Book Review: Tom Wolfe, "Back To Blood"

Soooooo....2012 was a shitty year for books... for me.  I do believe that I am getting old and it is just so hard to get any serious reading done.  I get a little done up in Michigan but for the rest of the year I try and read before I go to bed and that dog is no longer hunting.  I read the Post Dispatch every morning (I like to wrap fish in it later), I try and read the Wall Street Journal everyday so I can their reasoned, non agendaized, fair and balanced editorial content (not) and that fucking New Yorker tends to arrive on most weeks and along with what didnt get read earlier from the Journal that day seems to leave me very little time for books.  Which makes me sad.

I love books.  I am prideful of my predigious reading.  I am arrogant and unlikable about it and dismissive of people who don’t read fiction.  I am a bibliophole asshole.  Which is bad, but it is worse now.  This was my first year for a Kindle.  I read “The Hunger Games”, Grishams newest (than it was “The Litigator”, a great book called “The Gun” and the early chapters of an upcoming book by our own David Kowert.  But the Kindle does not satisfy.  The Kindle feels to me like I imagine Methadon feels to a Heroin addict.  It fills a need but it does not satisfy the beast like riding the horse and holding a nice hard back novel in your hands with a dusk jacket and brief author biography.  So i have been buying books again and not reading them because...truth to be told.... I can no longer stay awake.  On the shelf as ladies in waiting I am already dealing with a formidable stack of:
Neil Young: “Waging Heavy Peace”
Will Self:  “Umbrella”
Jonathan Tropper: “One Last Thing Before I go”
Richard Russo: “Elsewhere”
David Foster Wallace: “Both Fless and Not”
David Byrne:  “How Music Works”
And I despair for the future.  I gave up on several books this year including Michael Chabon’s well reviewed “Telegraph Avenue” and this fills me with self loathing (and I don’t need more of that).

Which brings me to Tom Wolfe’s new book.  Wolfe seems like an ass.  His foppish pictures dressed as a white haired dandy make me kind of queasy and the length of his books barks of a self indulgence that we have not seen on display since Clinton’s second term but damn.  The man can write.  This book fits in nicely with his last three, “Binfire of the Vanities”, “A Man In Full” and “I am Charlotte Simmons”.  They are all slices of time and place but honestly the characters never change but they are still fun to read.

His characters are not caricatures, so much as they are caricatures of caricatures.  Every predictable, bigotted, small minded, over generalization about a type of person is drilled down on relentlessly and satisfyingly mercilessly.  Wolfe has a strong eye for our desire as a country to classify, seperate, sterotype and move on.  His characters never surprise, they never shock, they never show much more than a glimmer of self knowledge but they all move their their environments like mindless sharks, reverting to type and devouring and destroying in their way.

The subject this time is Miami and South Beach and from an outsiders perspective he hits it pitch perfect.  A city of immigrants profoundly uncomfortable with itself with every group feeling threatened and victimized now matter how dominant and in control they are.  The stage is set with a Cuban water patrol cop who rescues a guy trying to get a foot on dry land so he can legally emigrate from Cuba.  The recue is heroic and brave and makes him a goat in his community and he becomes immediately ostracized and through most of the novel continues to spin down as fate keeps zeroing in on him again and again.  He loses his beautiful Cuban girlfriend to a sex therapist, social climbing doctor. We get introduced to the Editor of the Miami Herald and Miami Art scene which might or might not have just been mightily swindeled by a Russian oligarch.

What amazes me is how easy it is to read and how fun it is to read.  Lots of heavy handed social commentary but but his narratives and his dialogue keep you turning the page and it just makes for a good read.  Especially in the snow.  So I thank Wolfe for giving me this.  I read a 700 page gook like it was a John Grisham 320 pager and in the end was much more satisfied because unlike Grisham, Wolfe knows how to end a story.  So I recommend this book, and this author, though I think if I met him in a bar I would want to punch him.  read it and get lost for a while.

7 ½ Slingers on the Diner Review 10 Scale.

The Christmas Letter 2012 (As Edited By Family)

Soooo... for those of you who do not appear on my wife's Christmas Card List (this is normally because we don't get a card for you but otherwise is through my omission) we present the edited Christmas card for 2012.  The unedited version was destroyed by progressives who are turning our country into a socialist state.

Well, it has been a good year to be a Becker.  Let’s do it in reverse order.  Mike and Sandy who are enjoying their time as “empty nesters” took Lily and Lola and entered them in the Westchester Kennel Club show.  The dogs did fabulously, with Lily biting several other dogs and Lola, who never stopped her sobbing whine, was given a Blue Ribbon just for leaving.  It was an awesome experience for the dogs and we have high hopes for next year.

Laura is in the midst of her 2nd year at Valparaiso, in what she hopes to be a 4-7 year plan.  She has majored (in no particular order) in Communications, Room Mate Abnormal Psych, Education, Communications, Bread Company Consumption and Business... and Communications... again.  She is currently Facebook official with a nice young man named Jon.  She worked up at Camp Arcadia this summer and worked in the Kitchen and as a server with remarkably little drama.  We are most proud.

Pat GRADUATED! from Truman with a degree in Psych.  It was approximately 117 in Kirksville on the day of the graduation.  The graduation speaker had expertise in human trafficking.  It was a hoot.  After making us very proud Pat decided to think really hard and upset his parents in ways we had not yet imagined and he has proceeded to Lawrence, Kansas to get his masters In Social Work.  A Jayhawk!  Imagine our family shame. He and Kyle have been together for going on 4 years.  Sadly, they both love Lawrence, Kansas.  Maybe it is the liberal politics of Kansas, who knows? Rock Chalk?  You never think it will happen in your family.

JON AND LYDIA GOT MARRIED!  Jon did the nicest thing he could have done for his parents by marrying the beautiful Lydia Schaftenaar and making her Lydia Becker. The setting (Camp Arcadia’s Chapel on the Beach), ceremony,  day and the weekend were all perfect and it was a storybook wedding that even I cannot be cynical or snarky about.  We  are so grateful for the many family and friends who traveled a long way to celebrate with us. Jon and Lydia purchased a house in Shrewsbury and are raising our grandcat, Henry David Thoreau ,and granddog, Schafly.  Henry is evil. Schafly is adorable. The Schaftenaars have graciously allowed us their daughter’s continued presence here and we are hoping they will be frequent visitors.  We couldn’t feel luckier that God brought our families together.

Sadly the first paragraph was a lie and Sandy and I continue in our jobs.  My life has been really tied up in a call committee for a new Pastor at our church (going on two years and people are starting to think that I am the problem) and Sandy really just works a lot during a big chunk of the year.  But is was a great year for us. Perhaps the best ever and as I said at the beginning, a good year to be a Becker. Tragedies touched several families we love this year humbling us and making us ever more grateful for the friends and family who never fail to be there for us and share our sorrows and our joys, but this year a lot more joys.  We go into 2013 feeling blessed with all of you by our sides.

Wishing you a blessed Christmas and 2013!

The Becker family,
Mike, Sandy, Jon,Lydia, Pat and Laura

There's Got To Be A Morning After

Soooooo.... the Diner Review was conspicuously silent on this years election.  In 2008 I had to have 20 posts or more related to politics, the election, Obama, Mc Cain, Palin... it all seemed like high drama.  This year it just seems... or seemed...silly.  It still does.  6 billion spent so we can have the same general people in place as before.  A prospect of more ideology, more doctrine, more purity of political purpose and more gridlock.  I could of voted for either of them for President.  Part of me definitely wanted someone else to blame and wanted a new shot at something different.  Our President powerfully disappointed me in his first term.  Yes, he inherited an economy that had fallen off the cliff, and a world economy that was just about to go.  Hard for us to be healthy in a much touted global economy when the globe is not so healthy itself.  But still, he disappointed.  He was elected the first time with a real mandate for real change, and he failed us.  he might have tried to be the opposite of George Bush which was welcome but he was the opposite side of the same coin.  He had an opportunity to lead us in a bold new direction and redirect the conversation about what it means to be the greatest country in the world and the responsibility that comes with it.  Not to live in a million dollar house and drive a hundred thousand dollar car and provide your children’s every whim, but to be a leader of the world based on our famed Judeo-Christian beliefs.

But he screwed the pooch.

He stimulused us in an old fashion way feeding the Democratic pork and running up more debt. He failed to regulate seriously his friends in the banks and “too big to fail” is now policy whether we admit it or not.  People are still focused on themselves and their things and getting rich.  Class warfare became the re-election theme and it worked.  The Democrats ran a really good guy, a religious guy with respectable values and a history of success.  But he was wooden, and he was so damn rich and ultimately 51% could not relate or did not want to relate.

So we are now in worse need than we were 4 years ago.  We spent our way down the road and doubled and tripled up on the debt.  The world economy is still teetering on the edge.  We still have an un-swallowed rat of housing debt rolling and roiling through the snakes stomach and the student loan bubble is about to burst.  There are some positive things but they all pale in front the mountain of debt.

So.... fortunately for the President I have it all mapped out.  here is a way to really make a difference and make things happen.  To be the aspirational leader you were orginally elected to be when each of us pinned our hopes and dreams on your Muslim, not born here, community activist ass.

1. Ask (tell) Harry read and Nacny Pelosi that they must step down from leadership.  They have been divisive and are spectacularly unsuccessful.  They taunted when they were in control and skulked and connived when things didnt go their way.  they are polarizing and they represent the old way that brought us here.  Be polite, throw them a nice party and get them out of the way.  The Republicans have the same problem but Boehner is a human being.  The little guy, Eric Cantor should be fired to as being a divisive, smug little prick but HE is not your problem.  Pelosi and Reed are.  Do the right thing.

2. Go to Mitt Romney and apologize for the ugliness of the campaign and the tactics of attack you used to beat him.  Mean it when you apologize.  You should be embarrassed.  You demeaned your office and the country when you allowed your dogs to go after him.  Hire him in a job that is scheduled to disappear at the end of your presidency as (and I know everyone hates the word) Tsar oe Czar of the balanced budget.  Bring back Simpson and Bowles as his Lieutenants.  The orders are simple.  Do as little damage as possible while right sizing entitlements and the military. Put Colin Powell and Petraus on the committee also to assist in getting the military what they need and not what they want.  Taxes will have to be raised through a new tax code.  Give this group carte blanche and support their recommendations.  

3. Be humble and go to Israel.  Sit down with their jack ass Prime Minister who treated you like a school child and tell him that you will commit 100% of Americas military might and financial stability to an Israel that agrees to a two State solution, NOW.  If needed bomb Iraq and send troops in to find and destroy suspected atomic sites.  Then leave.  If Israel balks explain to the American people the bargain you offered and put it to a vote to stand by them with a deal to guaranty their peace, or let them stand alone.  Explain to the Palestinians that they must control their own people and then when rockets fall on Israel that we will support Israel to massively retaliate totally out of proportion to every attack.  Move the Blue Helmets from the UN in between and finance them.  Tell Israel that it is their business where their capital is but it cannot be on Palestinian ground or interfere with their right to visit their holy sites.

4. Leave Afghanistan and make clear to them and Pakistan that the world is sick to death of them.  Make clear our support is behind India and that we will assist the Russians, Chinese and Indians in dealing with their countries if terrorists are harbored there.  Pakistan is the real problem because they have the bomb and are moving towards extremism.  We must have a new UN Security Council resolution wherein everyone agrees that if Pakistan or it’s cousin South Korea use a nuclear bomb that their country will be annihilated.

Part 4 might be a bridge too far.  Shit, Part 3 likely is as well.  Israel is in an untenable position long term.  Not just Iran but the whole Muslim community when they speak frankly speaks of their extermination.  I am not sure the situation can be salvaged but it certainly cannot be done without significant give and take.  Anyway, how about 1 and 2.  Do it for me.