century Life
–Eric Hobsbawn (446 PP, Pantheon)
Octogenarian and historian Eric Hobsbawm is the author of more
than twenty books, including The Age of Revolution. He
was born in Egypt in 1917, and his family moved to Vienna and then
Berlin where
Hobsbawm was witness to rise of Hitler. Later in England he was,
for many years, an unrepentant Communist. In a lucid and insightful
essay in the NYTBR Christopher Hitchens (who, contrary to the yipping
terriers nipping his trousers legs, is not "in decline")
observes
about Eric Hobsbawm:
"Thus there is less paradox than first appears in the willingness
of such a civilized man to align himself with such a barbaric and
philistine politics. He did it, he tells us in effect, because the
Communist International supplied the elements of family and fatherland
that were unavailable to a deracinated Jewish orphan intellectual.
In other words, he did it because of his displaced yearning for
family values, religion and patriotism: the Tory virtues. In a memoir
that is often very reticent (a whole bad marriage goes by in a blink)
he reveals perhaps more than he intends when he tells us, 'I confess
that the moment when I recognized that I could envisage a real relationship
with someone who was not a potential recruit to the party was the
moment I recognized that I was no longer a Communist in the full
sense of my youth.' A great deal is compressed into that wry, arid
sentence."
Yes there is. And anyone who is not ideologically hobbled by what
passes for open dialogue in the US will find this intellectual memoir
a riveting tour of the recently past century. (RB)
The Poetry of Pablo Neruda
-edited w. intro by Ilan Stavans (996 PP, Farrar Straus Giroux)
The solitary dust jacket quote is from Gabriel Garcia Marquez,
"The greatest poet of the twentieth century—in any language."
Over six hundred poems by Chilean poet and Nobel Prize winner Neftali
Ricardo Reyes Basoalto known by his pen name, Pablo Neruda (an homage
to Czech poet Jan Neruda) are collected in this singular volume,
some newly translated. Here's a piece of "The Invisible Man"
from Elemental Odes:
I laugh,
I smile
at the old poets,
and l love all the
poetry they wrote,
all the dew,
moon, diamond, drops
of submerged silver
with which my elder brother
adorned the rose;
but
I smile;
they always say "I,"
at every turn
something happens,
it's always "I,"
only they or
the dear heart they love
walk through the streets,
only they,
no fisherman pass by,
no booksellers,
no masons pass by,
no one falls
from scaffolding,
no one suffers,
no one loves,
except my poor brother,
the poet,
everything happens to him…
Pablo Neruda is one of the most widely translated poets in the
world. He died in 1973. (RB)
August 25, 2003
Timoleon Vieta Come Home
-Dan Rhodes (226 PP, Canongate)
Dan Rhodes' Anthropology is frequently called a cult hit,
and he has recently been anointed by selection to the latest Granta
"Best Young British Novelists" List. Just a hair over
thirty has-been, he has also publicly toyed with the idea of retiring
from writing, but his first novel suggests he has shelved that idea.
The publication of Timoleon Vieta Come Home novel has
a back-story, "My old publisher refused to put it out,
so it was in limbo for about a year. It was a hideous episode, and
placing it with Canongate was a major victory, and marked the beginning
of the end of a very unpleasant chapter of my life. I didn't really
weep, but I did punch the air with joy when I found out they liked
it. The other two books had sold to a 'cult' level (i.e. not particularly
well) so there was no guarantee that it would come out at all. I'm
happy for it to have come out in book form. Everything else -- all
the translations, sales, good reviews, etc -- is a bonus.”
Timoleon Vieta is the story of a gay male and his dog and
is called "A deeply moving and post-modern take on Lassie
Come Home…" But don't let that deter you. (RB)
Zones of Exclusion: Pripyat and Chernobyl
–Robert Polidori (112 PP, Steidl)
In April of 1986, the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl ran amok,
and after the permanent evacuation of 116,000 residents of the surrounding
area it was declared unfit for human habitation. In May 2001 award-winning
photographer Robert Polidori (Havana) documented these
modern ghost towns. Zones of Exclusion includes the worker's
bedroom community of Pripyat. As in his masterful photographs of
Havana, Polidori's 190 images are made with his distinctive color
palette and are of the burned-out control room of Reactor 4, abandoned
nurseries, ransacked schools and cannibalized machinery. As has
been correctly pointed out, "Often considered an architectural
photographer, Robert Polidori is in fact a photographer of habitat.
On the surface, his subjects are buildings. But at the core his
lens is focused on the remnants and traces of living…"
(RB)
All The Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle
East Terror
- Stephen Kinzer (258 PP, Wiley)
Stephen Kinzer (with Stephen Schlesinger) was the co–author
of one of the seminal books on Central America, Bitter Fruit,
the history of the 1954 CIA-sponsored military coup of the legally
elected government of Guatemala. He was also the NY Times
correspondent in Central America during the Reagan adventures in
the '80s and wrote Blood of Brothers about his experiences
in Nicaragua in that time. Kinzer's newest book reconstructs the
August 1953 coup that installed Mohammed Reza Shah on the imperial
throne of Iran. As Kinzer opines, "It is not far fetched to
draw a line from Operation Ajax through the Shah's repressive regime
and the Islamic Revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the World
Trade Center in New York." (RB)
She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders
– Jennifer Finney Boylan (300 PP, Broadway)
Social deviation (from the norm) seems to be the stuff of Oprah
and Jerry Springer and in my experience is rarely presented thoughtfully
and with the intention to enlighten. Add sexual matters to the mix,
and what you usually get is tawdry and titillating afternoon TV
gibberish. Amy Bloom's Normal was the first non-academic
book I read that sensibly treated transsexuals, cross dressers and
hermaphrodites. Now comes Jennifer Finney Boylan, co-chairman of
the English Department at Colby College, known for forty years as
James to her friends. Hers is simply (if that is possible) the story
of a man who became a woman. Richard Russo, Jenny's best friend,
provides an afterword to this transgender memoir. (RB)
Root Doctor
– Jack Saunders (28 PP, Garage Band Books)
What to make of Jack
Saunders? Here's Jack on himself. "Caveat Lector: Jack
Saunders talks like he thinks, he writes like he talks, and he publishes
what he writes. If vernacular language offends you, don't click
on the links below. Vernacular translates of native-born
slaves. A slave is an ambassador in bonds, who speaks boldly,
as one ought to speak. To his master. If this appeals to you, read
on, and tell people about roman-feuilleton.com." I'm holding
a copy Saunder's recent self-published Root Doctor. I'm
not sure what it is. But it's fun and compelling. And since Jack
writes at least a novel a month, I'm certain we will have more to
say about him soon. (RB)
Hungry Ghost
– Keith Kachtick (322 PP, HarperCollins)
Texas-born Keith Kachtick attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop
and has been published in an array of the usual credential puffing
publications. Currently he teaches meditation classes in youth prisons
around New York City. His first novel is the story of a middle-aged
drug dependent and addled New York photojournalist who ends up in
Buddhist retreat where he invites a young woman he meets on a photo
shoot in Morocco. There the two Americans encounter a series of
problems that are the narrative engine of this book that the publisher
calls a "new spin on modern romance." (RB)
Marx for Beginners -Rius aka Eduardo
Del Rio (156 PP, Pantheon)
Darwin for Beginners -Jonathan Miler & Borin Van Loon
(176 PP, Pantheon)
Einstein for Beginners -Joseph Schwartz & Micheal Mcguiness
(173 PP, Pantheon)
Freud for Beginners -Richard Appignanesi & Oscar Zarate
(174 PP, Pantheon)
I am willing to bet Matt Borondy's Honda that you don't know the
ten points of the Communist Manifesto. That doesn't make you a dummy
(apparently a burgeoning niche in publishing). This series was first
published twenty-five years ago, before the "dummy" book
phenomenon and beginning with Mexican editorial cartoonist Eduardo
del Rio's (Cuba for Beginners) Marx volume, these books
present these world historical thinkers in understandable and amusing
commentary. (RB)
August 16, 2003
Commandante Che: Guerrilla soldier, Commander,
and Strategist (1956-1967)
– Paul J Dosal (335 PP, Penn State Press)
Ah well, those people and readers who are familiar with my interests
and obsessions are by now aware of my fascination with all things
Cuban. Thus even this scholarly tome that details battles and war
strategy of Che Guevera's last decade has a certain attraction.
Unlike the dismissive and narrow stance that Lawrence
Osborne expressed recently in the New York Observer,
"The refusal to see Che for what he really was is proving to
be a strangely obstinate phenomenon. You never know where it will
turn up next…” Cold War historian Robert Conquest commented
on the "rebirth" of Che in his 1999 book, Reflections
on a Ravaged Century, citing the "persistence to this
day of an adolescent revolutionary romanticism, as one of the unfortunate
afflictions to which the human mind was and is prone." It’s
being demonstrated "yet again with (hardly credible though
it may be) a revival of the cult of the totalitarian terrorist Che
Guevara." Osborne and his revolutionary debunking cronies,
of course, see Che for what he was, "a mere footnote in history."
Well, hey, I don't think so. (RB)
The Misread City: New Literary Los Angeles
– edited by Scott Timburg and Dana Gioia (286 PP, Red Hen
Press)
An unlikely anthology, certainly to readers and literati on the
other side of the country. Worth a look and more, especially since
Los Angeles is the biggest book market in the country this suggests
serious evidence of literacy. And this book should quiet the notion
that all Angelinos and Californians are sun-addled ignoramuses who
will drag out their screenplay at the merest suggestion of interest.
(RB)
One Hundred Years of Solitude
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez (417 PP, HarperCollins)
A new hardcover edition of Gabo's masterpiece (the Gregory Rabassa
translation) published thirty-three years after its initial introduction
is an immense personal joy (given my disdain for the soft-cover
book), but on the positive side because I try to re-read
100 Years or Love in Time of Cholera every year.
My first contact with Macondo and the Buendia family dates back
to Fullerton Beach in Chicago in the summer of 1972 and my fascination
has gone unabated for over thirty years. Alan Rich at Modern
Word has a
terrific website devoted to Garcia Marquez and it is a magical
source of elucidation should one's interest go beyond the village's
boundaries. (RB)
Envy
– Joseph Epstein (109 PP, Oxford University Press)
America's self-appointed leading snobographer, Joseph Epstein (Snobbery:
American Version, Fabulous Small Jews) turns his nimble mind
to one of the allegedly seven deadly sins. The New York Public Library
and the Oxford University Press indulge one of those occasional
series in which smart writers take up the notion of particular sins.
Besides Epstein, Michael Eric Dyson looks at Pride, Robert A.F Thurman
examines Anger, Wendy Wasserstein focuses on Sloth, Phyllis Tickle
unpacks Greed, Francine Prose dissects Gluttony and Simon Blackburn
explicates Lust. Even if you are hardly interested in an intellectual
view of sin, Epstein, a joyfully humorous writer, is worth the price
of admission. (RB)
McSweeney's No. 11
-edited by Dave Eggers (293 PP, McSweeney's)
Besides a photograph of Keith Haring by Anne Leibowitz, the only
other purchase that I have made that actually turned out to be a
good investment was paying a hundred dollars in 1998 for a lifetime
subscription to McSweeney's. In addition to the two McSweeney's
t- shirts and a xerox certificate acknowledging my (at that time)
largesse, I now have a complete set of all eleven issues which are
no doubt worth thousands of dollars. I think I might even have one
of them signed by Dave. Anyway, enough about me. Number 11 contains
material by TC Boyle, Denis Johnson, Lawrence Wechsler, Robert Olmstead
and Joyce Carol Oates of the charted literary world. And, of course,
a choice selection of unknowns. Also included, a mystery DVD. Does
The New York Review of Books give you this? (RB)
The Known World
- Edward P Jones (388 PP, AMISTAD/Harper Collins)
Edward P Jones' debut story collection Lost in the City
was nominated for a National Book Award. Among other things that
means that there will be the claim that there has been a building
anticipation for his first novel, The Known World. In my
neck of the proverbial woods, bookseller Tim
Huggins is already touting Jones' book and has him at his shop
in October. Judging from his itinerary Ed Jones will be all over
the USA this fall touring through twenty cities. The novel begins
with Henry Townsend, a former slave in Virginia, who via various
odd turns of fate ends up owning his plantation and slaves after
the Civil War. That would be quite a story…(RB)
|
