Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Audiobooks, But Were Afraid to Ask

While the world is obsessing about eBooks, Woody Allen has a different ultra-modern technology on his mind. Audiobooks.

Audiobooks by a Technophobe

From the article:

Q. How were you persuaded to embrace the audiobook format? Do you own or regularly use any of the high-tech gadgets that play these files?

A. I was persuaded in a moment of apathy when I was convinced I had a fatal illness and would not live much longer. I don’t own a computer, have no idea how to work one, don’t own a word processor, and have zero interest in technology. Many people thought it would be a nice idea for me to read my stories, and I gave in.

Oh, Woody. What do you want to bet someone told him audio would be a nice idea...in 1974? (...She scoffs, as she runs to iTunes to fork over $1.95 for "The Whore of Mensa.")

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith

Some people think President Lincoln was gay. Some think he was a patronizer of prostitutes. Some think he was a Republican. Lots of theories, lots of dubiousness. But we can shut all the rest down, y'all, 'cause I think we have a winner: Abraham Lincoln was a vampire hunter, and that was the consuming issue of his life.

Okay, not really. (But this seems just as plausible as the idea that he was ever in the same general political room as Dick Cheney, no?) And it's the central idea of Seth Grahame-Smith's novel Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. The book essentially takes what Grahame-Smith started in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and applies it to a public domain life instead of a public domain Victorian novel.

As someone who would put Lincoln in her top five presidents, but isn't necessarily a presidential purist, I liked it. I think there are respectful ways to be playful and cheeky with historical content, and that's what Grahame-Smith does--he takes something you already know, tweaks it a little, and makes it seem fresh without undercutting the original. In P&P&Z's case, that means channeling Austen-style feminist rage through flesh-eating monsters. In Lincoln's case, it's pulling a context (vampire domination) over the crushing inhumanity of the slavery issue. (Slaves are essentially captive prey for vampires, leading Lincoln to conclude that African slavery ends up enslaving all Americans.)

The most successful part of the book is that Grahame-Smith weaves everything together so that you tend to forget where the real threads stop and the absurd new ones begin. Like, I know that Real Abe Lincoln suffered some heavy losses in his life (mother, sister, girlfriend, children, etc.). But I also don't stop to question it when I read that his mother's "milk sickness" was really the act of a malicious vampire. Or that Jefferson Davis was fighting the Union to serve evil vampire overlords who viewed Southern-style repression as the way to keep humans in check. I don't think twice when I think of Abe and his good buddy, Joshua Speed, fighting vampires side by side (though honestly, that one might be because I find their rumored real-life hooker-based shenanigans to be pretty icky).

The least successful part of the book is that it takes 300+ pages to hammer this singular "what if?" point. The book opens with a great set piece that explains how the author (or "biographer") came to possess Lincoln's secret journals and was chosen to spread this "truth" to the world. And the re-framing of Lincoln's childhood and young adulthood as a 19th century Buffy Summers has its charm (there's even an Edgar Allen Poe cameo!). But by the time the umpteenth Lincoln loved one is killed by a vampire, and the Civil War is raging, with supernatural-tinged casualties at Bull Run, you're kind of over it. And so is the author, I think. But such is the problem with taking existing material for your base: you have to run its predetermined course. And any purported Lincoln biography has to end at Ford's Theater, if you're really going to commit to your conceit.

Overall, I'd recommend, especially for summer reading. No one will mistake the the scholarship for Doris Kearns Goodwin, but at least now we know that one of our presidents was committed to saving us from the scourge of vampires (thanks for nothing, Millard Fillmore).

The Girl Who Fixed the Umlaut

Even if you haven't read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or either of its sequels, chances are you know someone who has--or at least you've seen someone with his or her nose stuck in the Swedish noir on public transportation. But if you've actually read it, you know that the writing has some...challenges. Namely, beloved tropes and repeated language that the author uses to shoehorn certain plot elements in there.

This week's New Yorker has a spot-on parody of the books by Nora Ephron. No word on whether her movie version will star Meg Ryan.

"She tried to remember whether she was speaking to him or not. Probably not. She tried to remember why. No one knew why. It was undoubtedly because she’d been in a bad mood at some point. Lisbeth Salander was entitled to her bad moods on account of her miserable childhood and her tiny breasts, but it was starting to become confusing just how much irritability could be blamed on your slight figure and an abusive father you had once deliberately set on fire and then years later split open the head of with an axe."

As JF pointed out, the only thing missing from the Ephron version is a trip out for sandwiches and espresso in the middle of the night.

A Harper Lee joint

Who knew there's a reclusive author out there who makes the late J.D. Salinger look like an extrovert?

Britain's Daily Mail managed to score a rare and prized interview with Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the book. The catch? She won't talk about the book. Or anything relating to the book. The extent of the interview:

"Thank you so much,’ she told me. ‘You are most kind. We’re just going to feed the ducks but call me the next time you are here. We have a lot of history here. You will enjoy it."

Something tells me she won't be hitting up Oprah next. But I found it kind of charming. You've got to respect a writer who either knows her limitations, and didn't force a bunch of less satisfying books into the market just to prove she could do it again; or who simply decided she was Over It and didn't want to publish anymore.

Of course, there's the "what literature could we have had?" argument. But while I'd be curious about that, I don't think authors really owe us anything. And I don't think I'd trade the impact of, say, Franny and Zooey for a drawn-out, increasingly morbid and self-obsessed canon (sorry, messieurs Roth and Updike).

And this article reminded me that I really do need to read To Kill a Mockingbird (instead of saying I'd read it when, really, I'd just "read" the Gregory Peck version). It's a sad fact of my public school education, English major career, and general American Lit devotion that I've managed to avoid it so far. This summer, I swear!

40 is the new 26

So the New York Times announced The New Yorker's 20 Under 40 list. Do we really need an article about an article? Why not just wait for the magazine to print the freaking list? Usually, this kind of hijinks is saved for the hard-hitting venues, like Access Hollywood's exclusive "Inside People's 50 Most Beautiful People List." But anyway, since it's obviously not a secret anymore, here are the picks for the top 20 young go-getters of fiction:

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 32
  
• Chris Adrian, 39
  
• Daniel Alarcón, 33
  
• David Bezmozgis, 37
  
• Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, 38
  
• Joshua Ferris, 35
  
• Jonathan Safran Foer, 33
  
• Nell Freudenberger, 35
  
• Rivka Galchen, 34
  
• Nicole Krauss, 35
  
• Yiyun Li, 37
  
• Dinaw Mengestu, 31
  
• Philipp Meyer, 36
  
• C. E. Morgan, 33
  
• Téa Obreht, 24
  
• Z Z Packer, 37
  
• Karen Russell, 28
  
• Salvatore Scibona, 35
  
• Gary Shteyngart, 37
  
• Wells Tower, 37

Of the 20, I've only read one extensively (Joshua Ferris). So I can't really get excited one way or another about the actual inclusions. But I find their ages very interesting. Only two of them are younger than I am. This means there's still time to produce that great work of fiction I haven't managed to produce in almost 30 years. Nice! See ya, Orson Welles watermark.

BEA postgame

Book Expo America (BEA) this year was kind of a weird affair. Book publishing has been in death throes for a while now (if you listen to all the Chicken Little articles, anyway), but apparently books are still being signed, created, and publicized--go figure. But the times, they are a-changin' regardless. Instead of the usual four-day book bacchanalia, this year's expo was condensed to two midweek days at the Javits Center here in NYC--and one floor of the convention center. Lean times or late reservation paperwork? You decide.

There were still the usual elegant booths for the big publishers, homey little ones for the smaller ones, and freebies galore. I scored, in no particular order:

* a large purple umbrella
* a foam rubber gavel
* a massive tote bag (I felt slightly guilty about accepting it from a direct competitor, but it probably saved my poor shoulders, which can't schlep as much free stuff as they used to)
* several smaller tote bags, including a replacement for my beloved BookTV one from last year
* a candle advertising the latest James Patterson book
* a tree sapling
* a Steve Martin lunchbag
* lots of galleys

I was a little surprised at the overall selection of books coming out this fall. I didn't see much in the way of big-name memoirs. Even the event's headliner, Barbra Streisand, was there for her book on design. The high-profile stuff was mostly political-ish, like the upcoming Earth (The Book)--and The Promise, signed by Jonathan Alter, which was my personal highlight of the day. I'm still working on The Bridge, but am really looking forward to this one too. Sadly, I didn't manage to complete the Obama trifecta by getting a copy of The Manchurian President, the author of which was also at BEA. Shucks. (On a similar note, the Regnery booth just didn't seem as busy as many others. Fewer freebies than other companies? Not many birthers among the librarians, booksellers, and publishing people milling about?)

There was also a surprising number of books on growing/legalizing pot. Not so surprisingly, those booths (at least three different publishers by my count) were hopping.

All in all, it was a good day. Believe it or not, my main intent wasn't (just) free books, but rather research. I got some interesting info on digital products (the smaller companies really seem to be ahead of the curve on that), and met a good number of people. I also made a friend at one point when a guy walking by was excited about the James Patterson galley I had in my pile, and was genuinely touched when I offered it to him. Good book karma. (And justification for my indiscriminate galley-accepting policy at these events.)

Now I just have to read everything I got. Good thing I finally cleared out the pile from last year! (...she said, knowing that the best of intentions won't stop this vicious cycle from repeating itself in 2011.)

Better Know a Classic: The Great Gatsby

Every couple of years, I reread The Great Gatsby. It's my favorite book, but that's not really why I keep picking it up--I've had plenty of favorites over the years that I don't really turn back to, for fear that they won't hold up. (I've been avoiding the Memoirs of a Geisha reread for pretty much that reason.) But I know that Gatsby will. And it never disappoints--it's still as close to a perfect novel as I've ever read.

I didn't always feel that way. The first time I read it, in an "eh, it's a classic and I should do it" fit of self-improvement in high school, I wasn't enamored. But then it was taught in one of the craziest lit classes I ever took in college (American Lit with a certifiable professor), something clicked, and I fell in love. (That's kind of how I roll; it's always the second glance that gets me.) And each time I read it, I notice something different--a turn of phrase that sparkles, a subtlety of character, or some random little moment that never jumped out at me before.

I think the narrator, Nick Carraway, has benefited the most from these multiple looks. First I thought he was too reticent; then I thought he was using the Daisy-Gatsby drama to cover up his own latent crush on Gatsby; and eventually I just decided he was unreliable. But I don't think so anymore. Maybe it's because he's 30 and I'm pushing it as well, but now I think he just kind of patches things together as best he can, as the only sane person on Long Island. He's very efficient, that Nick. He keeps everything moving along at a good clip, hustling through back stories that would have been fifty pages of exposition in another author's book (cough*Faulkner*cough).

I also feel more lenient toward Daisy these days. She's still a jerk, don't get me wrong--having a voice "full of money" doesn't excuse pitting men against one another for sport, or mowing down your husband's mistress--but I don't think she's malicious. She's bored and unhappy and desperate, with childlike comprehension of consequences. And without actual stuff to do (how did people entertain themselves in 1925 when gin wasn't handy?), it's easier to see how and why she lets things get so far out of hand, so fast. There's also the fact that everyone's pretty much egging her on, something I never really noticed before. No one (even Nick, with his constant disapproval) really stops to say, "Hmm, maybe you shouldn't cheat on your husband with the rich guy with the crazy eyes."

And I think the part that amazes me most is how wall-to-wall good the writing is. Nearly every sentence is airtight and eloquent. There's no questionable extravagance in a book that's all about questionable extravagance. So this book is as much a triumph of editing (both Fitzgerald's and, presumably, Maxwell Perkins's) as it is of the writing. (And having dealt now with some...colorful authors myself as an editor, I appreciate the wrangling it must have taken to get Fitzgerald to turn in anything on time and in decent shape.)

All in all, very happy with the biennial visit to West Egg.

Some of my favorite parts, this round:

"The bar is in full swing and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside until the air is alive with chatter and laughter and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names."

"She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented 'place' that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village--appalled by its raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short cut from nothing to nothing. She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand."

The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West

When the shortlist for this round of book club came up, I picked The Day of the Locust because it's been lauded as one of the best novels of the 20th century, and even had blurbs from author Nathanael West's contemporaries, like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, and Malcolm Cowley. So I figured that with the lavish praise and the book's 1930s Hollywood setting, it would be somewhat Fitzgeraldesque.

Not so much. It's really more of a novella than a full novel, and an underdeveloped one at that. It's the story of Tod Hackett, an artist-cum-set-painter who moves to Los Angeles for the same reasons presumably everyone else did in the 30s: to trade the hardship and tedium of Depression-era America for something more exciting and glamorous. West's Hollywood is filled with people who have "come here to die," and Tod is fascinated by the quiet, insistent subclass that has popped up--the extras, crew members, and various hangers-on who fill out the movie industry. So between the actual scenery and the human scenery, Tod is kept pretty busy with an unofficial "artistic" study of it all. (He doesn't seem to notice or care that he's one of them as well.)

But of course there's a girl, too. He falls in lust with one of his neighbors, the beautiful movie extra Faye Greener, who wants to be an It Girl. But Faye doesn't seem to have much working for her on that front, except a vague idea that she needs to be a star, and a knack for making men act like idiots in her presence. She manages to hook Tod, a hapless Midwestern dude named Homer Simpson (seriously!), and a couple of cowboy types who basically stand around doing nothing until there's a movie that needs, well, cowboy types. Faye flirts, teases, and manipulates her way through the group of men, getting what she needs for herself and her aging showbiz father. And the guys all put up with it--paying for cuckolded dates, jockeying for her attention, buying her things. The only one who's close to a decent human being is Homer 'cause he's sweet and clueless, and even he's on the far end of the "acceptable" spectrum. And if there's any point that the book approaches Fitzgeraldism, it's in the fact that none of the characters are especially likeable--but here, there's no amazing prose to back that up, or an especially compelling plot.

The plot feels episodic and a little random. The only real common thread is violence: in the book there's a subtext-heavy cockfight, an actual fight among Faye's suitors, a fight with a little person, a fight with a child, forced sex...you name the brutality, it's in here somewhere. And for all of the emphasis on Tod's chronicling all of this for his art, you don't actually get to see much of that happen. And after a few carefully thematic scenes, including a riot at a movie premiere, West relies on very little else to convey meaning and relevance.

And I think it's a shame, because this novella could have been so much better as a standalone work if it had just been fleshed out, and not reliant on the ennui/inertia of the characters to get the major points made.

Oh, well--not the favorite book club book (on either of our parts, unless Jacob has had a major revelation since last night), but at least it was brief. On to the next one! And to The Great Gatsby, because I realized that I would have been much happier doing the semi-annual reread.

The Likeness by Tana French

A few weeks ago I read In the Woods by Tana French, an absorbing mystery set in Dublin. I enjoyed French's style, and was enthusiastic to read what came next.

The Likeness picks up, plot-wise, where its predecessor left off. But instead of following the same narrator, it focuses on Cassie Maddox, the (now former) partner of the previous protagonist, Rob Ryan. Basically, after the events of the last novel, Cassie is left completely burned out. She has ditched her primo Murder job to join the much less glamorous Domestic Violence squad, and struggles to get through the day-to-day mundanities, despite a supportive boyfriend (Sam, who's still a Murder detective) and a job with much less pressure.

But lest we think Cassie is going to be left to wallow for long, a murder victim turns up stabbed in a cottage in the Irish countryside. And theoretically it's not Cassie's problem anymore. But not only is the victim a dead ringer (ha!) for Cassie, the girl's papers identify her as "Lexie Madison"--the identity that Cassie herself invented for an undercover assignment that began and ended years ago. But identity theft aside, it's not every day that you get a victim who happens to look exactly like a local detective with undercover experience, I'm guessing. But once you get past that awfully convenient set-up, things get interesting fast.

Cassie's former mentor, a gung-ho type who's frothing at the mouth to investigate a murder from the inside out, has a plan: they'll tell the dead girl's friends that hey, false alarm, the stabbing wasn't fatal. Cassie will undergo a crash course in Lexie's daily life, mannerisms, and known associates. Cassie will become the dead girl, figure out how the chick ended up with the fake identity in the first place, and suss out who wanted her dead. Of course. Detective-on-the-case Sam doesn't want Cassie to take the risk of a) pretending to be someone who generates stabby ill will; or b) putting herself in the position of becoming Lexie Madison a second time--'cause what if the killer was someone holding a grudge against Cassie's iteration of Lexie, and not the impostor's? However, in the grand tradition of mild-mannered boyfriend characters everywhere, Sam's objections are quashed pretty quickly, and Cassie agrees to go undercover as Lexie.

The most difficult part of the transition is that Lexie had been living with a small,extremely close group of friends from her literature PhD program. Because there's a good chance that one of them is the killer, none of them can know what Cassie's up to. So, much of the novel is Cassie assimilating into this tight-knit group--no small task when the group (three guys and two girls) is so codependent that menstrual calendars aren't even secret. It involves a good bit of disbelief suspension, but it's interesting to watch Cassie straddle her duties as a cop with her devotion to melding into Lexie's life, and becoming caught up in the quirks and appealing (if odd) structure of Lexie's life with this crew. At the same time, Cassie needs to figure out how the girl ended up with the Lexie Madison identity at all. So it's one big ball of potential clusterfuck. Cassie knows it, and starts caring less. The reader knows it, and that's what keeps the tension going throughout.

As with In the Woods, what French lacks in plausibility, she makes up for with good characters and solid writing. Cassie makes a better (and much more reliable) narrator than Rob, and the sequel is both tighter overall, and structured better than the first. And I like the way French is creating her series: keeping the setting, the sensibility, and the periphery, while switching out the voices. Commercially, people like a protagonist they can get behind for ten books (and however many movies)--but literarily (is that a word?), it's much richer to create an arc this way. Although I definitely got attached to Cassie, I'm looking forward to the third book this summer, with yet another narrator.

Parts I liked:

"I don't tell people this, it's nobody's business, but the job is the nearest thing I've got to a religion. The detective's god is truth, and you don't get much higher or more ruthless than that. The sacrifice, at least in Murder and Undercover--and those were always the ones I wanted, why go chasing diluted versions when you could have the breathtaking full-on thing?--is anything or everything you've got, your time, your dreams, your marriage, your sanity, your life. Those are the coldest and most capricious gods of the lot, and if they accept you into their service they take not what you want to offer but what they choose."

"Have you noticed how easily the very young die? They make the best martyrs for any cause, the best soldiers. It's because they're held here so lightly: they haven't yet accumulated loves and responsibilities and commitments and all the things that tie us securely to this world. They can let go of it as easily and simply as lifting a finger. But as you get older, you begin to find things that are worth holding onto, forever. It changes the very fabric of you."

Shorts

Last week's New Yorker was one of the more satisfying ones in recent memory--and they've been on a good streak with the fiction as well.

I really liked E.L. Doctorow's piece Edgemont Drive. Short, simple, meditation on dispossession and suburban priorities.

And last week's story, Allegra Goodman's La Vita Nuova, was similarly punchy. I found this one poignant 'cause I identified with it more directly, but I think it's well-constructed. I'm a little leery of a story that begins with a woman getting dumped by a fiance, but it never veers into chick lit-ish self-pity. I'm not familiar with Ms. Goodman's work, but I'll probably check her out.