Freedom

I was able to get an early peek at the new Jonathan Franzen novel Freedom when President Obama loaned me his copy. Thanks, Barry.  The early reviews have been rolling out for a few weeks now, and each one seems to be trying to outdo the others in the superlatives heaped upon it.  So far the novel has been called “the novel of the century” and “a masterpiece of American fiction”.  Franzen is “alone in his willingness to tackle America’s big issues,” insists another critic.  And then the backlash started before the novel was even released. I had to stop reading if I was to ever be able to offer an opinion of my own.

I should start by noting that I was not especially a fan of The Corrections.  It was heralded as a Big, Important book. It was certainly a good book, but that’s as far as I was willing to go.  My problem with Franzen’s cast in that novel is that they were almost dripping with the author’s scorn.  He didn’t like them at all, and they were each clearly representative of a “type” that the author seemed intent on skewering.  If the author didn’t care for these people, why should the reader (me) care about what happened to them?  The praise for The Corrections was near universal, and mine appeared to be the minority opinion.  Fair enough.

Freedom is an enormous book, a veritable advertisement for the Kindle, and it is divided into several sections.  The novel begins with an introduction to Walter and Patty Bergland, urban pioneers to a newly gentrifying neighborhood in St Paul, Minnesota.  This introduction is often humorous and spot-on in its description of the travails of urban living:

…the collective task in Ramsey Hill was to relearn certain life skills that your own parents fled to the suburbs specifically to unlearn, like how to interest the local cops in actually doing their job, and how to protect a bike from a highly motivated thief, and when to bother rousting a drunk from your lawn furniture, and how to encourage feral cats to shit in somebody else’s children’s sandbox, and how to determine whether a public school sucked too much to bother trying to fix it.

After a mostly light-hearted introduction to the Berglunds, the next chapter is ominously titled “Mistakes were made.”   This section is written by Patty at the advice of a therapist.  It is written in the third person, as Patty says that she finds it easier to write about herself from a distance (and it was probably easier for Franzen, too). Despite being an “autobiography,” the chapter is fairly direct at laying bare the mistakes that Patty has made in her life.   Patty doesn’t commit the only mistakes in this novel, but she is the only one who gets to provide her own account.

Walter and Patty are both trying desperately to escape their pasts, which include dysfunctional families in the Midwest and the East.  True to Tolstoy’s famous quote on the matter, each of their unhappy families “is unhappy in its own way.”  Despite their efforts, the dysfunction begins to creep into their quiet Midwestern home.  Walter and Patty have two children, Joey and a girl.  (You don’t need to know the girl’s name, because she may be the least developed character in the novel.)  Joey rebels against his liberal parents by shacking up with the “white-trash” next door neighbor and becoming a committed conservative. (It reads like a horror novel at stretches for parents everywhere.)

For volatility, Franzen adds Walter and Patty’s friend Richard Katz, the iconic indie rock star, to the mix.  Richard was Walter’s roommate in college and the man that Patty passed up to marry Walter.  Tall and devastatingly handsome with cool to burn (even though he’s described as looking like Muammar Gaddafi), it can’t be a good thing to have this guy hanging around the family.

I’ll confess that I was concerned in the middle third of the novel when I feared that Franzen was returning to the form that I disliked in The Corrections.   Many of the characters become completely unlikable and begin to lose some of their dimension.  Add to that some observations bordering on caricature like, this one:

Walter wasn’t really even a neighbor, he didn’t belong to the homeowner’s association, and the fact that he drove a Japanese hybrid, to which he recently applied an OBAMA sticker, pointed, in her mind, toward godlessness and a callousness regarding the plight of hardworking families, like hers, who were struggling to make ends meet and raise their children to be good, loving citizens in a dangerous world.

…. and I feared the worst.  Luckily, the final third of the novel rides in to save the day.

The novel tackles many Big Ideas.  Franzen examines toxicity from both external (environmental) and internal (personal drama) standpoints, and highlights the extensive damage of both.  The author also explores  the profound impacts of the choices that we make, whether well considered or barely acknowledged,  on the direction of our lives.  Franzen also shows the blindness that we often have concerning our own actions.  For example,  when Walter accuses his son of “conniving with monsters trashing the country for their personal enrichment…”, he seems to be oblivious that this is precisely where he finds himself.

Of course, “Freedom” in its various forms is also a central theme to the novel.   When Joey is pursuing the sister of a well-connected college friend, the girl’s father delivers the following oration over a (just) post-9/11 dinner:

Freedom is a pain in the ass.  And that’s why it’s so imperative that we seize the opportunity that’s been presented to us this fall.  To get a nation of free people to let go of their bad logic and sign on with better logic, by whatever means are necessary.

Do nefarious Republican oligarchs really speak that way?  Or do we (Franzen and I) just imagine that they do?  Really, I have no frame of reference.

Another kind of freedom the author brings to mind comes from disentangling oneself from family, loved ones, and any kind of meaningful personal attachments in order to live life “unencumbered.”   However, Franzen shows in the third act that this type of freedom is illusory and empty.   Our families/loved ones provide nourishment for our souls and provide the only real paths to forgiveness and acceptance. These are  hardly the ironic hipster sentiments that I was expecting. Is irony truly dead?

As I’ve mentioned, the novel’s concluding third saved the novel for me.  It turned the novel away from what I was expecting, into largely unexpected territory.  Overall, I thought that this was an exceptional novel.  There were quibbles that I had along the way, some of which I’ve mentioned here, that leave me wondering about Franzen’s coronation as our greatest living writer and this the great novel of our times.  Time and perspective will tell.

Jonathan Franzen will be delivering the keynote address and signing books at the opening of this year’s Decatur Book Festival.  I’d love to hear the author talk about this book.  The event is free, but it requires a ticket.   If you waited, like me, to get your tickets, I’m sorry to say that there are no more available.  Come on down anyway and join me on the sidewalk outside looking for kind souls with extras.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

I had read a little bit about the film The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, but I didn’t realize that it was based on a book by John Boyne.   I hadn’t seen the film and decided to read the book.  As I’ve said in other reviews, Holy Cow.  What a marvelous, gut-wrenching book.

Like other books I’ve read and enjoyed (e.g., The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close), this book is written with a child’s innocence; unlike those, this one is told in the third person.  The story focuses on our main character Bruno, a nine year-old German boy, and tells of the events surrounding the early 1940′s from his perspective.  And Boyne’s skill at portraying such a brutal period in human history through the eyes of a child is positively spellbinding.

Bruno’s father is in the German military, although Bruno doesn’t really know what his job is — just that he’s very important.  And after a visit from “the Fury”, Bruno’s father gets put in charge of “Out-with”, and uproots his family from their comfortable life in Berlin to live in a large house bordering the concentration camp.  Bruno is devastated at having to move and leave his best friends, and as he tries to find ways to occupy himself in his new environment (including getting along with his older sister Gretel), he is perplexed by the people he sees who live on the other side of the distant fence, all of whom wear the same style of striped pajamas.  Hearing the scenes and events told as they are seen and understood by a nine-year old innocent child is incredibly moving.  And when Bruno goes “exploring” along the fence, walking for an hour into the woods, he comes across a boy on the other side of the fence and the two become secret friends.  As the boys begin meeting on a daily basis and as they talk and relay their experiences through the fence – being uprooted to a new place they didn’t want to go to, etc. — the similarities might resonate to the untrained eye; however, knowing the horror behind Bruno’s friend Shmuel’s story brings tears to your eyes.

Like the film Life is Beautiful, this book is a moving tale about a horrific and tragic time, and anyone with a heart would be stunned by this story.

It was supposed to be funny

Reading the comments on the cover of I’m Down (“hilarious” “laugh-out-loud”) including the picture of a young white girl with a big afro by Mishna Wolff, it would appear this book could be a natural extension of my Chelsea Handler summer reading material since I love to laugh. Not so. In fact, I found this memoir to be a bit unsettling.

I’m Down is about Ms. Wolff, a white girl growing up in the proverbial black ‘hood of Seattle. She does not fit into the neighborhood as completely as her father would like. He wants her to be “down” – to act like all the other kids on their block. To please him, she tries her best. At one point she does enjoy some success with ‘capping (public insults similar to “yo moma” jokes). She feels almost accepted by the kids in the neighborhood – but is suddenly moved to a more academic school where the population consists of smart, rich, white kids. She finds she is not a natural fit there either. Ms.Wolff can not believe that these white, presumably privileged kids are not happy either. She is introduced to a world of depression and cutting by girls who are also crying for acceptance and love from their parents.

At first glance, I was a bit insulted regarding the race issue. Normally I’m not the most politically correct person but reading that her dad wants her to be more “black” made my blood boil. Ms. Wolff claims that her father thinks he’s black because he has permed his hair into an afro, doesn’t have a job, begins but never finishes construction projects on the house and plays a lot of poker with the other unemployed men who live nearby. Is this being black? Or is this being economically disadvantaged (a.k.a. “poor”) in an urban neighborhood? It’s curious to me because my husband is black (I am not) and no one in his family acts like the people in this book. If you don’t go deeper into the book, then it’s just more of the same stereotypical trash that never seems to end.

At second glance however, race isn’t the real issue. The issue is acceptance and love. I was reminded of my childhood and the difficulties I encountered trying to ‘fit in’ being the fat kid from divorced parents that no one wanted to hang around. Whether racial, socio-economical, educational or even appearance, most children experience similar challenges. Unfortunately for Ms. Wolff, she didn’t have parents to whom she could trun to sort all of this out. My heart broke for Ms. Wolff and her endless effort to please her father. Ms. Wolff overhears her father’s girlfriends commenting on her new classmates:

They are not gifted unless gifted is another word for bad……….That girl is no more gifted than any of my kids and she’s disrespectful, thinking she knows more than grown folks.” Her dad then replies “ But even before she went there [to the school] Mishna thought she was better than everyone. She’s just snotty like her mother.

Ms. Wolff (and I) cringed at her father’s response. She aches for her father’s acceptance and love but she never measures up to “his” world. Even during her parents’ divorce, she was hoping the judge would ask her who she liked better so she could say:

Mom. Not because I liked her better, but because I knew I was cool enough for Mom. And I felt that not being quite good enough for Dad might cause problems down the road – like I’d cramp his style and maybe he’d decide to leave me at a party.

Although she felt cool enough for her mom, her mom is emotionally absent. She left the family to take care of her own personal issues. Later Ms. Wolff does move in with her, but it’s because she feels she causes too many problems in her dad’s new family with his new wife, not because her mother gives her any emotional support or positive guidance.

The story ends with hope that everything will eventually work out. When I Googled Ms. Wolff, I found that she had dropped out of high school at 16. I can only hope that by writing the memoir and speaking about her life she can understand the reasons for her father’s behavior and break that emotional abusive cycle with her future children.

All in all, a decent collection of childhood experiences – just don’t expect to laugh.

The Last Hero

On the heels of Dr J’s excellent post delving into the DeLillo archives to research “Pafko at the Wall” and the two big baseball news stories yesterday (the death of Bobby Thomson and the new medical paper that suggests that Lou Gehrig may not have died of the disease that bears his name), it seems appropriate that I finally get around to posting about one of the best baseball books I’ve read: The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron by Howard Bryant.

If you’re not from Atlanta or Milwaukee, maybe you haven’t thought of Hank Aaron in awhile.  Here in Atlanta though, Henry Aaron is difficult to miss.  Hank Aaron Drive is a walking distance from my house. A visit to Turner Field yields virtually unlimited references to number 44.   Hank Aaron owns several car dealerships in town (I once bought a car from Hank! Well, not Hank exactly…).  Hank Aaron also remains active in our city and in baseball, often serving as a spokesman for both.  It’s clear that the man long-ago reached hero status in this town.

Bryant’s previous book, Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston, addressed the slow path to integration taken by the Boston Red Sox.   Last Hero focuses on racial issues, too, in explaining the man Henry Aaron.  The book traces Aaron’s journey from the Jim Crow south to the pinnacle of American sport, where he was not always welcome.  Along the way, Bryant highlights how Aaron was shaped by his experience and how his outward expression of those experiences shaped how he was perceived by others, often to his detriment.

Aaron’s number 44 has been retired at Turner Field

The book begins before the beginning, in 1884, with the birth of the first Henry, Aaron’s grandfather in the rural post-slavery south in a geographically isolated corner of lower Alabama called Gee’s Bend.  Henry’s father Herbert left Gee’s Bend for the relative prosperity of Mobile, Alabama.  Bryant describes what racial segregation was like for the young Henry Aaron.  It was a time when a boy going to the grocery store would watch as white people would cut in front of his father at the checkout store line and societal norms dictated that Herbert would have to endure the public insult in silence.  Bryant points to these daily humiliations of segregation as formative in the psyche of Henry Aaron and the man that he would become.

Henry is soon discovered by a scout while in high school playing for a local team made up mostly of adults.  Major League Baseball was newly integrated at this time, but he was signed by the Indianapolis Clowns, a Negro League team. Aaron would be the last Major Leaguer to begin his career in the soon to be defunct Negro League.  His stay in the Negro Leagues was short-lived. He moved on to the minor leagues, playing first in the South Atlantic League, and eventually making it to the big club, the expansion team Milwaukee Braves.  While his rise through the ranks was in some ways meteoric, Bryant points out the indignities that Aaron endured at each step.

Coincidence?  Aaron’s 755 home runs is also the address of Turner Field

In the South Atlantic League, which Aaron integrated, he was greeted in many cities with the worst kind of racial epithets.  Of course, he was also unable to lodge with his team mates in the integrated south.  Even after escaping the South Atlantic League for the big club in Milwaukee, racism was persistent.  During spring training Henry Aaron and the other black Braves players were not allowed to lodge at the beach side resort where the white players stayed with their families, staying instead at a lodging house in the black part of town. The black players were assigned lockers together that were separate from the white players and were expected to shower separately.  Despite being a star player for the Milwaukee Braves, Aaron was expected to live within the boundaries of the tightly controlled black part of town in his early years.

Despite these injustices, Aaron was expected by the media to have a “just glad to be here” attitude.  Media reports of the day would describe the young Aaron as quiet, aloof, and bitter.  Charges that would stick to him throughout his career.  Aaron had never finished high school and had a southern accent, so he was often portrayed as a simpleton.  The legendary AJC sportswriter Furman Bisher penned a high-profile magazine piece on Aaron that quoted the slugger in phonetic “dialect” that would go a long way in cementing this view of Aaron.  The press also routinely compared him to the much flashier and media-savvy Willie Mays, usually to Aaron’s detriment.  In the face of this public criticism, Aaron became determined to let his playing do the talking and to be among the best that ever played the game.

All that’s left of the outfield wall of the old Fulton County Stadium where Aaron sent record breaking 715 into the stands

As an Atlanta Braves fan, I found it interesting that Aaron wanted no part of the team’s move from Milwaukee to Atlanta.  He feared that he would be forced to backtrack  on the relative racial equality that he had scratched out for his family in Milwaukee. It was also an interesting side note that Atlanta’s progressive civic boosters desperately wanted Hank Aaron and the Braves to serve as a center piece of their “City to busy to hate” marketing campaign.

The historic chase of Babe Ruth’s record and the racially-charged death threats that Aaron received is well documented, but it underscores the difficulty Aaron would always have in simply being allowed to enjoy the game.  When Aaron ultimately retired, he found that the expected jobs in the front office or managing within the ranks of the organization were not forthcoming.  His reputation as being embittered would once again stand in his way.  Interestingly, it  would be Bud Selig, a long-time friend from the Milwaukee days, who would be instrumental in finally reconciling Aaron with Major League Baseball.  It’s only relatively recently, Bryant notes, that Henry Aaron has found peace with himself and with the game.

If my enthusiasm for this book has not been self-evident so far, let me be clear: this is an incredible book.  It is guaranteed to appeal to any fan of the Braves in particular or baseball history in general.  Henry Aaron’s life-long struggle with institutional racism and a game that never really let him just be himself is an epic story of heroism. The Last Hero does that story incredible justice and deserves a wide audience.  It should be mandatory reading in Atlanta public schools.  But you should check it out, too.

Light Hilarious Summer Reading

The idea of ‘summertime’ reading always sounds so romantic to me: lying on a beach or next to a pool, drink on the table and book in hand for some undisturbed reading. Fat chance. For me, summer is when my kid, who is normally in school, is with me almost 24/7 and “needs” me every ten minutes. Thus, my summertime reading must be a book that I can pick up and put down without missing a beat. I have found a few such books by Chelsea Handler.

Normally, I would not have picked up a book called Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang but listening to my sister laugh uncontrollably while reading, I decided she shouldn’t have all the fun.  After finishing Bang Bang, I glided through her two others: My Horzontal Life: A Collection of One Night Stands and Are You There Vodka?, It’s Me Chelsea.

If you are a member of the Moral Majority or if you take pride in always being politically correct, then you probably won’t find these books as funny as I did. There is a lot of alcohol, drugs and sleeping around and I have no problem laughing at her mishaps (whether they are true or not, I don’t care.)

My Horzontal Life was my favorite of the three and of course none of it can be quoted here. The book delivers exactly what the title suggests, supposedly her experiences with many one-night stands as well as with men she did actually date. What I really admire most about Ms. Handler is her ability to create elaborate lies – on the spot! While working as a waitress, she sees a man with whom she just spent the night walk in with his wife. Chelsea becomes her own twin sister, Kelsey, and proceeds to make up several stories about her “loose” twin, Chelsea. He’s pretty ‘smart’ too, he says “wow, you look just like her” and she responds, “that’s usually what happens with twins.”

Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang was written after she became famous with her E! late-night show and she reminisces more about growing up with her nutcase family. We all need a retired, widowed father who dates the 22 year old Jamaican cleaning women to keep us laughing.

Next up, Are you there Vodka, It’s Me Chelsea? My 6-year old daughter promptly informed me that Vodka is a drink and thus the title makes no sense. Once again, this book is loaded with short stories of Ms. Handler’s supposed life. At one moment, someone emails her a picture of their dog in front of Niagara Falls. She confesses that pictures of people’s children are ok by themselves, but a pet? She has a great response that I may try:

“I clicked reply and sent a picture of my cleaning lady. Standing next to the toilet, alone. I attached a message that read, “’Not interested? Me neither.’”

Certainly this is not high-brow, award-winning literature, but once in a while it’s just fun to laugh.

Serial

One of the neat things about the Nook is the access to some free stuff — works that are in the public domain, as well as new works that Barnes & Noble gives you for free.  Serial, a short story by Jack Kilborn and Blake Crouch, was one of the latter.  A quick, free, impromptu read before bedtime — not a bad deal.

The Overview of the story initially led me to believe that I knew what was going to happen.  It reads:

Remember the twin golden rules of hitchhiking?  #1 — Don’t go hitchhiking, because the driver who picks you up could be certifiably crazy.  #2 — Don’t pick up hitchhikers, because the traveler you pick up could be a raving nutcase.  So what if, on some dark, isolated road, Crazy #1 offered a ride to Nutcase #2 . . . .

Having read that Overview, and then having read the opening line of the book, “The hardest thing about killing a hitchhiker is finding one to pick up”, as our character Donaldson is driving down the road, I assumed that as soon as he picked up a kid at a Cracker Barrel parking lot, I knew exactly what was coming.  Well, suffiice it to say that I didn’t.

Apparently this little story, referred to as “the original horror novella” has been downloaded over 200,000 times, and so maybe I’m late to the party on this one, but it’s downright creepy and shocking.  And not in the way you think it’s going to be, even when you think you know what you think you should expect.  Go check it out.  I personally am going to check out the subsequent longer version that apparently picks up where this one left off.  But I might leave the light on while I read that one . . . .

(and it looks you can download it – legally – for free over here in PDF or ePub versions.

The Ask

A few months ago,  one of our reviewers (Shaft) posted a decidedly negative review of Sam Lipsyte’s latest novel The Ask. We both loved Lipsyte’s phenomenal Home Land, so it was a bit of a surprise to read his take on the follow-up. Since I knew he had a copy that he wouldn’t be sad to see go, I decided to take it off his hands.  Where Shaft was left disappointed, I thought The Ask was a surprisingly deep and thoughtful effort.  Our mileage varied considerably.

Our protagonist is Milo, a schlub whose one thing to look forward to each day is a turkey wrap from the place across the street from the mediocre New York City liberal arts college where he works in the development office.  Milo loses his job (and ready access to turkey wraps) for several reasons, most notably for verbally attacking an overly entitled art student, whose dad happens to be a potential large donor to the school.

This failure sets Milo adrift and into a slow downward spiral.  To his surprise, he is called back to the development office in the hopes that he can land one more big fish – a college friend Purdy.  Now Milo’s future happiness seems to hinge on whether he can bring himself to ask a Brahmin from his past for a very large sum of money:

Purdy and Milo are thus thrown together, but Purdy has his own “ask” for Milo.  Through their renewed and strained relationship Lipsyte explores a number of themes, not least of which is the role of class in American society.  Purdy, representing the uber-wealthy strata, employs old classmates and is able to make things happen by merely requesting them. Milo, a struggling salaryman’s financial situation seems much more dire in comparison, but he in turn is seen in an enviable position to those that are lower on the socio-economic ladder.  No one, it should be said, is entirely happy.

The Purdy/Milo & gang relationships also suggest that college is a specific window in life when otherwise rigorous social and class structures break down.  The Ask notes that circumstance and proximity throw people together into illusory friendships that would never happen in the “outside” world.   (Surely if Facebook has taught us anything, it is this.) It is ironic that Milo finds himself once again in a college, and among some of his old friends, and yet is the loneliest and most alienated that he has ever been in his life.

Child-rearing is a spot-on target of Lipsyte’s biting satire (pre-school pedagogy squabbles are a highlight).  The standard bearer for the so-called “millennial” generation, Horace, is also ripe for parody.  When Milo tries to smooth over a sexual harassment complaint filed by Horace (one of the reasons Milo was originally hired), the millennials’ reputed “whatever dude/can’t be bothered” attitude is on full display:

“Didn’t you complain about me?”
“Yeah I guess I did.  But more like as a joke.”
“Did you make an official written complaint?”
“Yeah, but in a jokey way.”
“Those go on our record, Horace. Those are in our file. As soon as a company hires you they begin plotting the paper trail with which to fire you. Didn’t you know that?”
“Sort of.”

Horace always speaks in his own hipster-slang argot that Milo marvels over:

Horace’s swerves in diction always amazed.  He once explained that like many in this country, he spoke several dialects: Standard American English, Black American English, American Television English, East Coast Faux Skater English, Foodie French, and Drug Russian.

I loved “listening” to Horace talk – absolutely one of my favorite characters.  But I digress…

As Shaft noted in his review, The Ask is not generally the laugh-out-loud knee-slapper that Home Land was.  The novel is overall much darker and world weary.  It also has a lot more to say than Home Land did.  Although a much more serious work, The Ask also serves up witty observations, wonderful dialog, and incredible word play, all while telling a poignant story. I really enjoyed this novel.  Now you’ll have to read it to offer the tie-breaking review for Shaft and I.

Ordinary Thunderstorms

If I didn’t know any better, I’d think Stephen King was a hack right about now.  It was on his over-the-top recommendation that I got my hands on Ordinary Thunderstorms, by William Boyd.  The book tells the story of a climatologist in London who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time and goes down a rabbithole of conspiracy, intrigue, danger, suspense, blah, blah, blah.  Or so Stephen King said in his review.

In truth, the book certainly starts out that way.  Adam Kindred is interviewing for a job in London and following a casual interaction with a man in a pub, he attempts to return the man’s forgotten briefcase to him.  A murder occurs, Kindred is the primary suspect, and so Kindred goes into hiding.  And with that stage set, the book just coasts to the finish (I won’t say the “end”, because frankly there wasn’t one).

I don’t know that I’ve consumed too many books that fall into the “beach read” category, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this one probably falls into that bucket.  It’s harmless, fairly well-written, evenly-paced, fiction.  Without any edge that I could discern.  And don’t even get me started about the utter lack of engaging suspense or the total lack of denouement.  I think the only “twist” that Boyd managed was to get you set up for all sorts of crazy stuff that could have happened at the end, only to trick you by not having anything happen.

If what I’ve described sounds good to you, then have at it — this one is perfect for you.  But I’m bored and annoyed and I think I’ll boycott Stephen King for a while.

The 19th Wife

Ever since I was willing to convert for Donny Osmond, the Mormon faith has had a hold on me.  Donny never called, so I never converted, but this didn’t hinder my interest in the Latter Day Saints.  The 19^th Wife by David Ebershoff focuses on the most fascinating (but very short) part of the Mormon church  – the polygamy.

The main story is about a young man, Jordan, who returns to a Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints community (the “Firsts”) after reading that his mother has been arrested for shooting her husband, his father.  Even as his 19th wife, she claims that she really loves her husband and swears that she didn’t do it.  Even though he had been literally thrown onto the street years ago, he belives her and wants to help her.  Throughout the story, Jordan temporarily gives up his life to solve this murder mystery.

Ann Eliza Young, coincidentally the 19^th Wife of Brigham Young who succeeded Joseph Smith, also tells her story in this novel.  Ann caused quite a commotion when she divorced Brigham in the 1890’s.  In addition to writing a book about life as a plural wife, she went on a national speaking tour to raise awareness with hopes that Congress would make polygomy illegal.

Alternating between Ann and Jordan’s narrative, we read chapters from many other characters – Ann’s sons, mother, brother, father and scholars from various time periods who are researching Ann.  Get the picture? While I admire Mr. Ebershhoff’s talent to write from many points of view, it took me a long time to figure out what was going on.  There didn’t seem to be much flow to the alternating stories and I always wondered what was fact and what was fiction.

A very important part of the book is in the back where Mr. Ebershoff explains the fact/fiction issue.  I should have read this first and I encourage any future readers to do the same.  Despite my confusion, I forged ahead and enjoyed The 19th Wife enough to conduct further research to get my facts straight about the history of the Latter Day Saints.

Lord of the Flies

I’m certain that I read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies when I was younger, but not having any specific recollection of the details of the story (including the ending), I decided to re-read it.  And much like Jack London’s To Build a Fire, another story I had read when I was younger but couldn’t remember the details of, when I read this one again, all of the imagery was different from what I had remembered.  In both cases, even though I couldn’t recall specific elements, I had a vision in my mind of the respective settings, but when I read each of them again, the picture in my mind was completely different.  Maybe it’s just me, but that’s sort of strange.

But on to the details.  This is as intense a read as it gets.  First published in 1954, the book tells the story of a group of British schoolboys who are marooned on a deserted island without any adults.  As they try to sort out the roles and responsibilities necessary to sustain them and to maximize their chances of being rescued, they create the guiding principles for the society they create, but almost as quickly as they settle on their social contract and civil rules, their society begins to fracture and the boys begin to form alliances and devolve into a frighteningly primitive group of antagonistic factions.

A fair-haired boy named Ralph is the island’s first leader.  But as he and another boy named Jack begin to disagree over the group’s priorities, it becomes clear that a power struggle is sure to ensue.  Ralph works with Piggy, a fat, bespectacled boy, to try to govern the boys (including the “littluns”, the younger boys who cannot fend for themselves), while Jack and a group of the boys designated as “hunters” apparently make plans to govern themselves.  And the tension that builds between them and the ways in which it manifests itself are so wrought with suspense, fear, uncertainty, and confusion that the reader can’t help but be riveted to the turning pages.

The story itself is a metaphor that reflects human nature, good and evil, and the underpinnings of any human society.  But it is also filled with icons and imagery that serve to focus the reader on the fundamental nature of friendship, power, wealth/possession, adaptability, and the fragile nature of the human mind.  Piggy’s glasses, the “beast”, castle rock, the shelters the boys build, and the “lord of the flies” (the identity/description of which I won’t reveal here) each represent something that the reader is forced to define for him or herself.  And some of them represent things that are easily taken for granted until we are deprived of them.

This is a fantastic book.  While Golding’s writing style and word choice take a little getting used to, once you’re in, you can’t get out.

An aside: The NYT’s review of a new biography of Golding begins: “In the late 1960s, some 15 years after the publication of “Lord of the Flies,” William Golding confessed to a friend that he resented the novel because it meant that he owed his reputation to what he thought of as a minor book, a book that had made him a classic in his lifetime, which was “a joke,” and that the money he had gained from it was “Monopoly money” because he hadn’t really earned it.”

The Singer’s Gun

Although I haven’t read Emily St. John Mandel’s first book, Last Night in Montreal, it received rave reviews here on BGB, and I was excited to receive her second book The Singer’s Gun- I’m glad I moved it to the top of my stack.

The story begins with the end actually.  The death of two people.  Ms. Mandel takes us into the past and back to the present many times before we realize what really happened with these two people.

Main character Anton Waker’s family is full of criminals.  His parents steal antiques to resell in their store and see nothing wrong with it.  Even from an early age Anton isn’t comfortable with this way of life and when he asks his father if the goods are stolen, his dad justifies it:

“…sometimes regular channels aren’t open to you, and then you have to improvise.  Find your own way out…You have to make things happen for yourself.”

As an adult, Anton and his cousin Aria start their own business of selling social security cards and passports to illegal immigrants.  After 9/11, those uneasy feelings creep back:

“How would a terrorist get into the country?” [Alton asks his mother...]

“Well he’d come in on a tourist visa, I imagine.”

“Or he’d get a friend in the country to come to me and Aria and get him a passport, and then he’d enter as an American citizen.  Or if he were already here on his tourist visa, he’d buy a Social Security card directly from us and use it to get a job…..”

His father shrugged.

Anton has dreamed most of his life for an office job, so he quits the business with Aria and goes ‘legit’ by falsifying his Harvard credentials and landing a middle management position.  His father asks Anton what qualifies him for his job:

“Well, the same thing that qualified me to sell Social Security cards to illegal aliens, actually.  A certain veneer of confidence combined with sheer recklessness.”

When the company starts conducting background checks, Anton is in big trouble.  Although he isn’t fired, he is demoted to a basement office with no responsibilities while his ex-secretary is sent by the State Department to spy on him. Soon to be married, he figures he has nothing to loose by staying in the basement and collecting the paycheck.

Just prior to the wedding, Aria uses blackmail to convince Anton to help her “one last time”.  Coincidentally, this final transaction is to take place during the honeymoon on a remote Italian island.  As one can imagine, this “one last time” goes terribly wrong and we’re back to the “beginning” so to speak.

Ms. Mandel throughout the novel makes us think about crime – how much if any is ok?  Why is a little crime ok, but breaking the law on a daily basis isn’t?  What kind of person is someone like Anton that he “thinks” he is legitimate even though he has falsified his credentials to land a good job?   He is uncomfortable with helping Aria one last time, but he does it.  Is it really for the money?  Operating an illegal business doesn’t bother his parents or his cousin.

The Singer’s Gun is full of suspense and tension.  Despite moving back and forth through time, Ms. Mandel’s style flows – I was never confused.  I found myself wondering who would play each role in the movie version.  The twists and turns never let me down and I even enjoyed the dialog – I found a sick humor in all the madness.  I mean, who ARE these people?

I’m happy that my friend gave me The Singer’s Gun, but you shouldn’t wait for a friend, go read it on your own!

Burma Chronicles

I first heard of cartoonist Guy Delisle from what I remember as rave reviews of his previous book Pyongyang. I had every intention of picking that one up while visiting the Drawn & Quarterly bookstore, but it got put back on the shelf when I approached the register with more books than I could reasonably carry back home on an airplane.  I forgot about it until I came across DeLisle’s latest,  Burma Chronicles, which is what I ended up reading instead.  These kind of well-planned book acquisitions happen to me all the time.   Luckily, Burma Chronicles is every bit as good as I remember reading that Pyongyang was. If memory serves.

Delisle is an interesting guy.  He’s a professional cartoonist, which is interesting in of itself (to me).  His wife works for Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders).  Also an interesting gig.   When his wife is assigned to a new post in Asia, Delislse joins her as a stay at home dad for with their infant son.  In Burma Chronicles, Delisle has assembled a travelogue of an everyman’s daily life in the surreal and unique world of Burma.

Burma is officially known as Myanmar, but the U.S. and other countries refuse to acknowledge the name change since they don’t officially recognize the legitimacy of the government that changed the name.  Devout Buddhists and monks, military police, a diverse foreign community, and the “world’s most famous political prisoner” are within a short walk with a stroller of Delisle’s temporary home in Rangoon, which was the capital of Burma until the government inexplicably decided to suddenly move all  government operations out of the city to a new capital.

Delisle’s drawing style is deceptive.  It appears simple, yet somehow entirely conveys a sense of place and culture that always serves the story being told.  It shows remarkable restraint.  Similarly, the stories conveyed are often simple one or two page vignettes of various scenes encountered over his stay in Burma.  However, they manage to convey a rich picture of a difficult to understand country when taken together as a whole. I learned quite a bit about a country I knew very little about.  Burma Chronicles is an entertaining read and worth your time.  Like Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Burma Chonicles is a perfect “gateway comic” for people who don’t read comics.

Ben Franklin

Once again digging into material that many of you probably read long ago, I decided to read The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, since it cost a pittance on my handy new Nook.  Two quick points: (1) I loved this book, and (2) I blame my Nook for the brevity of this review.  I shall address each of these in more detail.

Having been born and raised in the U.S., I’ve certainly heard Ben Franklin’s name bantered about and therefore thought I knew as much about him as the next guy.  Well, a quick read through this short work proved that point to be utterly wrong.  As much as I thought I knew about how Franklin was an important historical figure in the history of this nation’s politics and diplomacy, the depth to which he was also quite the inventor, philosopher, and humorist (not to mention that he was apparently a highly-skilled printer — a trade that in modern times it might be easy to dismiss) was eye-opening to say the least.

Reading his recollections of traveling from Boston to Philadelphia reminds the reader of how difficult it was in those times to accomplish things that today seem trivial.  There were no guarantees on such journeys as to when you would leave, when you would arrive, or even if there would be enough food for everyone on the trip.  Yet old Ben didn’t seem to fret about those things.  Perhaps this was the case because his autobiography was written years later, when he knew in hindsight that everything would work out just fine; regardless, the way he recounts his trials and tribulations during the period when he was trying to find a vocation and establish himself makes clear to you that he was a special person, not just in how he did these things, but in how he tells about it.

He was a hard worker in his youth, both physically and mentally.  Without any requirement to do so (such as school), he spent every waking moment either working or engaged in self-study, trying to better himself mentally and psychologically.  And this hard work paid off, in ways that we continue to reap the benefits of to this day.

Now to point #2 above.  I had used the “highlight” function on my Nook to track bushels of mind-blowing quotes and anecdotes that I intended to share as part of this review.  Unfortunately, I’ve now learned that one of the issues with the Nook is that you can lose all of these highlights during a firmware upgrade of the device.  And I did.  And I’m too frustrated to go back and try to find all of those wonderful nuggets.  The Nook’s overall ledger is still on the positive side, but any more of that nonsense and I’m going to have to have a nice little talk with it.

But don’t let that dissuade you from reading this book if you haven’t already, or from re-reading it if you read it long ago.  Fascinating account of a fascinating individual.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

I got tired of waiting for all the slow readers at the library and just bought Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See.  As I mentioned in Shanghai Girls, Ms. See does her research and sends us into a culture very different from my American life and it continues to fascinate me.

The story begins in a small village in 19th century China with Lily and her perfect feet for binding. The painful tradition of foot binding begins with girls when they are six or seven years old. The most attractive bound feet will lead to a very successful marriage (if the young girl doesn’t die in the process).  Lily’s feet are exquisite. As a daughter of a farmer, her perfect lotus feet will ensure a match to a very respected and wealthy family in a nearby village.

Ms. See spends a lot of time detailing the foot binding process.  Mothers and grandmothers bent the toes of little girls toward the heel and bound them with very strong wrapping so the bones broke to form a lotus shape measuring roughly three to five centimeters.  The young girls were forced to walk on these little feet to ensure that the feet would form correctly while healing. The wrappings were replaced every day during the process.  Having a six year old daughter, I can’t even imagine putting her through such horrific pain. (for more on footbinding).

At the time of the binding, through the work of a matchmaker, Lily becomes a “laotong” sister with Snowflower.  This unique female relationship occurs when two women are found with so many similarities in their lives that they could be the same person – or “same oles” as they are called in Chinese.  They have the same birthdate, born at the same hour, the same number of siblings (one of which has died in this case) and many other identical connections.  The girls begin corresponding to each other by writing on a fan that is sent back and forth.  In this remote area of China women were not taught men’s language so the women developed their own secret language called “nu shu”.  The novel follows the lives of both of these girls  - lives which may have been the same when they were young but become drastically different as they mature.

Unlike Lily’s farming family, Snowflower’s family was once wealthy and respected, but has fallen into poverty due to her father’s opium addiction.  She is not as fortunate in marriage as Lily – Snowflower is matched with a butcher, the least desirable husband for any girl.

Ms. See masterfully takes the reader through the life of each girl – the poor, unlucky Snowflower and Lily, who is successfully married into a respected family.    After several tragic events in each of their lives, one unforgiving misunderstanding occurs between the two “sisters” and leads to unfortunate consequences until one woman tries to make amends as the other lay dying.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan could be analyzed on several levels, including:  the strength of women in an exclusive male dominated world and the metaphor of the foot binding used throughout the novel – as it relates to how the women are “bound” to each other, their families and their traditions.  I, however, am enthralled with the insight into Chinese history and culture.  Customs and traditions are followed without questioning.   Life’s two most important goals are to honor the family and bring boys into the world. (It’s always interesting to me that they seem to forget who actually gives birth to these boys.)

Once again, Ms. See brings us a heartbreaking story entrenched within the history from a remote region of China.

Two More by Millar: Part 2 – Ruby

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’ve been working my way slowly through the books of Scottish author Martin Millar.  It’s only “slowly” because his books (written over the past two decades) are being released in the US one at a time.  The second of the Millar books that I tackled this time around is Ruby and the Stone Age Diet.  I’m not sure what those are in the bowl on the cover.  Stones?  Gems?

Like the other books in what I’ll call Millar’s “Brixton Series,”  Ruby and the Stone Age Diet features a large cast of squat-hopping, unemployed youth with no dreams of a future beyond their next welfare check (or “giro”).   Our narrator is nameless, but he is unique in Millar’s Brixton – he actually tries to hold down a job.  Any job.   He’s not very successful in that regard.  But still…  He may be hampered by his daily imaginations of complex sci-fi plots that he believes are impacting his life.

The titular Ruby is our narrator’s room mate.  She provides all of the forward motion for the pair.  As a passive-aggressive woman of action, Ruby definitely runs the show at this particular flat.  Ruby’s “stone age diet” is based on her theory that we should only eat food that was available to cave men.  In practice, this means that Ruby throws away most of the squat’s food after opening the can.

Narrator and Ruby work to overcome obtacles and live a better life, but it doesn’t really pan out.  And then the book ends.  This wasn’t my favorite of the Millar novels that I’ve read so far.  It seemed a little more muddled than the others, but it still hit man of the same notes.  If you’re thinking of checking out Martin Millar’s books, I wouldn’t recommend starting here.

While thinking about Ruby and Stage Diving last night, I hatched a theory that Millar and Bret Easton Ellis, while outwardly worlds apart, are actually two sides of the coin. Where Ellis writes about the ennui of super rich American youth, Millar tackles the existential dread of crushingly poor British youth.  The common thread is English speaking youth devoid of any meaningful future, at least as far as they can see.  The youth are – in a word – screwed.

Two More by Millar: Part 1- Stage Diving

I’ve been slowly working my way through the Martin Millar catalog.   The dazzling Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me was my first exposure to Millar’s work (my review – synopsis: it’s way better than the title would have you believe).  I followed it up with two more that delved into the Brixton squat scene that was the crucible for British punk – Milk, Sulphate, and Alby Starvation (my review) and Lux the Poet (my review).  Although these books were written more than a decade ago, they are only slowing being released here in the states.  Recently, two more Brixton-centric Millar novels have come stateside. The first, and my favorite of the two, is Dreams of Sex and Stage Diving.  With a title like that, it has to go first.

Millar returns to a Brixton of wayward British youth being bounced from various squats, living on the dole, and not doing much of anything with the rest of their lives.  Our heroine (with an “e”) is Elfish – disgusting, unbathed, and completely self-absorbed.  Elfish was the top stage diver in all of Brixton until a falling out with her best friend and an acrimonious split with her boyfriend sent her into a tailspin.  Still, she’s convinced that if she can just steal her band’s name back from her ex and his band, things might just work out.

For all of her faults, Elfish becomes something of a leader for a long list of Brixton losers.  Her single-minded determination (and flagrant lies to everyone she meets) begins to have a positive effect on everyone she comes into contact with.  It might be that their lives have become so desperate, repetitive, and completely lacking of any initiative whatsoever, that a glimmer of hope for something better – no matter how grim the package that the hope arrives in – may be just the thing that they all need to turn it around.

Dreams of Sex and Stage Diving is a fun read.  Millar once again mines the crushing ambivalence of Thatcher-era youth for gold.  And he largely succeeds.  If there were any justice, this novel would have been made into an art house movie 20 years ago that showcased the “real” punks of Brixton – the kind of movie where the accents are so thick that American viewers are baffled about 70% of the time.  Elfish would have gotten it made.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about all of the fanfare marking the arrival of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest – Stieg Larsson’s last entry in his wildly popular Millennium Trilogy.  I read it almost immediately.  It kept me up nights well past my bed time so I could fit in that one last chapter.

Hornet’s Nest is tough to talk about without prefacing everything with a spoiler alert.  So much has been written about the series and this last book in particular, that it’s difficult to offer anything new on the topic.  In light of this, I’ll keep it simple and say Hornet’s Nest has more of everything that made the first two books so enjoyable – more coffee, more unpronounceable Swedish geography, more breakneck action, more bad guys, more of Kalle Blomkvist’s steadfast super-journalism and more of Lisbeth Salander – one of the most unique heroines ever.   And more strong women – secret police agents, police women, women working for private security firms – in addition to the recurring tough ladies of the series, Lisbeth Salander and Erika Berger.

I hadn’t occurred to me that women specifically were playing such an outsize role in the culmination of the trilogy until it was pointed out to me in an article that, regrettably, I can’t put my hands on to link to.  It seems patently obvious now in retrospect.  It’s a fitting end to the series and matches Larsson’s over-arching themes.

If you have not read any of Larsson’s books, you owe it to yourself to not start this odyssey with Hornet’s Nest.  If you’re going to read any of the Millennium Trilogy at all, you have to start at the beginning.  Hornet’s Nest must be saved for last – a reward for reading through the first two books and following Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist’s joined struggle for justice.  If you’ve read the first two books and have been wondering if the finale can possibly live up to expectations, I’m here to tell you that Hornet’s Nest has been worth the wait.

The Baseball Codes

If you loved Michael Lewis’s Moneyball because it showed you a whole new way to look at baseball, then you are going to love The Baseball Codes by Jason Turbow (with Michael Duca).    The premise is simple: the authors set out to document, once and for all, the unwritten rules of baseball.

Turbow and Duca answer all of the big questions:  When is it okay to lay down a bunt to break up a no hitter? Can announcers talk about a perfect game while its in progress?  Is it a good idea to stand at home plate and admire your home run? How many runs must your team be ahead before stealing a base becomes a bad idea?  When pulled from a game as a pitcher should you head to the dugout before the skipper gets to the mound?  Is it okay to watch a fight from the dugout?  These are all important questions in the game baseball.  Not knowing the answer to a particular question can cost you your spot on the roster or a fastball in the ribs.

Of course, all pitchers deny intending to hit a batter.  In the post game interview the pitcher says “that one got away.” However, the authors point out that the intent of the pitch was usually understood by both parties.  It’s part of The Code, a well understood system of rules and punishment that have become ingrained in how the game is played.  Even if no one talks about it openly (also part of the code – keep it in the clubhouse).

Cheating (stealing signs, looking back at the catcher from the batter’s box, juicing balls, etc) is not only tolerated, it’s expected:

“Everyone cheats,” said White Sox Manager Ozzie Guillen.  ”If you don’t get caught, you’re a smart player.  If you get caught, you’re cheating. It’s been part of the game for a long time.  If you’re doing whatever you’re not supposed to do and you don’t get caught, keep doing it.”

and

Leave the definitive sentiment to Dick Williams, the Hall of Fame manager who won two championships with the A’s,and pennants with Boston and San Diego.  ”Anything short of murder,” he said, “is okay.”

It’s part of the code!

An added bonus of checking out this book is that it caused me to stumble across my new favorite blog, The Baseball Codes.  The blog picks up where the book leaves off and delivers day to day interpretations of The Code.   I especially enjoyed their evaluation of the Alex Rodriguez/Dallas Braden imbroglio from earlier this season, which is also a nice primer for the book:

• A-Rod Crosses Braden – Literally – and Gets an Earful in Response
• A-Rod to Braden: ‘You Talkin’ to Me?’
• Point-Counterpoint on the A-Rod/Braden Affair
• Evidence Proves that A-Rod Wasn’t Alone
• Braden’s Perfecto Threatened By Bunt Attempt; Reaction Minimal
• Details Emerge from Braden’s Perfect Game; He Dropped the Ball

I love this kind of baseball writing.  If you enjoy this sort of thing, add The Baseball Codes to your summer reading.

Nook Update (in High Fidelity)

So the first book I finished on my Nook (which I was asking questions about after I purchased it) was High Fidelity by Nick Hornby.  I know, I know — as a self-proclaimed pop culture aficionado, why am I just now getting to this one?  Relax — I’m pretty sure I saw the movie a while back, so I’m not completely out of the loop.

(sweet cover art by Jacob Long – unfortunately not the “real” cover)

First things first — the Nook rocks.  Love it.  Completely.  Can’t wait to keep using it.

Second things second — I have only read one Nick Hornby book before, and didn’t dig it that much (it was A Long Way Down).  But, after reading about High Fidelity, I realized that if I’m gonna like anything by Nick Hornby, this would be the one.  And it is.

This book tells the tale of Rob Fleming, a down-on-his-luck record store owner in London whose girlfriend, Laura, has just broken up with him and moved in with another guy (who turns out to be the guy who used to live upstairs from them and whom Rob and Laura could hear making love for insane amounts of time).  So Rob is trying to make sense of his life and does so by thinking back through what he believes to have been the most important/meaningful relationships he’s had, and trying to figure out what he’s done wrong and what he’s done right.  Lots of things in Rob’s life are broken down into “Top XX” lists, including his relationships.  And including various musical facts, which he and the two guys he’s hired to work at his record store constantly compare.

The insights that Rob divulges are in fact pretty insightful, and the story he tells is pretty funny.  The whole notion of how foreplay was all he wanted when he was younger, and how it’s all women seem to focus on nowadays, but how it doesn’t seem to compute that when he was in high school he couldn’t get the opportunity to engage in foreplay with a girl and now he can’t seem to get anywhere is articulated in a pretty funny way.  Much funnier than I just articulated it.

I really want to see the movie again to see how it was translated into an American story (this one is very British).  And also because now that the book is fresh in my mind, I think that I’d have a pretty good appreciation for the movie — maybe as good as I have for the book.

Old School Politics

Unlike real, actual parties — where I’m always the first one there — when it comes to “literary” parties, I’m typically way behind the cool kids’ schedule. So it probably comes as no surprise that I just picked up Primary Colors, by Anonymous.  Primary Colors is THE hot political novel, giving insights into what makes the American political machine go.  In the early 1990′s.  Meaning last century.  As the old saying goes, though, better late than never.

I really liked this book.  I’m not active in party politics (although I have my beliefs and left-leanings), so what I know about politics comes from the mainstream media.  And this book, which tells the fictional story of a man named Henry Burton’s involvement in the Democratic primary campaign for Jack Stanton – governor of an unnamed Southern state – really opens the kimono on a political campaign, in what I thought was a believable way.  I seem to recall quite a bit of controversy surrounding this book when it came out, for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, the publishing of a book anonymously should stir controversy, or at least speculation, regardless of the subject matter of the book (it was later revealed that the author was journalist Joe Klein); secondly, the characters involved and the dirt that takes place on the campaign trail depicted in the book — even though it is a work of fiction — bore a striking resemblance to President Clinton’s 1992 campaign.

This book has it all.  There’s a love story, there’s a dynamic of our protagonist struggling with finding his true purpose, there’s lots of scandal, and there’s a real look behind what you see on tv and the strategizing that goes on to make you want to like a political candidate.  A real eye-opener, and a well-written read.