Why go to sunny Orlando when you can get just as much theme park goodness in foggy England? At least the Charles Dickens theme park won't have giant mice running around (run-of-the-mill London rats, maybe). And perhaps the "It's a Small World" equivalent will have haunted-eyed street urchins instead of smiley United Nations children. This has the potential to be great--yet I can't help but feel it's unfair to Scrooge McDuck, who will probably be the first casualty in the anti-Disneyfication movement.
Until I can visit this monument to London's dark social problems, it'll just have to serve as a reminder that I need to read Dickens. Aside from an annual re-read of A Christmas Carol, I haven't read any of his novels since high school. It seems kind of unfair not to have approached him as an adult. I should take this up with my book club....
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
solving the world's literary crime, one writer at a time
Because I'm way behind on fun reading, I had no idea until this evening that The New Republic ran a story last month about possible Sedaris fraud. On one level, I don't really blame them. Who better to be a watchdog for literary crimes than the former enabler of Stephen Glass? It's the literary equivalent of gaydar. Plus, I assume their factchecking department has improved in the interim.
However, the logic is definitely flawed. Not fatally, but close. David Sedaris has been pretty open about the exaggeration factor. The article explicitly mentions this. But trying to prove the precise extent of the exaggeration feels a bit too nitpicky. The grain of salt offered by this admission should be enough for most marginally intelligent people; do we really need an itemized list of what was enhanced and what wasn't? If Sedaris runs for president or American Idol, maybe this will be more relevant.
And this was all dredged up with the James Frey mess, but nobody's pushing David Sedaris as a beacon of what anybody should do with his life. His writing is a lot of things, but "life affirming" isn't quite one of them. He's a humorist. Dismissing that claim out of hand--as the secondhand Slate article does--is a mistake. No one wants to read ostensibly funny memoirs that detail everything exactly as it happened--mostly because no such book exists. Real life is rarely funny; and when it is, it's the kind of quiet, poignant funny that isn't really funny at all. (See: every memoir ever written by a female comedian detailing her uterus-related illness.) We pretty much expect our memoirists to punch it up. That's why these books aren't published under the banner of "self help," or "go ahead and sue me if you find inaccuracies."
And most of Sedaris's books aren't even published under "autobiography." Walk into any bookstore--the books are in Humor. According to the Library of Congress, David Sedaris is an American humorous essayist. Check and...check. Naked is the only one that lists "biography" among the LOC designations. Admittedly, that's the one under the most contention in the TNR article, but still...kinda weak. If the books were marketed as being inspirationally true, this would be much different. Call me when you can verify every claim Donald Trump has ever made in print.
Alex Heard squanders whatever points I may have given him for journalistic integrity when he details how he dug up long-gone acquaintences, a random nurse, and Lou Sedaris to prove that some moments and pieces of dialogue may have been fluffed. Very Fox News, Mr. Heard. Good job. The whole thing smacks of "vendetta," even though there doesn't seem to be any real animosity. Parts like this are especially telling:
Libby describes a friend who was funny and caring, and who had a soft spot for outcasts. She thinks the depiction of Sharon in David's "novels" (her term) is entertaining but a little off, because Sharon, far from being the full-time grouch of David's stories, was a capable mother. "The sarcasm is a little bit her," Libby said. "But she was nurturing, she was warm, she cooked dinner every night. I thought she was a marvelous woman."
She "thinks" the description is "a little off"? That's not a breaking news story. That's a personal issue between the writer and his writees. And discussing whether the dialogue sounds "too good" is probably less of an accuracy issue than a language one. Unless there's a verbatim record of every conversation ever had, memoir dialogue is going to be somewhat more approximate than, say, a transcript of Meet the Press.
But whatever its many flaws might be, the TNR article does have one of the best magazine illustrations I've seen in a long time. So, you know, there's that.
However, the logic is definitely flawed. Not fatally, but close. David Sedaris has been pretty open about the exaggeration factor. The article explicitly mentions this. But trying to prove the precise extent of the exaggeration feels a bit too nitpicky. The grain of salt offered by this admission should be enough for most marginally intelligent people; do we really need an itemized list of what was enhanced and what wasn't? If Sedaris runs for president or American Idol, maybe this will be more relevant.
And this was all dredged up with the James Frey mess, but nobody's pushing David Sedaris as a beacon of what anybody should do with his life. His writing is a lot of things, but "life affirming" isn't quite one of them. He's a humorist. Dismissing that claim out of hand--as the secondhand Slate article does--is a mistake. No one wants to read ostensibly funny memoirs that detail everything exactly as it happened--mostly because no such book exists. Real life is rarely funny; and when it is, it's the kind of quiet, poignant funny that isn't really funny at all. (See: every memoir ever written by a female comedian detailing her uterus-related illness.) We pretty much expect our memoirists to punch it up. That's why these books aren't published under the banner of "self help," or "go ahead and sue me if you find inaccuracies."
And most of Sedaris's books aren't even published under "autobiography." Walk into any bookstore--the books are in Humor. According to the Library of Congress, David Sedaris is an American humorous essayist. Check and...check. Naked is the only one that lists "biography" among the LOC designations. Admittedly, that's the one under the most contention in the TNR article, but still...kinda weak. If the books were marketed as being inspirationally true, this would be much different. Call me when you can verify every claim Donald Trump has ever made in print.
Alex Heard squanders whatever points I may have given him for journalistic integrity when he details how he dug up long-gone acquaintences, a random nurse, and Lou Sedaris to prove that some moments and pieces of dialogue may have been fluffed. Very Fox News, Mr. Heard. Good job. The whole thing smacks of "vendetta," even though there doesn't seem to be any real animosity. Parts like this are especially telling:
Libby describes a friend who was funny and caring, and who had a soft spot for outcasts. She thinks the depiction of Sharon in David's "novels" (her term) is entertaining but a little off, because Sharon, far from being the full-time grouch of David's stories, was a capable mother. "The sarcasm is a little bit her," Libby said. "But she was nurturing, she was warm, she cooked dinner every night. I thought she was a marvelous woman."
She "thinks" the description is "a little off"? That's not a breaking news story. That's a personal issue between the writer and his writees. And discussing whether the dialogue sounds "too good" is probably less of an accuracy issue than a language one. Unless there's a verbatim record of every conversation ever had, memoir dialogue is going to be somewhat more approximate than, say, a transcript of Meet the Press.
But whatever its many flaws might be, the TNR article does have one of the best magazine illustrations I've seen in a long time. So, you know, there's that.
Monday, April 09, 2007
Another Life by Michael Korda
About halfway through Michael Korda’s insider extravaganza about the publishing industry, Another Life: A Memoir of Other People, I realized that I probably could have skipped grad school. Emerson was great and all, but what I’ll take from it boils down to the structure of book publishing and the fun anecdotes about how it all works. Appropriate, then, that this book was actually an assignment for Book Editing in the twilight of my Master’s career. It’s probably just as well that I skimmed just enough to get by in the class discussions; had I read the whole thing, I definitely would have questioned the sanity of spending four hours a week listening to the instructor’s anecdotes when I had Michael Korda’s tucked in my bag all along.
So maybe I should be thankful that the book is a little slow to get into—so slow that I didn’t pick it up again until a reading drought this spring. It starts, despite its subtitle, as a memoir of Michael Korda. And this early Michael Korda is quite the name-dropper, thanks to his Hungarian-Hollywood-American upbringing. Until he gets an entry-level job at Simon & Schuster in the late 1950s, there’s a very real fear that he’s going to spend all five hundred pages talking about things like people he knew at Oxford, and which Hollywood washout hosted the best pool parties. But once he settles into New York book publishing, the dishy, informative parts start, and the references to “my father’s great friend, the movie producer X” become more sporadic and slightly less obnoxious.
After that, the book moves on two tracks, which wind up fused: practical information about how the industry functioned in the latter half of the 20th century, and anecdotes about particular authors/agents/publishing figures. The former bits make for an incredibly detailed look at the industry. A lot of things surprised me here. Like, it appears that book publishing has changed extremely little over the past fifty years. (For instance, publishing has to be one of the only industries with a business plan based on New Deal bailout policies.) Korda touches on the kind of patchy modernization when he muses that while the actual business of buying and selling books has stayed pretty much the same, it’s the world outside the bubble that’s changed. Crunchy corporate shell, smooth chocolate center. I also didn’t realize how recently publishing was the province of WASP-y males. Total non-kosher sausage fest until the late 60s.
The gossipy anecdotes about literati are the best part of the book. Korda was apparently the Forrest Gump of book publishing: in addition to being there for a crazy amount of bestsellers and nascent trends, his list of authors includes Graham Greene, Larry McMurtry, Richard Nixon, Woodward and Bernstein, Kitty Kelley, Ronald Reagan (at the same time Kelley was writing her Nancy book, no less!), Tennessee Williams on the decline, Philip Roth, and others that I can’t even remember. Korda wasn’t necessarily the editor on all of their big-name books, but still…impressive list. Some of the longer author spotlights are apparently adapted from New Yorker profiles that Korda did; the strongest are the ones on former presidents Nixon and Reagan, a long bit about Jacqueline Susann (which I believe was made into that Bette Midler movie a few years ago), and a great account of working with a painfully delusional Joan Crawford. Just as good are the snapshots of people who work behind the scenes, like various agents and editors. There’s a surprising candidness—it’s possible that by 2000, most of the major players were retired, or lunching at that big Algonquin table in the sky. It probably also helps that Another Life is published by Random House, while Korda did all his editor-in-chiefing at Simon & Schuster (another fun tradition in publishing: or, “what constitutes a conflict of interest, anyway?”).
The vivid characters definitely make up for unevenness in narrative flow, structure, chronology, and even language. Korda’s voice fluctuates throughout: sometimes he’s the cool observer, other times he’s much more present. I guess that’s a product of morphing previously published articles with a bigger timeline.
Anyway, despite the dishy qualities and the insider baseball, this was a pretty good read. Not that my career path is likely to change at this point (given that I did spend the cash and time on that M.A. and all), but it made me more excited about becoming a part of this world—God and interviewers willing. At the same time, I’d recommend it for anyone who’s not really familiar with the book industry. It’s a fantastic crash course, if you ever wanted to know more about those wacky literati.
And now some of the more amusing bits:
On editing:
“It is possible to simultaneously overwork and underachieve—indeed, for an editor, nothing is easier. You can spend weeks—months, even—lovingly rewriting a manuscript that was never worth anything in the first place. You know it’s someone else’s mistake, even as you sit up late every night with half a dozen sharpened number-two pencils, long after your partner has gone to bed with a martyr’s sigh and a strong hint that he or she won’t be responsible for what happens if this kind of thing doesn’t stop so the two of you can have a normal marriage in which a person doesn’t get pushed aside in favor of a manuscript every night of the week and gets fucked like a normal person every once in a while, not to speak of getting taken to the movies every once in a blue moon.”
On Joan Crawford’s advice to women:
“She strongly advised having afternoon sex and making men talk about their work. To the question of how a woman could take an interest in her husband’s work if, for example, he was a cashier, Joan suggested asking him (presumably before or during afternoon sex): ‘Any holdups today?’”
On publishing presidents:
“The only reason any normal citizen wants to visit the White House on business, I told Anderson, is to get the cuff links, or whatever the equivalent is for women. After all, take away the cuff links, and who on earth would want to meet Jimmy Carter? Anderson was not amused—at the time, he took the view that Carter was leading a moral crusade and was going to be part of a great moment in American history—but he managed to persuade the president to send me a handwritten letter of thanks when the book was finally published. To my surprise, Carter misspelled the title of his own book (‘A Goverment as Good as it’s People’). I had it framed.”
So maybe I should be thankful that the book is a little slow to get into—so slow that I didn’t pick it up again until a reading drought this spring. It starts, despite its subtitle, as a memoir of Michael Korda. And this early Michael Korda is quite the name-dropper, thanks to his Hungarian-Hollywood-American upbringing. Until he gets an entry-level job at Simon & Schuster in the late 1950s, there’s a very real fear that he’s going to spend all five hundred pages talking about things like people he knew at Oxford, and which Hollywood washout hosted the best pool parties. But once he settles into New York book publishing, the dishy, informative parts start, and the references to “my father’s great friend, the movie producer X” become more sporadic and slightly less obnoxious.
After that, the book moves on two tracks, which wind up fused: practical information about how the industry functioned in the latter half of the 20th century, and anecdotes about particular authors/agents/publishing figures. The former bits make for an incredibly detailed look at the industry. A lot of things surprised me here. Like, it appears that book publishing has changed extremely little over the past fifty years. (For instance, publishing has to be one of the only industries with a business plan based on New Deal bailout policies.) Korda touches on the kind of patchy modernization when he muses that while the actual business of buying and selling books has stayed pretty much the same, it’s the world outside the bubble that’s changed. Crunchy corporate shell, smooth chocolate center. I also didn’t realize how recently publishing was the province of WASP-y males. Total non-kosher sausage fest until the late 60s. The gossipy anecdotes about literati are the best part of the book. Korda was apparently the Forrest Gump of book publishing: in addition to being there for a crazy amount of bestsellers and nascent trends, his list of authors includes Graham Greene, Larry McMurtry, Richard Nixon, Woodward and Bernstein, Kitty Kelley, Ronald Reagan (at the same time Kelley was writing her Nancy book, no less!), Tennessee Williams on the decline, Philip Roth, and others that I can’t even remember. Korda wasn’t necessarily the editor on all of their big-name books, but still…impressive list. Some of the longer author spotlights are apparently adapted from New Yorker profiles that Korda did; the strongest are the ones on former presidents Nixon and Reagan, a long bit about Jacqueline Susann (which I believe was made into that Bette Midler movie a few years ago), and a great account of working with a painfully delusional Joan Crawford. Just as good are the snapshots of people who work behind the scenes, like various agents and editors. There’s a surprising candidness—it’s possible that by 2000, most of the major players were retired, or lunching at that big Algonquin table in the sky. It probably also helps that Another Life is published by Random House, while Korda did all his editor-in-chiefing at Simon & Schuster (another fun tradition in publishing: or, “what constitutes a conflict of interest, anyway?”).
The vivid characters definitely make up for unevenness in narrative flow, structure, chronology, and even language. Korda’s voice fluctuates throughout: sometimes he’s the cool observer, other times he’s much more present. I guess that’s a product of morphing previously published articles with a bigger timeline.
Anyway, despite the dishy qualities and the insider baseball, this was a pretty good read. Not that my career path is likely to change at this point (given that I did spend the cash and time on that M.A. and all), but it made me more excited about becoming a part of this world—God and interviewers willing. At the same time, I’d recommend it for anyone who’s not really familiar with the book industry. It’s a fantastic crash course, if you ever wanted to know more about those wacky literati.
And now some of the more amusing bits:
On editing:
“It is possible to simultaneously overwork and underachieve—indeed, for an editor, nothing is easier. You can spend weeks—months, even—lovingly rewriting a manuscript that was never worth anything in the first place. You know it’s someone else’s mistake, even as you sit up late every night with half a dozen sharpened number-two pencils, long after your partner has gone to bed with a martyr’s sigh and a strong hint that he or she won’t be responsible for what happens if this kind of thing doesn’t stop so the two of you can have a normal marriage in which a person doesn’t get pushed aside in favor of a manuscript every night of the week and gets fucked like a normal person every once in a while, not to speak of getting taken to the movies every once in a blue moon.”
On Joan Crawford’s advice to women:
“She strongly advised having afternoon sex and making men talk about their work. To the question of how a woman could take an interest in her husband’s work if, for example, he was a cashier, Joan suggested asking him (presumably before or during afternoon sex): ‘Any holdups today?’”
On publishing presidents:
“The only reason any normal citizen wants to visit the White House on business, I told Anderson, is to get the cuff links, or whatever the equivalent is for women. After all, take away the cuff links, and who on earth would want to meet Jimmy Carter? Anderson was not amused—at the time, he took the view that Carter was leading a moral crusade and was going to be part of a great moment in American history—but he managed to persuade the president to send me a handwritten letter of thanks when the book was finally published. To my surprise, Carter misspelled the title of his own book (‘A Goverment as Good as it’s People’). I had it framed.”
Monday, March 26, 2007
Some random New Yorker related bits, since I don't really have anything worth reviewing right now:
1. In the mail today, I got an Advance Reader Copy (kind of a fancy galley, but still not an official copy of the book) of What You Have Left by Will Allison. Sure, you could argue that I'm too excited about getting a book I'd never heard of before last week; or that I only received a copy because I'm one of 300 people who check their email obsessively enough to be the first to pounce on a "free book" email from the New Yorker. Whatever. It feels insider-y enough for me! I feel kinda bad for the publicist behind this, though. A copy probably should have gone to someone whose book blog reaches more than, oh, one person.
2. I don't like the new, animated versions of the New Yorker cartoons. It's not a notion of the artistic purity of the medium--that's kinda shot when you realize that the tag lines seem randomly assigned to a spare picture. Really, it's more of a sense that the humor just doesn't come across very well in this format. A vague chuckle works better when you can move right along to Sy Hersh's next Iraq bombshell, or a profile of some stage actor you've never heard of. Besides, this opens a dangerous door. What happens when Bil Keane decides that maybe "Family Circus" needs to move too? Haven't we suffered enough?
1. In the mail today, I got an Advance Reader Copy (kind of a fancy galley, but still not an official copy of the book) of What You Have Left by Will Allison. Sure, you could argue that I'm too excited about getting a book I'd never heard of before last week; or that I only received a copy because I'm one of 300 people who check their email obsessively enough to be the first to pounce on a "free book" email from the New Yorker. Whatever. It feels insider-y enough for me! I feel kinda bad for the publicist behind this, though. A copy probably should have gone to someone whose book blog reaches more than, oh, one person.
2. I don't like the new, animated versions of the New Yorker cartoons. It's not a notion of the artistic purity of the medium--that's kinda shot when you realize that the tag lines seem randomly assigned to a spare picture. Really, it's more of a sense that the humor just doesn't come across very well in this format. A vague chuckle works better when you can move right along to Sy Hersh's next Iraq bombshell, or a profile of some stage actor you've never heard of. Besides, this opens a dangerous door. What happens when Bil Keane decides that maybe "Family Circus" needs to move too? Haven't we suffered enough?
Saturday, March 03, 2007
The Bruni Vendetta
By now, it's not much of a secret that I love a good literary slapfight. It's even better when the New Yorker gets involved, so I was pretty delighted to read a very entertaining "Talk of the Town Piece" by Lauren Collins in this week's issue. Kobe Beef
All these people who assume that the best way to get justice by writing a nasty editorial letter after a bad review, or calling someone out in the media, or taking out a $40,000 ad in the Times...has anyone ever gotten a satisfying measure of flesh that way? It just makes everyone look jerkier.
Anyway, besides being amusing, the article was interesting for a couple of other reasons. First, Lauren Collins is really growing on me. Her writing is always good, but for a while she was doing fluffy socialite-type pieces about shoes and museum parties. Not that this one is deep journalism, but it shows she can bring her style to different areas.
Second, I had no idea that Frank Rich and Alex Witchel are married. She mentions her husband occasionally in her columns, but I'd probably have paid more attention had I known that the cute, homey anecdotes were about one of the OpEd columnists. I wonder if things were ever muy scanduloso at the Times building.
I also think it's hilarious that the paper practically edited the ad for Jeffrey Chodorow. They had self-interest in the content, of course, but there's a kind of sublimity in the fact that they were haggling over language while being willing to sell the space directly opposite Frank Bruni's column.
All these people who assume that the best way to get justice by writing a nasty editorial letter after a bad review, or calling someone out in the media, or taking out a $40,000 ad in the Times...has anyone ever gotten a satisfying measure of flesh that way? It just makes everyone look jerkier.
Anyway, besides being amusing, the article was interesting for a couple of other reasons. First, Lauren Collins is really growing on me. Her writing is always good, but for a while she was doing fluffy socialite-type pieces about shoes and museum parties. Not that this one is deep journalism, but it shows she can bring her style to different areas.
Second, I had no idea that Frank Rich and Alex Witchel are married. She mentions her husband occasionally in her columns, but I'd probably have paid more attention had I known that the cute, homey anecdotes were about one of the OpEd columnists. I wonder if things were ever muy scanduloso at the Times building.
I also think it's hilarious that the paper practically edited the ad for Jeffrey Chodorow. They had self-interest in the content, of course, but there's a kind of sublimity in the fact that they were haggling over language while being willing to sell the space directly opposite Frank Bruni's column.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Norman Mailer at Harvard
Now Mailer was often brusque himself, famous for that, but the architecture of his personality bore resemblance to some provincial cathedral which warring orders of the church might have designed separately over several centuries, the particular cathedral falling into the hands of one architect, then his enemy. (Mailer had not been married four times for nothing.) If he was on many an occasion brusque, he was also to himself at least so supersensitive to nuances of manner he sometimes suspected when in no modest mood Proust had lost a cell mate the day they were born in different bags. (Bag is of course used here to specify milieu and not the exceptional character of the mothers, Mme. Proust and Mrs. I. B. Mailer.) At any rate, boldness, attacks of shyness, rude assertion, and circumlocutions tortured as arthritic fingers working at lace, all took their turn with him, and these shuttlings of mood became the most pronounced in their resemblance to the banging and shunting of freight cars when he was with liberal academics.
I'll admit that part of me expected this 1967-fied, Armies of the Night Norman Mailer to show up at the First Church in Cambridge for the Harvard Book Store-sponsored leg of his latest book tour. That evaporated for a minute as the 84-year old writer hobbled to the stage on two canes. But even without a podium and a drink, Mailer was able to bring the feisty--while settled comfortably in an armchair, no less. It was difficult to hear him at first; the church, while beautiful and clean and open, had lousy acoustics for Old Man Voice with Crappy Microphone. But his voice got stronger as he got into the interview (the name of his interviewer escapes me right now, but it's his official biographer), and you could tell he still gets off on being the center of attention.
Just about all of the topics focused on his new book, The Castle in the Forest. Based on the given description of the book as a deeply imagined look at Hitler's early years, I'm not sure I'll pick it up--at one point, the interviewer mentioned that the first fifteen pages are essentially an SS officer talking about incest. Maybe I'll catch Mailer on the next novel. By the way: he mentioned that the book ends with a "To Be Continued?" First of all, risky game, tempting the calendar like that. Second, are real writers actually allowed to do that? Anyway, I'm not super keen on Hitlerian history, and it sounds like there's much Freudian stuff mixed in. So all WWII/mother obsessives, have at it, and let me know how it turns out.
When the floor opened up to questions, things took a much more current, political slant. I'm pretty sure "Don't you hate Bush?" has been a theme at 90% of the book events I've been to in the past year. But Mailer seemed game, and took whatever bait was thrown by offering opinions on the war, Hillary and Obama, etc. At one point he tried to goad the biographer guy into insulting him, just to generate God knows what kind of soundbite, but unfortunately the guy demurred. Probably out of respect or something. Lame. A Pulitzer winner asks you to insult him, you do it, dammit.
As Mailer is definitely an Endangered Author, I'm quite pleased to have gotten to listen to him while he's still in some kind of prime. It's not every day that you get to hear someone who's been fiercely literary, fiercely talented, and just plain fierce in his time.
I'll admit that part of me expected this 1967-fied, Armies of the Night Norman Mailer to show up at the First Church in Cambridge for the Harvard Book Store-sponsored leg of his latest book tour. That evaporated for a minute as the 84-year old writer hobbled to the stage on two canes. But even without a podium and a drink, Mailer was able to bring the feisty--while settled comfortably in an armchair, no less. It was difficult to hear him at first; the church, while beautiful and clean and open, had lousy acoustics for Old Man Voice with Crappy Microphone. But his voice got stronger as he got into the interview (the name of his interviewer escapes me right now, but it's his official biographer), and you could tell he still gets off on being the center of attention.Just about all of the topics focused on his new book, The Castle in the Forest. Based on the given description of the book as a deeply imagined look at Hitler's early years, I'm not sure I'll pick it up--at one point, the interviewer mentioned that the first fifteen pages are essentially an SS officer talking about incest. Maybe I'll catch Mailer on the next novel. By the way: he mentioned that the book ends with a "To Be Continued?" First of all, risky game, tempting the calendar like that. Second, are real writers actually allowed to do that? Anyway, I'm not super keen on Hitlerian history, and it sounds like there's much Freudian stuff mixed in. So all WWII/mother obsessives, have at it, and let me know how it turns out.
When the floor opened up to questions, things took a much more current, political slant. I'm pretty sure "Don't you hate Bush?" has been a theme at 90% of the book events I've been to in the past year. But Mailer seemed game, and took whatever bait was thrown by offering opinions on the war, Hillary and Obama, etc. At one point he tried to goad the biographer guy into insulting him, just to generate God knows what kind of soundbite, but unfortunately the guy demurred. Probably out of respect or something. Lame. A Pulitzer winner asks you to insult him, you do it, dammit.
As Mailer is definitely an Endangered Author, I'm quite pleased to have gotten to listen to him while he's still in some kind of prime. It's not every day that you get to hear someone who's been fiercely literary, fiercely talented, and just plain fierce in his time.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Molly Ivins
This past week, there have been all sorts of tributes to Molly Ivins, who passed away after a long series of bouts with cancer. And while most of those tributes have been sincere and all, I'm not sure any of them really got to the heart of the Molly Ivins thing like Dahlia Lithwick's piece in Slate did. I guess it takes a smart, funny chick to properly eulogize another. (No offense, Paul Krugman.)
Of course, any tribute is better than the one Ms. Ivins got on a wacko-conservative message board that I like to read as a guilty amusement. Posters there made references to her rotting in hell with Ann Richards, and--my personal favorite--to the idea that if Molly Ivins had been "born beautiful," she would never have become an incisive writer and caused so much trouble.
Maybe that's true. Maybe with the right face and the right body, she would have developed a different kind of Texas woman's armor. But she wasn't the cheerleader type, and so we have her mourned well by another woman who "gets it."
Of course, any tribute is better than the one Ms. Ivins got on a wacko-conservative message board that I like to read as a guilty amusement. Posters there made references to her rotting in hell with Ann Richards, and--my personal favorite--to the idea that if Molly Ivins had been "born beautiful," she would never have become an incisive writer and caused so much trouble.
Maybe that's true. Maybe with the right face and the right body, she would have developed a different kind of Texas woman's armor. But she wasn't the cheerleader type, and so we have her mourned well by another woman who "gets it."
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Housekeeping vs. The Dirt by Nick Hornby
I'm pretty sure Nick Hornby doesn't need to write novels anymore. He's already given us all the top-five lists and fucked-up relationships we could ever need. And with all his newfound free time, he can keep commenting on everything he reads. Sound good?
As a follow-up to The Polysyllabic Spree, the newest collection of his Believer columns, Housekeeping vs. The Dirt doesn't really vary much from that format. Not that it needs to. The essays are as engaging as ever, and they mix informal practicality and substantive reviews in ways that the New York Review of Books will unfortunately never touch. It's more like a friend talking about the books, being candid about what's boring, what's lame, and what's fun. Actual literary merit rarely matters over drinks. 'Course, it's not like I'll ditch pretentious/serious/jargony book reviews any time soon, but it's much more fun to get openly biased, tangent-filled picks or pans.
This is not to say, though, that the tone means that the essays are devoid of review-y philosophical goodness. Hornby makes a lot of interesting points in between his stories about how and where he bought the books, and discussions of his poor treatment at the hands of the Polysyllabic Spree of Believer editors. (Okay, so he touches on a lot of random thoughts I've had over the years but never really explored. Same diff.) Like, which books are "one of those books we've all read, whether we've read it or not (c.f. Animal Farm, 1984, Gulliver's Travels, and Lord of the Flies." And whether In Cold Blood is something you have to read to fit in with the literati (short answer: yes).
He also produces some nifty language to describe the depth of some books, in a way that's self-conscious, but can't really hide the glee he must have felt when the metaphor first popped into his head: "I have always prized the accessible over the obscure, but after reading Housekeeping I can see that in some ways the easy, accessible novel is working at a disadvantage (not that Housekeeping is inaccessible, but it is deep and dark and rich): it's possible to whiz through it without allowing it even to touch the sides, and a bit of side-touching has to happen if a book is going to be properly transformative. If you are so gripped by a book that you want to read it in the mythical single sitting, what chance has it got of making it all the way through the long march to your soul?"
And as usual, Hornby gave me a bunch of books to add to my queue. He's even managed to get me somewhat excited about reading novels again, after a lengthy hiatus. Not just anybody could make me break my current streak of nonfiction essay collections, but somehow he manages. I could probably acknowledge this favor by subscribing to Believer instead of waiting for the collections to come out, but it's more likely that I'll send the thanks toward one of my other favorite book reviewers for giving the well-chosen holiday gift of Hornby.
As a follow-up to The Polysyllabic Spree, the newest collection of his Believer columns, Housekeeping vs. The Dirt doesn't really vary much from that format. Not that it needs to. The essays are as engaging as ever, and they mix informal practicality and substantive reviews in ways that the New York Review of Books will unfortunately never touch. It's more like a friend talking about the books, being candid about what's boring, what's lame, and what's fun. Actual literary merit rarely matters over drinks. 'Course, it's not like I'll ditch pretentious/serious/jargony book reviews any time soon, but it's much more fun to get openly biased, tangent-filled picks or pans. This is not to say, though, that the tone means that the essays are devoid of review-y philosophical goodness. Hornby makes a lot of interesting points in between his stories about how and where he bought the books, and discussions of his poor treatment at the hands of the Polysyllabic Spree of Believer editors. (Okay, so he touches on a lot of random thoughts I've had over the years but never really explored. Same diff.) Like, which books are "one of those books we've all read, whether we've read it or not (c.f. Animal Farm, 1984, Gulliver's Travels, and Lord of the Flies." And whether In Cold Blood is something you have to read to fit in with the literati (short answer: yes).
He also produces some nifty language to describe the depth of some books, in a way that's self-conscious, but can't really hide the glee he must have felt when the metaphor first popped into his head: "I have always prized the accessible over the obscure, but after reading Housekeeping I can see that in some ways the easy, accessible novel is working at a disadvantage (not that Housekeeping is inaccessible, but it is deep and dark and rich): it's possible to whiz through it without allowing it even to touch the sides, and a bit of side-touching has to happen if a book is going to be properly transformative. If you are so gripped by a book that you want to read it in the mythical single sitting, what chance has it got of making it all the way through the long march to your soul?"
And as usual, Hornby gave me a bunch of books to add to my queue. He's even managed to get me somewhat excited about reading novels again, after a lengthy hiatus. Not just anybody could make me break my current streak of nonfiction essay collections, but somehow he manages. I could probably acknowledge this favor by subscribing to Believer instead of waiting for the collections to come out, but it's more likely that I'll send the thanks toward one of my other favorite book reviewers for giving the well-chosen holiday gift of Hornby.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Don't Get Too Comfortable by David Rakoff
You know how you meet someone, and you end up thinking he's a jerk after a few minutes of conversation, but he's friends with some of your friends, so you end up hanging out with him again anyway? That's pretty much how my reader/writer relationship has gone with David Rakoff. Most authors don't get a chance to re-engage me after severely disappointing me on the first go-round. (Just ask any number of chick lit and hipster writers.) But Rakoff did--mostly because I felt like I should like him. He's genuinely witty underneath the abrasiveness of Fraud (despite how obnoxious I found a lot of the writing); he's got the NPR hipster pedigree I usually love so well; and he's really entertaining when you see him on The Daily Show and the like. So I decided to pick up Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, the Torments of Low Thread Count, the Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems.
The format is pretty much the same as Fraud's. Even the covers are nearly identical (I guess branding is a First World issue as well). It's another collection of nonfiction essays, most of which were first published elsewhere. But the writing is better, on the whole. Where Rakoff used to be too abrasive and judgmental about his subjects, now he's a little more contemplative, like he's learned more about profiling instead of condemning. And the latter must have been pretty tempting, given that George Bush, Hooters Girls, and Log Cabin Republicans are among the characters here. Rakoff is less likely to go for the instant scoffing payoff than he was before. The dry humor stays, without the shrill need to bond with the reader by saying "Oh my God, will you look at this guy?"
However, there are drawbacks to a deeper approach, in that Rakoff apparently feels it's necessary to end most of the essays on a moralizing note. Sometimes it works (as in a brief contemplation of the wonder of human travel at the end of a piece on contrasting airlines), and sometimes it just doesn't (like when an essay on working at the pool of a posh hotel finishes with a random musing on Floridian socioeconomics). It's like he's trying to give a journalistic overtone to what are very much fluff pieces. It's too bad, because the fluffiness is probably the best part. If you're gonna write about what happens to a person when he goes on a juice fast, great. I'd want to read that. Ditto on what it's like to work undercover as a poolboy. Explore, share, but don't bother pretending you're doing this for society's sake. I like Rakoff's curiosity about random things, and I'm coming around on his voice. I just wish those were the dominant elements here.
The highlights of the book include the aforementioned Log Cabin Republican piece, in which Rakoff tries to look objectively at how fellow gay men can align themselves with "the enemy;" a quasi-scientific profile of the cryogenic preservation movement, and all the related implications of mortality; and a reflection on the bureaucratic process involved in his becoming an American citizen. (Side note: the latter essay has a random appearance by Sarah Vowell as a character. Between this, the peer references in her own books, and Nick Hornby's shout-outs to her in his Believer columns, someone should be tracking this stuff. Clique lit is the new hotness, apparently. Too bad I'm too lazy and easily distracted by other projects to attempt such a chart on my own.)
And now for the usual Bits I Liked:
On a faded NYC billboard for a long-defunct strip club: "Nostalgia has always been a bit of a bunko scam. Authentic charms of its signage notwithstanding, it's worth remembering that those must have been pretty grim circumstances for the young ladies of the Whirly Girly. Unless it's your own heyday as a peepshow dancer you're fondly recalling, it's dangerous to drag a sepia-dipped brush over the sleaze of yesteryear."
On writing: "If seated at the computer, I check my email conservatively 30,000 times a day. When I am writing, I must have a snack, call a friend, or abuse myself every ten minutes. I used to think that this was nothing more than the difference between those things we do for love and those we do for money. But that can't be the whole story. I didn't always write for a living, and even back when it was my most fondly held dream to one day be able to do so, writing was always difficult. Writing is like pulling teeth. From my dick."
On leading the Log Cabin Republicans: "We go out to lunch together at a nearby Mexican restaurant. The only two people in the place on this gray day, we sit underneath strings of chili-pepper lights. It makes for a very sad fiesta. Perhaps abjection is in the air as I can't help wondering why someone would take a blowtorch to such a promising political resume. With the exception of that Jai Rodriguez fellow--the culture expert on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy--Patrick Guerriero might just have the worst gay job in America."
The format is pretty much the same as Fraud's. Even the covers are nearly identical (I guess branding is a First World issue as well). It's another collection of nonfiction essays, most of which were first published elsewhere. But the writing is better, on the whole. Where Rakoff used to be too abrasive and judgmental about his subjects, now he's a little more contemplative, like he's learned more about profiling instead of condemning. And the latter must have been pretty tempting, given that George Bush, Hooters Girls, and Log Cabin Republicans are among the characters here. Rakoff is less likely to go for the instant scoffing payoff than he was before. The dry humor stays, without the shrill need to bond with the reader by saying "Oh my God, will you look at this guy?"However, there are drawbacks to a deeper approach, in that Rakoff apparently feels it's necessary to end most of the essays on a moralizing note. Sometimes it works (as in a brief contemplation of the wonder of human travel at the end of a piece on contrasting airlines), and sometimes it just doesn't (like when an essay on working at the pool of a posh hotel finishes with a random musing on Floridian socioeconomics). It's like he's trying to give a journalistic overtone to what are very much fluff pieces. It's too bad, because the fluffiness is probably the best part. If you're gonna write about what happens to a person when he goes on a juice fast, great. I'd want to read that. Ditto on what it's like to work undercover as a poolboy. Explore, share, but don't bother pretending you're doing this for society's sake. I like Rakoff's curiosity about random things, and I'm coming around on his voice. I just wish those were the dominant elements here.
The highlights of the book include the aforementioned Log Cabin Republican piece, in which Rakoff tries to look objectively at how fellow gay men can align themselves with "the enemy;" a quasi-scientific profile of the cryogenic preservation movement, and all the related implications of mortality; and a reflection on the bureaucratic process involved in his becoming an American citizen. (Side note: the latter essay has a random appearance by Sarah Vowell as a character. Between this, the peer references in her own books, and Nick Hornby's shout-outs to her in his Believer columns, someone should be tracking this stuff. Clique lit is the new hotness, apparently. Too bad I'm too lazy and easily distracted by other projects to attempt such a chart on my own.)
And now for the usual Bits I Liked:
On a faded NYC billboard for a long-defunct strip club: "Nostalgia has always been a bit of a bunko scam. Authentic charms of its signage notwithstanding, it's worth remembering that those must have been pretty grim circumstances for the young ladies of the Whirly Girly. Unless it's your own heyday as a peepshow dancer you're fondly recalling, it's dangerous to drag a sepia-dipped brush over the sleaze of yesteryear."
On writing: "If seated at the computer, I check my email conservatively 30,000 times a day. When I am writing, I must have a snack, call a friend, or abuse myself every ten minutes. I used to think that this was nothing more than the difference between those things we do for love and those we do for money. But that can't be the whole story. I didn't always write for a living, and even back when it was my most fondly held dream to one day be able to do so, writing was always difficult. Writing is like pulling teeth. From my dick."
On leading the Log Cabin Republicans: "We go out to lunch together at a nearby Mexican restaurant. The only two people in the place on this gray day, we sit underneath strings of chili-pepper lights. It makes for a very sad fiesta. Perhaps abjection is in the air as I can't help wondering why someone would take a blowtorch to such a promising political resume. With the exception of that Jai Rodriguez fellow--the culture expert on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy--Patrick Guerriero might just have the worst gay job in America."
Monday, January 08, 2007
Character Studies Redux
P.S. A little research turns up the Ricky Jay piece ("Secrets of the Magus") and the Donald Trump essay ("Trump Solo"). They're long, but pretty entertaining. The Trump one is even better if you keep in your head the old SNL skit with Darrell Hammond playing Trump at a Domino's commercial shoot.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)