After Dark

I’ve never read anything by Haruki Murakami but I’ve seen his name a lot lately.  Looking him up at the library I found his novel After Dark.  Not having any clue about Mr. Murakami‘s style or the subject of the story, I inserted the audio book with much anticipation. I popped that CD right in.

Taking place during the wee hours of one night when most people are sleeping, we are told from the very beginning that we are mere observers into the story – a bird flying above or a solitary camera.  The narration begins objectively to find nineteen year old Mari Asai reading alone in a Tokyo Denny’s.  She is approached by college student Takehashi, a  part time jazz trombonist who reminds her that he has met her and her model sister Eri before.  This chance meeting drags Mari into a virtual foreign world far from her suburban life.  Fluent in Chinese, Mari soon finds herself in a “love hotel” helping a Chinese prostitute who had just been beaten.  As the night continues, she becomes familiar with the hotel’s staff and not only learns their secrets, but confesses her own.  Many of Mari’s secrets relate to her insecurities surrounding her beautiful sister.

During Mari’s story, Mr. Murakami reminds us that we are just observers as we frequently visit Mari’s sleeping sister Eri.  We learn later that Eri has been sleeping for two months and no one knows why.  And frankly, neither do I.  Mr. Murakami takes the reader on a bizarre journey from Eri’s sleeping room, into a television set with a man with no face. Uh, ok.

The camera also jumps into the life of the man who beat the Chinese prostitute.  Not a very interesting man, he works a lot of hours at a company while his wife dutifully waits for him at home.

I found After Dark very odd.  The individual stories were compelling enough to hear through to their respective conclusions, and the third party observer perspective was unique. Although not giving any obvious insight into the actual thoughts of the characters, I was able to form my own judgments based on their dialogue and actions.

After traveling through the book as a simple observer, my take away is the story of the two sisters, one who deeply cares for the other.  I also enjoyed the Tokyo setting and little American references – the Denny’s where the story begins and the mention of Hall & Oates on the sound system.

Once in a while I am interested in broadening my horizons to challenge myself.  I’m not giving up on Mr. Murakami, he has received accolades for his work.  Maybe after experiencing a couple more books, I will come back to After Dark and say “A-ha, of course!”

Ready Player Two

Our fearless leader Tim’s review of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One inspired me to add that one to the stack, and what a great add it was.  If Tim was Player One, I guess I’m Player Two.

If you’ve read anything at all about Cline’s book, you probably know that it takes place in the year 2044, in times where our society is a disaster.  We don’t get enough information from Cline to necessarily call it dystopian (a la Brave New World), but suffice it to say that despite advances in technology, times are tough and some significant sector of society is slumming it.

Our protagonist, Wade Watts, is one of those people who is slumming it.  He is an overweight social outcast who lives with some extended family and countless guests in the “stacks” — vertically stacked trailer homes — outside Oklahoma City.  But Wade’s escape from the horrors of day-to-day life, like many others, is to log in to the OASIS, a virtual world that allows users to create a virtual identity and live in a virtual world with virtual friends, virtual toys, and virtual joy and excitement.  Even though Watts is poor, he at least has a computer and the necessary equipment to log in to the OASIS (where he also attends high school virtually), which he does in his secret hideout inside a van at a nearby junkyard.

So far, so good, right?  Standard futuristic blah, blah, blah, right?  Well, this is where Cline takes his novel into a direction that, while not completely original or unexpected, is flawlessly executed.  The man who founded the company that created the OASIS, James Halliday, has passed away and in his will has disclosed that he’s hidden an “easter egg” somewhere in the Oasis, and that the user who can find the three virtual keys to pass through three virtual gates to access this easter egg will inherit his fortune (including the OASIS).  This sends the entire world into a tizzy as companies, teams of individuals, and independent “gunters” like Wade Watts, a/k/a “Parzival”, put aside their lives to embark on a quest for the easter egg.

To this reader there were two elements of Cline’s story that struck a chord.  The first, which might only resonate with me and others from my generation, was that Halliday was a child of the 1980′s, and so his clues and the tasks that users must accomplish to advance in their quest are all tied to the 1980′s.  Movies, tv, music, video games, etc.  So it was unavoidable for me to try to test my own skills as we went along.  I didn’t fare as well as I would have thought.

The second really cool thing about Cline’s book, and this would be equally valid for any reader regardless of how much you know or care about the 1980′s, was how Cline blurred the line between the real and virtual worlds.  As players’ avatars interact with other avatars, and as greed and hostility manifest themselves in the OASIS, it becomes clear that certain participants aren’t playing fair and are using their money and power in the real world to gain an advantage.  This includes monitoring real people’s behaviors, and eventually murder.  Alliances that are formed in the virtual world extend into the real world, and mystery and adventure ensue.

No spoilers here, other than to say that once the story got going, it was literally (meaning I mean it) a virtual (meaning I read it on my Nook) literary virtual-reality page turner.

The Abstinence Teacher

After listening to The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta (my review)  I was interested in checking out some of his other work.   I chose the audio version of The Abstinence Teacher, frankly because it was immediately available at the library.

Ruth, a divorced mother of two girls, is a Sex Education teacher at the local high school.  She is serious about her subject and wants her students to be armed with all of the facts.  Seemingly overnight, complaints about the curriculum are grabbing the attention of the school and local school board.  Coincidentally, the congregation of The Tabernacle, the local Evangelical Church, is becoming a louder presence in the community and suddenly Ruth is instructed that “abstinence only” will be taught, no questions asked.   The order doesn’t end Ruth’s continued conflict with the school officials and the new beauty-queenesque “Abstinence Consultant.”

Added to Ruth’s career angst, her personal life is boring.  A re-connect with her pudgy teenage-sexual-partner-turned-hard-body is a complete bust.  Then one day, Jesus-loving Tim enters her life and she is shocked and embarrassed at the feelings he stirs within her.  To add insult to injury, not being a fan of the Tabernacle doctrine, her daughters come home and tell her they want to go to church to “get to know” Jesus.

Tim, divorced father of one daughter and former drug addict/alcoholic/rocker, is a new member of the Tabernacle.  He is trying very hard to live a successful Christian life with his new Christian wife, but constantly struggles with his former self.  He can’t stop thinking of bedding his former wife as she greets him at the door in lingerie.  And the thrill of having played the guitar in a rock band must be currently fulfilled by jamming during church services.  Tim enters Ruth’s life when, as soccer coach to Ruth’s daughter, his faith overcomes him after a game and he prays with the team.  When Ruth hears about this, she and he have a heart to heart meeting which temporarily halts Ruth’s continued actions against him.

Contrary to what the title may suggest, The Abstinence Teacher isn’t only about Ruth.  Every character in Mr. Perrotta’s book abstains from something –whether by choice or not.  Ruth’s students are denied the facts, Ruth’s gay friends are denied the right to get married, her previous pudgy teenage sex partner must be denied the food that he used to enjoy, Tim’s ‘Christian’ wife denies herself in order to please her husband, and the list continues.  By bringing all of these characters together, Mr. Perrotta creates a story about this suburban town and what happens when the Christian Right invades and imposes their beliefs on everyone.   If I think about this subject too much, I become aggravated as The Abstinence Teacher poses more questions than answers about what should/could be done in this situation which seems to be currently happening all over America.  Thus, I choose to enjoy the story simply as entertainment.  Becoming upset is not the goal of listening to audio books during a long commute.

I have concluded that I have enjoyed all of Mr. Perrotta’s books thus far (Little Children, The Leftovers, The Abstinence Teacher) because I can put myself into any one of his stories.  Some readers don’t want stories so true to life – too depressing.  However, I find Mr. Perrotta’s sarcasm and humor extremely entertaining as I sit in traffic.  The Abstinence Teacher allows you to go deeper if you want to, but you can also enjoy it as is.

The Third Reich

Roberto Bolaño.  I’ll admit that he’s a writer that I struggle with.   I was so annoyed with his novel The Savage Detectives that I posted an angry 1000+ word snarky review venting my frustration – “To say that this book disappointed me is a bit of an understatement. Frankly, I was a pissed off, if not relieved, when I finally reached the end of its 592 pages.”  I was taken to task for my “typical hipster-hype” reaction in the comments.  Contrary to that commenter’s opinion, I get no joy in writing negative reviews.   I want to like the books that I read.  I want to share my love of great books.  Bolaño is widely regarded as an important literary voice, and I wanted to get that novel.  But I didn’t.

Bolaño’s next super critically acclaimed novel released in English was the mammoth 2666.   At almost a 1000 pages, it didn’t seem to be the novel that I should try again with.  I’ll freely admit that I was intimidated.  Bolaño’s latest work in translation, The Third Reich, weighs in at a svelte 277 pages.   If I was going to give Bolaño, this appeared to be the ticket.  So with some trepidation, I dove in.

The Third Reich, I should quickly point out,  is not a World War II novel and has little to do with historical Nazis.  The title refers to a World War II themed board game.  Udo Berger, a young German, is the national champion of a federation of war game enthusiasts.  He begins the narrative as a journal entry of his first day of vacation in Spain with his girlfriend Ingeborg.  This will be, in part, a working vacation.  Udo is excited to set up a few tables in the hotel room and test various strategies that he’ll write up for war game newsletters and journals.   His actual job job is of little consequence.  Udo is upbeat as he reflects on the weeks ahead:

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that my life has never been better.  Most of the credit goes to Ingeborg.  Meeting her was the best thing that ever happened to me.  Her sweetness, her charm, her soft gaze, put everything else–my own daily struggles and the back-stabbing of those who envy me–into perspective, allowing me to face facts and rise above them.

Despite Udo’s sunny self-assessment, he reveals through his actions that he is petulant, full of himself, and a bit of a bore.

Udo and Ingebord soon make the acquaintance of another vacationing German couple, Charly and Hannah.  Charly is a good-time windsurfer who immediately tests Udo’s patience.  Through Charly, Udo also comes to know some seedy local beach characters, known as the Wolf and the Lamb.  The most indelible new acquaintance of the summer will be El Quemado, which translates to “the burn victim” in Spanish.  True to his name, El Quemado’s body is covered with horrible burn scars.  The source of the disfigurement is not immediately revealed.

El Quemado is essentially homeless, choosing to live on the beach in a depression dug under the stack of paddle boats that he rents during the day.  In time, El Quemado and Udo begin playing a game of Third Reich.  Udo is very condescending in engaging  Udo in the game.  The self-evident distastefulness of playing a game in which one tries to relive World War II and emerge with the German army victorious seems completely lost on Udo.  For Udo, the game is entertainment.  El Quemado, however, may view warfare in an entirely different light that becomes more apparent as the game plays out over weeks.

The game, coupled with Charly’s mysterious disappearance, casts a pall over the beach vacation.  Udo remains in Spain as the sunlight begins to disappear into fall, waiting for news on Charly and the conclusion of the game.  Over the course of these events, Udo’s early “perspective” on life is shown to be inaccurate and completely shallow.   At its heart, The Third Reich is a coming of age story – wait, he’s German – let’s call it a bildungsroman.  Udo’s experiences force to come to grip with an immature view of the world and his place in it.

I enjoyed this novel.  It appears that Bolaño and I can get along after all.   I’m not sure that I am ready to tackle 2666, which everyone seems to agree is his masterwork.  At least now I can see myself considering the possibly of tackling that tome, which was not the case prior to reading The Third Reich.   

Book Pitch: I can readily imagine an upated US version of this book where an American video game blogger takes his X-Box on vacation with him to work on mastering Modern Warfare 3 and meets someone who doesn’t view playing warfare as “fun”.

Also: I received copies of the hardcover and the audiobook at roughly the same time.  In an unusual move for me, I went back and forth from the novel to the audiobook as time allowed.  The chapters are mostly named for dates, so it was relatively easy to listen in where I had left off in the book and vice-versa.  The audiobook is read by Simon Vance who does an excellent job.  Through the audiobook I was better able to get a handle on pronunciations of names, places, and words in languages that I don’t speak than I would have otherwise had. Vance’s world-weary approach seemed to capture Udo perfectly.  Check out an audio clip from the first chapter:

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The Terror of Living

No, the title of this post is not a teaser to lead you into a deep, moving essay I’m writing about the world we live in; it’s the title of Urban Waite’s debut novel.  The Terror of Living came recommended to me by Goodreads in the same slew of recommendations that offered up Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams, a critically-acclaimed novella that I found rather disappointing.  So why would I listen to those recommendations again, you might ask?  Well, I’m all about giving second chances.

And Waite’s book isn’t bad.  It isn’t particularly special, but it’s not bad.  It’s a suspenseful crime thriller that takes place around Seattle and the Canadian border.  Phil Hunt is a man with a past who has been making his living smuggling drugs.  Bobby Drake is a smalltown deputy sheriff whose father was also a deputy sheriff who fell to the dark side.  Drake messes up a deal that Phil works on, and then a slew of rather stereotypical characters come into play:  “the lawyer” who faciliated the drug deal; Hunt’s friend and drug-smuggling boss Eddie; Driscoll, the experienced DEA agent; two nameless Vietnamese men trying to recover the drugs; Roy, one of Hunt’s friends from their stay in prison together; Hunt’s and Drake’s innocent wives; and Grady, the ruthless serial killer sent to find and kill Hunt.

Waite is a straight-shooter as a writer, not getting caught up in tricky prose or overworked language, and he is very good at one of my favorite things:  writing short chapters.  The book jumps from chapter to chapter, checking in on what’s happening with different characters, pretty much in real time relative to one another.  So there are lots of breaks, each of which represents a good stopping point to put the book down and know that when you pick it up again you won’t be in the middle of a specific scene.

This is a quick and easy read, and it’s not not good.  It’s just not a standout; there’s nothing here that is wholly original, and perhaps because I’ve never been to the Pacific Northwest, the storylines and backstories didn’t sink in with me in a way that moved me.  But if you like the thrill of the chase without being bogged down by deep symbolism, this might be right up your alley.

Train Dreams

I read a couple of shout-outs to Denis Johnson’s novella Train Dreams and was immediately intrigued.  Described as [paraphrasing here] an epic novel squeezed into a novella, with sprawling descriptions of the great Pacific Northwest and one man’s life among the loggers in the early twentieth century, etc., it sounded positively grand (and perhaps even Steinbeck-esque).  And as I began reading, Johnson’s style of prose instantly reminded me of Tony Earley, of whom I’m a huge fan, and whose Jim the Boy and The Blue Star are some of my favorite books.

However, not too long into the book, I realized a significant difference between Earley and Johnson — namely, that Earley’s storytelling grips you and brings you into the protagonist’s world in a way that creates a meaningful connection that moves you and leaves you desperately rooting for his success.  However, Johnson’s approach with his main character, Robert Grainier, is so distant and unemotional that I was dragged along wondering where I was going and why I was going there.  As Grainier returns home to find that his entire town had been burned to ash and his wife and daughter were nowhere to be found, the only tug at my heartstrings that I felt was due solely to my role as a husband and father, and can’t be attributed to Johnson’s description of the scene.  Grainier is a loner, and it’s almost like Johnson makes a conscious decision to distance him from the reader.

Johnson’s prose is truly beautiful, but the lack of any connection to his character left me disappointed; this is exacerbated by the lack of any real arc to the story of Grainier’s life.  It’s a sad, lonely tale, and the inability to feel any empathy for Granier or to believe that Granier sees any meaning in his life makes it a cold read.  This book is a quick read, and perhaps a second read (or another set of eyes) might surface more than I could get out of it.

The Whore of Akron

The Whore of Akron, by Scott Raab, is not for everybody.  Not because it’s not interesting or written well enough, but because the topics covered here won’t necessarily resonate with anyone who hasn’t suffered through the historically unfulfilled and unlucky life of a Cleveland sports fan.  Having grown up a couple miles west of Cleveland and having done my undergraduate work at CWRU in Cleveland, I know the story and the feeling all too well.

I left Cleveland in 1990, but I’ve carried my loyalty and passion for Cleveland sports with me ever since, including the self-loathing and “Why me?” attitude that accompanied watching my beloved Indians take a lead into the bottom of the ninth inning of the 1997 World Series against the Florida Marlins only to see one of the best closers in the game blow it and then witness the Tribe lose it in extra innings.  Cleveland has not won a sports title since 1964.  We’ve come oh so close, but haven’t sealed the deal.  And it’s been a painful journey.

Raab now lives in New Jersey, but he grew up in Cleveland and was actually at the NFL Championship Game that the Browns won in 1964.  In this book, he addresses the cult of Cleveland sports through the city’s experience with LeBron James.  And he does not pull any punches.  As a journalist who’s fortunate enough (or not) to be able to get media credentials to sporting events, and as a lifelong Cleveland fan, he got to come along for the seven-year ride LeBron had through Cleveland, starting with the Cavs winning the lottery and selecting the local superstar from Akron with the #1 overall pick in the 2003 NBA draft and then “culminating” (for lack of a better word) with “The Decision”, LeBron’s primetime special in the summer of 2010 in which he ended months of suspense by announcing that he was “taking his talents to South Beach”, gathering the world together to witness him driving the proverbial dagger through the collective hearts of Cleveland fans.

Excuse me — I started talking like Scott Raab for a second there.  But that’s what this book can do to you, particularly if you’re from Cleveland, or if you’re the type of sports fan who can empathize and appreciate the struggles the city has gone through.  Raab engages in a look back, re-examining some of the things LeBron did during his tenure in Cleveland and casting doubts upon LeBron’s motives all along the way, portraying him as a selfish, greedy, unsympathetic villain who never cared for or wanted to be in Cleveland in the first place.  And Raab uses the events that unfolded around and after The Decision, including LeBron’s first season with the Miami Heat, to corroborate the suspicions he raises.

This book is clearly an indictment of LeBron James, and no one should go into it expecting any sort of objectivity.  But if you’re in the mood for some scathing, claws-out, vilification, this is your book.

Inside Scientology

I’ve always been curious and perversely fascinated by Scientology; not in the sense that I want to join, but rather that I want to understand what exactly it is and how it came to be.  We’ve all heard stories about L. Ron Hubbard and how the religion he invented was actually the result of a lark stemming from a bar bet or something like that, where he succeeded in tricking people into buying into a theory that we’re all the spawn of aliens who landed in a volcano millions of years ago, etc.  Inside Scientology:  The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion, by Janet Reitman, is the result of years of painstaking research and analysis by the author in her attempt to publish the first-ever comprehensive history of Scientology.

Reitman’s book starts with a biography of Hubbard, the science fiction writer who invented Dianetics in the early 1950′s as an alternative to psychotherapy and then lost Dianetics through bankruptcy but re-emerged by repackaging his theories as Scientology.  Based on how his life is described by Reitman, how anyone believed anything Hubbard said or wrote is absolutely beyond me.

While he may have been a charismatic and engaging guy, he is portrayed as a pathological liar who never even came close to doing one tenth of the things he claimed to have done.  He told people he was a former explorer, researcher, war hero, sea captain, and a multitude of other glamorous titles, none of which were true.  But that didn’t stop people from buying into his theories of self-exploration and self-help.  After his health began to deteriorate, he secluded himself in a secret compound in California.  When he passed away in 1986, the organization was taken over by David Miscavige, by all accounts a less “crazy” but seemingly more ruthless leader, who seems to have focused far less on thinking of Scientology as a religion, but instead as a business.  And he appears to use and abuse his power to exercise unrelenting control over the Church and its members.

While this book is heralded as the first full journalistic history of Scientology and as an evenhanded account, even the most objective, evenhanded reading of it can’t mask the fact that Scientology seems to fit every stereotypical characteristic of a cult.  It is absolutely terrifying to read what people who’ve been indoctrinated into Scientology have gone through, and even more terrifying to think that sane people can be held captive the way that they are.

The Church of Scientology has got money coming out its eyeballs.  It was able to get itself classified by the IRS as a religious organization and thereby achieve tax exempt status (and the ability to maintain its books as confidential).  If you think you’ve felt pressured to tithe beyond your means by your church, you have no idea.  Individuals pay freakish amounts of money to be “audited”, something they must do to reach “Clear” status and advance along “The Bridge to Total Freedom”.

As members advance, more and more secrets of Scientology are revealed to them, and they apparently become even more eager to learn what’s behind the next level of advancement.  I would say that you can’t make this stuff up, but apparently you can, and apparently people will buy into it.  And all along the way, the Church of Scientology is just collecting that money and supposedly using it to further its mission to “clear the planet”.  But as you read this book, you see how that money is used for selfish, crazy purposes to satisfy the whims of Church leaders, and how the hierarchy of the Church fosters corruption and abuse of power.

There’s an entire chapter in the book dedicated to Tom Cruise, the most outspoken of the celebrities who’ve joined the Church of Scientology.  Celebrities have long been an avenue the Church has used to grow its appeal, and the things it does to court celebrities would blow your mind — complete with spending millions of dollars to renovate one of its compounds before Cruise’s first visit there.  The leaders who meet with Cruise fake their way through a bunch of stuff specifically to make it look like Scientology is perfect for Cruise, and they continue to cater to him outside of the normal protocols until he’s hooked.  Of course, when he reaches OT3 level and learns that the stuff about the aliens is actually for real, he freaks out and backs away.  But they get their hooks back into him and allegedly mastermind his divorce from Nicole Kidman.  It’s just bizarre — even more bizarre than you can imagine.

Scientology has reportedly used spies and secret operatives (including the largest domestic espionage case in history), fraud, frivolous litigation, and all sorts of other unscrupulous means to continue its growth, gain more power, and build more wealth.  This book explains it all through anecdotal evidence and data collected from current and past members.  Absolutely fascinating stuff.  A must read for anyone with any interest in American culture.  If you’d like a taste of what the book has to offer, check out Reitman’s original article for Rolling Stone that lead to this book.

The Art of Fielding

Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding was the book that I kept threatening to read all year long.  (Recent Example)  I don’t know why it took so long to get around to, but it definitely lives up to the hype.

The novel takes place largely over a single school year at Westish College, a small liberal arts college in Wisconsin.  The main character is Henry a once-in-a-lifetime shortstop of almost limitless potential.  Henry was “discovered” by Schwartz, the captain of Westish’s baseball team.  Schwartz drives Henry to achieve the dream that they both share, to play major league baseball, but only Henry has the talent to realize.  Woven into Henry’s story are the lives of Owen, Henry’s roommate and openly gay teammate, Guert Affenlight, the school’s president, and his daughter Pella.  Their stories intertwine, sometimes in completely unexpected ways.   You know what — that’s all I’m going to tell you about the plot.  You’re better off diving in and letting the story surprise you.

The Art of Fielding is also the title of  a book within the book.  Written by a famed (fictional) St Louis Cardinal’s shortstop, it is Henry’s bible.  The Art of Fielding is a collection of Zen-like koans that serve as meditations and Henry’s guide to playing his position.  An example:

3.  There are three stages: Thoughtless being.  Thought. Return to thoughtless being.
33.  Do not confuse the first and third stages.  Thougtless being is attained by everyone, the return to thoughtless being by a very few.

The idea that those two items would appear non-consecutively is part of the beauty.  The Art of Fielding (the fake one) needs to be written, too.

The novel also weaves literary references throughout – most notably Melville’s Moby-Dick.  The college features a statue of Melville in the main quad, because the author once gave a lecture at the college.  As a result, the school’s athletic teams are called the harpooners.  One of Henry’s teammates is named Starblind, surely a reference to the Pequod’s mate Starbuck.  The college bar is named Stubb’s, another of Ahab’s mates.  President Affenlight frequently references Melville, American poets, and literature.  Affenlight’s favorite chapter of Moby-Dick  features prominently in the book’s conclusion.  Henry, the least well read,  imagines himself as a sort of Ulysses in a moment of despair.

The effect of the references is to frame the novel as a Hormeric tale, an American epic, a modern-day Moby-Dick, where the chief (but not only) obsession is baseball.  The five main characters struggle to learn how to be their own true selves. No mean feat.  This is a fantastic novel.  As a result of reading The Art of Fielding, I’ve picked up my half-read copy of Moby-Dick and have begun to press on.  Next up, Nathaniel Philbrick’s Why Read Moby Dick to help fill in my own cognitive gaps.  Any book that is not only a cracking read in its own right but sets the reader off on a journey of additional reading is about as good as it gets.  The Art of Fielding will be on my year-end top 10 list (coming soon!) for certain.

Bonus:

Check out this interview with Harbach @ Baseball Nation ”The greatest baseball books aren’t really about baseball per se, they are simply great books that are set it in the baseball world.”  Indeed.

For an example of Harbach’s writing style, check out this brilliant essay for Grantland.

Steve Jobs

(This is a guest post by our friend Debbie in San Francisco.  She couldn’t stop talking about this book. )

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (Benjamin Franklin: An American Life and Albert Einstein: His Life and Universe) is everything a reader could want and more. It appeals to those interested in the formative years of Silicon Valley and personal computing.  It also appeals to those who like to read success stories of groundbreaking corporate founders and even has something special for readers who just like a well-crafted biography.  But the most rewarding thing to take away from the experience of reading this book is the feeling that we have a front row tour of the history of our beloved Apple products.  We learn how the iPod’s continuous scrolling functionality came to be.  We read about who’s idea it was to make the earbuds pure white on the iPod (hint: it’s not Jobs).  Credit where credit is due is another reason this book should be required reading for anyone who uses Apple products.

Do not be fooled by the author’s seemingly breathless and gossipy tone.  While off putting at first, we realize that this is necessary to tell the tale from multiple viewpoints after many exhaustive personal interviews with major players.  The only way to tell the story is to tell what others say and how they feel and that cannot help but read like “he-said/she-said” gossip.  However, since most all the players are living, the device works.

The ultimate triumph of the book is that Isaacson was able to speak to Jobs himself while there was still time.  Over the course of two years, Isaacson conducts over forty in-depth interviews with Jobs.  During the process it’s clear the two develop a friendship of sorts. Jobs implored his biographer to tell the whole story, even if it made him look bad, which it often did.  The perspective gained from these sessions is infinitely rewarding.  Add hundreds of interviews with others and the resulting prose is dramatic and compelling.

And yet, and yet.  The same reader could feel that something was missing in the story.  The book leaves us wanting to know a little bit more about how Mr. Jobs became so brash and narcissistic in the first place, as these traits are usually visible at a very young age.  We never really learn where in his formative years this behavior was allowed to take root and take over.

We get a glimpse of his earlyish years and the fascination with electronics (remember Heathkits?).  We see the willfull youth pushing back on hapless adults (and maybe not so hapless as in the case of Bill Hewlett who ended up offering the 13-year old Jobs a summer job after the kid looked him up in the phone book and called him to inquire about an electronic part).  We see a friendship of youths forged of mutual interests from different perspectives between Mr. Jobs and Wozniak (“Woz”).  The symbiotic (maybe opportunistic?) nature of this coupling is apparent when we read about Woz’s interests (tinkering, hacking, open systems, freeware) and Jobs’ (closed systems, marketing, aesthetics, revenue streams).  These opposing worldviews remain firmly in place throughout the book and professional careers of these gentlemen.  They never really meet in the middle even though they created something significant together.

The best part of this book is the wild ride and we are in the front seat with Jobs (or at least Isaacson).  The adventure that is creating the epic masterpiece that is Apple, which is the world’s most valuable corporation on some days, next to Chevron.  This is no small feat, and the story is transfixing.  Mr. Jobs outsize personality dwarfs most other players, making reading this book exhausting.  But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  Creating something this successful IS exhausting, so the reader really gets a sense of the drama and hard work and human interplay that gets inserted to each corporate situation and strategy.

Jobs’ lack of interest in the trappings of vast personal wealth is fascinating.  He and his family seem grounded and as normal as they could be under the circumstances.  Opulence was not something to which he aspired.  He aspired to seeing Apple’s ideas manifest in physical reality of useful and pleasurable objects that serve and entertain.  Mr. Jobs is the Chief Architect of this unprecedented bout of forward motion in manufacturing excellence. As stated elsewhere, he deserves a seat in the pantheon of America’s best business leaders.

After all this, we really want to see the protagonist (is Jobs the protagonist?) personally redeemed.  Sadly, this is not the case. That is one of the great disappointments about the book, and perhaps his life story.  We see the fractured relationship he has with his children which the author describes in painful detail.  The heartbreak of the youngest daughter when a long-promised trip to Kyoto is cancelled by Dad  was especially hard to read.  Also hard to read was Jobs’ clear favoritism toward  his son Reed.

Jobs has been identified as having a narcissistic personality disorder.  Author Wendy T. Behary  in an Oct 06, 2008 article offers the best definition of a narcissist I have seen:

A quick definition of a narcissist: someone who has an exaggerated sense of self-worth, is highly self-absorbed, entitled, condescending, superior, show-off-ish, competitive, and approval-craving. They do not appreciate the impact of their often obnoxious behaviors on others. They have a lot of trouble with empathy and with the notion of give and take.

In the end, we are left with Mr. Jobs’ outsize personality and its effect on those in his family, friends and colleagues.  Much of it is gut wrenching.  How much was necessary?  Given what was created in its wake, maybe all of it.  The reader is left not with a feeling of disgust toward Mr. Jobs’ obvious personality handicaps, but a feeling of gratitude for all that was created under the sheer will of Mr. Jobs.  He has made millions upon millions of lives better, and reading a book about this remarkable evolution is a reward in itself.

Thank you. Jobs and Isaacson.  I am going to read Steve Jobs a second time.

The Visible Man

I really like Chuck Klosterman.  I like his essays (e.g., Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs), and I like his fiction (e.g., Downtown Owl).  Plus I get him mixed up in my mind with Chuck Close, a super cool artist.  So he’s got it going on in my book.  When I saw that he had published a new novel, The Visible Man, I pushed it straight to the front of the queue.

Those of you who follow my reviews probably know by now that I don’t like to work too hard when I read; I like great characters, great stories, and great prose, but I don’t like to make my brain burn extra calories trying to figure stuff out — give it to me straight, doc.  Which makes The Visible Man a dark horse for me, because Klosterman takes an unorthodox approach to telling this tale.  But it worked, even for me.

This story centers on two characters:  Victoria Vick, an Austin-based therapist (although not a doctor), and a patient, referred to as “Y___”, who seeks her out for treatment.  The reason I don’t know the patient’s name is that the story is told through correspondence and notes from Vicky, which she has ostensibly submitted to her publisher, and in which she protects the patient’s identity by giving him this “name”.  Y___ reaches out to Vicky for “treatment”, although it is clear from the get-go that he has every intention of setting the rules of engagement for their relationship, beginning with the demand that they meet via telephone.  And it is also clear from their earliest sessions that Y___ has a huge ego, to the point where it’s not clear why he’s seeking counseling in the first place.

Y___’s issue seems to be that he needs a confidential sounding board to tell his stories to — stories that he’s arrogant and proud of — and which in the hands of someone other than Klosterman might have turned this into some weird science-fiction novel.  See, Y___ comes from a background in military and scientific research, and a specific project on “cloaking” technology that he finished by himself after the project was shut down.  He’s come up with a technology for making himself appear invisible (by bending light around his body and other things that you and I wouldn’t understand, and which he makes clear to Vicky that she wouldn’t understand either).  And he’s been using this technology to spy on people, particularly when they are alone, to try to divine the essence of human personalities — who are we when no one is looking?

The existence of this technology and the way Y___ uses it become the focus of the counseling sessions, and eventually weave their way into the actual personal dynamic between Vicky and Y___.    I won’t spoil the story, but I’ll vouch for Klosterman’s uncanny ability to approach what makes people tick in interesting and unusual ways, and I’ll also vouch for the fact that you won’t put this book down once you pick it up.

The Leftovers

A confession: I was pretty sure that I did not want to read The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta.  At all.  The subject matter as I understood it, a story of what happens after the Rapture-like event comes to pass, didn’t seem like my thing.  As luck would have it, Tom Perrotta was a featured author at the Decatur Book Festival.  I went to see him read from the novel, and the next thing I knew I was getting my own copy of the book signed by the author.  Signed copy in hand, it seemed that actually reading the novel would be the next logical thing to do.

I suppose what I thought the book was going to be was a wink-wink style satire of the Rapture and the people who believe that such a thing is imminent – something mean-spirited.  Perrorra signals the reader that this is not where the novel is going right upfront – on Page 2 of the prologue actually – when a character reflects on what she thought of the Rapture – before:

It felt like religious kitsch, as tacky as a black velvet painting, the kind of fantasy that appealed to people who ate too much fried food, spanked their kids, and had no problem with the theory that their loving God invented AIDS to punish the gays.  Every once in a while…she’d spot someone reading one of the Left Behind books in an airport or on a train, and feel a twinge of pity, and even a little bit of tenderness, for the poor sucker who had nothing better to read, and nothing else to do, except sit around dreaming about the end of the world.  And then it happened.  The biblical prophecy came true…

There is some disagreement over whether the baffling disappearance of millions of people from the face of the earth (and millions left behind) is truly a Rapture-like religious reckoning or something else entirely.  It quickly comes to be referred to as the  ”Sudden Departure” on the 24-hour news channels.

The novel focuses on how the aftermath plays out in a middle-sized town.  The titular “leftovers” are stunned both by overwhelming grief for the loved ones who suddenly disappeared from their lives and the existential angst of what it means that they weren’t among those taken. It’s a fascinating premise.  Naturally, many people choose to abruptly live their lives in a different way.  Some see no point in living as they had been, and they frequently resort to extreme or bizarre worldviews to hammer out some sense of the inexplicable.  Others try to continue on with a normal life despite the fundamental shift in the world around them.

Perrotta, to his credit, treats all of this very seriously.  The novel is never cartoonish, and it’s interesting to see where he leads.  This is a thought-provoking novel and a good read.  I’m glad that I stumbled across Perrotta at the Decatur Book Fest, or I would have clung to my very wrong preconceptions on what this novel is all about.  I recommend checking it out

Post Script:  As I was finishing The Leftovers, a copy of the audiobook version arrived in the BGB mailbox.  I handed it off to Anne, the BGB reviewer who uses audiobooks to keep from harming fellow Atlantans in traffic.  I’m looking forward to hearing what she thinks about it.  It’s that kind of book.

The Cut

George Pelecanos.  I’ve been meaning to read some of his work for years after watching so much of it on television. Treme. The Wire.  He’s one of the kings of television as novel.  So it would follow that he would be pretty good as the author of a novel as a novel.  Right? I didn’t know where to start.   The author appeared this year at the Decatur Book Festival to talk about his new novel The Cut and crime writing in general.  It was excellent.  The Cut is the first in a planned series and Treme is between seasons, so it seemed like the perfect time to get on board.

The Cut “stars” Spero Lucas, a returned combat Marine back from serving in Iraq.   He’s a detail guy and has found a niche working for a defense attorney as an investigator.  He can handle himself and is detail oriented.  His work on a particular case leads to Spero’s involvement with a criminal who hires him to recover some stolen property.  He works on the case for a cut of the action.  Spero slowly but surely wades into the darker side of the shades of gray concerning legality around the job.

Throughout the novel, the issues of race and class in its relation to crime in DC are at the forefront.  Spero is from a mixed-race family adopted by Greek parents. This background and his habit of dressing in  blue collar work clothes while on the job help Spero to blend in with his surroundings in almost any situation.  Add in a love for food from the corner diner to DC’s best restaurants and the reader is given a virtual all-access pass to the nation’s capitol.

Pelecanos has said that he wants readers to find in his books an “accurate, almost journalistic accounts of the life of the city [DC].”  I have a friend who is a hotshot newspaper editor.  His theory is that any book over 300 pages is in need of an editor.   Pelecanos is clearly working from the same journalist’s viewpoint.  The Cut is 292 pages, and there is little extraneous detail. Whenever someone walks into a room or place, there is a quick description of the location and personal appearances and then back to the action.   The dialogue sometimes comes across as stilted as a result, but it too quickly moves on.  No harm/no foul.

I’m not sure how representative The Cut is of Pelecanos’s body of written work, but it was certainly a well-crafted, tight little novel.  It’s maybe not as good as the best episodes of Treme or The Wire, but it holds its own.  I’ll be checking out more Pelecanos in the future.

Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion?

My sleeper hit for 2011 is the amazing Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion by Johan Harstad.   I stumbled across this novel while browsing in Denver’s Tattered Cover Book Store.  It was highlighted as a staff pick.   I had never heard of the novel before, and it’s put out by a press that I had never heard of before either (Seven Stories Press).  It is translated from Norwegian by Deborah Dawkins.  It has a wonderfully odd title, and it opens with the memorable line “The person you love is 72.8% water, and it hasn’t rained for weeks.”  A book on my shopping list was immediately bumped and Buzz Aldrin leaped to the top of my reading stack.

Buzz Aldrin figures into this novel due to his stature as the second man to walk on the moon.  Our anti-hero Mattias was born in Norway during the moon landing, with dad in the delivery room straining to hear the details on the radio out in hall.  He grows up obsessed with space travel and Aldrin in particular.  What’s unique about Mattias is that he doesn’t want to stand out in any way.  He wants to be invisible to the world but useful.  He describes it as wanting to be a cog in a machine – a cog in an important, contributing machine – that is never noticed.  Buzz Aldrin, the man completely overshadowed by Neil Armstrong,  is his perfect role model in this regard.  Buzz Aldrin’s later problems in life also serve as a nice mirror for what lies ahead for Mattias’s own life.

Mattias’s approach to life seems to work pretty well until he loses his girlfriend of several years due in part to his need to be invisible. Mattias comes unmoored when he loses his job at a gardening center shortly thereafter.  A trip to the Faroe Islands to lend support for a friend’s band goes seemingly very wrong when he finds himself face down in the middle of the street with no idea what has happened since the ferry ride over.

The silver lining to this misadventure is that Mattias is found by a psychiatrist who runs “a post-psychiatric” facility in the bucolic town of Gjógv.  In an isolated corner of one of the world’s most isolated countries Mattias may have found the ideal spot to disappear from the world while being a small cog in small machine.  When Mattias learns that the Apollo 11 astronauts once visited the islands in preparation for their moon landing, it seems that he may well have found his true home.  Life is rarely that simple, however.

One of the many things that I loved about this novel is that I was completely unfamiliar with the people and places where the novel takes place.  I frequently pulled up Google Earth to check out the Faroe Islands locations being discussed. If I ever found myself in need of a post-psychiatric facility to regroup, I think I would like it to be in Gjógv.  I’m sure that I’d like to find myself there some day regardless. Check out these pictures so see what I mean.  Gorgeous.

One of the characters has “an episode” after viewing a painting at the National Gallery in Tórshavn. The painting, by artist Sámal Joensen-Mikines, is called ”Hjem fra begravelse” (Home from the funeral).  This is it:

It apparently takes most of a wall in the gallery.  Well no wonder she had an episode.

Another fun thing about the novel were frequent mentions of the Swedish band The Cardigans.  I’ve been a fan of the band for years, and it was cool to realize that the perfectly apt section titles were taken from the band’s albums.  That the same four titles also feature prominently in the story is a nifty trick.

This is an amazing first novel that rarely takes you where you think it is going to go.  It’s an inventive narrative that repeatedly surprises the reader.  I will read anything by Johan Harstad that is translated into English.  I loved it. Check it out.  And I should mention again: I never would have found this book were it not for the efforts of the Tattered Cover staff to get it noticed.  So hooray for independent booksellers!

Audio Bonus:    Since The Cardigans are featured prominently in the novel, it seems fitting to add some of their music here as a mini-soundtrack to the novel:

The Cardigans – My Favourite Game

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The Cardigans – Erase and Rewind

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Unbroken

I unintentionally jumped from the Vietnam War (Matterhorn by Karl Melantes) right into World War II by listening to Unbroken by Laura Hildebrand.  I had heard it was a great story without being aware of the subject matter.  If I had known I may not have listened to it, but I am certainly glad I did.

The book chronicles the epic transformation of Louis Zamperini.  His life story is so compelling that Ms. Hildebrand (Seabiscuit) decided it was worth telling.  Louis is a young boy being raised in Torrance California. He spends much of his youth during the 1920′s stealing from people and getting into all kinds of trouble.  For being so mischevious, his personality is bright.  He is perennially upbeat.  He lets no one discourage him; he does what he wants.  His saintly and high-achieving older brother Pete saves Louis several times, but the last time he had to make a deal with the high school principal.  Louis wouldn’t be punished if he ran on the school’s Track team.  This turning point in Louis’ young life gave him a passion he didn’t know he had and he ultimately breaks the mile record all the way to the 1936 Olympics.

World War II breaks out in time to cancel the 1940 Olympics and Louis becomes an airman, flying for the US Army Air Corps, the precursor to the US Air Force.  During an air fight, Louis’ plane goes down in the Pacific Ocean with two other men.  The details of their 46 day survival are too impressive and creative to give any spoilers – it’s unbelievable but true.  In fact it should be said that this entire story is true, which makes it that much more incredible.

After a dramatic water shooting scene, Louis is captured by the Japanese.   We are filled with relief and joy when he’s captured because life in a POW camp has got to be better than life on sea.  Not so in Japan.  Throughout Louis’ two year stay in several Japanese POW camps, he is consistently beaten, starved and injected with unknown substances.  The Geneva Convention had drawn up international laws for POWs which the Japanese chose to ignore.  In fact many of their camps were hidden and unknown to anyone other than the Japanese military.   The worst abuser of all is a man named Watanabe. He is noteworthy because he chooses Louis out of hundreds, to beat daily. It is as if he recognizes Louis’ strong spirit and takes it as a personal mission to squash it.

It is said that man can survive without a lot of food and water, however, if a man loses his dignity there is no hope.  While being held captive, the prisoners find various ways to keep this dignity: they steal and share food, and communicate with fellow prisoners by addressing the Japanese guards, knowing the guards do not understand. The communication is for fellow prisoners.  In one camp in which they aren’t allowed to speak at all, they communicate in Morse Code with their fists.  In so many ways they learn how to trick the guards.

After the war when it seems everything should be going well, Louis and his friends continue to struggle through psychological turmoil.  Although Louis marries and tries to live a conventional life, he has nightly flashbacks and dreams of Watanabe and the horror he inflicted.   His wife works hard to be supportive, but even she starts to lose hope.  One evening, Louis has an encounter that changes his life – and that’s all I’ll say.   It is possible to Google Louis to learn the rest of the story, but I didn’t.  I wanted to listen to it via Ms. Hildebrand.

Ms. Hildebrand brings us a shocking tear jerker – tears of sadness and horror and tears of joy.   Louis Zamperini is an amazing man.  He endured torture that none of us can imagine. Throughout it all, when he thought he couldn’t take another lashing, he found a way to keep his dignity and he lived on.  Louis didn’t just survive the camps, after the war he eventually found a way to flourish and use his experiences to help others.  He remained positive and upbeat. According to his brother Pete, everyone loved Louis.  He truly was unbroken.

My respect for our troops and veterans that was renewed while listening to Matterhorn, only deepened after listening to this magnificent story.  So many combat veterans have and survived by the skin of their teeth, ready to sacrifice it all for America.  I am grateful to Ms. Hildebrand for bringing us this detailed chapter of World War II.   I’m also thankful that she researched every character’s life after the war.  So often after reading these stories I’m left with an emptiness of not knowing what happens.  I’m happy to learn the rest of the stories in Unbroken.

The Marriage Plot

Jeffrey Eugenides!  Author of The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex.  Pulitzer Prize Winner.   Dude on a Times Square billboard.  When I received an advance reader copy of his latest novel this summer -  The Marriage Plot - expectations were high.  Those expectations were crushed in short order when I read the first five pages three times, could get no further, and put the book back on the shelf until fall with a sigh.  Eventually, I picked it back up with tempered expectations.

The novel kicks off at Brown University in the early eighties and tells the story of three students that become involved in a love triangle of sorts.  The early reviews that I read were all agog that Eugenides begins the novel with a shout out to literature.  The very first line of the novel is, “To start with, look at all the books.”   I’m guessing that the reviewers had similar book shelves.  I did not, and I often found the establishment of the literary bona fides tedious.  Madeleine, an English major writing her thesis on the Regency/Victorian-era “marriage plot,” isn’t too enthusiastic about literature herself:

Some people majored in English to prepare for law school.  Others became journalists.   The smartest guy in the honors program, Adam Vogel, a child of academics, was planning on getting a Ph.D. and becoming an academic himself.  That left a large contingent of people majoring in English by default,  Because they weren’t left-brained enough for science, because history was too dry, philosophy too difficult, geology too petroleum-oriented, and math too mathematical–because they weren’t musical artistic, financially motivated, or really that smart, these people were pursuing university degrees doing something no different from what they’d done in first grade: reading stories. English was what people who didn’t know what to major in majored in.

Ouch. The tediousness reaches its height when Eugenides discusses the ins-and-outs of a semiotics class that our star-crossed trio take together. Eventually though, a story takes place.

Madeleine becomes involved with Leonard Bankhead, the “bad boy” in the love triangle.  Leonard is a handsome former burnout from Portland.  He wears flannel and chews tobacco and turns out to be manic-depressive.  Not very Ivy League.  The other corner of the triangle is Mitchell – the “good boy.”  How good is Mitchell?  He is a relatively chaste religious studies major who at one point in the novel finds himself in India working for Mother Theresa.  Not kidding.  So you know who Madeleine chooses, right?

Early in the novel, Eugenides tips his hand on where the novel is headed in a discussion of the outline for Madeleine’s thesis:

…Madeleine was going to move on to the Victorian novel, where things got more complicated and considerably darker.  Middlemarch and The Portrait of a Lady didn’t end with weddings.  They began with the traditional moves of the marriage plot–the suitors, the proposals, the misunderstandings–but after the wedding ceremony they keep going.  These novels followed their spirited, intelligent heroines…into their disappointing married lives, and it was here that the marriage plot reached its greatest artistic expression.

There is a marriage, and it should be no surprise that it becomes disappointing.  Things get complicated and considerably dark.   However intelligent Madeleine may be, however, she doesn’t come across as all that spirited.  Fatalistic would be my description. Madeleine seems to be carried along by events as though she has no control over the story of her own life.

As much as I’ve griped about the novel in this review, I did come away with a grudging appreciation by its end.  I cared enough about the characters, eventually, to want to know how things turned out.  The Marriage Plot is not Eugenides’s “greatest artistic expression,”   but this is in no way a terrible novel.   My own very high expectations for this novel set a bar that I think few novels would have been capable of achieving.

Matterhorn

After reading about how Tim learned about the novel Matterhorn by Karl Melantes and then reading his review, I decided that this war book had to go on my list.  I didn’t read it however, I listened to it.  I’ve seen plenty of movies about the Vietnam War but I’ll admit, I never thought I’d be interested in reading about it.  Reading or listening, Matterhorn is one intense novel.

The story begins with a very graphic incident of a leach being found where no leach belongs. (I had to actually look up leaches because I didn’t realize how horrible they can be.) We quickly learn about crotch rot, heating coffee in cans with explosives and living in a jungle with no food or water.

Yale educated, Second Leutenant Mellas, has volunteered with the Marines during the Vietnam War.  He wants to believe that his reasons for volunteering are to build his resume.

Mr. Melantes immediately transports us into the jungle, to a mountain called Matterhorn, where we follow Mellas through his first three months in Vietnam.  Mellas and his company, due to egos above them, are forced to survive for seven days on just a few days of rations.  They are ordered to build barracks and then ordered to leave and build somewhere else.  They are forced into ambushes for which they aren’t equiped.  And although discouraged by losing limbs and lives, they march onward to finish the job that they have been ordered do complete.

There are quite a few battles raging throughout the story in addition to the war.  Within the company, the racial unrest reflects the inequality at home. The captains and colonels making the strategic decisions are fighting their own political war as well, which makes me just as ill as the actual fighting.  And throughout the story, Mellas has his own internal conflicts –  did he try to save the wounded soldier because he wanted the medal? or because he cared?  Can it be for both reasons?  He spends a lot of time contemplating the war, his friendships and his past.

Mr. Melantes has written a war novel for men and women.  Men love war scenes, right?  I enjoyed these glimpses into war myself,  but I may not have enjoyed the story as much without the complete development of the characters and their relationships with each other.  I really cared for these ‘kids’ and was brought to tears several times.

When Matterhorn ends I wonder what happens to everyone.   The story only covers the first three months, then what? What does Mellas become? What about the young men who begin their adulthood fighting in a war?  I want to believe everyone gets out, but reality in war dictates that very few will come out alive or whole.   If Mr. Melantes decides to write about the rest of Mellas’ tour, then my questions will be answered.

Tim:   Hi, Anne.  Hate to muscle in on your review here, but I just wanted to note that Karl Marlantes is reading tonight at The Tattered Cover in Denver.  Which is where I am this week.  Woohoo.   Carry on.

City of Thieves

City of Thieves, by David Benioff, is the first book I acquired based solely on a “recommendation” from Goodreads.  And if this is any indication, I suspect there will be many more to come.

This is the most complete page-turner I’ve read in a long time.  It is entertaining, suspenseful, moving, sad, and funny, all at the same time.  The book opens with the author trying to learn more from his beloved grandparents about their history, knowing that they are Jewish immigrants who survived World War II in Europe.  When his grandfather gets our author alone, he begins to tell the story of his adventures during the Siege of Leningrad during WWII, and the remainder of the book is the tale he tells.  (I couldn’t help picturing the opening scene of The Princess Bride.)

The author’s grandfather, Lev, was a seventeen year-old living in Leningrad in a sprawling apartment complex during the Siege of Leningrad.  Lev’s father, a poet who had written some inflammatory material, had been taken away (never to be heard from again), and his mother and sister had fled the city; Lev stayed behind, feeling obliged to remain in the city he loved.  This was a time of fierce martial law, scarcity of food (residents had ration cards), and strict curfew.  Lev and his friends would see the light show resulting from bombings and anti-aircraft fire nightly, and one night they witnessed a paratrooper drifting from the sky toward their complex.  They were intrigued, and despite curfew, went to investigate.  The paratrooper was German and had apparently frozen to death in the sky; Lev and his friends searched the body and took what they could find from him, but as they were taking slugs of liquor from the dead man’s flask, Russian soldiers appeared.  As the youths tried to run back to their apartments, Lev was captured while saving his friend who had slipped and fallen.

The penalty for such a curfew violation was death, and Lev was certain that would be his fate.  He was taken to prison and put in a cell with Kolya, a talkative, handsome Russian soldier who had been accused of desertion.  The two are temporarily spared from execution by Colonel Grechko, whose beautiful daughter is to be married the following Saturday.  The colonel needs eggs to bake the wedding cake, and so he sends Lev and Kolya on a mission to find eggs.  If they can return with eggs in time, they will be released; if they do not, they will be found and killed.

The story follows the two as they scour Leningrad and surrounding areas on their quest; it is January, they’re on foot, and they have little in the way of supplies.  They are justifiably paranoid and fearful as they meet strange characters and live in constant peril, and they form a strong bond that makes you root for both of them like you’ve never rooted for anyone before.  In many ways this is a sort of buddy story/road trip novel, despite the lack of choice the two were given as to whether to be buddies or to take a road trip.

Like The Kite Runner, this was a story set in a foreign land and steeped in history that I sadly had little knowledge of or familiarity with; but like The Kite Runner, that only drew me in more.  I absolutely loved this book, and I give it two big thumbs up; if I had three thumbs, I’d give it three.

My Father’s House

If you’re a long-time reader of this blog, you know that author Ben Tanzer is a friend and an all around great guy.  You’ll know that my reviews usually begin with a disclaimer that I am totally biased, and I may even mention that the work in question is his best book yet. Ben has a new novella called My Father’s House.  I ask your indulgence when once again I  (truthfully) make the claim that it is his best work yet. You’ll just need to read it yourself to back my call.

Ben’s books typically focus on guys, guys the age of the author and I, trying to make sense of being an adult.  My Father’s House begins with a man remembering how his father’s illness, a rare form of bone cancer, entered the family’s life and changed it forever.  It’s heavy stuff, but it is so well done, that the book never feels like a chore or pity party.

One of the things that I love about Ben’s writing is his reference to popular culture to create a context for a given scene.  What I love about Ben’s references is that, by and large, they are my cultural touchstones as well.  In one example, the narrator explains to his therapist why he wasn’t embarrassed by his dad’s unorthodox lifestyle by drawing on John Irving’s The Hotel New Hampshire.

“…when I was a kid I read The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving and there is a section of the book where the remaining family is living in Vienna and  the narrator goes out for drinks with his father to this fancy bar.  The son is concerned about being seen with his father who is quite eccentric in dress and personality. When they get inside the bar though it turns out his father is a regular there and the patrons all love him for who he is regardless, or maybe because of, how he dresses and what that represents them.”  ”So it isn’t a problem then?”  ”No that was the least of the problems.”

I haven’t read The Hotel New Hampshire since I was teen myself, but I instantly got it.  Now I have another book to revisit.

This book is a work of fiction.  However, I do know that Ben’s father was an artist, just like the narrator’s, who died of a similar, if not the same, form of cancer.  (And if I’m not mistaken, the cover art is one of Ben’s father’s paintings.)  It is clear that Ben drew from his own experience, because the emotions shared on the page have the unmistakable ring of truth.  Within the novella, our narrator gives an indication of what Ben’s experience writing the book may have been like:

I realize yet again that even though I may be able to cry these days, it doesn’t mean I don’t still struggle to feel things, and this is important because here I am trying to figure out what it takes to be a writer, and like my dad, my first inclination is not to dig and uncover all those horrible things that might be lurking beneath the surface, the regrets and the pain, the confusion and the sense that I never feel like I understand what everyone else seems to get about how these things work.  The thing is I need to dig in if the writing is going to be honest and resonate with people.  The question as always is whether I am willing to do so.

My Father’s House is honest and resonated with this reader.  In the end, the author must have dug in.  We both win.

The Art of Fielding

I had seen a couple of unrelated but equally glowing blurbs about Chard Harbach’s debut novel, The Art of Fielding.  Since my Cleveland Indians had dropped out of the pennant race, I figured this might be a great way for me to get back into the baseball spirit.  This is a fantastic book — it’s well-written, it’s a great story, and it features an amazing cast of engaging characters (feel free to add more superlatives to that sentence if you like — they’re deserved).

The book opens with a focus on Henry Skrimshander, a scrawny but gifted young shortstop from somewhere in the Dakotahs.  Mike Schwartz, the brawny catcher and team captain for the Westish Harpooners, a Division III school from Wisconsin, happens to catch Henry’s post-game fielding practice ritual after a summer league game and sees enormous potential for Henry.  Schwartz somehow finagles a way for Henry to matriculate to Westish and join the baseball team.

While Henry and his deep-seated admiration for Aparicio Rodriquez, (a fictional shortstop for the St. Louis Cardinals who wrote a book entitled “The Art of Fielding”), are the initial centerpiece of the story, other characters weave in and out of center stage and draw the reader in.  There’s the aforementioned Mike Schwartz, an inspiring and motivational bear of a man who mentors Henry, Owen Dunne, Henry’s “gay mulatto roommate”, Guert Affenlight, the president of Westish who struggles with his sexuality, Pella Affenlight, Guert’s daughter who comes to visit after her marriage fails, and other members of the baseball team and campus fabric.  While Harbach shifts his focus from character to character, he never loses the reader and compels you to keep turning pages to see what might happen next for whomever is in your sights at that moment.

Each of our characters wrestles with one demon or another; most of these are part of that character’s fundamental make-up, with the exception of Henry, whose nebulous nemesis comes out of nowhere when the normally flawless fielder one day during a game mysteriously makes a wide throw to first base that sails past the firstbaseman into the dugout and hits Owen square in the face.  Henry is devastated, and begins for the first time to think while he fields and throws, undermining his natural skills.  Henry’s rise and fall and his struggles along the way form the backdrop for the others’ personal internal struggles.

The Art of Fielding features numerous common literary elements and themes — romance, conflict, redemption, etc. — but manages to incorporate them into a wonderfully compelling story without feeling unoriginal.  No vampires, no wizards, just a good read.