Baby Got Books

I recently completed Zadie Smith’s On Beauty. I’m actually a big Zadie fan, so there were no ulterior motives involved.

I loved Smith’s White Teeth, so much so, that I totally and willfully avoided her second book, The Autograph Man - just in case it sucked. On Beauty was nominated for the Booker Prize and was shortlisted - so I felt that I could maybe take a chance on this one. It is a sprawling, imperfect book, and I thought it was great. [more after the jump]

The book is about two families that are thrown together. Each is headed by a famous English academic, one is a conservative at a UK college - the other a liberal teaching at US liberal arts college in Massachusetts. The book has been described as a satire that skewers the sacred cows of the left and the right. Or it is a tale of academia. Or it is a study of racial mores on both sides of The Pond (mostly on ours). I think that these descriptions of the book pigeon-hole it in a way that doesn’t do justice to the book as a whole. Yes, the book hits on all of these themes, but in the end it is really about how two black women approach the job of holding their families together.

Smith’s style has been termed “hysterical realism”- an assessment she agrees with. Zadie Smith creates memorable characters and instantly recognizable settings through liberal use of detail. You definitely come to know her characters through her books. Once she has created these carefully constructed worlds, she casts off “plot bombs” that send her characters (and the reader) reeling, wondering what it all means. Just like life. It’s interesting to me, but the authors that are described as belonging to the “hysterical realism” camp include some of my favorites: Dave Eggers, Jonathan Safran Foer, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Tom Wolfe, etc. As Debbie Boone said (sort of), “If loving them is wrong, I don’t want to be right”.

It is either a tribute to Smith’s ideas on multi-culturalism or my own stupidity, but this reader did not know that most of the two families were black and/or mixed racially (the UK dad professor is white) until at least 50 pages into the book. I don’t know if that is worth commenting on - but I thought it was interesting. Similarly, the US version of the book’s cover (above) would lead one to believe that this is some sort of Victorian “chick” book. However, the UK version of the book is implicit that this book will feature a black woman with a large afro. Were the publishers afraid that US readers would think this was a knock off of How Stella Get Her Groove Back? Whenever UK and US book covers differ, I tend to think some smarmy book-marketing stooge is thinking ill of me. Do I read too much into this?

One thing bugged me in this book. Smith describes a minor character as from the “deep south”. He’s from Kentucky. As someone from the actual deep south - as a kid I used to think that the North Pole was up around Shreveport - I found this a little shoddy. But she’s British, so I’ll let her slide.

In short, I dug this book. Will you? I guess that depends on your feelings towards this hysterical realism business, multiculturalism, and other potential hobgoblins. Govern yourself accordingly.

Update: Zadie Smith on Fresh Air discussing the book. Also, I should have mentioned that the book is “structurally” based upon Howard’s Ends. Lastly, my wife has become concerned that I’m scheming to run off with Zadie Smith.

I read Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees last year and raved about it to everyone from the baggers at Publix to my cousin who reads only books with half-naked people looking windblown on the cover. When The Mermaid Chair was released I rushed out to buy it. I read the first few chapters, flung it across the room and didn’t pick it up again for several months. It kept taunting me, though, and good friend and fellow blogger had read it and recommended it highly so I figured I’d give it another shot.

The Secret Life of Bees was written in this wonderful, lyrical, southern voice. The characters became like family and when I finished reading it I missed them dreadfully.

I was looking for that kind of involvement in The Mermaid Chair but I never got it. I read a review on Amazon that compared it to Danielle Steel. I don’t think that’s fair. If a comparison were to made I would name Anne Rivers Siddons. It was a good book, not nearly great, and it left me empty. But it was well written in spots and actually did include some insights into faith and marriage and the sacrifices we will make for one we love. And that sets it above Danielle Steel. [more after the jump]

The story is about Jessie, a middle-aged woman who has hit a point in her marriage where she feels stifled and held back from being her true self. When her mother cuts off her own finger and Jessie has to stay with her on a fictional island off the coast of South Carolina it gives her a necessary break from the mundane. While on the island she meets Brother Thomas, aka Whit, and they fall madly in love, meeting for secret picnics and making love in the sand. When Jessie’s mother cuts off another finger it brings the book to its climax where all mysteries are revealed and everyone ends up doing what they ought to have done in the first place.

This is not a book that leaves you with any burning questions. The characters were hollow. What made Bees so magical is that you KNEW these people and wanted to be closer to them. This book does not have that selling point.

Part of the problem is the way Kidd shifts the point of view. Most of the book is narrated by Jessie. Other sections, though, are theoretically meant to give more insight into Brother Thomas’ feelings and thoughts. One section is dedicated to the Jesse’s husband, Hugh. Why only one section? We learn nothing except for the obvious: he’s mad at Jessie for having an affair. Duh. Brother Thomas’ sections are mainly comprised of the suspicions of the other monks at the abbey on the island. He’s having an affair with a married woman and he’s afraid of being caught. Again, duh.

The part of the book that makes it worth slogging through the rest is when Jessie’s mother cuts off the second finger. That scene and the transformation she and Jessie go through while she is in the hospital and immediately upon her release are moving and beautiful. I think the image of Jessie with her head in her mother’s lap, weeping, and being stroked by a hand missing a finger will stay with me for some time.

In summary, this is a vacation read and not much more. I hope that Kidd can bring more to the table in her next novel.

Believe it or not, Hollis Gillespie’s Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch: Tales from a Bad Neighborhood was recommended to me by one of my daughter’s pre-school teachers.

Ms. Gillespie is an Atlanta-based writer, and it took me longer than it should have to connect the author of this book with the article that she’s been cranking out for our alt-weeklies for, like, forever. She is also an NPR commentator on All Things Considered. Her web site describes her style like this - “If David Sedaris had a vagina and was a little less of a pussy, he’d be Hollis Gillespie…”. No really, it says it right there at the top. [more after the fold]

The local word is that Ms.Gillespie’s daughter was formerly a student at our neighborhood pre-school - or so they say. So I figured that the “bad neighborhood” of the title was my own. It turns out that I live on the “fringe” - Hollis (can I call her Hollis?) and her friends lived on the “fringe of the fringe”. At any rate, the neighborhood stories were my draw into picking up the book. The urban pioneer tales that I was looking forward to are among my favorite stories in the collection. The title gets its name from an encounter that the author had while scouting a neighborhood. After almost hitting a stumbling guy out for his “asshole walk”, he called Hollis a “Streaky-Haired Honky Bitch”. If you’ve ever lived in a “transitional” neighborhood you totally know that guy. You really can’t buy that kind of street entertainment in your sterile gated developments. I wish there were more of these stories in the collection.

Gillespie also writes about her friends, who include the artist known as Sister Louisa, and just about every other semi-famous Atlantan (current company excluded, natch). She writes about her job(s). Convinced that the writing thing can’t be relied upon to pay the bills, she’s also an international stewardess/translator. She also writes about her family, who provide lots of grist for the mill. And then some.

Judging by some of the things that are happening in the Atlanta of these stories, it appears that this is a collection of some of Gillespie’s earlier articles. Because the stories were initially intended for a weekly audience, it can be a bit repetitive reading them all together (like after the fifth time that you are introduced to her friend Lary, for example). I’d recommend reading this book a few stories at a time, on the bus/train, in the can - that sort of thing.

BGB Exclusive: At the end of the book in the acknowledgemnts, Ms. Gillespie mentions her friend Jill, who left the confines of Atlanta for New York in order to marry Fox’s right wing puppet Sean Hannity. Hollis gives a shout out to the adminsitration mouthpiece - “…Sean: If this book makes me rich, I promise not to bogey the reefer”. Now, I’m no hep cat, but I think this translates to - “I will try to be more forthcoming with the marijuana in the future”. Being a Fox News pundit, you can guess at the level of hypocrisy that this implies for old Sean. That guy is such a tool. Anyway, this has been a BGB Exclusive.

Last night I read the final section of Revenge of the Paste Eaters by Cheryl Peck.

Ms. Peck is the author of Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs, originally self-published and then picked up by Warner. The book is comprised of sixty-four vignettes and poems, if one includes the introduction.

My initial reaction when I picked up the book was that it looked funny and fun. And I was very much in the mood for both of those. My reaction upon completing it is that, although choppy and amateurish in style, it is a book that is worth reading. [more at the “more” link]

Ms. Peck works, for her day job, for the welfare department in Michigan. She is fat. She is a Lesbian. She is one of five children. And she talks about all of this at great length. She tells stories of growing up, of being fat, of being a Lesbian, of being a sibling. She does it all with frank honesty. The book, on the whole, reads like a blog. She uses aliases for her sisters (The Wee One and UnWee) and her partner (my Beloved). When I saw that her cat’s name is Babycakes I thought that might, perhaps, be an alias as well. Alas, it was not, and somewhere in Michigan lives a well-loved cat who every day must face reality as ‘Babycakes.’ I’m not sure the purpose of the aliases since anyone who reads the book and knows her will know who she is talking about but I didn’t have any real problem with their use.
The best pieces are near the beginning of the book. I found ‘The Vole Hole’ to offer the most meaning and insight. It describes her job situation in a faceless, windowless corporate environment juxtaposed with that of her Beloved’s job in a small company where her office has a window that opens. (I am lucky enough to work for a small company but have no window in my office and the folks who do have windows must never open them for fear of defying building management’s fierce energy saving strategies. I read this section with more than a touch of envy.)‘Waiting’, ‘Mine’ and ‘Silly Rabbit’ were also very funny. This is not a book about which a whole lot can be said. It was sharp and witty at times, depressing and miserable at others. She has an irritating tendency to start a story in one place and wrap it around to an entirely different one. The style is cryptic at times to the point of being jarring. At other times her words sing out and are so beautifully placed they bring you right into her life. I think she is a writer who could stand to attend some writing seminars to polish her style and find confidence in her voice (which does peep though in several of the vignettes). If she were to do that we would have a formidable new humorist on our hands.

Hollywood players are stepping up to get an Encyclopedia Brown movie off the ground, and the word “franchise” is being thrown around (Ridley Scott would be a producer). This news is like Belinda Carlisle’s appearance in Playboy; appreciated - but a little late in the game. When I was a young reader, I was an Encyclopedia Brown junky (i.e. giant dork). Whenever the Scholastic book order forms came around, I was loading up on more E.B.

I was such a huge fan, that I still remember the details of how my enthusiasm came to an end. E.B. was big on the kind of mysteries that were solved when the culprit tipped his/her hand by saying something that only the person responsible for the “crime” would know. So in this last story I read, E.B. says, “the answer is only an arrow flight away”. So the guilty party says something like,”well let’s go outside and see”. To which E.B.’s aha! response was, “since we were standing next to these skinny stairs you would have thought I said a ‘narrow flight’ away and headed upstairs - only the guilty person would know that the real answer would be outside”. What kind of bullshit is that? And so a cynic was born.

I never read another page of E.B. Which isn’ty to say that I haven’t enjoyed the numerous parodies that find their way around the internet. These GaTech guys have a good example of the art form. However, the Modern Humorist’s Encyclopedia Brown: The Complete Case Book is the best way to kill time on a Friday afternoon.

Being an avid poker player, as well as a pseudo-semi-avid reader, I’ve dealt my way through my share of poker books. So when I was at the bookstore looking for books with cool covers, imagine my delight at spotting The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King (Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time), by Michael Craig.

Obviously, I couldn’t resist betting $24 on it (a big blind bet, if you will). The book tells the story of how Andy Beal, a banker from Texas, managed to set up a heads-up poker game between himself and a group of professional players in Las Vegas for the highest stakes ever played. It’s an interesting story, with some interesting characters. [hit that danged old ‘more’ link to read on…]

In fact, probably the most interesting parts of the book for me were the background stories of some of the characters. Take Andy Beal, for instance. He was a complete do-it-yourselfer who became a billionaire. Remember the old Steve Martin gag about “Fred’s Bank”? Well, he pretty much did that — created Beal Bank, and got rich. I was pretty familiar with many of the other background stories, about the individuals who made up the pool of players who combined their bankrolls to take turns playing Andy Beal. And whereas I was hoping to get some insights into the types of hands that were played at these stakes and some of the poker moves the players made, those types of details were very sparse. The normal recap would be something along the lines of “the cards ran cold for Andy” or “Andy played very aggressively”, and then you’d find out who won how much in that given session. Granted, the amounts are staggering (they reached a point where they were playing with $100,000 and $200,000 blinds, where any given pot could reach into the millions of dollars), but once you got over that shock, it lost some of its luster.

For anyone familiar with the current poker scene, and with the game itself, this book frankly isn’t that interesting. Where I was looking for some juicy tidbits about the players and the specific games that were played in this epic match, the book seems to be more about name dropping than substance. And if you like that, then enjoy this: Blah, blah, blah, Doyle Brunson. Blah, blah, blah, Howard Lederer. Blah, blah, blah, Johnny Chan. Blah, blah, blah, Jennifer Harmon.

You get the point. So anyone who has only sparing familiarity with the game of poker and its current crop of top professionals might find this a fun read. But for money players, this was pretty much dead money.

The weekend before last, Mrs. Cayenne and I took it on down to The Center for Southern Literature. We went so see a reading by John Berendt, author of the new book The City of Falling Angels and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. The new book is a true story about the mystery surrounding the burning of the Fenice Opera House in Venice - and wacky Venetians. In keeping with the opera theme, the Atlanta Opera had a singer there doing a number from La Traviata, which debuted at the Fenice - back in the day. We had culture coming out the ass. It was a nice evening. Unfortunately, attending the event precluded my going to see the band Gang of Four with Shaft. That’ll happen. I am currently seeking volunteers among the Atlanta-based BGB-ers to go see Ernest J. Gaines this coming Tuesday night for me. I’ll be out of town, and I need a book or two signed in a bad way. There will be a bar.

Since everyone else seems to post about non-reading items - I felt compelled to give my critique on a movie I saw last night - Everything is Illuminated. Now I believe that many of us read this book by Jonathan Safran Foer and thought it was brilliant. What made the book brilliant was the writing style, and the sequencing back and forth between life in a small Ukranian shetl and the modern day search for a woman who saved Safran Foer’s grandfather. The characters on this search are Alex, the hilarious Ukranian translator who loves everything American, Alex’s grandfather, his seeing eye dog, Sammy Davis Jr. Jr and Safran Foer. Unfortunately - I didn’t think any of this translated well on film. The entire film centers around the search through the Ukraine for this woman and there are no flashbacks to life in the shetl. Safran Foer is played by Elijah Wood who just seems stiff and lifeless and wears this weird black suit throughout the entire movie. The pacing of the movie is extremely slow; there are many scenes of them driving through the countryside which was such a contrast compared to the fast, almost manic, pace of the book. The best part of the film were the two Ukranian characters, Alex and his grandfather, who are great actors and made the movie. And Liev Schrieber (who apparently bought the rights to the book before it was even published), the director, did do a good job of the hilarious broken English spoken by Alex. Other than that - a disappointment. I would love to get someone’s opinion of the movie who had not read the book - anyone?

If you grew up in South Louisiana or Southeast Texas you learned about the famous pirate Jean Lafitte in the same breath as Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. Only Jean Lafitte was way more interesting. I mean he was a pirate. And he saved the country. Come on!

vs.

When I read that there was a new and authoritative (?) book out about the famous pirate, The Pirates Laffite: The Treacherous World of the Corsairs of the Gulf by William C. Davis, I bought it immediately. When I was growing up, the town next to mine was called Lafitte (it’s called Jean Lafitte on some maps, but I never heard anyone call it that). What used to be a big swamp a few miles from my childhood house is now Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve (Barataria Preserve). We went on school field trips to see the puppet show version of the Battle of New Orleans, starring Jean Lafitte and Andrew Jackson. A much more boring field trip involved schlepping out to the Chalmette Battle Field where the Battle of New Orleans took place (this area was devastated by Katrina). Why they bring children to battle fields for field trips is beyond me. [more fascinating insights after the jump]

Later in life, I enjoyed cold ones in one of New Orleans’ coolest bars, Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop (note: the picture of the 1772-vintage building was taken before the hurricane), reputedly the location of the pirate’s “front” business. (Added bonus: our own FlavaWheel once slept there). I’d also go to the Napoleon House regularly for muffalettas and Pim’s cups. The Napoleon House was supposedly offered as a refuge to the then banished Emperor once the Lafitte Fréres were successful in rescuing him from Elba. Or something like that. Anyway, the Lafitte “myth” was history that I grew up with and was literally surrounded by. Like all history that you grow up with, I didn’t really know much “book learnin”-wise, most of what was retained was the oral tradition and grade school lessons. So the book was a no-brainer - is what I’m sayin’.

I wondered how this scholarly history would compare with what I learned as a kid. Advisedly, I decided not to rely solely on my memory to resolve the two. So I pulled out a copy of the book The Pirate Lafitte and the Battle of New Orleans by Robert Tallant. I had picked up a copy of The Pirate Lafitte at a used book sale years ago. It is a “young adult” popular history book, part of the Landmark Books series. My copy was printed in 1951, so it seemed like the appropriate outdated vintage for my elementary school and Parish library collections.

First, a quick update if you’re not familiar with the basic history. The local oral tradition is sort of a Robin Hood story - but with pirates. Jean Lafitte was a French pirate who moved to Louisiana from Bordeaux just before the Louisiana Purchase. He and his men were gentleman outlaws. During the war of 1812, the British were plotting to take the Louisiana territory by capturing New Orleans. The British had already burned down the original White House in DC, so they were pretty serious about this whole thing. General Andrew Jackson was dispatched to protect the city with very few troops. The pirates led by Jean Lafitte pitched in to help the US soldiers and fought bravely, thereby defeating the British, saving the City, and ultimately the US. That’s the general story.

Now for the books. The most obvious differences in the two books - other than levels of scholarship, intended age of audience, size, age of the books, etc. - is found in the titles. The Pirate Lafitte is singular. The Pirates Laffite plural. Hats off to the Pirates Laffite for giving some props to Jean’s brother, Pierre. The Pirate Lafitte mentions Pierre, but it downplays Pierre’s importance. Pierre was integral to the whole operation, being the “brains” behind the enterprise for want of a better description. 10 points for The Pirates Laffite.

Still dealing with the title, The Pirates Laffite uses one spelling of the last name while The Pirate Lafitte opts for another. There are various spellings of the last names in the historical record - including the brothers’ signatures. This is problematic for historians, but not unusual for the time - apparently. Everything in my neck of the woods uses The Pirate Lafitte spelling. The “Laffite” spelling seems to be a Galveston thing, based entirely on the basis of the Laffite Society being located there. We don’t care how they do it in Texas. 10 points for The Pirate Lafitte.

Both books refer to the Lafitte Fréres as “gentlemen pirates”. Yet both sort of gloss over the fact that much of the cargo that the pirates were smuggling into Louisiana were slaves. It was illegal to import slaves at this time. After several slave revolts in the Caribbean, the locals were afraid of importing “radicals”. It was still perfectly legal to sell slaves, however. So the trick was just getting them past customs. Both books treat slave trading as merely an “of the time” phenomenon. -10 points for both books. Another -5 points from the Pirate Lafitte which begins with the “amusing” anecdote of a young boy who goes to New Orleans with his dad to visit the slave market and has a brush with Jean Lafitte. Nice.

The Pirate Lafitte probably oversells the story of the pirates’ contribution to the Battle of New Orleans. Almost a Chamber of Commerce-style telling of the Battle. The Pirates Laffite seems to knowingly undersell their contribution. I’m not sure what was up with that. He has a beef with the Brothers Lafitte? I’m not sure who’s ahead in points, but deductions for both here.

The Pirate Lafitte deviated freely from fact, and it blended stories that were clearly fiction as though they were fact. Well, if you’re 12. Lots of page long stories will begin, “and legend has it…”. On the other hand, the Pirates Laffite was a never ending list of facts - “this ship came in this month with this and that on board, the next month another ship came in with the other”. There is lots of popular myth to explore, but The Pirates Laffite has no time for speculation. The author even seems to go out of his way to say that the brothers were almost certainly never blacksmiths, without ever mentioning the bar. The Pirate Lafitte seems to get it, suggesting that the fabled blacksmith shop was a front for piratical-type operations. Which may be pandering. Either way, a nod for The Pirate Lafitte for acknowledging local myth. Neither book mentions, even in passing, the Brothers’ supposed involvement with a plot to rescue Napoleon from Elba. So who knows if any of that story is true. The Pirate Lafitte talks about hidden pirate treasure and riches. The Pirates Laffite indicates that the pirate life, while lucrative at times, was largely a desperate, hard scrabble way of making a living. You know, in case anyone is thinking of becoming a pirate.

To maybe wrap this up sometime soon, The Pirate Lafitte was very much the sort of Jean Lafitte story telling experience that I remember as a kid. The Pirates Laffite filled me in on lots of local history that was incredibly interesting for someone who grew up in the Barataria area. The author also bored the pants of this reader for huge stretches at a time - while talking about pirates for crying out loud. Given the subject matter and the interest I brought to the table, I wanted Pirates to be better than it was. Maybe it was just a case of not meeting my ridiculously high expectations.

Note: OK, that may be the longest and most self-involved post ever. This post has been about a month in the making. Sadly, I don’t have more to show for it. Reading over it, I bore myself. Thanks for reading this far. Now I get to writing about other books in my “read” stack.

Let me start off by saying that I believe that I have won the award for longest book read on BGB to date……At a mere 846 pages - Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke was a huge investment of my time and I must say that it was worth it.

There were definitely times (at about page 650) that I thought I would never get through the tome but I was too immersed in the world of English magic during the years 1806-1817 to give it up. I would definitely characterize this book as Harry Potter for adults but what’s interesting is that I was not a huge Harry Potter fan and in fact, magic does not really interest me at all (unlike my husband who is obsessed with the show on A&E - Criss Angel’s Mindfreak) yet I still really enjoyed it. [more after the jump]

The book centers around 2 main characters - Mr. Norrell who is a theoretical magician, i.e. he has read and studied every book about magic and is the most knowledgable in all of England and Jonathan Strange - who begins the book as Mr. Norrell’s pupil but then goes on to become a practical magician. The two magicians of course must part ways because Strange is dabbling in “black” magic and getting deeper involved with faeries and all things in the otherworld. What is so fascinating about this book is that Clarke wrote it in a non-fiction style and there are footnotes throughout the entire book referring to fictional characters/books in history. The most notable of which is the Raven King who apparently ruled Northern England for hundreds of years and was the most powerful magician in all of history. We are entertained throughout the novel with snippets of British life in the 1800’s, the Napoleonic wars, life in Venice, how the aristocracy lived, etc. The writing style, attitudes and language are very British which made the book that much more endearing. Clarke goes into such descriptive details about “otherworlds” which is where faeries live that I almost came to believe that maybe there are other “worlds” that do exist. Her imaginative uses of magic such as creating a naval fleet out of rain to outsmart Napoleon, bringing back the dead, magic spells and potions were all just fascinating. She also has many twists throughout the book so it captured by attention right up until the ending.

I do think that some editing could have lopped off about 100 pages particularly in the beginning when there was so much storyline centered around Mr. Norrell and his friends who were really quite boring characters. That aside - if you like fantasy and magic or just feel like reading a different kind of book - make the investment.

Stop whatever it is that you think that you ought to be doing right now and give a listen to the new official version of the unofficial song for B.G.B.

It’s Friday afternoon, and my brain is turning into pudding. Time to post on some more book awards. The (US) National Book Award Finalists were named this week. In a populist move, the finalists were announced by John Grisham. He made the announcement from William Faulkner’s house - so it all washes out in the end. The finalists are:

E.L. Doctorow, The March
Mary Gaitskill, Veronica
Christopher Sorrentino, Trance
Rene Steinke, Holy Skirts
William T. Vollman, Europe Central

Of the books, I’ve only heard of March. I’m not crazy at all about Civil War-era stuff. So I’m going to punt on that one. Vollman is the only other author that I’ve heard of - my shortcoming, not theirs. Vollman wrote a 7-volume (3500 page) treatise on the history of violence that was originally published by McSweeney’s called Rising Up and Rising Down (priced to move at $199 - used). His new entry, Europe Central is 832 pages long. The remaining books don’t appeal to me either at first glance. Anyone else know anything at all about these books?

Yesterday the winners of the Quill Awards were announced. According to the Quill Foundation website the mission behind the new award is: A new book award program that pairs a populist sensibility with Hollywood-style glitz to bestow the first literary prizes reflecting the tastes of the people who matter most–readers.

Un-huh.

The Book of the Year Award (that’s right… the whole year) was awared to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I read it. I enjoyed it. I think she’s an amazing writer for children. I do not think that a Book of the Year Award is deserved.

The award ceremony will be aired on NBC on October 22nd and my Tivo box will be capturing it for sheer curiosity value. I cannot conceive of debasing literature to the point where Elmo is handing out awards for Children’s Illustrated Book. (Note that there is no “Best” in that title. It’s as if this might be the only illustrated book to come out this year. Or maybe they forgot to choose a title and sent a runner over B&N to grab something.)

What’s next folks…. an award for Best Dust Jacket…. Best Bargain Title… Best Cookbook Featuring the Creative Use of Guavas?

Kim Cattrall and Candice Bushnell are presenters. Sex and the City comes to literature - at Pier Sixty in New York.

Here is some minimal information regarding some things that I found interesting.

First, here’s a story about contraversial book reviews of Jesse Helms new biography. Key excerpt: I may not know much, but I know chicken shit from chicken salad.

Next up, PJ O’Rourke takes a steaming dump on the new book Slam Dunks and No Brainers by Leslie Savan. Key excerpt: And Savan writes that “exactly when cool jelled into the word we know today is difficult to say.” It is not difficult to say upon looking into The Oxford English Dictionary. Ouch, PJ.

Neal Pollack will be writing for the new Cracked Magazine. That’s right. Cracked.

Slate says that Bill Simmons is the best sportswriter of his (our) generation. But you knew that.

Charles Darwin get the McSweeney’s treatment. The surprising thing is that it appears to be factually acurate - more or less. Key excerpt:

After all that shit—Ramsay dead, Canary plans gone, the new offer, Dad shooting him down, Uncle Jos saving the day, leaps of joy, racing around and telling everyone, tearful farewells, buying up expedition gear, snacks, swimsuit, old People magazines—he comes to find out it isn’t a go. Hope nobody was “inconvenienced,” FitzRoy says. What a dick.

Finally, Shaft totally backs my call.

That’s it for now. Carry on.

Cormac McCarthy could have written No Country for Old Men with one hand tied behind his back. For all I know, he did.

This is not a terribly noteworthy book in the scheme of things, but only Cormac could possibly have created the character Anton Chigurh, one of the more depraved and violent (and memorable) fellows to come down the literary pike in recent years. (Chigurh’s philosophical statement at the end of the book, which came out of nowhere, absolutely slayed me.) [Read more after the jump]

Cormac writes violence better than anyone, but there was nothing in this book that could hold a candle even to the knife fight or the dog hunt in Cities of the Plain, for instance. And, I have to agree with many of the critics who said that in this case the violence was devoid of morality. It served to show off his flashy writing chops more than any exploration of a moral code.

No Country took the edge off my Cormac jones, so it served its purpose. I’ll be able to contain myself until he bangs out another book that could compete with any of the Border Trilogy novels. But it’s a far cry from Blood Meridian or Suttree. There was a time in my life when I considered buying crates’ worth of Suttree and just handing out copies to strangers on street corners, and I still think of images from that tale and laugh out loud to myself. Sometimes I cast the movie version in my head. It’s that good, and I’m that weird.

Suffice it to say that I won’t start pricing grosses of No Country anytime soon.

P.S. Kudos to Cormac’s editors at Knopf, or whomever is responsible for his jacket covers. They’re always excellent.

It was announced yesterday evening that John Banville won the UK’s 2005 Man Booker Prize for his book The Sea. Unfortunately, this book will not be available in the US until March 2006. Mark your calendars. I’ve read another book by Banville, The Untouchable. It is a fictional account of a group of Cambridge graduates who spied against the UK, one of whom is unmasked well past his espionage days as an old man. I recommend it, and it is priced to move (Never Let Me Go (see post 1 and 2) was going to win. I have a pet theory that the author actively avoided being too Science Fiction, which I felt ultimately detracted from the book. So imagine my surprise when the author was on NPR talking about literature and Science Fiction. The host makes the explicit point that Ishiguro is reluctant to embrace the SciFi label. Sweet. For me and my theory I mean.

I happened to read Warren St John’s Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer a couple of weeks ago. In addition to being the book whose title I have least enjoyed trying to explain to other people who asked me what I was reading, it’s an interesting and funny insider’s chronicle of one season with the Alabama fans who follow their football team around the Southeastern Conference in their recreational vehicles. St John has some funny observations about his fellow Alabama fans, a few trenchant ones about upper-middle class whites who follow the doings of working- or lower-class African American teenagers who play football for “their” team, and more than I ever wanted to know about RVs.

But what he mostly has is the best descriptions I’ve ever seen of the conversations intelligent sports fans have immediately after their team loses the Big Game: Why do I let these stupid things control my feelings? Why do I fall for this year after year? Why do I care about these humps? Why do I waste my time on this foolishness?

Those are conversations I have with myself every year oh, about… now.

First, hi! I’m new to the blog and thrilled to be here.

Now… to the books!

On Monday I finished reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I am a rabid fan of Ishiguro. He is on my list of “The Five People I Most Want to Meet.” Therefore, my comments should be read with the understanding that there may have been some rose-colored glasses between me and the text. [Click the “more” link for the rest of the post]

That being said, the novel is a victory for Ishiguro and will be thrust into the canon along with 1984 and Flowers for Algernon. What struck me most about the book (and here come the spoilers) is the distance that Ishiguro purposefully places between the reader and the narrator. There is a cold, clinician’s touch in the handling of the characters and their relationships with each other. This coldness serves to make the reader question their own perceptions of the clones. Are we truly sympathetic toward them, or do we, like Madame and Miss Emily, shrink from their presence and have to avert our eyes?

Those familiar with Ishiguro’s writing style might argue that this distance is present in all of his books and is not different here. However, there are so many devices used to create this distance and emphasize it that I don’t think it can be anything less than deliberate.

The dialogue, I find, is stilted to an unusual degree even for Ishiguro. This alone makes the reader feel outside the story. While I was caught up in the suspense of the story as it moved along I felt uneasy with the narrative. Unsettled might be a better word. There was no warmth. While I gathered pretty quickly that Kathy and Tommy were destined to be more than friends I found her descriptions of her feelings to be minimalist and therefore ineffective. Is that Ishiguro’s voice or is it Kathy’s? I believe that Ishiguro set up the narrative this way.

Another technique to further the distance is the way Kathy and Ruth’s relationship is constructed. Although we peak through the doors at more intimate moments between them, where they cozy up and have long talks, we never get much detail about those talks. To me, those details are not extraneous and would have made Kathy, and perhaps even Ruth, more emotionally accessible. But, while we get play-by-play detail on their arguments, the nice times are glossed over. I came away not caring very much for Ruth.

DJ Cayenne mentioned in his post on the book that he questions why Ishiguro chose to set the book in the 1990’s. I think it is to make us question whether or not a subculture like that of the clones could possibly exist under our noses without our knowing. Ishiguro loves to play with our perceptions of memory and time and I think this was simply a technique to make us stop and take note of the current scientific research going on and question the end results.

There was an undercurrent of suspicion in the book. As Kathy goes from center to center to care for her donors it seems as though she’s afraid to set a toe out of line. When she and Tommy stop the car so that Tommy can scream and thrash out his anger at the world he gets covered with mud and is concerned about how to explain that to the people at his center. Even at Hailsham there are repeated mentions of how little privacy there is. People are looking out of windows and skulking around. I think the undertone suggests that the clones are under watch all of the time and to escape would mean some unnamed punishment. I wonder, too, if it is possible that given Hailsham’s seclusion and the protection offered to the students if the main characters here might not have heard of escape attempts even if some have happened. Kathy, despite her occasional displays of moxie, does not strike me as a flight risk. Miss Emily tells Kathy and Tommy that most clones are not offered a chance to have a childhood. She makes it sound as though they are farmed and penned like animals. If a person is treated that way from “birth” they would have no context for “freedom” and “escape” and therefore proceed through the donor process without a thought as to alternatives.

Obviously the book asks many questions and provides no answers. It has made me pause and contemplate things like racism and class-ism and how we relate to our fellow humans. In so many instances there have been entire peoples that assumed that other peoples lacked souls. This book provides an interesting view of that problem.

First, hi! I’m new to the blog and thrilled to be here.

Now… to the books!

On Monday I finished reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I am a rabid fan of Ishiguro. He is on my list of “The Five People I Most Want to Meet.” Therefore, my comments should be read with the understanding that there may have been some rose-colored glasses between me and the text. [Click the “more” link for the rest of the post]

That being said, the novel is a victory for Ishiguro and will be thrust into the canon along with 1984 and Flowers for Algernon. What struck me most about the book (and here come the spoilers) is the distance that Ishiguro purposefully places between the reader and the narrator. There is a cold, clinician’s touch in the handling of the characters and their relationships with each other. This coldness serves to make the reader question their own perceptions of the clones. Are we truly sympathetic toward them, or do we, like Madame and Miss Emily, shrink from their presence and have to avert our eyes?

Those familiar with Ishiguro’s writing style might argue that this distance is present in all of his books and is not different here. However, there are so many devices used to create this distance and emphasize it that I don’t think it can be anything less than deliberate.

The dialogue, I find, is stilted to an unusual degree even for Ishiguro. This alone makes the reader feel outside the story. While I was caught up in the suspense of the story as it moved along I felt uneasy with the narrative. Unsettled might be a better word. There was no warmth. While I gathered pretty quickly that Kathy and Tommy were destined to be more than friends I found her descriptions of her feelings to be minimalist and therefore ineffective. Is that Ishiguro’s voice or is it Kathy’s? I believe that Ishiguro set up the narrative this way.

Another technique to further the distance is the way Kathy and Ruth’s relationship is constructed. Although we peak through the doors at more intimate moments between them, where they cozy up and have long talks, we never get much detail about those talks. To me, those details are not extraneous and would have made Kathy, and perhaps even Ruth, more emotionally accessible. But, while we get play-by-play detail on their arguments, the nice times are glossed over. I came away not caring very much for Ruth.

DJ Cayenne mentioned in his post on the book that he questions why Ishiguro chose to set the book in the 1990’s. I think it is to make us question whether or not a subculture like that of the clones could possibly exist under our noses without our knowing. Ishiguro loves to play with our perceptions of memory and time and I think this was simply a technique to make us stop and take note of the current scientific research going on and question the end results.

There was an undercurrent of suspicion in the book. As Kathy goes from center to center to care for her donors it seems as though she’s afraid to set a toe out of line. When she and Tommy stop the car so that Tommy can scream and thrash out his anger at the world he gets covered with mud and is concerned about how to explain that to the people at his center. Even at Hailsham there are repeated mentions of how little privacy there is. People are looking out of windows and skulking around. I think the undertone suggests that the clones are under watch all of the time and to escape would mean some unnamed punishment. I wonder, too, if it is possible that given Hailsham’s seclusion and the protection offered to the students if the main characters here might not have heard of escape attempts even if some have happened. Kathy, despite her occasional displays of moxie, does not strike me as a flight risk. Miss Emily tells Kathy and Tommy that most clones are not offered a chance to have a childhood. She makes it sound as though they are farmed and penned like animals. If a person is treated that way from “birth” they would have no context for “freedom” and “escape” and therefore proceed through the donor process without a thought as to alternatives.

Obviously the book asks many questions and provides no answers. It has made me pause and contemplate things like racism and class-ism and how we relate to our fellow humans. In so many instances there have been entire peoples that assumed that other peoples lacked souls. This book provides an interesting view of that problem.

Today is the 50th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg’s first reading of his epic poem Howl, which is remembered as a defining moment of the Beat Generation.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,…

Etc. Jack Kerouac described the Beat Generation as all but dead in 1958. More after the jump.

My first introduction to the Beats came one Saturday morning watching Popeye. For some reason, Olive Oyl was a beatnik. So Popeye put on a turtleneck, grabbed some bongos, and took it on down to the coffee house. As far I could tell from that experience, being a Beatnik involved bongo playing, cigarettes, jaunty berets, and mysteriously sliding your palms across the table and saying “cool” over and over while others read poetry. Also: snapping. Later (as viewed by me), a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon had a “Beatnik Rooster” (below) who played rockabilly guitar and was into hooking up with the hens at the hen house.

Later still, there was an episode of the Beverly Hillbillies where Granny runs into a group of beatniks at the park. She was instantly considered hip because she was looking for “a little pot” to “smoke some crawdad”.

What does any of this have to do with the 50th Anniversary of Howl? Who knows? I love the “cartoon” of the beatnik. However, I am pretty sure that Ginsberg, Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, etc. would have preferred that the Beats were remembered differently.