From Sawdust to Stardust

2012.05 — From Sawdust to Stardust: The Biography of DeForest Kelley, Star Trek‘s Dr. McCoy, Terry Lee Rioux (2005)

I picked this book up on a whim. We were at the library for the first time in years, having for some reason let our cards lapse. I was walking the stacks looking for a different book, and the gently smiling face of Dr. McCoy caught my eye. In my excitement at rejoining the ranks of proud library users, combined with my fondness for the original Star Trek series and for the feisty Southern doctor in particular, I snatched it off the shelf. If I had been able to find the book I’d originally wanted, if I’d spent more time browsing for other things to read, maybe I wouldn’t have checked out From Sawdust to Stardust, which in the final accounting is a decent (but not great) book about a decent (but not great) actor who achieved stardom thanks to a decent (but, I must be objective here, not great) television show.

Sawdust is a linear account of the life of DeForest Kelley (1920-1999), and during the first handful of chapters, during which Rioux recounts his childhood as the son of a poor itinerant preacher in Georgia during the 1920s and 30s, I wondered if perhaps my Star Trek fandom had led me astray. He was poor, his family were conservative rural Southerners, he was well liked but somewhat shy. Things took a promising turn when he moved to Long Beach, California in the late 30s and eventually became interested in acting, but I remained somewhat bored. He was a stage actor, he had friends, he had pets, he liked to drink and dance. We’re still 25 years from “boldly going” anywhere.

Beyond the Blue Event Horizon

2012.04 — Beyond the Blue Event Horizon, Frederik Pohl (1980)

In this sequel to his excellent Gateway, Frederik Pohl again impresses with his ability to combine Big Ideas and compelling plot lines into a delightful and thrilling book. In this case the primary plot involves a family of explorers trying to strike it rich on the frontier, while the Big Idea is nothing less than the evolutionary origins of humankind. The level of conceptual ambition at work here puts this series of books (known as the “Heechee Saga”) on a level with Larry Niven’s Ringworld series, while Pohl’s ability to create believable setting and characters — in short his talent as a writer — in fact exceeds Niven’s.

I don’t want to give anything away, but if you’ve read Gateway you’ll know that the basic premise is that humans have discovered the apparently abandoned relics of an ancient space-faring race called the Heechee. We were able to use some of these relics for scientific gains, such as the expanded exploration of the galaxy, and what we couldn’t figure out how to use we turned into decorative (and salable) commodities.

A Short History of Nearly Everything

2012.03 — A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson (2003)

The title of this book by best-selling author and noted American-with-a-British-accent Bill Bryson might be amended to A Short History of Science. While Bryson does indeed investigate everything from the Big Bang down to the machinations of mitochondrial DNA and all stops in between, alongside everything are the stories of the men and women who have brought this knowledge to light. Primarily, in fact, what we have is a short history of modern science, with most of the science coming from no earlier than the mid-17th century.

In any event Bryson’s Short History is a very enjoyable book, wherein he presents his complex subjects in a manner readable to the lay person (i.e., me), without dumbing anything down. Early in the book he states that much of science deals with figures both infinitely large and infinitesimally small, and that his aim is to deliver it to the reader in a digestible way, spelling things out rather than using scientific notation whenever possible, and using analogies rather than bald numbers (Bryson thankfully never uses “football fields” as a unit of measurement, but he does tell you for example that if you wove all the DNA in a single cell out in one continuous thread it would stretch from the Earth to the Moon multiple times).

The Wapshot Chronicle

2012.02 — The Wapshot Chronicle, John Cheever (1957)

It is perhaps a Freudian slip that when I typed the title of the book to begin this review, I mistakenly typed it as The Waspshot Chronicle. Maybe I’m being too harsh on what is at the end of the day a rich and interesting book, which as the title says chronicles the lives of a well-to-do family in mid-20th century rural New England. While the characters themselves are something less than likeable (likewise the setting, belying the Norman Rockwell stereotype I hold of the place), Cheever’s writing is masterfully wrought and thoroughly engaging.

The first hundred or so pages are fairly prosaic as the author uses plenty of evocative but not overdone imagery and apt metaphor to place the setting and the characters in the reader’s mind. Cheever’s dialogue is most often indirect, but when he uses direct quotes they are in dialect that feels spot on and unobtrusive. We meet the oddball family and become involved in the gradually thickening plot.

Triumph

2012.01 — Triumph: the untold story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics, Jeremy Schaap (2007)

The title says it all, really, as our author the estimable Jeremy Schaap tells the story of Jesse Owens’ astounding victories at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

I was a little disappointed in the tone of the writing, at least through the first part of the book, which briefly recounts Owens’ childhood and in more detail his college track career. I’m familiar with Schaap as a good sports writer — one of the best in fact, and a fine successor to his widely respected father Dick Schaap — and perhaps my expectations were a little high. Perhaps I’m being overly harsh. In any case there is a definite rah-rah Hallmark Card feeling to the early parts of the book, emphasized by the sometimes corny dialogue Schaap puts into the mouths of his protagonists.

Beyond feeling like I was being urged by the author to root for Owens (and honestly, why would I need such urging? Owens is an iconic figure in American and world sports history, and anyone picking up this book surely does so at least partly out of sympathy with him and a distaste for the Nazis), I got exactly what I wanted from the book, which was a detailed account of Jesse Owens qualifying for and competing at Hitler’s Olympics.

Book Log 2012

1. Triumph: the untold story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics — Jeremy Schaap (2007) [review here]

2. The Wapshot Chronicle — John Cheever (1957) [review here]

3. A Short History of Nearly Everything — Bill Bryson (2003) [review here]

4. Beyond the Blue Event Horizon — Frederik Pohl (1980) [review here]

5. From Sawdust to Stardust: The Biography of DeForest Kelley, Star Trek‘s Dr. McCoy — Terry Lee Rioux (2005) [review here]

6. Andersonville — MacKinlay Kantor (1955)

7. On Writing — Stephen King (2000)

8. Liberia: History of the First African Republic — Abayomi Cassell (1970)

9. The Bridge of San Luis Rey — Thornton Wilder (1927)

10. March — Geraldine Brooks (2005)

11. Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag — Kang Chol-Hwan & Pierre Rigoulot (2000)

12. True Grit — Charles Portis (1968)

13. America’s War: Talking about the Civil War and Emancipation on their 150th anniversaries — edited by Edward L. Ayers (2011)

14. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas — Gertrude Stein (1933)

15. Under the Banner of Heaven: A story of violent faith — Jon Krakauer (2003)

16. Instant City: life and death in Karachi — Steve Inskeep (2011)

17. A Study in Scarlet — Arthur Conan Doyle (1887)

18. God Is Not Great: How religion poisons everything — Christopher Hitchens (2007)

19. Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam — James M. McPherson (2002)

20. The Day the Martians Came — Frederik Pohl (1988)

21. Lavinia — Ursula K. Le Guin (2008)

22. Drift: the unmooring of American military power — Rachel Maddow (2012)

23. Slouching Towards Bethlehem — Joan Didion (1968)

24. Hotel Du Lac — Anita Brookner (1984)

25. Paul Newman: a life — Shawn Levy (2009)

26. Every Third Thought: a novel in five seasons — John Barth (2011)

27. Nibelungenlied (The Song of the Nibelungs) — Unknown (ca. AD 1200). Translated by Frank G. Ryder (1962)

28. Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War — Tony Horwitz (2011)

29. The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe — Peter Godwin (2010)

30. Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, & Power, of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiasticall and Civill — Thomas Hobbes (1651)

31. The Taqwacores — Michael Muhammad Knight (2004)

32. No Man Knows My History: the life of Joseph Smith — Fawn M. Brodie (1945)

33. The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice — William Shakespeare (1603/04)

34. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness — Michelle Alexander (2010)

35. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln — Doris Kearns Goodwin (2005)

36. Breakfast of Champions — Kurt Vonnegut (1973)

37. Danny, the Champion of the World — Roald Dahl (1975)

38. Last Orders — Graham Swift (1996)

39. Beowulf — Unknown (ca. AD 650-1000). Translated by Seamus Heaney (2000)

40. Grendel — John Gardner (1971)

41. Soccernomics: why England loses, why Spain, Germany, and Brazil win, and why the U.S., Japan, Australia, Turkey—and even Iraq—are destined to become the kings of the world’s most popular sport — Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski (2009)

Book Log 2011

I didn’t open a book “with intent” this year until sometime in late August. I cannot explain why but I just did not feel like reading, which was sort of worrying since I’ve been a voracious reader all my life. I finished Trout Fishing In America right around the New Year, and since I did not include it in my log for 2010, I’ve included it here.

Once I did start reading, I managed to get some pretty good books in before the year’s end. The best book I read this year was the one I just finished last night, The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck’s examination of Dust Bowl migrant farmers. If you have never read it, do. If you have read it, read it again. I hadn’t read it since college about 15 years ago, and it is much better than I remembered; in part because I think I’m a better reader now than I was then (more practiced in critical thought and close reading, and more appreciative of well-crafted writing), and in part because it speaks directly to a lot of the things that I have been thinking heavily about lately: suffering, economic equality, cruelty, generosity, etc. It has been called communist propaganda but I think it would be more accurately described as Humanist propaganda. On top of the grand themes, Steinbeck is a master of prose, able to both construct a large and intensely believable plot and cast of characters, and stick the emotional knife into the reader and twist it to maximum effect. Most classics are classics for a reason and The Grapes of Wrath is a perfect example of this.

I am making an effort to consume more non-fiction, and while I didn’t get the 1-to-1 ratio of fiction-to-non that I’d aimed for, five of the 14 books I read were non-fic, all of which were edifying if not always entertaining. Eating Animals made me continue to look hard at what I put in my body (which currently constitutes a vegetarian diet and may ultimately end up closer to vegan…did I just write that?); 1491 and Mornings on Horseback broadened my deficient knowledge of New World/American history (I know more about the Peloponnesian War than the American Civil War, sadly); and Fear and Loathing: Campaign ’72 and Consider the Lobster helped me realize that there are great authors writing non-fiction (I knew about Hunter S. Thompson, but Lobster is the first David Foster Wallace book I’ve read, and he is a simply brilliant, gifted writer).

My first and greatest love remains fiction, specifically novels. Whether pulpy sci-fi or big meaty lit-class stuff, I love a novel, and I read some good ones this year. It turned out to be one of the first books I ever read, The Hobbit, that helped me get back into the rhythm of reading this year after that inexplicable eight-month hiatus. I normally read quite a bit of sci-fi, but this year the only thing I read from that genre was Man Plus, well-written 1970s psychedelia with a sense of humor and a sense of horror. All the Pretty Horses is top notch (though the best thing I’ve read by Cormac McCarthy is still Blood Meridian), and J.G. Ballard’s Crash is disturbing on both a psychological and a visceral level (but still worth reading!). I got a few lulz out of the Tarzan book I read (review linked below). The most disappointing books I read this year were The Thin Man and The Nigger Factory, in both cases because I expected them to be so much better.

So here’s the list for 2011. As I said I finished The Grapes of Wrath last night, and this morning I began reading Triumph, Jeremy Schaap’s book about Jesse Owens at Hitler’s Olympics, which will be the first book on my log for 2012.

1. Trout Fishing In America — Richard Brautigan (1967)

2. The Hobbit, or There and Back Again — J.R.R. Tolkien (1937)

3. Consider the Lobster and Other Essays — David Foster Wallace (2005)

4. Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 — Hunter S. Thompson (1973)

5. Crash — J.G. Ballard (1973)

6. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus — Charles G. Mann (2005)

7. All the Pretty Horses — Cormac McCarthy (1992)

8. The Nigger Factory — Gil Scott-Heron (1972)

9. Man Plus — Frederik Pohl (1976)

10. The Thin Man — Dashiell Hammett (1934) [review here]

11. Eating Animals — Jonathan Safran Foer (2009)

12. Jungle Tales of Tarzan — Edgar Rice Burroughs (1919) [review here]

13. Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt — David McCullough (1981)

14. The Grapes of Wrath — John Steinbeck (1939)

The Thin Man

#10 — The Thin Man, Dashiell Hammett (1934)

The Thin Man had a few nice moments but was overall disappointing, especially when compared with Dashiell Hammett’s best known work The Maltese Falcon. Hammett was a good writer, but this seemed bored and perfunctory. I didn’t care about the intricacies of the plot (a noir murder mystery) and I didn’t care what happened to any of the characters (socialites, cops and lowlifes in NYC), even if some of them were a little interesting. The book ends with a four-page dialogue wherein protagonist Nick Charles tells his wife and sorta sidekick Nora, in elaborate detail, whodunit and howdunit. With the last sentence of the book Nora replies, summing up how I felt about the book: “That may be,” Nora said, “but it’s all pretty unsatisfactory.”

Weirdly it was the last novel Hammett wrote, though he lived another 27 years after its publication.

Reset

What’s been going on with me lately? Lots of stuff; also some things, and a few whathaveyous, but mainly stuff.

Burmese Days

2010.28 – Burmese Days – George Orwell (1934)

Orwell’s first novel is not what you might expect from the guy who gave us Big Brother and Napoleon the Pig. To be sure there are villains in Burmese Days—indeed, you’d be hard pressed to find any character in the book who doesn’t fit that bill—but this isn’t a dystopian nightmare or an instructive allegory.

What we have instead is something like a soap opera (Burmese Days of Our Lives?) set amidst the waning days of the British Raj, with a cast of characters each more despicable than the last. Our protagonist, John Flory, an English timber merchant, is the closest one gets to a sympathetic character. He accurately describes his compatriots as “Dull boozing witless porkers!” though he can’t escape that same distinction himself; to say he’s less of a racist, misogynist coward than his fellows is still to acknowledge that he is in fact a rather unpleasant guy. Add to this such endearing personality traits as alcoholism and love of violence, and by the end of the book we’re left with no one to root for.

The bulk of the action of Burmese Days has no real action at all: we are at the European Club, where the dissipated and hateful English keep themselves entertained by drinking copious amounts of gin and whisky, and telling each other the same jokes and stories over and over (the theme always being how disgusting and awful the natives are—”Orientals” is the most polite appellation they use that I’ll bother to print here—compared to the godlike wisdom and patience of the English).

There is a plot, which revolves around an intrigue between two citizens of high standing; two local citizens, which is to say natives, which is to say their standing is roughly equivalent to that of a water buffalo. We also have an absurdly pathetic love story involving our protagonist, and toward the end of the novel we get some proper action (i.e. violence).

Burmese Days is a bit dry and the resolution and denouement are ultimately less than satisfying; but it is worth reading for Orwell enthusiasts or those who enjoy historical fiction. While this isn’t as stylistically or thematically brilliant as Orwell’s later work, it does have as its central thrust the idea that people are essentially shitty to one another, and that distinctions of class, race and wealth only make things worse (see: power/corruption, etc.). I see it as something like a warm-up for 1984 et al.; Orwell’s first-hand experience of the evils of totalitarian or imperialist governments (he was born in eastern India and served as a policeman in Burma) serves as his template for a not-so-subtle and vicious attack.