Book Review: Vacation

Soooo… we went on a cruise.  There was a lot of music but also a lot of time between flying there… waiting to board…hanging out in the room and reading before bed.  Lots of time to read.  I finished a 2016/2017 book “The Underground Railroad” which deserves its own review but I had also picked up for the trip a book appropriately called “Vacation” by a woman named Deb Olin Unferth.  The book had been recommended by a podcaster I follow who does the “Welcome To Nightvale” and “I Only Listen To The Mountain Goats” podcasts and he said he picked up  this book a couple of years ago after he moved to New York and he thought he could write.  Then he read the book and realized, “Oh… I can't write at all and I have a lot of work to do.”  I thought, that as very high praise and ordered it immediately and I was not disappointed.

The book takes place at various points in NYC, Syracuse NY, Coney Island NY, Panama and various sad, SAD places in Nicaragua.  It involves two (at least) shitty marriages and more than a handful of deeply and profoundly damaged, mundane, confused, vaguely interesting characters.  It also has a guy who untrains dolphins.  Untrains is not a word.  Good for Deb.

The concept of the book is unremarkable.  Two somewhat damaged people find each other and get married.  He thinks he has hit jackpot and she is just looking for something and hoping it is him.  It turns out not to be him.  She discovers (or thinks she discovers) something about his past (relating to his cartoonish head) and sees it as betrayal and goes off the rails with her own abhorrent behavior.  He doesn’t know what happened but discovers it, and ultimately leaves her to find an old college chum (who his wife might have been following around for 4 plus months). The chum is supposed to be in Syracuse (but is not) and then he follows him to Nicaragua (where he isn’t) and loses his job trying to get to the beautiful… Corn Island.

There is another character… the daughter of the untrainer.  Searching for her father...

The story is beautifully, cleverly written.  Occasionally it verges into the dreaded “look mom no hands” cleverness with language that only comes from people who have spent too much time in writers workshops but there are some brilliant lines, brilliant dialogue and some pretty deep introspection on life, relationships and the treadmill we are all secretly just barely able to teeter forward on each day and know falling, and not breaking our neck or a list a wrist… until we do.  It was a GREAT vacation book and I will now go see what else she has written and try and consume that as well.  I think, there is a possibility she might be a great writer.  It is also an easy read at around 200 pages and that is hard to beat when on Vacation.

Spoiler Alert! It does not necesarily end with sunshine and roses.

Richard Russo: Trajectory

Soooo… I am not the hugest fan of collections of short stories.  There was a time I enjoyed them.  I used to read those Best Short Stories compilations.  Somehow I got over it.  I like the longer narrative.  I read the occasional short story in the New Yorker but it seems like every other one is written by some hot new Asian writer.  I don't know.  There are some good ones but I just kind of got out of the habit. I am not sure it is so different even when a writer I like comes out with a collection but… Richard Russo… definitely one of my faves… when he writes… I read.

He has a new collection.  “Trajectory”.  It is… great.  Four pieces and maybe I like them because they are a little longer than your usual short story.  All the stories involve people at “difficult” times in their lives.  Three of them are about men who are perhaps past their prime but...still alive.  Still coping.

Desperate people.  Funny people.  Broken people.  My people.

“Horsemen” tells the story of a female english professor dealing with her past, her impaired son, her caretaker husband and memories of an old laureate genius who told her her writing was perfect but, didn't have it when she was a grad student.  She experiences all in the context of discovering an entitled student plagiarizing his final paper.  So much texture here in 38 pages.

The next story, “Voice” follows a man on a group trip to Venice for Biennale.  I had never heard of Biennale before but I was reading this in europe while it was going on.

http://www.labiennale.org/en/Home.html

It is clearly too sophisticated for my understanding but serves as a nice backdrop for a tour with his brother with whom he is estranged, running from (or at least hiding from) a humiliation at his university where he is one of the leading scholars on… wait for it...Jane Austen.  Just a lost, lonely man with a problem in his family in Venice.

“Intervention” tells the story of a New England realtor trying to sell houses in a declining market and stuck with his sister's house, which is full of her life accumulations.  He has a brother too and memories of a father who was a saver and a brother who is a deal guy. Closure comes hard.

The book finishes with a beautiful little story of “Milton and Marcus”.  It is the story of an author and screenwriter who travels to Colorado to “take a meeting” on a little treatment he did years before for good friend.  The actor who wants it is all Hollywood and he is whoring himself out for health insurance for his ailing wife back home… and running out of time.  Beautiful.

The thing about Russo is he just is...evocative.  He is not the guy who wrote “Mohawk”.  His is not the kid who wrote “Ransum”.  He is a man who understands ageing and understands the pain and beauty of life and writes what he knows.  I strongly recommend this one.

Universal Harvest: John Darnielle

Soooo….John Darnielle… lead guitarist, songwriter, singer, leader of “The Mountain Goats” who also aspires as an author.  His first novel “The Wolf In The White Van” was nominated for the National Book Award and was in a lot of ways a great little book.  That is one of the nicest things I can say about an author, that they write “little” books.  There is tendency especially after the first novel to, for lack of a better term bloviate, following their success, believing (apparently) that they have so much more to share.  Kudos to Darnielle for not getting to impressed with himself.

That being said it is a difficult book.  Set primarily in Iowa.  It explores families and according to Darnielle in particular mothers. It is fitting to be banking out a review of it on Mother’s Day but it is part of Darnielle’s somewhat dark take on the world that it is difficult to view this as a “homage”.  We have mothers who have disappeared and mothers who have apparently died. Families seem to come unmoored, at best, when bereft of even a mentally ill mother.

It all kind of starts around a spooky premise of a guy working at a video store who starts to get reports that “there is something weird” on this tape.  The story is set in the 80’s primarily and it is heartening to the baby boomer in me to have such detailed discussions of VCR’s and small video rental stores which used to be a hallmark of the suburbs and small towns and he name checks a lot of movies as he sets the stage.  The “something” tends to be someone recording over a portion of the video for some vaguely described yet very disturbing “vignettes”.  Implied violence...perhaps even torture but certainly troubling images that disturb people's days, nights, sleep and for some, their lives, which is the case of the video store owner who recognizes in these tapes something familiar and goes to investigate.

For me, perhaps due to disjointed reading I found the book somewhat confusing even though well written.  He really does a good job dealing with basic family, basic dysfunction, basic dysfunctional families. Some of the relationships just seem very personal but very real.  There is not a lot of action in the book but there is a lot of, relationship...dialogue and angst...especially in the context of Iowa.  One of the big things I took from it all was that there is a lot of trouble in even the calmest, most boring and apparently sedate households.  Almost Biblical… there is always more than enough trouble to go around and that old canard that happy families are always happy in the same way and unhappy families… there are a million ways and Darnielle explores a couple.

I cant tell you to buy this and read it but it is well written and it is interesting and if I had read it sober each night it might have fit together better for me.  

Bright Precious Days

 

"I try so hard, just to fill your cup.  I try so hard just to fill it up."-Del Fuegos "I Still Want You" (1985)

Soooo...summer reading.  You never know how much you are going to get read.  You never know the quality of what you will get read and you never know how it is going end… until Labor day.  So it was a pretty good summer. Sweetbitter, The Fixers, Nobody's Fool… all had their merits but I ended with Jay Mc Inerney’s “Bright Precious Days”.  

Mc Inerney is like an old annoying friend. ”Bright Lights Big City” and “Ransom” grabbed me 30 years ago and I was fascinated. Here was the new brilliance.  Along with Bret Easton Ellis here were the cool young talents that should carry my generation.  Our Faulkner, our Hemingway, our...disappointment.  Because that is what they kind of ended up as.  Easton Ellis burned out fabulously and literally “shot his wad” with “American Psycho” and Easton Ellis, like an unprofitable John Grisham, just kept writing the same book, with the same cadence and the same “look no hands” writing style.

Mc Inerney is a great writer but his “Bright Lights” tale has been done and following the career of an aging, editor, failed author, book/wine/food snob got really annoying with this book. Every character was deeply and uninterestingly flawed.  Each character was and is relentlessly unfaithful to their spouses, their partners and ultimately themselves and it is all justified because they were the movers and shakers brave enough to go to Manhattan and burn bright, and burn out.  But unfortunately in “Bright Precious Days” some of these people, most of them in fact have now lived to middle age. And that is too bad.

The book is set in a period prior to the “Great Recession” as we like to think of it, and culminates in the 2008 election of Barack Obama.  Russell and Corinne… bright, promising and full of energy and intelligence are exhausted, raising two privileged id sweet kids, whose actual mother is Corrine’s sister.  There are parties and fundraisers filled with drama and betrayal and always booze and sometimes drug.  There is a literary bad boy whose death is telegraphed so painfully that half way through I told my daughter, “there is something sad about seeing a character marked for death halfway into the book,  and then continuing to read about their exploits know it will end poorly for them.”

A strong message of the book...not everyone handles success and money well… and drugs are bad.  About marital infidelity… I would like to say the book is more nuanced but that is too kind to the book.  Cheating on your wife is just something which happens and it is ok and it is ok doing it many times, sometimes in long term relationships, sometimes one and done… but it seems to always be OK.  It seems off putting being at the same age as the characters in the book and taking this as the “lesson” of life.

The book was difficult to complete because none of the characters are likable.  You can root for no one.  They all live in gilded cages of their own making and Mc Inerney cannot resist hitting tonelessly, every trope of NYC literati/money/vacuous bullshit along the way.  I know he writes about wine (although I have not read his wine books) but I really don't need to be bopped on the nose with great labels that they are sucking down...I get it.  I was grateful that apparently no one had invented the Sous Vide method at that time or we would have seen Russell cooking something for a dinner party with it or preparing for one of their annual parties up at their rental in the Hamptons.  I mean, seriously… I love reading The New Yorker but you cannot necessarily write a book for the best seller lists based on living The New Yorker for 30 plus years.  But perhaps that is the point.  The book is written for those who have gone there and lived “the dream” and for those in flyover country who still dream of it.

Once again, we get it, Manhattan is awesome….

And hard…

And it tests you…

And sucks the life out of you….

And is too expensive to be survivable…

But there is no simply no other way a seriously creative person could live their life.  For God’s sake Russell and Corrine met at Brown.

Reading the book as these people stumble through their alternately brilliant and horrible lives the only thing i could think of is that they needed to get to church and reflect a little on their lives.  Even when they are doing good in their charities it tends to be to serve their egos or to fill the vast holes created in the tragedies of their lives.

In the end they pull up from everyone dying in the crash preceding the great recession, but not by much.  Dreams have been reigned in, relationships recalibrated and in the end the book ends up being about the resiliency of imperfect marriages and imperfect people.  I look forward to all of their retirements in south Florida in “The Bright Twilight of Their Days”.  I pray that he doesn't serve up these people living another 20 years.

My Documents: Alejandro Zambra

A Beautifully written, perfect book of longish stories. All connected by nothing other than Chile and a male narrator. I could travel to Chile and in fact hope to, and never will experience the depth of the culture Zambra paints of a beautiful and historically rich culture with a serious politics problem.

He paints beautiful pictures with each story of a place that has confused Orwellian juxtapositions of meaning, without all the other aspects of an obvious police state. Most of these political aspects are background noise related to the fall and return of Pinochet. 11 stories in 5 sections and translated by Megan Mc Dowell.  The narrator is inevitably either a boy or a young man negotiating the complexity of family, school, computers, smoking, sex, soccer migraines, writing and relationships sometimes with a feeling similar to the lead character in the novel "Being There".  His story of a writer quitting smoking made me want to take it up myself. He does the math on the cash outlays for cigarettes in his life and determines that he is the type of person who chose to smoke, rather than to buy a house.

The writing is just... perfect and the lines resonate as do the confused processes of adolescence when one of his characters insists on classifying everything in his life as "true" or "false".  The narrator is at once involved from all the action and removed from it. He creates worlds inside and outside of his characters' heads and allows us to... Fall in.

A great vacation book. I found it on Mc Sweeneys. Always a great filter for the new and the bold. Your welcome.
http://www.mcsweeneys.net

Between The World And Me

I have read the most glorious books so far this year that I am hesitant to keep reading for fear of breaking the streak.

The Tsar of Love and Techno

Between the World and Me

My Documents

David Benem Excerpts

All very different and all written by people different than me (other than Benem, who is only bigger than I am and drinks Bud Select in I unfathomable volumes. But all brilliant.

I love to travel because it opens my eyes to the beauty and suffering in the world and helps me appreciate my easy (albeit hectic) life. But reading is almost better because writers can take us to places with depth and forethought that my scattershot "travels" often lack. I can observe the poverty of the Deep South but I cannot experience the lack of opportunity for someone born there without reading about it from someone who has lived it. I can visit Ferguson but not experience the loss of a mother who invested he love and 18 years of time and treasure in a son, only to see this asset gunned down and gone forever. But writing takes you there.  

The book "Between The World and Me" is Coates letter to his son. Toni Morrison called it "required reading" and while initially suspicious, I can only echo that sentiment. Coates refers to people like me (and probably you) as "dreamers" who have had an entire reality system constructed around us to keep us from waking up and having to confront the the obvious truth and ugliness of what we have created and profited from. He derides me for my obliviousness and pushes me, but not to action. He makes very clear that what has been done by our country in regard to the black race cannot be "fixed”, at least not quickly and by half measures.  Instead he shoves me to thought and conversation, intolerant of denial and remaining in the comfortable sleep of a dreamer.

He starts the letter when his 15 year old son retires to his room to be alone after hearing that the killer of Michael Brown will not be charged… with anything.

To begin,  he outlines his own life to his son, negotiating violence in his home, in his school and on the street. Never having the luxury of being asleep but always awake to the possibilities of harm should he ever not be alert, afraid, paying attention. To always be awake to the taking of his body and the bodies of others.  Then he recounts how he went to Howard University (the Mecca) and first experienced the depth of black culture and community. How he had to be awoken from that by a fellow student, unarmed and gunned down outside of his suburban home by an undercover police officer.

He displays the lessons for his son not to call his son to anger and violence but to incite awareness and understanding that he will not, cannot and should not ever be a dreamer but by the necessities of our societies plunder of his race and his body must instead be vigilant, and appreciative and also... most importantly to find joy.

This is a humbling letter and many of us don't want to read it but we should. We cannot "fix" our nations history of enslavement, rape, and systemic, organized, relentless exploitation and marginalizing of black people in America. We can seek to understand it amd discuss it and OWN it.

It is a sad book to have to write to ones own son. But it is a beautiful picture of a father urging a son, his son, his joy, towards a life of understanding, meaning and appreciation of his own beauty and the beauty of an ugly, broken sinful world.

Not for the squeamish but an important book never the less.  To read it is to be humbled and perhaps to be called to greater understanding, a non-dismissive understanding iof what it is like to e called “equal” and yet find over and over again that you are “other”.

Book Review: Said Sayrafiezadeh: "Brief Encounters With The Enemy"

Soooooo…...we are taking a brief break from “The Irish Blatherings” for a standard Diner Review, Book Review.  I am reading more books this year in an effort to be a better person.  I mean, you got to try something, right?  Anyway… I really like a good short story.  But frankly, the New Yorker prints a good one every week and a great one about once a month and I cannot keep up with those so it is rare that I buy a collection of short stories.  This one popped up in a nice review in The New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/books/review/said-sayrafiezadehs-brief-encounters-with-the-enemy.html?_r=0

Like it or not, the times still has the best consistent book coverage.  Everything Amazon does is by algorithm now and I really like a good book review.  Anyway, I bought it and it sat on my shelf but in my new, reading disciplined mode I finally go to it and I was pleased to do so.  While writing this I am slightly distracted as my Billikens are down by 7 with 8 minutes left against Duquesne.  They keep turning the ball over… now down 9.  But I digress.

This was a really good book.  It is a series of 8 short stories, all from the perspective of 20 something males.  They are all in urban or suburban environments in a country…

Preparing for war,

At War,

Post War.

A country where it is unnaturally cold in the summer and unnaturally hot in the winter and unnaturally hot in the summer.

Where even in the midst of war on the other side of the world… there appear to be no great jobs, even as factories reopen.

A country where everyone “supports our troops” and flies the flag… though no one appears certain about where the battle is or what it is for.

The men are struggling to find their place and they all run into old associates from high school and there is much comparing of notes and taking stock.  There are frustrated relationships and undercurrents of possible violence but… every story is so tightly written that they all seem kind of like page turners with you wondering what is going to happen next.

This guy… this Said Sayrafiezadeh (there is an umlaut in the first name...over the i, I think.  Why would I read a book by this guy?  because he has an unstoppable control of the language and excellent timing and pacing in his stories… which tend be sedentary… but…(hard to explain)...beautiful.  I would like to say the stories are about winners and losers but it is more a series which instead of being about winners and losers, is about people who are barely holding on...and losers.
Spend the money and get out and buy this one.  He teaches in New York and I think he is going to write a lot of good things.  I will go pick up his first book “When Skateboards Will Be Free” and I will report.

Irish Blatherings: Dooblin!

I AM NOT CERTAIN BUT I BELIEVE LAURE BECKER WAS HAVING A MARGARITA... IN IRELAND!

Soooo...I arrived at the beautiful Dublin airport to meet my daughter.  It had not been a bad plane ride over once we got on a new (unbroken) airplane.  On the trip over I was sitting with a very pleasant guy who lived in Dublin who as he was telling me about (it was 90% unintelligible to me because of his accent and because I am old) Dooblin just kept saying it like that and so… so did I.  I originally was supposed to arrive an hour before my daughter who was meeting me there from Cambridge but with my flight delay I texted her and she said she would find me.  I cleared customs quickly and easily and when I came out, she was not there.  Moments like this are when I realize that my wife does everything and that I am (at best) a parasite that lives on her gifts for organization and planning.  Conversely my daughter is half me.  We were going to meet each other.  How hard could that be, in a foreign airport… where your phones don’t work?  My first temptation was to call my wife… she could sort it out from 5000 miles away...right?  I turned on my phone hoping against hope for free WiFi and VIOLA!  I texted her.  She was in the wrong terminal at arrivals.  She found me in 5 minutes.

We went to get our rent a car and ended up with a slightly used Renault.  I had the sense to get an automatic transmission figuring driving on the wrong side of the road would be challenge enough (which, by the way I was correct about).  My daughter had been responsible for making our accommodations (when it was clear i would not be) and she sensibly found us a room for about 100 bucks a night which I didn't think was too bad.  What she had not realized was that it was as far from Dublin proper as say… Chesterfield is to downtown St. Louis.  Oh well.  We were staying in a place called Balbriggan which I quickly stopped trying to say, instead referring to it as Bilbobaggins.  It was 20 minutes from the airport and I will once again defer to another time to describe driving there which for my jet lagged ass could best be described as…”horrific” and for my poor daughter…”more so”.

We finally screamed in Balbriggan with my mirror clipping the mirror of a parked car.  I was of course pleased that the thump was not me hitting a warm body.  We swung into the garage attached to the hotel and garages are a challenge just like the road because you must… keep to the left.  But we parked and found our way into the hotel which was pleasant.  Were able to check in quickly and I was able to grab an Irish Times and we retired to a reasonably comfortable adequately priced room.  It would be a fine base of operations.  We discussed the options for getting to Dublin and we were assured the train station was a 5 minute walk and so… we were off!

BILBRAGGIN BEACH

Walking to the train station we purchased tickets round trip without incident.  One of the interesting things about Ireland is that unlike England they have adopted the Euro.  I had the foresight before I left to go to US Bank in Clayton and get a couple of hundred dollars of the currency which is always worth more than a $1.50 but less than $2.00 in my limited experience.  You can use most ATM cards to get dollars but there are fees involved and there is always something to be said for landing with walking around money.  The train station in Bilbraggin is on high ground looking down on a huge beach which is kind of in a bay which leads to a little channel.  Tide was out and there were a bunch of boats just sitting on the ground in the dry channel.  In Europe, the trains run on time and ours showed up pretty quickly and we hopped on and headed south.  The train tracks had a reasonable amount of time on the coast where I guess you overlook the “Sea of Man” which in retrospect seems rather pretentious or perhaps even ominous.  In any case, a lovely train ride, 20-30 minutes landed us in Town Center.  Both cities I was in identified the downtown area as “Town Center” and signs would direct you there which was helpful in each case.  Laura had found us a map and since our phones didn't work she was our navigator.

I had forwarded to her the name of a well reviewed Celiac Friendly restaurant and we made towards to for a late lunch.  The Millstone.  It was excellent and I ate some delicious fish thing and then had piece of beef which was represented to me as a Hereford steak.  Hereford Beef is very big and well advertised in Ireland but generally I would say their meat sucks.  I might hate the idea of factory farming, antibiotics, Monsanto,  and what not but we have unbelievable beef in our supermarkets and restaurants, well marbled, properly fatted and delicious.  I did not find the same to be true in Ireland.

Then we walked.  What a nice, beautiful, friendly, attractive interesting town.  Once again speaking some semblance of English is awesome and we were able to ask stupid questions and get patient answers.  Even though the iPhones did not work we could use free WiFi in abundance to look up and find our way to our next stop.  Over the two days we visited a lot of places.

From my perspective they had great shopping. For me that generally means Cigar stores ( for Cubans) and cheese mongers (for all varieties of cheese).  We did not want to do too much on the first day so we just bummed around.  We walked by the Olympia Theater where I was unable to get tickets for Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros on line.  We walked in and the nice lady behind the window said “we just had a cancellation” and were able to grab two tickets.  Better to be lucky than smart.

We made our way across town to the Jameson Distillery.  It is a lovely, touristy place.  Being tourists we looked in the gift shop and then we took the tour.  Now I don’t know what experience you have with distilleries but as a veteran of the bourbon trail and having spent a few weekends in Lexington and Frankfort…. distilleries are all pretty much the same and even though there is some slightly more than rudimentary physics involved all distilled beverages are made in pretty much the same way.  Jamieson, we were quickly, and then repetitively told, was “triple distilled”.  Every distillery has a wistful story about the product that is lost through evaporation when manufacturing their product and here is was “The Angels Portion”.  In Kentucky that share belonged to the devil.  We did a tasting which was a nice affair and did nothing to particularly enhance my love of Irish Whiskey.  I did learn one thing and that is that Irish Whiskey and certainly Jamiesons the grain is heated with a smokeless source, formerly anthracite and now natural gas.  Scotch, tastes like smoky scotch because they roast the grain with peat and that produces a lot of smoke.  It was a fine way to kill and hour or so.

We called it a day and headed back ready for a full day the next day and we got up and had an Irish Breakfast (sausage, eggs, pudding, tea) at our hotel and headed back to town.  Now I always like to look in bookstores wherever I go and so with the help of Google I had located a few of them.  I believe that sooner or later they will all cease to exist so… I go and pay homage. Chapters bookstore did not disappoint.  I like to collect foreign first editions of my favorite authors but alas, they were not in the offing here either in their new or used section.  Still, it was a nice massive place with a great feel and my daughter milled around patiently more or less.
A BAR IN TEMPLE BAR

We got lost and turned around more than once but found a gluten free pizza place for lunch that was nice and then found a beer (also gluten free) for me in the Temple Bar area.  Temple Bar is confusing because it is an area, a hotel, a bar, a hostel and so a lot of things are in “Temple Bar”.  So we drank a little and I got speak at length to a bartendress who essentially convinced me that I needed to spend the second half of my trip in Galway.

That night we went to the Olympia see the concert.  Despite it starting late due to a power outage it was a great show.  The Olympia is just a gorgeous two balconied, intimate venue and it was a great end to the night… other than the fact that we got badly lost driving back to Balbriggan.

The next day we made the obligatory pilgrimage to Guinness.  Now I cannot drink beer anymore and I still have a loyalty to St. Louis beers from when Anheuser Busch was still “our” beer and more recently to Schlafly which is now “our” beer.  But everyone said we had to go, if nothing else for the view of Ireland from the 7 story tower shaped like…*deep annoyed sigh* a pint glass.  We looked at the gift shop, heard the beginnings of the self guided tour and blew through 7 floors in about 20 minutes.  The Anheuser Busch tour puts it to shame and even the Samuel Adams tour in Boston was far superior.  Beer, like spirits is pretty much always made in the same way but like the “triple distilled” Jamiesons and the “beechwood aged” Budweiser, Guinness thing is that their barley is roasted. *yawn*.  The tasting room up top though was awesome and the view spectacular.  I sipped my water and gave my daughter my beer ticket so she could have two.  I did have the blessing of watching an experienced server put their logo in the froth on top of a glass.  You should go and skip the tour.  Just take the elevator straight to the top.  It is a no brainer.FROM THE GUINNESS TOWER
THIS IS THE PATHETIC GUINNESS VERSION OF A CLYDESDALE!
We visited St. Patricks Cathedral and the Irish Gallery and the Irish Library.  I could wax poetic but really we blew threw them as only Beckers can without paying a lot of attention but just trying to take it all in and check it off our list.  That is a stupid way to visit such brilliant, ancient historical places but, we are what we are and in the end I was in Dublin, hanging out with my daughter and didn’t really give a shit about where I was at.  It could've been Gary, but I was happy it was Dooblin
ST. PATRICKS CATHEDRAL

Book Review: Hyperbole and a Half

Soooo...A lot of people are depressed.  A lot of people have stupid dogs.  A lot of people cannot draw.  But not a lot of people are depressed, with stupid dogs, cannot draw AND ARE FUNNY.  Allie Bosch is funny.  Scary, poignant, funny. Think of this book as a “Where The Wild Things Are” for adults.  And it turns out all the really scary shit is in your head.

I think I got turned onto this through Terry Groos and her NPR fanzine “Fresh Air”.  That is probably unfair to Terry and the show but I do respect that on her show, at every break (and there are at least 5 of them in one of her typical hourly shows will say something like:

“I am here with Allie Bosch, author of the blog “Hyperbole and a Half” which has just been released in paperback”.

Terry really shills for her guests.  I don’t know, maybe it’s nice.  In any case Terry Gross bats about .400 in putting on interesting people and a .400 average will (I am told) keep you in the majors for quite a while.  Anyway, Bosch started her blog while mired in depression and the things she writes about it are true, and frightening and if damaged enough, funny.  Most of the drawings have her in them.  I learned from Gross’ show that the yellow thing on her head was her attempt to draw a pony tail.

Anyway, crude drawing of her, her dogs, her mom and occasionally objects.  The art adds to the damaged quality of the prose but her narration of her plight, or her dogs plight, or her mothers mental illness are all spot on and leave simple people like me humbled both by the writings quality, it’s honesty and it’s humor.  I mean, if you cannot laugh about severe and clinical depression, what can you laugh about?

This is a book to put by your toilet.  Easily chopped up chapters time out excellently for the task you are poerfomring there.  Sometimes it is good to read a really easy book with a lot of pictures but this book made me laugh out loud at least a dozen times and… I need that.  Buy this book, give it to a friend, but not if it is the copy you kept by the toilet.

Peace, and your welcome.

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com

Book Reviews: "The Unknowns" and "David and Goliath"

Sooooo… This could hypothetically be a good year for reading.  I have just finished two more books that I was reading...simultaneously!  Unbelievable  I did not know I could read anymore but denying myself the newspapers and news might have been healthy.  So two books… “David and Goliath” by Malcolm Gladwell… arguably non fiction and “The Unknowns” by Gabriel Roth.  I had read another of Gladwell's books but never one of his big insight books like “The Outliers”.  I had never read the Roth guy before.  I think it might be his first book.

“David and Goliath” was really good.  It starts with the the recounting of the Biblical story of…. David and Goliath.  It is all based on the premise that we look at a lot of things wrong.  In regard to David and Goliath we are talking about the view that David, over unbelievable odds pulled off this miracle slaying of Goliath.  Gladwell informs us that the story could not have ended any other way.  A talented guy with a sling can land it on a face 200 yards away and Goliath (and King Saul) were all expecting a hand to hand battle.  So David did not wine because of God or destiny.  He one because he was thinking of a different battle, he prepared for that battle and he destroyed his opponent… who according to Gladwell, never had a chance.

Gladwell then goes on to give a bunch more examples of this type of thinking from classroom size, to money and parenting, successful dyslexics and underdog teams.   The premise is that adversity  can be an advantage.  I like books like this because they make me think but… from my limited perspective he draws well researched examples and uses them to illustrate whatever point he is trying to make.  This is one of the reasons that demagogues like Glenn Beck LOVE Gladwell because he, like they, uses these examples to support their false narratives.  I don’t know whether Gladwell is right but it gets pedantic and uninteresting as he pulls aberrant examples of things which in his mind disprove the norm.  Not a bad read but… miss it.

The second book however is excellent fiction read. Gabriel Roth has written what I think is his debut called “The Unknowns”.  It is the story of a nerd and it is a pretty good one. It opens with the nerd who has killed it with a start up going to a party and in attempting to meet the love of his life ends up going home and doing ecstasy with the girl he did not mean to be with.  I have no experience with that particular drug but from his description of how it felt when he was done, it seems like something for an old man to avoid.

The book flashes back to how he got molded into a dot.com millionaire with his high school nerd friend and all the social awkwardness and family problems that damaged him but eventually he finds (stalks) the aformentioned girl of his dreams.  She is indeed the girl of his dreams but like everyone has some damaged baggage.  He handles the difficulties related with the trust issues involved in every relationship… not so well.  

It is well written and a good read and of the two books if I was looking to get outside my life (and I always am) I would recommend the Roth book.  Read, have fun.  Be a human being. It could still happen. Even for you.

Book Review of Nicholson Baker's "The Traveling Sprinkler"

Soooo…. Nicholson Baker.  A national treasure?  Maybe not.  A really, REALLY solid contemporary author...absolutely.  This guys body of work is as good as it gets for a guy still kicking around.  “Vox” and “The Fermatta” knocked me out 20 years ago and he has published good work since those.  He is a maturing guy who after those books had the elbow room to write what he wants.  The books range from Presidential assassination fantasies to diatribes questioning the politically correct narratives of World War II.  All of it cogently written in a particular voice.  That voice also lent itself to storytelling in “The Everlasting Story of Nori”.  If you want an overview of a diverse writers life, check his Wiki page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholson_Baker

“The Traveling Sprinker” brings us back poet/anthologist Paul Chowder (from his prior book “The Anthologist” who is struggling to write poems but instead forays into popular songwriting, dance music, electronica and beats.  It is a classic middle aged man’s take on his own mid-life crisis as he deals with:

Not knowing what to do with his life

Failed relationships that are not quite dead yet

Health issues

Cigars

Drinking

Childlessness…

and the like.  He uses the title subject as a nice metaphor for...everything. It is one of those things I refer to as a "tractor" sprinkler but it follows the course of the hose that feeds it as it goes on whatever path is set for it and waters and... lets just say there are a lot of metaphorical opportunities there.

But it is an endearing book and an easy read as he learns about modern music and listens to it and creates his own amidst what appears to be the abundant debris of his life.

He cannot keep his liberal politics out of it but throws off shattering statistics regarding deaths related to drone warfare while remembering his passion for the bassoon as he smokes cigars and tries to write, primarily in his car.  The portrait is one of a talented guy who is occasionally brilliant as he wanders, literally through his life and… other than the brilliant part, I could certainly relate.  

The lead character is also a Quaker and I know nothing about Quakers so found that interesting.  The idea of going to a “meeting” and sitting in silence and contemplation for an hour or so seems… very healthy.  I tend to only go to “meetings” where people are fighting about money or opening by saying, “Hi, my name is Mike and I am an…”.  I guess this is what I like about Baker as an author.  He takes me outside my realm of experience and really outside my normal way of thinking about things and there is something liberating about that in a book, but here is a comfortableness and reality to his characters that ring true.

Wives should read this to have a better handle on what a mess their husbands are.  Younger men should read it so they can see what they will become (and that is assuming everything works out) and middle aged men should read it so you can go, “that seems about right”.  

It is a nice read from a nice author.