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.

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.

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.

Gateway

2010.19 – Gateway – Frederik Pohl (1977)

As I have been recently reminded, I am a sucker for 1970s era sci-fi psychological thrillers. They’re like the earnest outward-looking sf of the 40s and 50s, combined with the more cynical and humanist stuff that came later; unabashed absurdism mixed with honest existential contemplation. Also there are usually some good sex scenes. All of this can be found in Frederik Pohl’s iconic Gateway, which is at times uneven in its pacing and narrative structure, but overall works very well as a tense and credible musing on the effects of space exploration on the human animal.

The book is set at some undefined point in Earth’s future and the bare bones of the plot are difficult to describe without spoiling anything, but are also almost simplistically didactic: rich people live in literal bubbles, and the rest of the population spend their time in what amounts to tar pits, shoveling shit for the good of humanity.

For most people, the only means of escape from a life of unblinking poverty and grime is to join in the commercial exploration/exploitation of the galaxy, via the relics of a long-extinct alien species (the most important such relic being the Gateway, an asteroid-cum-space station, abandoned for tens of millions of years before being discovered and reused by humans).

As for the exploration itself (or “prospecting”) : imagine a mining company blindfolding you and throwing you into a pit; if you’re lucky, the pit is shallow and you continue to live (and earn a living wage). If you’re very lucky, the pit is shallow and full of gold, and you get to live while being suddenly rich. In most cases, though: splat.

The bulk of the book is taken up with life on Gateway, and our protagonist Bob’s travails as he engages in exploratory trips therefrom. Interspersed with the Gateway chapters, we see Bob in the future, made rich from what we are led to believe were some very successful prospecting trips, as a psychiatric patient trying to deal with some very troubling repressed memories.

It is from these future narrative chapters that the book both benefits and suffers. Bob’s interactions with his robot psychiatrist Sigfrid serve as comic relief, as the robot becomes increasingly creepy and absurd in his methods. The narrative “Gateway” chapters are informed by the progress (such as it is) that Bob makes with Sigfrid, uncovering memories he wanted to keep locked away. As Bob reveals things to Sigfrid in the future, Bob as narrator of the main action seems to become more self-aware, and the plot is likewise revealed incrementally, culminating in some nicely unexpected tidbits as the book climaxes.

As effective as the intermediate chapters are (and as entertaining as I found the robot Sigfrid, who at one point conducts a session in the form of a giant teddy bear, with which Bob is supposed to cuddle as he talks about his feelings toward his mother, et al.), they as often as not distract the reader from the main action, and seem to bog down the book at least as much as they advance the plot.

(Like the robot psychiatrist chapters, another device employed by Pohl with only marginal success are the ephemera scattered generously throughout the book – classified ads, ships logs, excerpts of lectures – which contribute to the reader’s knowledge of the setting, but whose placement in the middle of chapters is extremely distracting. At times I found myself skipping them entirely so as not to have to stop in the middle of a scene, or even a sentence, to read them.)

Pohl’s success in Gateway comes as a result of presenting a well-wrought futuristic story, and combining that with the immediate, visceral effects that space travel has on humans. Gateway and the extinct alien species are fully realized plot elements, but without the human element (fear, sex, longing, drugs, sacrifice, betrayal, and the rest of the human reaction to living in an alien environment) it would make for a boring book. As it stands, I enjoyed it very much, despite the slightly flawed narrative structure. A recommended book, thoroughly deserving of the accolades it won.

The Santaroga Barrier

2010.10 – The Santaroga Barrier – Frank Herbert (1968)

Frank Herbert wrote a lot of silly, pulpy books, but he also wrote one of the single most powerful and significant sf books of all time (no, I’m not talking about The Green Brain). The more of his work I read, the more I discover that the silly/pulpy stuff is the norm, and the really amazing/world-building stuff is pretty much just Dune (and maybe the first two sequels).

When I began The Santaroga Barrier, and the protagonist was rushed headlong into the action almost before the author had bothered to do a paragraph of setting or character building, I figured, “OK a quick bit of fluff, maybe it’ll have a fun monster.” I was pleasantly surprised though when the book coalesced into something worthwhile; I’m not talking literary excellence here, but it was overall a good read. Contained is Herbert’s ever-present obsession with the role of psychotropic drugs in expediting human evolution (Spice Melange, anyone?), but the setting is present-day Earth (late-60s northern California to be exact), not a galactic empire thousands of years in the future. Heck, there weren’t even any monsters, unless a wheel of drug-laced cheese counts as a monster.

Santaroga is definitely one of the more readable and interesting of Herbert’s books; short enough to avoid being onerous and repetitive (à la Destination: Void), but with enough substance that it’s not just a throwaway adventure story.

[Return to book log]

Clockers

2010.09 – Clockers – Richard Price (1992, Novel); Spike Lee (1995, Film)

Almost immediately after reading Richard Price’s massive and intense novel about the underworld of crack cocaine, we rented the adaptation, a Spike Lee ‘Joint’ which has points to recommend it, but ultimately falls far short of the bar set by the book.

Price’s novel is a nearly 600-page drama featuring a large cast of fully realized characters; the plot is heavy and meticulous as it follows primarily a street crack dealer named Strike, and a homicide detective named Rocco. Price lays out a world of crack dealers (“clockers”), narcotics cops (“knockos”), indigent drug addicts (“pipeheads”), and hard-working poor people (…no real nickname for these, sorry) – it’s all there in fluid, page-turning prose.

What the author doesn’t do is make value judgements: a clocker might sell crack but he might also use some of his earnings to support poor old people; a knocko might prevent deadly drugs from being sold on the street, but he might also extort huge sums from dealers as hush money. There’s no black and white; even a terrifying hitman might let down his defenses and show you some naked humanity. The end result is something like fatalism – do it or don’t it, your actions aren’t going to change much, so get what you can out of life and try to survive.

Apart from larger themes of fatalism or right and wrong, the book works on an immediate level; the author gets the reader inside the heads of these various players and shows you real humanity. That’s where Price succeeds and where, sadly, I feel like Spike Lee fails.

Lee’s adaptation, while remaining faithful for the most part to the story, omits and enlarges various facets (as adaptations do), and the end result is uneven and ultimately something like an after-school special (“Don’t do crack, kids!”). Some of the casting is great – Harvey Keitel as Rocco and Isaiah Washington as Strike’s tragic brother Victor, e.g. – and some of it is frankly awful (there is a wild and crooked narcotics cop named Jo-Jo, who in the book is described as looking like Santa Claus, shows up in the movie looking like Scott Baio’s “Chachi” playing cops and robbers). The usually great John Turturro just seemed bored whenever he was on screen.

Where the novel has a dry and dark tone throughout, the movie veers all over the place from gritty and stark (the very powerful opening credits sequence is a montage of crime scene photographs) to falsely heartwarming scenes of camaraderie (with this awful light jazz incidental music all over the place, really getting in the way of the storytelling).

Lee leaves out nearly one half of the meat of the story – i.e., Rocco’s half – to concentrate on the other protagonist, Strike; and while Mekhi Phifer is convincing enough (though not great) as the earnestly taciturn clocker, much of the rest of his milieu comes across as too clean and presentable. Nothing seems dirty or bleak enough, even with scenes of murder and squalid drug use, or humiliation at the hands of crooked cops. I can’t stress enough how distracting the soundtrack was: apart from the periodic hip hop songs, which worked well when used, the swelling and uplifting light jazz absolutely killed the mood most of the time.

I’m not trying to be too harsh on Spike’s film, and as I said earlier it does have some things to be said in its favor: there are some well-crafted, moody scenes and some nice acting performances (I’m thinking here again of Isaiah Washington, and of Delroy Lindo as Strike’s mentor in the coke biz); it does improve as it nears the end of the story, managing to capture at least some of the spirit of the novel; and it’s faithful enough to the original that nothing major is changed, plot-wise. Overall though it was contrived and kind of boring.

It might be the case that having read and watched both versions so close together, I’m being overcritical of the film; but unlike a lot of folks I don’t tend to get too frothed up about movie adaptations that aren’t rigidly faithful to their antecedents (because they’re just that: adaptations, not replicas). I like it when film versions stray from the originals, because you can do different things with a movie than you can with the written word (and vice versa). So I don’t think I’m too out of line when I say that Spike just seems to have missed the point of what Richard Price wrote (though they did co-write the screenplay), and pushed through his pointed agenda at the cost of artistic merit; which is a bummer for me because I’ve enjoyed some of his other films (er, joints).

My recommendations: definitely read the book, which is engrossing and often touching and tragic; but unless you’re a big Spike Lee fan give the disappointing movie a pass.

[Return to book log]

Common Sense

2010.08 – Common Sense – Thomas Paine (1776)

If I’ve ever read Paine’s famous pamphlet before now, I don’t remember it. Likely it was assigned to me in high school, and like most rational high school students faced with such a notion, I ignored the fuck out of it. Nowadays I like to read all kinds of grown up stuff like, so I figured I’d give ol Tom Paine a whirl. Also it was my book club’s selection (which is how I’ve been introduced to most of the new authors I’ve read in the past 8 years, for better or worse [mostly better]), and it’s only 70 odd pages so what the hell.

What I discovered were 70 densely packed pages of political philosophy, not at all unpleasant to read, outlining bold ideas about democracy and society; at the time these ideas may have been astounding in their novelty, but now, to me, Mr 21 Century Schizoid Man of the Future, they read like…well, like the radical concepts our country was founded upon. Obviously hereditary monarchy is bad, and obviously a representative republican government is the way to go. Checks and balances: no duh! Am I right? Apparently to most of the sot-weed farmers and other moneyed bigwigs of late 18th century America, this stuff wasn’t so obvious, which makes the success of this book all the more impressive (it proved quite effective in galvanizing support for revolution in lieu of mere “reconciliation,” which word Paine pronounces throughout as though it were laced with arsenic).

Near the midway point Paine’s tone shifts, and becomes less that of a rational professor expounding on political history, and more that of a shit-stirring preacher, passionate in urging a dangerous but necessary course of action. While I myself am certainly no political philosopher, I found the earlier portions of the book more persuasive in their reasoned tone; by the end Paine is basically saying “OMG OMG you guys we have to revolt but it’s gotta be right now! SRSLY GUYS!”

One of the most interesting things about this world-shattering little essay, is that its author Mr. Thomas Paine was an Englishman, having been in America for something like 14 months at the time of its publication. And he really gives the King of England a hard time, too!

My overall impression of Common Sense, without having any deep knowledge of the history of the era, or the circumstances of the pamphlet’s publication or distribution, literacy rates among the colonies, etc. (I’m a bad citizen, I know); is that Paine knew exactly what message he wanted to get across, and wrote it in a very forthright and engaging manner. Was he preaching to a choir of like-minded people, who just needed a nudge to be brought to action? Did Common Sense really change enough minds to induce revolt, or was the revolution inevitable (which inevitability Paine himself asserts was the case)? The answer is: I don’t know; but I bet there have been at least a dozen real academic type papers written about it in the past 230 years, so maybe if my curiosity gets piqued I’ll read one of those for S&Gs.

[Return to book log]

The Forever War

2010.06 – The Forever War, Joe Haldeman (1974)

I wouldn’t count myself much of a connoisseur of military sf; I prefer the mind-bending/psychedelic, social commentary/human evolution type stuff. But I have read a handful of Robert Heinlein’s military books, and a few others, and when it works I do enjoy it (Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, e.g., I thought was a very nice blend of tense action and surrealist camp).

The Forever War, Joe Haldeman’s allegorical attack on the US war with Vietnam, is probably the best military sf book I’ve read. The book is inspired by Haldeman’s own experiences as a veteran of that war, and what I like so much about it is how well he combines the hard military themes (life in the army, battle tactics, etc.) with commentary on the total absurdity of war in general, and its effects on the rest of society (which in this case are devastating and all-encompassing). Which is not to mention that he does it all with healthy imagination and a fine, fluid prose style.

The most engrossing part of the book, for me, and the reason the book works so well, is the middle section when our protagonist Mandella is first discharged from the army and returns to Earth. Hitherto we had seen him in basic training and in combat; we learn, as does he, about the technological advances that have been made in the field of killing people and breaking stuff. The aliens with whom they are at war are frightening, dangerous and, well, alien; and the weaponry the humans employ are no less bizarre and deadly (imagine having a nuclear weapon strapped to your back, and you’re on a frozen planet trying to build a base, and if you fall down you’ll likely die, and if you don’t die you get to fight against the aliens, about whom virtually nothing is known – stuff like that).

But it is when his tour of duty is over, and he is discharged on Earth and allowed to reenter civilian life (complete with his back pay, compounded by decades of interest, even though he’s only been fighting for two years…something involving quantums and relativities that I refuse to understand): this is where the genuine horror begins and the story really takes off. Due directly to the costs of supporting an interstellar war, human society has ‘evolved’ into a ghastly dystopia. Mandella returns to a world with massive overpopulation, out-of-control violence and theft, and a moneyless, enforced-agrarian economy. He tries to adjust to this new world, but ultimately he reenlists in the army. At this point I, as a reader, feel as relieved for him as he does – that he is traveling billions of miles away to engage in a war against bloodthirsty aliens that spells almost certain death, in order to escape the violence and feelings of displacement he has on the Earth (irony everywhere you look).

Normally when I see anything described as “an allegory about X” my fear of pedantic finger-wagging kicks in and I run in the other direction. The Forever War is definitely an anti-war novel and an indictment of the Vietnam War specifically, but these facts don’t solely inform the book. There are also honestly crafted characters, interesting scenes of battle and space travel, moody explorations of the future of humanity…it’s not all one big lecture.

[Return to book log]