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identity theory is a regularly published, web-based magazine of literature and culture edited by matt borondy. [contact]

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a reader's progress

robert birnbaum's musings on the world of literature

August 16, 2006

The worst violators of nature and human rights never go to jail. They hold the keys. In the world as it is, the looking-glass world, the countries that guard the peace also make and sell the most weapons. The most prestigious banks launder the most drug money and harbor the most stolen cash. The most successful industries are the most poisonous for the planet.

Between the richest of the rich, who appear on the porno-financial pages of Forbes and Fortune, and the poorest of the poor, who appear on the streets and in the fields, the chasm is even greater. A pregnant woman in Africa is a hundred times more likely to die than a pregnant woman in Europe. The value of pet products sold annually in the United States is four times the GNP of Ethiopia. The sales of just the two giants General Motors and Ford easily surpass the value of all black Africa's economies. According to the United Nations Development Program, "Ten people, the ten richest men on the planet, own wealth equivalent to the value of the total production of fifty countries, and 447 multimillionaires own a greater fortune than the annual income of half of humanity." The head of this UN agency, James Gustave Speth, declared in 1997 that over the past half century the number of rich people doubled while the number of poor tripled and that 1.6 billion people were worse off than they had been only fifteen years earlier.

- From Upside Down, A Primer for the Looking Glass World by Eduardo Galeano

With Eduardo Galeano’s exhortation that words are sacred resonating in my ears after my recent chat with him and the release of a new edition of the American Heritage Dictionary occupying some top-of-mind space, I can’t help but look at the public utterances of sick puppy anti-Semite Mel Gibson and automaton war criminal Condoleeza Rice with both despair and wonder. Having given up declinist impulses and proclamations sometime in my sophomore year in college, I don’t posit that the fate of the Universe hinges on anything that the so-called actor and the so-called diplomat say or do, but their recent actions and statements are symptomatic of a reality gone off kilter and the growing schism Galeano has lamented between words and reality.

Rice first. I saw Ms. Rice being interviewed by PBS’s Ray Suarez in a Q&A that was contrived to look as if they were in the same room (why would they do that, do you think?). Rice’s expressions of sorrow, speaking for the United States, about the 60 civilians, for instance, slaughtered at Qana, were so palpably unconvincing and mechanical as to be Stepfordian (one would hope that she had retained some humanity and that somewhere this brilliant-woman-turned-apologist/lackey did indeed feel the sorrow that she apparently was obliged to proffer). Of course, these dead were killed because the bad guys were allegedly hiding amongst them, so too bad.

And then we are treated to endless bleating and ululating about Mel Gibson’s latest depredations (anyone still trying to rehabilitate Herr Gibson would do well to read Christopher Hitchens’s judicious brief at Slate) leaving one to wonder if any thing means anything at all, or as Lewis Carroll proclaimed “words mean what I say they mean” and the like. Not for nothing was Carroll a logician by trade and author of Alice in Wonderland’s Looking Glass world.

Mel Gibson is not an anti-Semite like Charles Lindbergh and Father Coughlin and most of the world is not anti-Semitic. What was the name, again, of that movie Gibson produced and directed?

The trouble is, of course, not that there are bad people and evil afoot in the world. Well, okay, it’s trouble, but that’s the way it is, right? No, the cruel and profound puzzle is that in the face of evil and stupidity and the like, people who should know better turn away. Not a new phenomenon, so the ridiculous analysis that people suffer from disaster fatigue does not explain the world’s indifference in WWII and ever since, to the massive suffering that was finally given a name—that being genocide. Is it irony that crimes against humanity were identified and codified at the same time there was a valiant rhetorical resolve, “Never Again?” David Rieff has skeptically interpreted this to mean “Never again will European Jews be mass murdered in the mid 20th century.” One has only to look at a list of genocides in the waning days of the last millennium to understand the source of Rieff’s disbelief and to wonder at the durability of our humanitarian resolve.

Okay then, so what’s to be done? I’m not sure, but for a start I would like to see (y)our President take himself to downtown Beirut and dare the pair of murdering malefactors to shoot. I think that would end the hostilities. Maybe not. Or at least perchance save the lives of all those women and children that Secretary Rice is not shedding tears over. Keep in mind, being elusive is the one certain quality the mumbo jumbo coming from senior administration officials has and that it is of the same quality as the gibberish that has been explaining what is now commonly known as the Iraq fiasco and the post-Katrina debacle which, as Izzy Stone pointedly made a career of proclaiming, is a pack of lies.

And Mel Gibson and anti Semitism—really, who cares? Jews don’t, except for a few headline-glomming rabbis looking for larger congregations. Is there anyone in this world that thinks that there is one thing that can be done to eradicate, reduce or ameliorate anti-Semitism? If there is, let them answer the question, “Why do people hate the Jews?” As far as I can tell, Henry Bean’s poignant film The Believer had the right answer: “Because they just do.”

Being against anti-Semitism and racism and war—such noble aspirations. It reminds me of the lines from Gil Scott Heron’s "Work for Peace":

If we only work for Peace,
If everyone believed in Peace the way they say they do,
we'd have Peace.

The only thing wrong with Peace
is that you can't make no money from it.

It remains to understand what is being done to our understanding of the world when we care so little about how we use words that relate to it? We don’t seem to think they are sacred after all. Perhaps we should surrender to the regnant trope of our time?

Whatever.

June 27, 2006

Once again the New York Times seems to have roiled the literary pond, provoking, depending on your disposition, screeches of indignation or snarls of ridicule. The occasion for the rising noise level being the lame-assed (I guess I am tipping my hand here) attempt to name the best American novel of the past 25 years. While not as rank as Paris Hilton, as vile as Donald Trump, as juiced up as methamphetamine poster child Ann Coulter or as vapid as Jessica Simpson, the NYTBR seems to be increasingly a cultural gatekeeper (some? many?) people love to hate.

A few years ago, chatting with Hendrick Herzberg, we touched on the NYTBR, and he observed, "I think it’s a mistake to try to make the New York Times Book Review interesting. It’s a public utility of a sort…a piece that’s lively and provocative when it’s in the New Republic or if it’s on this web site or on Slate or Salon, it has an entirely different meaning when you put it into the Times Book Review. I certainly have had the experience of writing for the Times Book Review and dulling it down. Because you feel a tremendous sense of responsibility. There is a lot at stake."

Apparently, the current editorial leadership doesn't subscribe to this point of view. The astute Jen Howard, formerly of the Washington Post's BookWorld, opines:

"There's more Times-bashing now than I've ever seen before, but people still pay attention to it—even if they make fun of it. Look at all the talkback the Book Review got from that best-of-the-last-25-years list. Everybody hated that list, and everybody talked about it—and I guarantee you the Book Review's editors were counting on that. [my italics] The section doesn't need to be loved, it just needs to be read. And it is. Or glanced at, anyway."

Howard also remarks on a notion that most concerns me, "Has the NYTBR ever really been the gold standard of American literary criticism, or just the most visible one?" [And is it yet?] This is at the crux of the periodic caterwauling debating the importance attached to the Times' book coverage. Sam Tanenhaus, who followed the inestimable Charles “Chip” McGrath into the editorial hot seat, seems to want both—higher circulation and buzz [not to mention personal glory] and more gravitas attached to the Times as a literary arbiter. Tanenhaus, who reportedly is one humorless fellow, claims that the Book Review is the best book section in the U.S.—a claim that is at best humorous even if Tanenhaus' comic abilities are accidental. I would point to Oscar Villalon's San Francisco Chronicle, David Ulin's L.A. Times, or Tom Walker's Denver Post as examples of good and relevant newspaper book sections.

The very savvy Howard nails a key point: “The more great reviewing there is in other places—other papers, magazines, litblogs, wherever—the more the Times may feel its influence being nibbled away at." No doubt this a serious, critical and quite understandable concern for the New York Times—in all areas. What is not as clear to me is why people who know better—meaning they have more than a passing acquaintance with the literary world, its history and current state of affairs, and in fact have more direct access to information about it—feel the need to condemn the Times when it seems that a seismic shift in corporate media mandates and prerogatives underpins its editorial judgements.

One thing I hadn’t thought of before is that there is an uncharted population of interested parties—writers, serious readers, and editors who will not speak out on the decline of the Times as they either directly get work or are concerned about the [future] review reception of their work. For the time being the Times is still a heavy weight in the market place. Thomas McGuane in a conversation related this:

Thomas: … It was interesting the last time I saw you, I got this great review from Fredrick Busch. The best review I think I have ever gotten for a book. I had this kind of funny experience with that book [Nothing But Blue Skies] which was that it got great reviews everywhere except the Sunday New York Times.

Robert: Which in the publishing world seems to be the most important.

Thomas: Yeah, it’s in every independent bookseller's desk …My [former] son-in-law Walter Kirn is a novelist and his first book came out and he got a bad review in the NY Times. He was out on book tour, he made one stop, and his publisher called up and said, “Go home.” And cancelled the tour. All based on that. You could have a book reviewed in the L.A. Times by Saul Bellow and get a rave review and it wouldn’t make much difference, but a graduate student in the NY Times can kill you.

You get the idea, right? There was a time when the Times stood tall on the literary horizon and, for example, even occasioned such perverse exercises as Gore Vidal [an effort later reprised by Anthony Lane] reading and reviewing all the books on the best seller list. Today it seems to have ceded its integrity and dependability for the short-fingered aspirations of marketers and “brand optimizers.” In an increasingly embattled economy of attention, that’s not a good deal for anyone except perhaps New York Times Company shareholders. Maybe.

Note: Apparently that some people require a deadline is dramatically exhibited by the almost two year lapse in filings at Robert Birnbaum's mutant web log, a reader's progress (in some circles it would rightfully be called a journal (note the restrained— nay—the subtle use of hypertext). All that side, to quote the Bard "All's well that ends well." Or Billy Wilder, "Nobody's perfect."

Four More Years (August 26, 2004)

Four years is the time we set aside for high school, undergraduate degrees and presidential terms. It happens also to be the length of time that Identitytheory dot com has been broadbanding across the Internet firmament. This anniversary probably requires some (few) words to mark it and its progress, if not for its readers, certainly for its creators and contributors. Or at least for me.

I am struck, these few years later, by the consistency of Identitytheory approach and—forgive the loaded word—its ethos, exemplified by my first contact with its progenitor, young and noble Matt Borondy. Four summers ago, Matt approached me desiring my contribution of a Howard Zinn conversation for his yet-to-be online website/webzine. My reaction was one of ambivalence. Harboring at that time the opinion that the Internet was the first refuge of scoundrels and thieves in a new economic paradigm, I was wary. On the other hand, I didn't see how propagating the name of Howard Zinn and his good works could be for a scurrilous end. At the time, I demurred, preferring to wait for the site to be launched.

When finally I offered young Borondy a conversation with the brilliant and peculiarly amusing Jewish cartoonist, Ben Katchor it was quickly accepted—as were my talks with writers Alan Furst, Julian Barnes, Adam Gopnik, Susan Orlean, Alan Lightman, Manil Suri, Andre Dubus III and Amy Bloom. Finally, in the spring of 2001 I once again sat down with Howard Zinn and produced the first of the two conversations for IDT with the author of the People's History of The United States.

At this odd point in time, Identitytheory is the repository much of my work (for lack of a better word) of the past few years. It is as well, the (at least vacation) home of a number of other writers and poets and artists (you might even find Matt's NFL picks for the past two seasons somewhere), and I encourage everyone within eyesight of my words to kick around IDT's side streets and back alleys. But that self-promoting suggestion didn't need the exhalation of a three of four hundred words. So what justifies this celebratory verbiage?

Okay then, let me join the issue at hand. The remarkable work (I still haven't found a better word, in spite of current superlative devaluation) here is all the more worthy of commendation because none of it was done with an eye to an appreciation of bank accounts or the enhancement of purchasing powers. Dreams of SUVs, Ipods, 52" HD plasma screen TVs--or any of the panoply of toys and distractions that are available to citizens of this mighty and righteous nation--were not the engine for the conversations, poems, meditations, photos and all manner of literary stuff that comprises this creative sanctuary. And that's all that this sceptered site content may have in common—that it to say, it wasn't about the Benjamins.

Perhaps this is not so satisfying an answer. People of an artistic bent are always special pleading on this or that (self-serving) issue. No, I came to recognize that in pursuing the creation of the works that you find at Identitytheory, the disabling of one's consumer identity doesn't make any of us unique or particularly noble (as much as I would be pleased to make that claim). What it does do is put us within a tradition and a culture that values ideas and feelings and images that are always seemingly marginal and on the verge of extinction. That is the culture of literature. The mistake here of course is that when we substitute 'story telling' for 'literature' we see that the danger of extinction is really unlikely.

Okay, okay, I am rambling. Here's the thing—in addition to being able to indulge whatever dictates of ecstatic artistic urgencies present themselves, this strange little boat sails uncharted waters with a flotilla of other strange and drunken boats. What a fine thing it has been to meet in some unlikely way, fellow sailors Mark Sarvas, Carrie Frye, Maud Newton, Huree Babu, Dennis Loy Johnson, Banafsheh Zand -Bonazzi, Daniel Green, Rosecranz Baldwin, Michael Ortofor, Tom Rakewell, Sam Jones, Ed Champion, Jimmy Beck, Ron Hogan, Dong Resin, Lizzie Skurnick, Sarah Weinman, Laila Lalami and more. That's the really energizing and inspiring thing: that the never-ending conversation goes on, bringing meaning and meanings to its participants. That's a pretty good thing, no?

April 7, 2004

It is best not to disclaim any low motives for one's criticism and embitterment with the forces of ignorance and unbridled commerce, and I must leave it to others to discover the base reasons for my dismay and with the e-mob that lays claim to the portals of the brave new world. I have already aired out my chagrin that Gerard Jones' long-awaited (at least by his family members) novel, Ginny Good, has scarcely attracted any attention except by the astute and outspoken Ed Champion at his web log, The Return of the Reluctant.

Now comes a great, perhaps greater, crime against good sense and compelling literature. To whit, the complete disregard and roaring silence about the publication in the New Yorker, 29 March issue, of Jim Harrison's short story, "Father Daughter." I will be, of course, sending out indignant e-missives (not by design, but I am certain my fury at this gross violation of literary common sense will shine through) to those of my acquaintances who have weblogs, for some explanations for their derelictions. One can only hope that there will have been a significant attitudinal correction to greet the publication of Harrison's new novel, True North.

Harrison's story is set at a small bistro in Colorado Springs where Norton and his daughter Laura are having lunch. Norton has recently done a nine-month bit for tax evasion, which apparently has left him with 80% of his substantial assets intact. He is divorced from Laura's environmental lobbyist mother, and this story is about his longing for connection with his college-age daughter and the clues we get as to why the relationship might be as tenuous as it is seems to be in the context of this story. Told with Jim Harrison's trademark off-handed good humor, "Father Daughter" is a bittersweet tale which resonates with the commanding characteristic for which I prize Harrison's writing and world view, his great, big hearted humanity:

By the time he hit the noxious traffic of Denver, he had become contemptuous of his own muddiness. There was nothing like family to throw you off-kilter. His parents had been bitterly disappointed at his divorce. His mother had told him that she was ashamed of him, and his father, suspecting infidelity as a cause, had droned, "Son, it's better to climb the same mountain a hundred times than a hundred different mountains." This kind of otiose country wisdom had always baffled him, and he thought of dreary church potluck suppers, where the strident problems of the outside world were dismissed with a chuckle.

To my way of thinking, almost any paragraph is quotable, and I was tempted to cite the story's final one, but least someone stumble over this buried journal and feel moved to find this story, I will leave them the joy of that discovery.

April 2, 2004

To sink to the old good news/bad news routine, Avenue Victor Hugo Bookstore is closing its doors after 29 years. Vince McCaffrey lays out his view of the objective conditions that led to this final closing:

Twelve reasons for the death of small and independent bookstores

Ever thankful to those who made the effort before us, with heartfelt apologies to those who are still in the fight and the few who support them--offered upon the closing of Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop in Boston.

1. Corporate law (and the politicians, lawyers, businessmen and accountants who created it for their own benefit)--a legal fiction with more rights than the individual citizen, which allows the likes of Barnes & Noble and Walmart to write off the losses of a store in Massachusetts against the profit of another in California, while paying taxes in Delaware--for making ‘competition’ a joke and turning the free market down the dark road toward state capitalism.

2. Publishers--marketing their product like so much soap or breakfast cereal, aiming at demographics instead of people, looking for the biggest immediate return instead of considering the future of their industry, ignoring the art of typography, the craft of binding, and needs of editing, all to make a cheapened product of glue and glitz--for being careless of a 500 year heritage with devastating result.

3. Book buyers--those who want the ‘convenience’ and ‘cost savings’ of shopping in malls, over the quaint, the dusty, or the unique; who buy books according to price instead of content, and prefer what is popular over what is good--for creating a mass market of the cheap, the loud, and the shiny.

4. Writers--who sell their souls to be published, write what is already being written or choose the new for its own sake, opt to feed the demands of editors rather than do their own best work, place style over substance, and bear no standards--for boring their readers unto television.

5. Booksellers--who supply the artificial demand created by marketing departments for the short term gain, accept second class treatment from publishers, push what is ‘hot’ instead of developing the long term interest of the reader--for failing to promote quality of content and excellence in book making.

6. Government (local, state and federal)--which taxes commercial property to the maximum, driving out the smaller and marginal businesses which are both the seed of future enterprise and the tradition of the past, while giving tax breaks to chain stores, thus killing the personality of a city--for producing the burden of tax codes only accountants can love.

7. Librarians--once the guardians, who now watch over their budgets instead--for destroying books which would last centuries to find room for disks and tapes which disintegrate in a few years and require costly maintenance or replacement by equipment soon to be obsolete.

8. Book collectors--who have metamorphosed from book worms to moths attracted only to the bright; once the sentinels of a favorite author’s work, now mere speculators on the ephemeral product of celebrity--for putting books on the same level with beanie babies.

9. Teachers--assigning books because of topical appeal, or because of their own lazy familiarity, instead of choosing what is best; thus a tale about the teenage angst of a World War Two era prep school boy is pushed at students who do not know when World War Two took place--for failing to pass the torch of civilization to the next generation.

10. Editors--who have forgotten the editorial craft--for servicing the marketing department, pursuing fast results and name recognition over quality of content and offering authors the Faustian bargain of fame and fortune, while pleading their best intentions like goats.

11. Reviewers--for promoting what is being advertised, puffing the famous to gain attention, being petty and personal, and praising the obscure with priestly authority--all the while being paid by the word.

12. The Public--those who do not read books, or can not find the time; who live by the flickering light of the television, and will be the first to fear the darkening of civilization--for not caring about consequences.

"Thus, we come to the twilight of the age of books; to the closing of the mind; to the pitiful end of the quest for knowledge--and stare into the cold abyss of night."

John Usher

From THE HOUND by John Usher, copyright 2004. Permission to reproduce is granted to all upon request with proper attribution.

I have some views on these matters of book commerce, but I am hoping to sit down with Vince and talk about his years in the trade and other things and thus air my own thoughts in a more contentious context.

Gerard Jones, infamous for his iconoclastic web site Everyone Who's Anyone in Adult Trade Publishing, has published his long repressed novel, Ginny Good. No surprise then that G (I guess I must disclose that I frequently correspond with him and thus have been given to referring to Jones as 'G') has brought his singular brand of skeptical exuberance to this fiction, which in fact was the catalyst to the greater infamy he has gained by tugging at the beards of the high and mighty. I think I'll save my take on Ginny Good for when I have actually read the whole thing. I have so far been prevented from doing so by the inability to go though a few pages without busting a gut laughing—this is additionally embarrassing in public where my gleeful outbursts were greeted with the kind of body language one might expect of Tourette's sufferers. I wrote G telling him that I thought a surgeon general's warning might be appropriate.

Anyway, what I am distressed about is that the 3rd edition of EWA has gotten a few mentions at the more conscientious web logs but not one mention of G's GG. This is, of course, gives some credence to reason # 11 in the above mentioned autopsic list. You'd think someone, other than me, would be curious to know why Scott Spenser blurbs Ginny Good with the opaque reference "weirdly triumphant." Right? So far, I guess not.

So which is the good news and which the bad?

March 17, 2004

Far be it for me to step in the large pile of turds that Mel Gibson has left behind with his deft marketing of his deity-inspired rendering of Christian mythology. As Joseph Epstein replied when I queried him about his intentions to weigh in, it would require him to see the movie, which he was loath to do. Joe added that in the neighborhood guys like Gibson were called "jageoffs." Also, least my headroom further resemble the habitats I have occupied in my adult life—a perpetual fine arts grad student motif with some black Italian leather mixed in—I have demurred for the same reasons and one further. I am not interested in Christian theology or any theology.

I am interested in anti-Semitism though.

There's more, the super heated public commentary, punditry, and demagoguery that The Passion of Christ has created—so (too) much noise and nuisance that I have had to set aside reading the new LOA Studs Lonigan and do some thinking and conversing on this whole sorry stink pool. There have been some really provocative and exciting ripostes to the, uh, the heightened cultural noise level surrounding "Twelve Hours," and in reading Christopher Hitchens (2 versions), David Denby, Chris Lehmman, William Safire, Peter Aspden (Financial Times) many of whom have quoted other commentators such as Elaine Pagels and Leon Weiseliter, I am reminded of an interesting little book that Verso put out, After Diana, a collection of essays on the late British royal. Again Gore Vidal's heir apparent, Hitchens contributes a, shall we say, unsympathetic view of the immortal Di. I forget the who the other contributors were—what I am trying to say is that there is an interesting pamphlet or broadside in the air to be plucked as a useful marker of this, as the smart people say, cultural moment.

It's not fun or comforting, of course, to hear that yet another misguided Christian has conspired to present a historical vignette with the Jews portrayed as unter menschen or rodent-like apparitions, not to mention a phrase that can only be bleated or brayed, "The Jews killed Christ." And on top of all this hoo hah, magic Christian, Mel Gibson, threatened to kill Frank Rich's dog (Does Frank Rich have a dog? Has anyone taken this seriously? Did I imagine this surreal twist)…

The one thing in all this that has me really fascinated is the news that cartoonist/illustrator Will Eisner is working on a graphic novel response to that most infamous cartoon of a lie, The Protocols of Zion. Given the marketing principle's dominion in all aspects of society and culture, the campaign to put the word out on that effort will be very interesting to follow. So will the movie's.

February 25, 2004

I was going to write about the unrefined thoughts I had on the passing of Golden Age of TV icon Jack Paar. Which involved some teleportation back, against time's arrows, to the past, when television was Howdy Doody and Buffalo Bill and Kukla Fran and Ollie and Studs Terkel (this was in Chicago) and Dave Garroway and whatever the chimpanzee's name was (I could go to Google but am feeling like minimizing my contact with the search engines of the world). Sadly or unfortunately there are a number of barriers between the kinds of thoughts that are more than passing and my opportunities to think them through or write them down. Well, anyway that's my problem.

So before I move on to the great pressing question of the day, Ralph Nader, I did want to secure the recollection that WD Wetherall's Morning was a terrific novel whose protagonist was the archetypal early morning television show host. It's a good time to examine the media against the context of real history, and Thom Mallon, in a way, does the same sort of thing in his new novel, Bandbox, which fabricates a hilarious narrative around a mens's magazine in the raucous NYC journalism jungle of the late '20s.

I have also, in the recent weeks, been trying to read a bit farther afield than the occasionally claustrophobic strip of terra firm that I call my home away from home, contemporary literary fiction. This effort has me delving into neurology and the "intellectually unhygienic" subject of creativity with Alice Flaherty's The Midnight Disease, contemporary physics and super string theory via Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos and Eva Hoffman's thoughts on what I have recently acknowledged is its own subject, the Holocaust, in her portentous, After This Knowledge. Not that I am complaining.

So, now other than knowing the price of a gallon of milk [$2.39] (which is a renewable resource) and having by necessity to know the price of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline [$1.61] (which is not a renewable resource [shouldn't the renewable one be cheaper?]), my somewhat remote contact with everyday life is being threatened by the hysterical keening and ululating that is coming from my friends who are upset at Ralph Nader for exercising his right to be a candidate for the presidency. Let me say this is not worthy of hysteria and may be as much the result of our poor education — especially in matters of history and governance — as any real threat posed by Nader's machinations. But that's a matter for another time.

Without any resort to the current vernacular of blue state, red state mumbo jumbo, which has reduced politics to beer distribution, let me offer two things. One, Ralph Nader did not cause Albert Gore to lose the election. Guess who did (besides the Supreme Court?). Two, without a third party candidate the media will pay attention to (there are others, that perennial Larouche, among them) the election will be an Armageddon of television commercials and Orwellian. What will that advance?

Nothing good, I am sure.

February 8, 2004

Regular garden-variety cantankerousness—now regularly euphemized as “contrariness” or “curmudgeonly behavior”—is responsible for my life-long (as least adult life) disregard of the Justinian calendar. The lapse in my attention to my journal was superceded by the end of the annual end-of-the-year hysteria that has firmly rooted itself in the American culture—it might be thus in other cultures, but I have little direct knowledge of how others weather this monsterish blend of religious mythic celebration with the Cyclopean consumer engine that drives much of the American civilization. So my plan to resume at the beginning of my year, nominally Martin Luther King Day or my son Cuba's birthday, fell by the wayside—as the days came off the calendar.

Over a year ago, I decided I wasn't doing enough writing and also that the journalism I was reading about books was not satisfying. What resulted was a reader's progress—a journal with which I intended to satisfy/rectify at least those two concerns. Of the few things that I was clear on when I began to bare my soul, was that arp (as we insiders soon began to refer to it) was not a blog (that disgusting verb/noun) but a kind of personal journal, commonplace book and catch all for things I wanted to remember or get off my chest. And a kind of narrative calisthenics for my atrophying writing skills.

Certainly I was hesitant to categorize a reader's progress as a diary or journal largely because my life-long experience with journalizing has been pretty much fruitless. So why attempt such a thing, personal account—a diary—in everything but name?

For one thing, lots had changed in my life—a significant transformation of scenery from the so-called People's Republic of Brookline to a small-town, exurban life in Exeter, New Hampshire. And a good part of that brave new life has been 'no cable hook up' or television. And to top those changes off, there has been a significant down turn in my consumer activity—except for the supermarket, film-processing shops and a local Gap where I continuously find comfortable useable clothing for about 25% of the original price. Seemingly big changes internally and externally warranted some navel gazing.

A natural consequence of being an avid reader is that one (I) spend(s)a lot of time in my head either engrossed in a narrative or cogitating, fulminating, rationating, ideating, or contemplating a steady flow of—what to call it?—information? The idea of getting myself out of that headspace and onto the (a) page has had a lot of good effects, not the least of which is a modicum of reality testing for my ideas and theories and hypotheses. Curiously, what ended up happening was divergent from my original vague intention. Dan Wicket over at EWN, in some exchange, pointed out to me that I was less and less writing about books. Mostly, I became more caught up with the writing than the reading component and the reading I was doing was increasingly web-based.

My current intention in redressing my deviations is to stick more to thinking about the books I am reading—and also the books I am not reading. This has been helped by my current decline in interest in the endless solipsistic monologues that have overwhelmed the brave new media world. That and a certain high-school-cafeteria-style cliquishness that infests the Internet, happily, have freed up some more reading time for me.

So, here are the books I have had a chance to read and complete in the past few months:

THE KILLING KIND - John Connolly, READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN – Azar Nafisi, DARK HOLLOW - John Connolly, VOYAGE TO THE END OF THE ROOM – Tibor Fischer, LOVING CHE – Ana Mendes, ABSOLUTE FRIENDS – John Lecarre, THE HEALING ART- Rafael Campo, EVIDENCE OF THINGS UNSEEN - Marianne Wiggins, MAILMAN – J Robert Lennon, HARD REVOLUTION – George Pelecanos, THE PIECES FROM BERLIN – Michael Pye, COLD MOUNTAIN – Charles Frazier, STRAY DOGS – John Ridley

I found, as is frequently the case, writers who are every bit as worthy of attention as critic favorites. I am thinking of the likes of Marianne Wiggins and Michael Pye. John Lecarre is still a very potent writer and George Pelecanos gets better with each book. Charles Frazier's book was much better than I expected for a best-seller. Finally, I fell in love with Azar Nafisi.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to finish BLOOD MERIDIEN when I started to reread it in October, and I haven't gotten around to the new Edith Grossman translation of DON QUIXOTE. My bad.

December 7

"Scary" Martin Amis

Recently I printed out a digital image I made of Martin Amis at my most recent conversation with him. I showed it to my friend Janice and her immediate reaction was that he was scary looking, "He looks like a vampire," she opined. Michael, my other friend who was also given a preview, agreed. I found this more shocking than the reaction of Heather at the offices I use as the site of my conversations. She was so excited and thrilled at meeting and being in proximity to Marty that I thought I was going to be the recipient of unsolicited but not unwelcome sexual lavishness. All of which points to Amis as a kind of lightening rod of strong, uh, reactions, an issue addressed in a recent feature in the San Francisco Chronicle: "What would the British press do if it didn't have Martin Amis to haul through the gutter? Scorned as an intellectual snob and a child of privilege -- his father was the author Kingsley Amis -- Amis is having his worst year yet, with the publication of Yellow Dog in August. A comic novel about dislocation, pornography, male misbehavior and the British monarchy, Yellow Dog was the subject of a spirited public mauling that was launched in August by Tibor Fischer, a novelist whose newest work, not coincidentally, was published on the same day as Yellow Dog."

As a side bar, Deirdre Day-MacLeod spanks Fischer for with this rejoinder to his infamous embargo breaking review of Yellow Dog, "I must admit it's pretty difficult to review an Amis book to begin with, especially if one is overly concerned with the opinion of fellow commuters as you seem to be. Really, Tibor (the trend in these articles is to use first names), perhaps you ought to do something about your fear that other people on the train really care what you are reading and that they are judging you for enjoying certain kinds of reading matter. Even without the problem of reading while only thinking about yourself, Amis is a hard one to look at with a clear head and a reasonable eye. Even if he hasn't already been blasted by some other British male writer with an eye on the Booker, Amis comes as part of a larger literary narrative."

This is a view that in some sense echoes my own on Amis. He is not easy to read —sometimes, not even fun to read. But as in past encounters with both his writing and his person, I find Amis worth paying attention to and certainly not to be taken lightly or dismissively —which I think is the effect of the ad hominum and self-serving fulminating that orbits him. And yes I think Yellow Dog is worthwhile and engaging, and I don't see Marty as scary looking.

December 1

Despite industrial imperatives that focus on current releases with the hopes of creating bestsellers, hopefully in the giga proportions of Harry Potter, there are occasional reminders that the literary moment is not coincident with the commercial one. Jonathan Yardley's "Second Reading" columns in the Washington Post are some of those. Recently Yardley revisited the prodigious oeuvre of John D McDonald which reminded me that before there was Parker or Hiaasen or James Hall or Thomas Perry or Lehane and Pelecanos, there was McDonald's Travis McGee.

Another such restraint on the dominance of immediacy (at least for me) is the twice-yearly half price sale at the Bryn Mawr Bookstore in Cambridge—which was sweetened by a surprise 75% off sale on fiction in August. Among the treasures that fell into my hands (I always see these acquisitions as providential) was The Red and Green by Iris Murdoch, The Venerable Bead by Richard Condon, Ocean Sea by Alessandro Baricco, Einstein's Monsters by Martin Amis, The Good Samaritan & Other Stories by John O Hara, The High Spirits by David Huddle, Birds of America by Mary McCarthy,
Reflections of An Angry Middle Aged Editor by James Wechsler and many others. For the price of an overpriced lunch in Harvard Square I came away with a fair-sized box of books. And based on Louis Menand's recent piece in the New Yorker (Sept 15, 2003) on Condon, I started reading The Venerable Bead, which is a hilarious send up of anti-Communism, American Style. Condon makes a great use of (faux) Albanian culture and as humorously as Tune in Tomorrow (the film version of Vargas Llosa's Aunt Julia and The Scriptwriter) with Peter Falk, Keanu Reeves and Barbara Hershey, scapegoats Albanians.

I finally saw the film The Trials of Henry Kissinger by Alex Gibney and Eugene Jarecke. There is a lot to be said about any narrative rendering of the uncompleted Kissinger Saga, and this film does well to scratch the surface with the prosecution represented by the irrepressible Christopher Hitchens whose book of the same name is a brilliant encapsulation of Kissinger's high crimes. The film starts out with shots of Henry accompanied by Billy Strayhorn's masterpiece "Lush Life" (sung by the singular Johnny Hartmann from his collaboration album with John Coltrane) and has some interesting tidbits (Alexander Haig, a former Kissinger aide who comes off as a twit, calls Hitchens a "sewer pipe sucker").

Back to finishing up Stuart Dybek's must read (an obnoxious imperative, no?) new story collection, I Sailed with Magellan. A witless curiosity had me scanning the NYTBR piece on Dybeks' book, and I came away aghast that the great Nelson Algren was not mentioned in a book about piece about a Chicago writer. That in turn reminded me of a righteous piece of Algren hagiography (and more) called "Mediocrity's Vengeance" by another vastly underrated American writer, Michael Ventura. And on and on…

November 23

Rosie is not reading this book. But she is helping out. Read on.

Recently I went to some Homo sapiens events with Rosie, my steadfast canine companion. They weren't billed as dog-friendly events, but such is my arrogance (or confidence) that I thought nothing of making Rosie my date. It helped, of course, that I am a board member of the host of one event and a client and friendly acquaintance of the owner of the other. It also helps that Rose is, well, Rosie. We socialized a short time because to quote Sandra Cisneros, all rooms filled with more that couple of human beings start to resemble having one's head in a box of bees. Anyway, I lost count of how many people came up to us and wanted to have some contact with Rosie— alternately fawning over her, appropriately commending her beauty and inquiring about intimate details of her life (her age). For myself, besides regularly being reminded what a chick magnet she is (an observation I find idiotic as anything other than a locker-room remark), I see Rosie as an infallible test (if there could be such a thing) of (others’) personal character. This is something I have come to value more than aesthetic indicators, such as the quality of shoes or the color palette and drape of someone's wardrobe.

As can be expected in the broad spectrum of humans who appreciate, like and admire the canine species, there are manifold manifestations of human/canine love. There are people who immediately begin the baby-talk thing and are unabashed in exchanging or receiving bodily fluids. I think you know the type. Others will repeat how beautiful she is and hang back with a kind of brittle and constipated look. And yet others will come up to me on the street and ask to pet Rosie or offer her a dog treat. The treat offering is the only one to which she has a consistent response -- inhalation of the surprise offering -- but that only insures her continued and ardent attention to her new benefactor's gift hand and pocket. She, of course, pays no attention to the new stranger in her life. Interestingly, to me, is that otherwise Rosie will respond unpredictably to reverential human behavior—occasionally enthusiastically, other times she is nonplussed, and infrequently she will express some, uh, bitchiness. From this unscientific approach I conclude there is something else—perhaps subsonic—that Rosie keys in on, some invisible-to-my-human-senses cue.

Having said all this, I expect that it is understandable that we will (Rosie and I) eschew the conceit that one finds in some dog-oriented books (Barbara Bush's Millie's Book and Mike Malysko's and Judith Hughes' two Betty and Rita books) including the one under consideration, Throw Me A Bone, that attributes authorship to well-known New Yorker writer Susan Orlean's Welsh Springer Spaniel, Copper Gillespie, and is also evidenced in a NYT article echoing that conceit.

I am quite clear that English is not Rosie's natural language and that her deficit in the opposable-thumb area makes her perusal or interest of any book problematic (other than as a potential snack). What, then, suggests Rosie as my collaborator in considering this book? As one learns in the above-cited Alex Wichtel piece, there are 65 million pet dogs in this country, and at least a third of their owners say that they consider the animal to be a child or family member. So while I don't look at Rosie as my child, I do think of her as a family member, and I try to teach that concept to Cuba. That entails a fair amount of empathy and thinking about her needs and behavior, and it is one of the useful attributes of Throw Me a Bone that it intersperses text and recipes with photos and quotations and aphorisms such as the one that comes to mind here (by Edward Hoagland), "In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't train him [or her] to be merely semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog."

Such is my own mindset regarding the understandable but perhaps misguided anthropomorphism that takes place around dogs. And by the way, I am still mystified about the elevation of William Wegman's Weimerheimer portraiture as art. Mostly I am interested in the ways that dogs have adapted to cohabiting with us humans and the ways humans display canine and other higher mammalian behavior. This has been Rosie's great gift to me— which has been to sensitize me to other mammalian modalities of survival. One thing though is very clear to me — in thousands of years of domestication, the Labrador has lost any ability to discern beneficial foods or to make dining a relaxed and recreational thing. Rosie's relentless foraging and importuning looks at proximate food sources make books like Throw Me a Bone superfluous in responding to her proletarian, mustard-and-ketchup taste buds.

And yet for the food-fixated dog guardian this book is in turns, amusing, as in presenting Mark Twain's incisive observation that, "If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. That is the principle difference between man and dog." And useful with an array of veteran cookbook author Sally Sampson's "healthy canine taste tested recipes for snacks meals and treats." And also whimsical with Cami Johnson's dog portraiture found throughout.

I want to think some more about this. Since Rosie is a constant companion in my trips to the city, it is hard to escape noticing human behavior towards dogs…after my back stops aching and spasming. I expect there will be more to come…

October 28

One recent visit with Cuba's kindergarten teacher, Karen Derusha, reawakened both my fear and my loathing of the dismal direction of American history as represented and presumably directed by, as Robert Stone opined in a recent conversation, a bunch of "truimphalist babbits." The stench of disingenuous posturing, as exhibited by George Bush's claims to aspiring to being the Education President, has lifted from many places—but not from my memory. It also brought to mind that one but needs a few prompts from the real world to gain a sense of the disconnection of a great many members of our ruling and mandarin classes. For example, images of flag-draped caskets of dead GI from the Iraq adventure being off-loaded are upsetting Americans. Solution, discontinue media coverage. The long list of complaints and concerns I have about American civilization are not what I want to spend my time airing out at this particular moment, but as intellectually arrogant as I think this claim is, I feel pretty certain that the men and women who have finagled their way into the offices of governance and power will not be judged well by history.

There is much I admire in Susan Sontag's acceptance speech for the prestigious German Friedenspreis peace prize, which appears to have been willfully ignored by America's press (Jennifer Lopez and Liza Minnelli appear to be more worthy of attention). Here's some choice Sontag:

True, when, during George Bush's run for president in 2000, a journalist was inspired to ask the candidate to name his "favorite philosopher," the well-received answer -- one that would make a candidate for high office from any centrist party in any European country a laughing stock -- was "Jesus Christ." But, of course, Bush didn't mean, and was not understood to mean, that, if elected, his administration would feel bound to any of the precepts or social programs actually expounded by Jesus.

And then there is Lt. General William G Boykin. Here's a sample of this military intelligence leader's point–of–view from his October press conference:

MS.THOMAS: Thank you, Mister Lt. General. You have repeatedly been quoted telling church audiences that your mission is "a battle with Satan," and that "we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian ... and the enemy is a guy named Satan." How do you respond to charges that these remarks are not only divisive, but also serve to inflame and propagate religious hatred?

LT. GENERAL BOYKIN: How do I respond? War is hatred, cup of pudding. I mean no ill will to these Islamian cockroaches. I say, they have the freedom to worship whatever idols they wish to worship. No matter how false or ridiculous. They also have a right to instantaneously disintegrate before my archangel's blade. I do not spread… religious hatred. I spread religious purity. Like boiling water. Kills the impurities. Clean water. Water to wash your hands in. Sanctify your hands, your holy hands. Yes. Clean. Jesus washed the feet of whores. My feet are clean. Where I walk, my footprints pool with the blood of the enemy. Muslims are Christians who don't know that until I send them to hell.

Okay, okay but not so far from the real thing.

Anyway, leftist running dog and journalist Tina Brown's new love object, Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria, has a worthwhile suggestion, "President Bush’s commission on public diplomacy recently noted that in nine Muslim and Arab nations only 12 percent of respondents surveyed believed that ‘Americans respect Arab/Islamic values.’ Such attitudes, the commission argued, create a toxic atmosphere of anti-Americanism that cripples U.S. foreign policy and helps terrorists. To address the problem the commission suggested a major reorganization of the American government, hundreds of millions of dollars of funding and the creation of a new cabinet position. I have a simpler, more urgent suggestion: fire William Boykin."

Another reminder of the blessings of religion came in the form of Christopher Hitchens’ reiteration of his case against Mother Theresa upon her recent beatification. Hitchens has written a deft monograph on the new saint, The Missionary Position (part of his great trilogy of character vivisections—the other two personages being Henry Kissinger and Bill Clinton). Hitchens, by the way, was called to testify by the Vatican, "As it happens, I myself was interviewed by them but only in the most perfunctory way. The procedure still does demand a show of consultation with doubters, and a show of consultation was what, in this case, it got."

Here's some primo Hitchens:

This returns us to the medieval corruption of the church, which sold indulgences to the rich while preaching hellfire and continence to the poor. MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been—she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself—and her order always refused to publish any audit. But we have her own claim that she opened 500 convents in more than a hundred countries, all bearing the name of her own order. Excuse me, but this is modesty and humility?

Wil Haygood, who wrote a masterful biography of Adam Clayton Powell, has just had his In Black And White: The Life of Sammy Davis Jr. biography published. I was intending to read it anyway with the expectation it will fall into the Nick Tosches and David Hadju approach to biography. In the mean time, Frank Rich was incisively amusing with his revisionist take on the Rat Pack and quotes Haygood usefully:

For Republicans with long memories, the party's new affection for Rat Pack naughtiness must feel like coming home. Though Sinatra and his pals were known for their liberal Democratic politics in the early 60's, they moved to the right once the 60's rock culture shoved them to the show business sidelines. By 1972, Sammy Davis was hugging Richard Nixon at the Republican convention in Miami Beach; two years earlier, Sinatra had stumped for Reagan's re-election in California. It was also then, Wil Haygood reports in his sparkling new Davis biography, "In Black and White," that the party's "unofficial envoys to Hollywood were Donald Rumsfeld, an aide to Nixon, and his wife, Joyce." In Mr. Haygood's account, we learn that the Rumsfelds hung out with Sammy at the pool in Vegas and even obtained an audience with an apparently pill-popping Elvis. To this day, we can see the Sinatra influence in our secretary of defense's hair-trigger temper, though he has a way to go to emulate Sammy's sartorial flair.

When I saw the photo of Floridian Jews on Harleys in his Jews/America/A Representation, I was convinced of Frederic Brenner's great talent and vision. His newest grand opus Diaspora —years in the making—is an artistic/photographic tour de force. He spent a quarter of a century and traveled to forty countries working on this project. This is almost unimaginable to me, this kind of focus and dedication over so many years. Wow!

Edward Jones has recently been nominated for the National Book Awards for his first novel, The Known World, which by one reckoning has taken him eleven years, is as compelling a book as I have read. One of my favorite passages occurs near the end of the story:

When Augustus Townsend died in Georgia near the Florida line, he rose above the barn where he had died, up above the trees and the crumbling smokehouse and the little family house nearby and he walked away quick like toward Virginia. He discovered that when people were above it all they walked faster, as much as a hundred times faster than when they were confined to the earth and so he reached Virginia in little or no time. He came to the house he had built for his family, for Mildred his wife and Henry his son, and he opened and went through the door. He thought she might be at the kitchen table, unable to sleep and drinking something to ease here mind. But he did not find his wife there. Augustus went upstairs and found Mildred sleeping in their bed. He looked at her for a long time. Certainly as long as it would have taken him, walking up above it all, to walk to Canada and beyond. Then he went to bed, leaned over and kissed her left breast.

The kiss went through the breast, through the skin and bone and came to the cage that protected the heart. Now the kiss, like so many kisses, had all manner of keys, but it, like so many kisses was forgetful, and it could not find the right key to the cage. So in the end, frustrated, desperate, the kiss squeezed through the bars and kissed Mildred's heart. She woke immediately and knew her husband was gone forever. All breath went and she was seized with such a pain that she had to come to her feet. But the rooms and the house were not big enough to contain her pain and she stumbled out of the room, out and down the stairs, out through the door that Augustus as usual had left open. The dog watched her from the hearth. Only in the yard could she breathe again. And the breath brought tears. She fell to her knees, out in the open yard, in her nightclothes, something Augustus would not have approved of. Augustus dies on Wednesday.

Maybe he'll win the National Book Award he is nominated for. In any case I look forward to talking with Jones.

October 15

I was filling up my tank at the local Getty station, and I noticed the Powerball lottery was up to 47 million dollars. Which got me thinking—what would I do with net 23 million dollars? By the time I got inside to pay, I had decided that winning all that money wouldn't be worth it. I announced that my decision to Tom, who was taking my money, and though I don't think he bought in to my general premise, we both got a chuckle out of my observation that winning such a sum would bring out contact with long-forgotten members of one's high school graduating class. That, of course, I believe would be the least of one's troubles…

The list of 2003 Fellows was announced by the John D. and Catherine T. Mac Arthur Foundation. The $500,000 over five years that goes with this fellowship is more to my liking. First of the all, that sum of money is manageable and what a reasonable person could live with and continue to do their work. Secondly, the talent and accomplishments of the MacArthur Fellows makes it a grand club to be included in.

Of course my (mild) disappointment at once again failing to be selected was balanced by the mild euphoria I felt at the Chicago Cubs playing baseball this late in the season. Some latent and primal instinct brought me back to the level of wonder and joy of the nine-year-old boy who lived a few blocks away from Wrigley Field. And I didn't even mind that the Red Sox are still hanging around, too.

Speaking of youthful exuberance, I took Cuba to see School of Rock. Why a five-year-old would want to see this movie is explained simply by the barrage of commercials on the Cartoon Network. I think he liked the movie—mostly because he thought he was supposed to. Me, I thought Jack Black pretty much used up his trick bag early in the film. I would have liked a little more so-called subversion along the lines of the 'sticking it to the man,' which has an all-too-brief moment in the spotlight. Oh well.

And speaking of subversion, the celebration of Columbus Day only makes sense in the context of unexamined American Triumphalism— which I see as a subversion of any sense of decency. There have been many eloquent expressions on the topic of Columbus and his infamy, and here is a recent one by Anita Quintanilla:

"What is at issue here is what Christopher Columbus and the holiday stand for. Columbus Day, also known as Discovery Day, symbolizes conquest, genocide, and racism. Columbus Day is nothing more than a remembrance of the Western holocaust of 100 million indigenous peoples. For Native Americans, it is a day of mourning and the anniversary of the beginning of the European conquest of their world without borders. To celebrate Columbus Day and view this barbaric exploiter as a hero indicates the level of insensitivity, disrespect, and racism in our society for the original inhabitants of this land. If the parades are showcases that represent the best of Italy and the best of the Italian-American community, then the worst Italian should not be the honoree. Italians should feel shame, not pride, in this man; he should be reviled, not revered. Columbus is the one rotten apple in the Italian barrel. Italians have better candidates to represent their rich culture and history. This national holiday should be replaced with Italian-American Day at the state level."

Of course, there is Howard Zinn on what he calls "Invasion of Americas Day":

"In the standard accounts of Columbus what is emphasized again and again is his religious feeling, his desire to convert the natives to Christianity, his reverence for the Bible. Yes, he was concerned about God. But more about Gold. Just one additional letter. His was a limited alphabet. Yes, all over the islands of Hispaniola, where he, his brothers, his men, spent most of their time, he erected crosses. But also, all over the island, they built gallows--340 of them by the year 1500. Crosses and gallows--that deadly historic juxtaposition.

In his quest for gold, Columbus, seeing bits of gold among the Indians, concluded there were huge amounts of it. He ordered the natives to find a certain amount of gold within a certain period of time. And if they did not meet their quota, their arms were hacked off. The others were to learn from this and deliver the gold."

Occasionally some kind and alert person is moved to write me (in some instances email resembles and actually is, writing) and express appreciation for my published conversations and wonder that I have not been grabbed up by a so-called major media venue or book publisher. Part of me wonders about my anonymity, but the better (more professional?) part is well versed in the reasons that my view and work has not captured the imagination of Big Media. Now I am as ambitious as the next egomaniacal journo (except for maybe Neal Pollack), so indifference doesn't explain my exile in the far reaches of our brave new world. Perhaps examining two cases will offer something approaching explanation.

Michael Wolff is the rebarbative media columnist who writes "This Media Life" for New York magazine and who of late is in the news because he 1) has a new book being published, Autumn of the Moguls: My Misadventures with the Titans, Poseurs and Money Guys who Mastered and Messed up Big Media and 2) he has initiated an effort to purchase New York magazine. Wolff understands the playing field and does quite well by his insights, "The media is, in fact, in the business of being noticed by the media." He is paid $450,000 a year for his column and such aphorisms, and he also received a $500,000 advance for his new book—which is pretty much a rehash of his magazine columns (he says the book has been "derived" from that column). Now there is no question Wolff is smart, clever and either brave or well armored. Some of those qualities were exhibited during the Iraq war, at a United States Central Command briefing in Doha, Qatar, where he was the only media person who had the cojones to ask, "why any self-respecting reporter would hang around for the thin gruel being dished up."

On the other end of my media spectrum is what I call the most recent perfect storm of media creation, Elizabeth Spiers, who has recently commenced to web log for New York magazine and contribute to its gossip column (New York, it would seem, is the breeding ground for these kinds of phenomenon). I have, since my discovery of Gawker, wondered what people found noteworthy about Ms Spiers besides a normal apportionment of dishiness and feigned ubiquity. Barely a few months later even the fly-over zone is celebrating her meteoric rise, "Her witty synthesis of media news and celebrity gossip was showcased on a frequently updated Web log (or ‘blog’) called Gawker.com, which made its debut late last year and soon became a daily stop for more than 40,000 Web surfers, including much of Manhattan's media elite…Spiers' spectacular career trajectory -- from financial analyst to media insider in less than a year via the Internet -- may be difficult to duplicate, but it's not impossible." So there you have it, "witty synthesis of gossip" and gossip. And a clear intention, expressed obviously in her work, to rise higher in the food chain. That and fawning, sycophantic treatment of the tribal elders. Makes sense to me...

October 1

I'm the innocent bystander
Somehow I got stuck
Between the rock and the hard place
And I'm down on my luck…

-from "Lawyers, Guns and Money" by Warren Zevon

It's been years since I have been able to muster up much enthusiasm for any political candidate in this country. This did not result in what would be an understandable apathy as I have voted in every congressional and presidential election since the fateful year of 1968, though I have more often not voted for the top or the head of the ticket. When I lived in Massachusetts' 4th congressional district I was proud to cast my ballot every two years for Barney Frank.

As the Republic slouches toward another Presidential election personally, currently I am more interested in who wins the Booker Prize. I have found myself mildly attending to the shenanigans of the so-called major candidates. Because of my disavowal of television as being vital to my civic responsibility, I have spent some time on the Internet inspecting and grousing about the representations of America's Eleven. For what it's worth:

Dr. Howard Dean -- The slogan, "Dean for America," is clever. The requisite all-American color motif (red white and blue) with hints of Old Glory. Dean is open shirted looking off into the distance, no doubt at the radiant future he sees accompanying his election. The Dean site is given credit for having the first web blog, though a quick look left me unimpressed. I do like the Italian Futurist drawing used in the fund-raising initiative. There are Spanish-language features. Here's Howard Dean on national security: "Bajo el gobierno de George W. Bush, esta nación se ha perdido en el camino. No sólo estamos menos seguros, tanto en nuestra tierra como en el extranjero, sino que aun hemos disipado nuestro rol como fuente de inspiración y guía para otras naciones. Yo busco el devolver a los Estados Unidos el lugar que le corresponde en el mundo y su liderazgo moral en los asuntos internacionales." Or if you will, "Under George W. Bush, this nation has lost its way. Not only are we less secure at home and abroad, we have squandered our role as the inspiration and guiding light for other peoples. I seek to restore America’s rightful place in the world and its moral leadership in world affairs."

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry -- The headline "Hammer Bush out of the White House" is the boldest statement I can recall from a candidate who rivals Al Gore in his roboticism. It does have a certain ring to it, and the hammer cursor is a cute touch. But the visual of Kerry reading "My Friend Rabbit" to a group of kids is beat. So is his slogan, "The Courage to Do What's Right." I am wondering why the announcement that the new Kerry website is also in Spanish is in both English and Spanish.

President George W Bush -- No surprises except maybe the photo of Dick Cheney smiling. And there is the GeorgeWbushstore.com. You can buy George Bush stuff there. And, not to belabor the obvious, there is a lot of blah blah blah here.

President George W Bush -- Okay, so this is the parody “official site” and the site about which President Bush opined, "There ought to be limits to freedom!" Here's one headline, "President Bush's Even-Tempered Response to Egregiously Slanderous Iraq Criticism from Senator Ted ‘Pinko Hooker Murderer’ Kennedy." Showing pictures of Bush picking his nose may be a low blow. He wasn't President at the time: "Priceless footage of W publicly picking his nose -- right from ESPN coverage of a Rangers game when W was part-owner." This site as no Spanish-language component.

Republican National Committee -- Predictable stuff except for the RNC monthly newsletter entitled "Rising Tide." That's a good title, dammit. And the Spanish-language site is serious and comprehensive.

Democratic National Committee -- Okay, they have a weblog called "Kicking Ass." They have the Spanish thing going too.

You Decide -- Here's Bill Feldspar on his creation, "Welcome to the ‘George W. Bush or Chimpanzee’ webpage. This is a little project I decided to start once I realized how much George W. Bush looks like a chimpanzee. I'm not a member of any political party, and I have nothing in particular against the man. I just think he kind of looks like a chimpanzee."

Draft Jim Traficant, Democrat President 2004 -- Former congressman "Jim Traficant is in prison so are you" is currently serving an eight-year prison bit on federal bribery, racketeering, tax evasion and other corruption charges. It's a great country, isn't it?

Guide to the 2004 Democratic Presidential Candidates -- Useful because it has a list of at least 31 other candidates running for the Democratic nomination.

Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman -- Joe? And then there is Joe's Jobs Tour. What that? There's more, "Joe Lieberman's manufacturing recovery plan will help transform today's producers into the factories of the future, make worker training more affordable and accessible, and level the global playing field by cracking down on unfair trade practices while continuing to open new markets."

Reverend Al Sharpton -- Just a hint of an American flag. Brown, green and black are the motif There's no Spanish iteration, but there is the Rev's 10 point program:

1. Raise issues that would otherwise be overlooked—for example, affirmative action, anti-death penalty policy, African and Caribbean policy.
2. Fulfill American democracy by supporting voting rights or statehood for the 600,000 disenfranchised citizens of the District of Columbia.
3. Increase political consciousness and awareness.
4. Declare the RIGHT TO VOTE A HUMAN RIGHT and supporting H.J. Res. 28, a constitutional amendment.
5. Stimulate more people to get involved in the political process.
6. Declare EDUCATION A HUMAN RIGHT and supporting H.J. Res. 29, a constitutional amendment.
7. Increase voter registration.
8. Declare HEALTH CARE A HUMAN RIGHT and supporting H.J. Res. 30, a constitutional amendment
9. Strengthen our REAL national security by fighting for human rights, the rule of law, and economic justice at home and abroad.
10. Rejuvenate the idea of putting AN EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT FOR WOMEN (ERA) in the Constitution and supporting H.J. Res. 31, a constitutional amendment.

Dennis Kucinich -- The currently unemployed former mayor of Cleveland lays claim to being the "Progressive Choice": "I am the only candidate who will take this country away from fear and war and tax giveaways, and use America's peace dividend for guaranteed health care for all, ending health care for profit." There are images of Martin Luther King and JFK, a picture of Willie Nelson in a Kucinich for President t-shirt and Ani DiFranco is a pal. Studs Terkel anoints Dennis "the one," and this site unabashedly (and perhaps disingenuously) entitles his story "Power to the People."

Former Ambassador (New Zealand) Carol Moseley Braun -- Lots of the usual red white and blue. Ambassador Moseley Braun has a great smile and the whitest teeth on the campaign trail. No Spanish-language section. Que pasa?

Florida Senator Bob Graham -- The usual campaign visual motif with a picture of Graham and, we assume, Mrs. Graham and three tots (Who they?). Also, Jim Buffet is a fundraiser for the Senator. There is Spanish and this site has the weblog thing going, but the disclaimer "The following comments are from our visitors, and are not endorsed by Bob Graham for President" puts the kaboosh on verisimilitude. It must have been the people from legal.

North Carolina Senator John Edwards -- What does Edwards get for announcing his candidacy on the "Daily Show"? Really. I don't know. Tell me. Anyway, the site is concerned with—as it announces—accessibility but has no Spanish version, which is a dumb move. There is a weblog: "Welcome to my campaign's official Blog! I'm new to this whole thing, but it's very exciting, and I thank you all for helping make this a community for us all to talk. You know the past few weeks have been very exciting for the campaign. I've continued to meet with people all over the country and am very encouraged by people's show of support."

Missouri Congressman Richard "Dick" Gephardt -- Gephardt, whose father was a milk truck driver and a proud member of the Teamster's Union, goes right after Howard Dean's online fundraising ability with a pop up ad. And this web site has this oddly original effort—who knows, maybe Dick rocks or be down with the funky beat—"Submit your own Gephardt music.” Dick Gephardt released "Gephardt Remix," an important musical addition to a Democratic nomination fight. Gephardt, who will be honored at grassroots house parties across America on September 30, 2003, also invited others to send their own musical entries. Qualifying songs will be added to the Gephardt House Party website. "Gephardt Remix" was made by Mike Gustafson of Fort Dodge, Iowa. If you would like to send your entry, simply email a short 1-2 minute original song tmixology@dickgephardt2004.com.

September 11

No matter what I am writing about today (except maybe a note to my mother, "Warren who?") I have to say that Warren Zevon's passing is heartbreaking. I spent the day listening to a two CD anthology. I didn't feel so bad after that. I mean, "The gorilla at the LA Zoo took the glasses off of my face…"

Anyway, as we all know an immutable law of the Universe is that snark begets snark. Say "yo mama," to someone and what do you expect in return? In the literary world Dale Peck's infamous review of Rick Moody in which Bad Boy called Moody "the worst writer of his generation" may be a bench mark of sorts. In March of this year a new magazine, The Believer, was launched with its editor offering what has been called a manifesto, tossing down the gauntlet to all the nasties in the book reviewing sport. This, of course, was greeted with predictable doctrinaire responses. And also predictable was the apparent lack of effect it had on the ground.

Fast forward to Laura Miller's recent ham-fisted pummeling of Chuck Palahniuk's new novel which touched off a series of skirmishes along the hustings of the known literary world such as this one at the antic muse which also noted the inauguration of the Snarkwatch (I'm sure you can figure that one out). The fray continues at antic muse's September 5th entry Jumping the Snark.

Enter samurai Clive James with his September 7th NYT piece, The Good of a Bad Review which as one commentator aptly opines, wraps up the debate better than anyone else had (or probably could). And not that this will be the end of the controversy, though surprisingly— in an attention addled age—it has gone on longer than I would have expected, Alex Good reports from northern precincts calling the Snarkwatch an inquisition and rendering some worthy objections on various "beliefs" about reviewing.

Anyway, like Warren Zevon sang, "Life will kill ya." I was tempted to write RIP, but it doesn't seem appropriate…

July 24

The deaths of Cuban musical legends Compay Segundo and Celia Cruz are vivid reminders of the large space taken up in my life by Cuba and its culture. Cruz's death was accompanied with the kind of notice Catholics usually reserve for deceased popes. In a truly odd twist The Washington Post noted her passing on its editorial page. The Miami Herald took the Celia Cruz' obituary as opportunity for an anti-Castro screed. Jon Pareles' obit for the Times was the only piece that stayed on point, mainly the passing of a great musician. My own response was to unearth my copy of Caliente's great sixteen-selection CD compilation Introducing Celia Cruz and pop it into the my ride's player and jacking up the volume as I cruised I-95 south into the Havana of New England, Boston.

When I finally construct a FAQ for myself (a looming necessity as I seem to be receiving an ever-growing stream of electronic mail) after, Question: Where do you get so tan? Answer: I have a convertible, I will deal with Question: Why are you so interested in Cuba? Elsewhere I have talked about my youthful encounters with things Cuban: listening to Dizzy Gillespie and the great Cuban percussionist Chano Pazo and Diz and Bird playing the ere and haunting "Tin Tin Deo" and then about the same time of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution with Fidel and Che and Camilo Cienfugos appearing in newspapers and Life Magazine. As Gil Scott Heron says in another context (Military and The Monetary) "Peace is not the absence of war but the absence of the rumors of war." And so in that way Cuba has stayed a hot-button subject (Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK Assassination, the hunt and murder of Che Guevera) most of my life since those innocent and heady days when a small group of bearded revolutionaries overthrew another one of those regimes held in place by American support and compliance.

As I wended my way through the labyrinth of a poor public school education and a poorer university experience, my study of American foreign policy and the many untold stories and hypocrisies exposed, reinforced my support for the Cuban Revolution. That continued into the raucous Vietnam era with the iconic Korda photo of Che (along with that other ubiquitous poster of the time, Huey Newton) adorning walls all over my world and visual field. Revolution was in the air, the Beatles wrote a song so entitled. Life was full of endless possibilities. Volunteers from around the world, the Venceramos brigades, went to Cuba to help with the sugar harvests. Socialism and the advent of a New Man were in play in what seemed a real way.

For reasons that therapeutic investigation will one day reveal, my '70s are largely a self-indulgent blank. Not that I suffered a substance abuse problem (I was an obsessive long distance runner competing in six marathons and a myriad of other long distance races from '77 to about '81) or any particular obvious dysfunction. I held a number of odd jobs, moved to Boston, hung out in Cambridge bars and had a lot of very superficial relationships. And most telling, I read very little. In Cuba, the Soviet period was in full tilt and Fidel was exporting revolution to Angola and Mozambique. Central America, especially with the fall of the American-supported Somoza dictatorship, became the next setting for the anti-Cuban agenda, as the nascent indigenous revolutionary movements attacked the American supported the status quo in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua. Ah, the Reagan years: death squads, massacres, mass disappearances, the School of the Americas, contras, Oliver North, Eliot Abrahms and Sandinista/Soviet tanks rolling across the Rio Grande. Who can forget them?

As I returned to a life of reading and engagement I was regularly struck by the submerged but strong interest that otherwise normal Americans seemed to have about Cuba. That I knew anything at all about Cuba quickly marked me as an expert (that, of course, also marked the beginning of my own skepticism about 'experts'). Despite the ascendant interest in Cuba by an assortment of thrill seekers and trendies, my own connection continued. In the '90s and onward I read, John Sayles Los Gusanos, Thomas Sanchez' Mile Zero, Georgette Geyer's hatchet job bio of Fidel, Tad Szulc's Fidel Castro, Gullerrmo Cabrera Infante's Mea Cuba, John Lee Anderson's Che Guevera, Oscar Hijuelo's wonderful novels, Renaldo Arenas' Before Night Falls, Christina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban, Pico Iyer's Cuba and the Night, Thomas Miller's travelogue of Cuba, Che's Motorcyle Diaries, Hebert Padilla's melancholic memoir Self Portrait of the Other, and the anthology edited by Ann Louise Bardach.

Also in the' 90s I visited Havana and Cuba twice and delved deeper into the music, discovering Beny More, Cachoa Lopez, Arsenio Rodriguez, Sylvio Rodriguez, Los Maniquitios, Ernesto Lecuono, Chucho Valdes, Arturo Sandoval, Reuben Gonzalez, Ibrahim Ferrer, the unforgettable Celia Cruz and many more. Much of the music made by these great Cubans has been the soundtrack to my life and who is to say how much of the Cuban spirit has shaped my outlook.

But, happily, I know that it has.

Instruments Without Players
copyright 2003 Robert Birnbaum

14 July 2003

I do believe that a rainy day is a good day to extoll the life-extending capacities of the convertible automobile. And because I have already opined at length on the incapacity of millions of American automobile drivers in the preface to my automatically written (but as yet unpublished) memoir, Who's Listening?, I can now freely wax eloquent on the matter of al fresco driving. This would also work on a sunny, breezy day — but be less likely expressed — as I would most certainly be behind the wheel, cruising (as opposed to being tethered to my information appliance) to who knows where. It's not like I am in a bragging kind of mood, but lately, as I have driven into the heart of my major metropolitan area, where horn honking is a sixth sense, I have immediately identified a sense of ease and comfort. That, for example, is the polar opposite of my high-alert anxiety when I travel to the airport or to the human zoo of Fenway Park.

As I was driving, I was able to look over the past two weeks of heat and sweat and grueling effort (though not exactly like a Nike sweatshop in Indonesia) and accept the sort of balancing act that occurs in life— you know, the yin of intense labor with head phones on staring into a monitor, the yang of floating through a buoyant piece of fiction. These hours of my waking life spent weighted down with real other voices in my head, reliving recent conversations (including the one with Oxford Tom Franklin [Hell at the Breech] where the smoke alarms were being tested) sharpen my taste for the great outdoors, tooling along on God's Own Concrete.

My convertible is of a Y2K vintage. It is a pretty low-tech ride (I think that's what auto enthusiasts call a car) without Global Positioning or a Home Entertainment Center. Sufficient to my needs it has an ample back seat for Rosie's lounging and Cuba's car seat and an electrically powered top (which my Jeep CJ 7s did not have). It was on Route 95 Southbound that, sun shining, compilation CD doing fairly well at overriding the wind noise, maniacal drivers whizzing past me, I had the kind of realization that I attribute to the mentally restorative powers of my ragtop, to whit, that Amazon's advertisement admonishing, "Don't be the last one to read Harry Potter!" was the kind of thing that led people to be negative and fearful about this corporation. Such is this silly season that I have actually read people defending Amazon—a definite instance of seeing the trees and not the forest. This argument that Amazon provides a great service by bringing books to people that have no local bookstore is, well, dumb. Almost every independent bookstore has a web presence and these days an interest in good service. I leave it to others to determine whether Amazon is still data mining (I have visions of Amazon providing portions of its database to the national internal security apparatus much as Disney and other Hollywood cryptos sucked up to J Edgar "How does this cute black Chanel number look on me?" Hoover).

Given the nature of my grasshopper mind, I managed another chuckle or two thinking of the headline on l saw on Jim Romenesko's site, "Tina Brown on why Fuller succeeded at US Weekly." There's some earth-shattering news, what? Happily I have been able to forsake the self-defeating impulse to read the chirping of the likes of Tina and Andrew Sullivan and that Speirs woman. Oh happy day!

But most of this ambient cruise time was spent in reveling in the recollections of the satisfying books I have read of late and the conversations with some of the authors, those readings spawned. There was the chat with Roger Angell and selections from Game Time. And Karl Iagnemma's On Nature of The Human Romantic Interaction and his feisty Midwestern sense of irony. And talking with Lionel Shriver's about her compelling novel We Need To Talk About Kevin. Marcelle Clements of Midsummer is someone I hope to read more of, while Joseph Epstein's assiduous stories in Fabulous Small Jews has me thrilled at the prospect of talking to their author.

All in all, a pretty good life.

Rickshaws on the Malecon/Havana 1997
© 2003 Robert Birnbaum

24 June 2003

As I was buying a gallon of milk for $1.99 at the Mobil gas station convenience store, I thought back to the days when George Bush's father was campaigning to keep his sinecure. He was apparently embarrassed by some pesky reporter who had inquired about what the price of milk was —this also might have been about the time that the elder Bush discovered the ubiquitous retailing appliance, the price scanner. This comes to mind because my bad feelings about the younger Bush and his band of triumphalist Babbits has lead me to examine some of the ur-reasons that prop up the political name game currently running amok in my adopted country.

What has finally tipped me over the edge was reading that the Bushists were going to raise a half a million dollars a day each and every day until Election Day 2004. That would be about a quarter of a billion dollars. Needless to say this stinks badly. That alone is a stab in the heart of democracy, but consider that Murdoch's flying monkeys (thank you, Keith Olbermann) will be having an unabated feeding frenzy ripping the entrails out of any opposition to the Bush theocracy.

Much is troubling in public political discourse today, and surely one insidious factor is the use of totalitarian techniques to define and direct that discourse. I knew that an even lower low had been reached when I read that President Bush was now creating a new pariah category, 'revisionist historians'. His use of the notion of revisionist history was so beyond any evidence to date of George Bush having any acquaintance with a world of ideas, that I shudder at what might come next.

I have a sense that there are many people waiting for some sort of (Paddy) Chayefskyian moment, as when in the film Network Howard Beale (Peter Finch) coalesces a powerful submerged national sentiment and makes a mantra out of "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore."

Weapons of Mass Destruction? Tax cuts. High Unemployment. Global warming? The International Criminal Court. Slaughters in Central Africa. Skanky machinations in Venezuela. The Patriot Act. Crony corporations rebuilding Iraq. Continuing the idiocy of a mesozoic Cuba policy. Being mean to Helen Thomas. A glorious taxpayer-funded campaign spot performed live for a narcoleptic press. Insisting on making this a Christian nation—I cannot go on and expect to be productive for the rest of the day.

Okay, so here's the thing. My greatest fear is that a political party that is willing to spend a quarter of a billion dollars to secure the seemingly most powerful office in the known universe (and can easily raise that small fortune) is not doing it to give bread to the poor. More likely we are in for a prolonged season of circus.

I am still mulling over the vaguely fascistic bumper sticker I saw on a late model sedan driven by a white haired couple, "Fear this!" next to an American flag. Am I the only person that sees this as both a flag waved in the face of the US's enemies and a warning to its own citizens?

And finally, I don't see that whatever the ideological bent of my observations (well, the truth is that I would monogram it 'progressive skepticism') their assailability is not a matter of dogma. Maybe.

My desk top, Robert Birnbaum © 2003

June 18

When anyone asks me what I do (though I can't remember the last time I was in the company of any strangers—that would be people I don't know—so thoroughly American), I now will answer solemnly, "I am a Revisionist Historian."

I am still working out the job description, but a portion of my responsibilities will be trying to decide which list is longer, the list of things that I do care about or the list of things that I don't care about. Since reading the Washington Post (or claiming to) is a mainstay of a revisionist historian's media canon, I noticed that Peter Carlson has written a well-conceived trashing of the ubiquitous journalistic gambit of list making and its creatively challenged practitioners.

Undeterred, I plodded on determined to rid myself of the bile that has been building up as the assault of all that is irrelevant to me starts to pound my senses and sensibilities …

I don't care about Hilary Clinton or whatever sales records her book is setting. I don't even care what she has to say about her life. And less (than zero) about anything she and Barbara Walters harmonized about. I do believe my skepticism about her intentions about having her name on a book is warranted. Somehow I think a proximal relationship to the concept of 'truth' is what is intended.

I don't care about Harry Potter (whichever volume this is) or that someone stole nearly eight thousand copies or that a bazillion copies have been pre-sold. Or that Harry has a new mark on his face.

I don't care about RADAR magazine or Maer Rohan or what a nice guy he is.

So it stands to reason I don't give a fig for Tina Brown or whatever she is twittering about and wherever she is doing that twittering. And even whom she is twittering with.

I never cared about who was going to design for the space that was once the World Trade Center towers.

Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass, who cares? I don't. Two callous young twits who are best left to the care of their families, who are no doubt responsible for their minor (so far) sociopathies. That's correct, blame the families.

When Bob Woodward wrote in the instant-neo-faux-quasi classic Bush at War that Condoleezza Rice went for a ride with The President and Bob in US Pickup Truck Number 1, at the President's ranch, and never got out for a stroll because she didn't have the right shoes, I was titillated.

I don't care about Howell Raines' demise, and the office pool about who succeeds him is a big yawn. I do have a copy of the 1969 Pulitzer Prize winner's second book, a novel, Whiskey Man, that I will let go for an ample sum or to a good home.

I don't care about Charles Moose.

I don't care what Dave Eggers calls himself or who he has chosen as his agent or what Ian Speigelman thinks of him. Come to think of it, I don't care about Ian Speigelman either.

I don’t at the moment think about whether bloggers are saving the world though I am sensing a drumbeat for this messianic ambition in the blogging world. I could change my mind about this especially if someone coined a new word for the web-logging thing.

I wish I didn't care about Roger Clemens getting his 300th or whether Sammy Sosa used a corked bat. But, I do. Oh well.

I don't care that there are nine Democratic presidential hopefuls (a word almost totally devoid of meaning); in fact, I would wager there are more than nine democratic presidential candidates. I might care about those if some Wizard of News wasn't already defining the story as some version of the seven dwarves.

And as for the 'triumphalist babbits' (that's what Robert Stone calls them) that are in power in the US government, I continue to wonder how they came upon such a low regard for the citizens of this country and what it will take for those citizens to awaken to the cynical arrogance of their government.

Luckily, this week what I did care about was Tom Franklin's excellent new novel, Hell at the Breech and Arthur Kempton's masterpiece of musical history, Bugaloo. And Russ Smith's idea that there be a magazine called Obituary is the best idea I have heard all week. Maybe there is still life in the old magazine concept. Do you think?

RB in Havana, '91

June 1

Summer reading as a category seems to me to be as legitimate as greeting-card holidays like Valentine's and Mother's Day. Graybeard Norman Mailer had it right when he was asked about his summer reading, "I read all year around." Despite this sensibility, that one would hope is shared by at least a few people, some cultural lighthouses insist on propagating this summer reading list contrivance. On the other hand, joyful exhibition--"Hey, look what I'm reading!"--is not a terrible motivation to get a list on the page, especially for a scribbler who is an enthusiastic reader. Or in the case of John Powers' list of influential books, a chance to fulminate on what it all means. Though not quite the provocative snapshots that Gore Vidal and later Anthony Lane exhibited with their analyses of the New York Times bestseller's lists. Here are the titles on Powers' list (of which I read 1 and 1/2, Bush at War and half of the Of Paradise and Power).

The New York Times Summer (recommended reading) list contains seventy three titles on its fiction list (it must count for integrity not to reach for a low round number with some cliched headline, "The Hot, Hot, Hot 50 Beach Must-reads.") There was something that did confuse me about this list though. I distinctly remember some of the books being given less than positive reviews. Well, who knows? Or cares?

Anyway, I was looking over what I had read in toto this year, to date (that is, all the books that I read all of). And I am surprised, in a way, that I found so many of them worth recommending to the bookish of my world:

DANCER - Colum McCann - a vivid novel using a character called Rudolph Nureyev. Russia, fame, the '70s and '80s celebrity culture, the art and dance world--so many tantalizing subjects.

MAN EATER - Ray Shannon - a high spirited crime story set in Hollywood with well crafted characters (A black ex-con with a screen play, a smart and tough woman film producer, a sociopathic drug dealer) that play out the absurdities of America's adult sandbox.

GENUINELY AUTHENTIC - Michael Gross - a humanely unapologetic biography of Ralph Lauren, short Jewish Bronx boy who made it really, really big.

YOGA FOR PEOPLE TOO LAZY TO DO IT - Geoff Dyer - a minor masterpiece in digression by one those young British writers (I think also of Alain de Botton) who actually put ideas in one's visual field like the famous image of a philosopher contemplating a human skull. Ruminations on the Burning Man festival, Roman ruins, New Orleans, a Detroit Rave festival and more.

A MEMORY OF WAR - Frederick Busch - a middle aged psychoanalyst heads for the weeds with a young attractive patient and a man who claims to be his step brother while his own marriage does its own fade to black. Fred Busch is a sturdy and dependable writer and good storyteller who, I have a feeling, has not written a bad book.

SOUL CIRCUS - George Pelecanos - Like that great Staples Singers' song of the '70s, Pelecanos takes you there. 'There' being the mean streets of DC's urban ghetto of drug dealing and gang turf.

LOST IN AMERICA - Sherwin Nuland - Yale-educated, Bronx-born Shep Nuland looks at his youth and his relationship. If emotional weight were quantifiable, this slender tome should come equipped with wheels.

I SHOULD BE PLEASED TO BE IN YOUR COMPANY - Brian Hall - A novel about the Lewis and Clark expedition that manages the difficult task of keeping the reader in suspense on matters one already "knows" the outcome of and maintains the sense of novelty and excitement of discovery and exploration.

UNDER THE SKIN - James Carlos Blake - Mexico and Texas around the time of Pancho Villa by the author of In A Rogue's Blood and a few other novels of the mythic American past.

DORIAN - Will Self - With dazzling intention and taut execution, Self recasts the Wilde fable The Picture of Dorian Gray in late 20th century Anglo American celebrity culture.

DROP CITY- TC Boyle - Back to the '60's and its smorgasbord of new ideas, old ideas on drugs, drugs, communes, sex unleashed and anthemic pop music realized in the hands of the precise Tom Boyle.

THE DEVIL AND THE WHITE CITY - Erik Larsen - A serial murderer's story runs parallel to the construction and duration of the World's Fair in Chicago in 1892. This book is well researched and well written and the parallels and counterpoints Larsen emphasizes make the two divergent stories part of a greater whole.

THE COFFEE TRADER - David Liss - Seventeenth Century Amsterdam, exiled Jews, a blossoming stock exchange and an esoteric commodity--coffee--combine to form the elements of this clever novel that centers on one trader's plan to extricate himself from the brink of ruin.

DRINKING COFFEE ELSEWHERE - ZZ Packer - and ON THE NATURE OF HUMAN ROMANTIC INTERACTION - Karl Iagnemma - Two really impressive story collections--powerful for their displays of humanity and writing talent exhibited in the stories

HARVARD AND THE UNABOMBER - Alton Chase - An intellectual history of post-WWII America as embodied in the life and education of Ted Kaczynski, Chase has done good research and thinking to put forward a thesis of "A Culture of Despair." Read it and weep.

GOD'S COUNTRY and WATERSHED - Percival Everett - Everett's most recent novel, Erasure, is on my required reading list after these two novels. God's Country takes on the mythology of the America West and Watershed shines a harsh (yet still darkly humorous) light on American notions of social justice against the back drop of a Wounded Knee-like Indian reservation siege.

A SHIP MADE OF PAPER - Scott Spencer and WHAT I LOVED - Siri Hustvedt - are two ruminations on love that couldn't be more different. A white Manhattan lawyer flees the big bad city and moves back to his small New York State home town and falls in love with a married black woman. In Hustvedt's novel an aging art historian in Manhattan, recounts his marriage and the tragic and intertwined events and relationship with his painter friend's marriage and …

BAY OF SOULS - Robert Stone - I read it twice. A Midwestern university professor begins an affair with a colleague that takes him to the other worldly Caribbean of voudon, drug smuggling and post-colonial intrigue.

SHUTTER ISLAND - Dennis Lehane - Young crime story master Lehane pulls off the good trick of maintaining suspense in this novel that takes place at a state hospital for the criminally insane located on an island in Boston Harbor in the early '50s, just before a major hurricane.

EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED - Jonathan Safran Foer - I liked when Arthur Phillips did it in Prague, that is, as a side story, fabricate a fictional history of a Hungarian family. And Foer's effort is a central part of his novel of discovery as a character of the same name looks back into his family's history.

GOOD FAITH - Jane Smiley - The '80's rendered humorously through the machinations and ambitions of a group of small town real estate operators. Wry, nimble exposition with sympathetic characters and a look at the ramping up of materialism in America without a catalogue of brand names.

THE LIGHT OF DAY - Graham Swift - A day in the life of an every man on the anniversary of the crime his imprisoned lover has committed. A subtle and melancholy meditation.

MR. POTTER - Jamaica Kincaid - Kincaid packs more political insight into her seemingly personal autobiographical novels than anyone I can think of (maybe Robert Stone, but his stories aren't as obviously personal). Mr. Potter is her father's name. Mr. Potter is her father. It's his story? Maybe.

MONEYBALL - Michael Lewis - Here's a smart book about baseball mostly because Lewis has turned his writing skills to accounting for the success of one of the games' great debunkers of conventional wisdom, Billy Beane of the Oakland Athletics.

GAME TIME - Roger Angell - A collection of twenty-nine pieces from the length of Angell's considerable career of forty years of writing about baseball for the New Yorker. Unpretentious, articulate, humane and un-nostalgic. This is not a book to be read cover-to-cover but savored over a season--but that's just me.

Judging from the publisher's lists for the rest for the year I am feeling the joy of a radiant future--more wonderful books, stories and public discourse get better from a very hopeful and decent start. But then again things (me) change…back to reading Charlie Smith's Canaan. What ever happened to him?

RB in New Mexico, 1967

Robert Birnbaum was double promoted in the 4th grade, was on the swim team in high school and was a philosophy major at university. He has been a night club manager, a short order cook, an Earth Shoe salesman, a secretary in a neurosurgical ward, a public school teacher, an advertising salesman and, of course, a taxi driver. He has been an adherent of a certain kind of antediluvian journalism that eschews publicist's lunches, industrial cocktail parties or shop openings as either the text or the source of stories. Most of the time. For the better part of two decades Birnbaum was the publisher of a now-defunct hip and smart downtown magazine in Boston. Since the early ‘90s he has interviewed over 500 hundred writers — from Martin Amis and Isabel Allende to Marianne Wiggins and Howard Zinn — and read over 1000 books. He continues to tilt at windmills while he tries to be a good father to his son, Cuba Maxwell, and a congenial companion to his blonde Labrador, Rosie.

Note: Featured author in November 2000

E-mail: reddiaz@aol.com

Robert Birnbaum was double promoted in the 4th grade, was on the swim team in high school and was a philosophy major at university. He has been a night club manager, a short order cook, an Earth Shoe salesman, a secretary in a neurosurgical ward, a public school teacher, an advertising salesman and, of course, a taxi driver. He has been an adherent of a certain kind of antediluvian journalism that eschews publicist's lunches, industrial cocktail parties or shop openings as either the text or the source of stories. Most of the time. For the better part of two decades Birnbaum was the publisher of a now-defunct hip and smart downtown magazine in Boston. Since the early '90s he has interviewed over 500 hundred writers — from Martin Amis and Isabel Allende to Marianne Wiggins and Howard Zinn — and read over 1000 books. He continues to tilt at windmills while he tries to be a good father to his son, Cuba Maxwell, and a congenial companion to his blonde Labrador, Rosie.
Note: Featured author in November 2000
E-mail: reddiaz@aol.com
Writing interests: Interviews, Photography
Author interviews: Dorothy Allison, Steve Almond, Roger Angell, Nicholson Baker, Julian Barnes, Andrea Barrett, Alex Beam, Jill Bialosky, Sven Birkerts, Amy Bloom, Amy Bloom 2002, Alain de Botton, TC Boyle, Arthur Bradford, Frederick Busch, Ethan Canin, Stephen Carter, Ben Cavell, Iris Chang, Alston Chase, Sandra Cisneros, Marcelle Clements, Michael Connelly, Richard Conniff, Frank Conroy, Mark Costello, Elizabeth Cox, Jim Crace, Nicholas Dawidoff, Andre Dubus III, John Dufresne, Geoff Dyer, Tony Earley, Barbara Ehrenreich, Gretel Ehrlich, James Ellroy, Joseph Epstein, Percival Everett, Maria Flook, Jonathan Safran Foer, Richard Ford, Nick Fowler, Tom Franklin, Alan Furst, Alan Furst 2002, Josh Furst, Tim Gautreaux, Anthony Giardina, Barry Gifford, James Gleick, Adam Gopnik, Allan Gurganus, Barbara Haber, David Hadju, Brian Hall, Jake Halpern, Ethan Hawke, Patricia Henley, Amanda Hesser, Christopher Hitchens #1, Christopher Hitchens #2, Janette Turner Hospital, Gabe Hudson, Siri Hustvedt, Karl Iagnemma, Elizabeth Inness-Brown, Ben Katchor, Nora Okja Keller, Arthur Kempton, Jason Kersten, Chip Kidd, Anthony Lane, Erik Larson, Don Lee, Annette Lemieux, Michael Lesy, Michael Lewis, Alan Lightman, Alan Lightman 2003, David Liss, Paul Lussier, Ruben Martinez, Daniel Mason, Colum McCann, Thomas McGuane, Jenny & Martha McPhee, Abelardo Morell, Thisbe Nissen, Sherwin Nuland, Tim O'Brien, Joseph O'Connor, Susan Orlean, Ann Packer, ZZ Packer, Tom Paine, George Pelecanos, Thomas Perry, Arthur Phillips, Samantha Power, Richard Price, Christopher Rice, David Rieff, Hazel Rowley, Richard Russo #1, Richard Russo #2, John Sedgwick, Will Self, David Shields, Lionel Shriver, Peter Singer, Jane Smiley, April Smith, Ilan Stavans, Robert Stone, Darin Strauss, Manil Suri, Graham Swift, Donna Tartt, David Thomson, Nick Tosches, Brady Udall, Vendela Vida, Sarah Vowell, Kristin Waterfield Duisberg, Brad Watson, W.D. Wetherell, Mark Winegardner, Howard Zinn (2001), Howard Zinn (2003)
Author portraits: John Sayles, Howard Zinn, Robert Stone, Ana Castillo, John Waters, Allen Ginsberg, Carl Hiaasen, Carlos Fuentes, Barbara Ehrenreich, Eduardo Galeano, Isabel Allende, Junot Diaz, Joan Didion, James Ellroy, John Edgar Wideman, Martin Amis, Michael Ondaatje, Richard Price, Rigoberta Menchu, Louis de Bernieres, Studs Terkel
Photography: "I am the Son of my Son"
Journal: "a reader's progress"
Links: Review of Cuba: A Traveler's Literary Companion at Hyde Park Review of Books | The Morning News - Robert Birnbaum | Birnbaum v. Douglas Coupland | Birnbaum v. Gail Caldwell | Birnbaum v. Julie Orringer | Birnbaum v. Charles Baxter

arp archive:

April/May 2003
March 2003
February 2003
1/15/03 - 1/26/03
10/4/02 - 1/4/03

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