Best and Worst of 2009

Top tens are fun. Here's what I liked and hated from the literary world in this past year.

10. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Obviously I'm not the first to appreciate this one. Does it deserve to be at the bottom of this list though? No, not really. There's no excuse for that but it's staying.

9. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Is it non-fiction or fiction? Who cares. This man is brilliant.

8. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The White Whale! Amazing man book with tons of metaphors that I never got couched in its encyclopedia of all things whale hunting.

7. Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
Man must act on principle instead of on impulse. But has South Africa come to this yet? Coetzee explores what makes man different from animal, aging, and the political climate of his homeland. See the movie too.

6. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Brilliant stuff, probably even better in its original language.

5. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
Plot-less but so good.

4. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters by J.D. Salinger
I omitted Seymour's part of this book because I didn't want to penalize this story, maybe my Salinger favorite, from being included.

3. American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Maybe the best prose of all year. Effortless, smart and natural.

2. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
Sorry, this was the best prose of all. This would have been number one but it gets distracted a little in the middle. Its retaining of number 2, though shows how strong the rest is. Give me more Roth!

1. All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
This man leaves me speechless.

Best Short Story Collections:
1. Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger
2. Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver
3. In the Garden of the North American Martyrs by Tobias Wolff

Best Non-fiction:
1. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Don Miller
2. The Longest Trip Home by John Grogan
3. Superfreakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

Dishonorable Mention:
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
To Hate Like This is To Be Happy Forever by Will Blythe
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
Marry Me by John Updike

Superfreakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

Sam posted earlier this year on this book's predecessor and it seemed like he wasn't too thrilled with it. I thought the first book was awesome and really interesting. This book is more of the same but not quite as interesting. They didn't pull out that many original correlations as they did before and some sections were less relevant. It's still a good read and written very well, though, and the first part on the economics of prostitution is intriguing.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Don Miller

Donald Miller's real good. Not liked by the entire Christian circle, but you can't argue that his thoughts are thought provoking. In this book, he asks why do some lives make sense and others don't? If your life was a movie would anybody make it to the end? He challenges us to be bold and accept different stuff. If we keep trying to reach the comfortable and live the comfortable life then our deaths will never come "too soon". With lots of funny episodes throughout, this book works and is highly readable.

Rabbit Run by John Updike

Rabbit Angstrom was a hometown hero but now he's slipped into a mundane job with a wife whom he's doesn't truly love and a life that doesn't seem worth it. So he runs. And that's the book and it's really good and some of the most harmonious and poetic uses of the English language for prose can be found in here. Small plot, but lots to feast on.

The Wild Things by Dave Eggers

It goes without saying that we all loved this book as kids and the fact that there is a movie just made us giddy with nostalgia. I really only read this novel though because Dave Eggers wrote it. But I can’t say he did a good job with it. There is much more to the story obviously than we gleaned from the short children’s story, such as Max’s parents are divorced and somewhat distracted, and his sister is in her teenage bitchy years. Wanting to escape from this, Max sails (for years) to the place where the wild things are. Max announces that he is their king and is there to solve their problem with the chattering noise they hear underground. Good start but then this conflict with the monster below is never developed. It seems that the worst thing Max is there to end is boredom. The enact a pretend war, where Eggers just looks to entertain his young audience by talking about how the wild things gnawed on each others’ arms and pulled up chunks of the earth with lava on it—simply put, silly stuff. They then decide to build a fort, taking up the last fifth of the book. This book was obviously suited to a generation much younger than me but I thought it would still follow the basic principles of a tale. In my opinion, it would have been much better had Max come to the place where the wild things are and helped them defeat something pretty much harmless, like the dark, and then left to go back home, not because he had to but because he was simply getting hungry and had to be home for dinner. That’s what I imagined the story to be anyway.

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

This man is nothing short of a genius and understands much more things about life and the world than anyone I can think of. I read this epistolary work a few years ago and loved it so much that I had to read it again. Actually that’s not the entirety of my motivation for rereading this—there’s a lot of thick stuff in there that I only unlocked during the second go round. Who knows what will happen on my third.

This book is a collection of short letters written under the guise of a senior devil adviser to a young tempter who is trying to turn a man morally corrupt. Basically, Wormwood is the bad devil that resides above one of your shoulders and Screwtape is writing letters to him advising him on how best to conduct business. The book is brilliant in how it forces you to rethink what is actually wrong and how easy it is to fall into that. More important though, it reveals a lot about the theology and “the Enemy”. One of my favorite books.

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

Pretty much more of the same with this book. It came out before Engulfed. After reading it, I think the best thing about Sedaris is his dad. He’s a real character.

When You are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

I initially bought this book for my host mom for her birthday but due to a very sad and estranged relationship with her husband, my host dad, who did not give her a present, I decided I would stay out of things and not give her anything as well. So I kept and I read it. My past history with David Sedaris, who writes regularly for The New Yorker, has been off and on. My first impression of him was that he was not a very good writer but he did have a unique ability to turn an everyday, mundane situation into an enjoyable read. His most recent New Yorker appearance though was a stark improvement in his writing and what actually made me decide that my host mom might like him. This book is nowhere near genius but Sedaris’ candor is somewhat absorbing. He’s super gay and kinda flaunts his partner throughout the book but if you can get past that then the book will, in the least, entertain you, which I think is all it really tries to achieve.

The Discomfort Zone by Jonathan Franzen

I particularly like memoirs more than autobiographies because they usually only include the most compelling parts of one’s life rather than try to include every detail. Yet there is still usually a constant theme throughout, something cohesive that binds all the stories and achieves something more than just random events strung together. I don’t really remember that happening in this book. I remember him talking about his hot German teacher on one page and then his fixation with birds on the next. The writing is infinitely more readable, though, than it was in The Corrections because it came out smoother and more natural, which is a benefit of writing a memoir—you don’t have to try too hard. On the other hand, though, Franzen took too many liberties with this and, to me at least, the book came out as a half effort.

A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor

Kurt Vonnegut once wrote a list of 8 rules for writing short stories. He ended the list by saying that Flannery O'Connor broke all of them except the first ("Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.").
He clearly meant this as a compliment, and he was right on. How she wrote the stories in this collection and made them as good as they are just doesn't add up. Another rule on Vonnegut's list is to "give the reader at least one character he or she can root for," and it is the one she most consistently breaks. The characters with whom one identifies (other than a child or two) are usually just the least despicable.
All the same, Vonnegut was right to say that she never breaks the first rule. Every story in this collection is stunning, haunting, and impossible to ignore. The title story might be one of my favorites ever. In fact, The River might be another.
One thing O'Connor does is introduce you to a character who is ruminating on his or her (usually her) annoyance with another character, suggesting to the reader that the object of the rumination likely has a deeper, more justified, and more profound resentment or even hatred for the one ruminating. This is an interesting motif, but it hardly accounts for the excellence of these stories in the face of such unlikable characters. But the excellence is undeniable.
So then: what is it that makes these stories so great? Honestly, I couldn't say.

Independence Day by Richard Ford

A successful practice of my middle life, a time I think of as the Existence Period, has been to ignore much of what I don’t like or that seems worrisome and embroiling, and then usually see it go away.

Frank Bascombe certainly deserves a place among the best characters in literary history. The simpler he tries to make life by idling his time from one insignificant moment to the next, the more complex it becomes. However, this book being written in the first-person, it became a very tough read for me. Not really in the sense that the passages were too intense and beyond grasping; on the contrary, Ford’s style is straightforward and strays far from the abstract. But each chapter seemed more mundane than the last. I realize that this is the whole idea for the book and its relation to reality, but the execution was incredibly boring and, at times, insufferable…

My host family wants to play cards now so I guess that’s about it.

Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth

This book of one novella, the title’s namesake, and five short stories, was Roth’s first; published when he was only 26. And you can tell. The smooth, extremely lucid and comfortable prose that I found in The Plot Against America and American Pastoral was absent and the story was begging for a point. At multiple points, it seemed like Roth would drone into useless scenes and rely on wit to pull him through, suggesting that he did not know exactly where to take the novella next (perhaps this is why it is a novella instead of a novel). At the end of each paragraph it seemed that Roth was gasping for air. For young, aspiring writers, I think this, along with trying to be excessively witty and eloquent, is a result of trying to imitate the authors who inspired them to write in the first place. What happens though is very unnatural and ungainly and I’d say a great laugh to the author many years later when they have so much more control of the page. However, that being said, the main problem may be that this book is about Jewish identity—particularly at the stage in life where your identity is most confusing—and I’m simply a goy.

I do want to point out though that the surface-level parallels between this novella and The Mysteries of Pittsburgh are striking. Both main characters are in their early twenties, both are socially awkward, they both work at the library at their college, both meet and begin sexual relations with girls during the course of the book, and both have unusual family lives. Both books take place during the summer and were the first projects for both of the now famous authors.

The short stories that followed Goodbye Columbus were a huge pickup. I think one was terrible, the rest were really good and one—Defender of the Faith—was incredible. If you can find it on the internet (it appeared initially in The New Yorker) then I highly recommend reading it. My overall suggestion, though, is to start with another Roth book.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Just finished re-reading this--I'm going for it--masterpiece. Even better this time. Some parts I didn't remember that are amazing:

-The man shooting someone with a flare gun.
-The man's memory about his father and his father's friends unearthing a writhing mass of snakes and setting them on fire.

That's all I have. What a book.

(Movie coming out Nov. 25, but unfortunately not until March in New Zealand)

Light in August by William Faulkner

I took what was supposed to be a brief break from my strict regimen of short stories to read this. However, this sucker (along with the weird hours I work) bogged me down for something like a month, maybe it was more.
Faulkner was a genius. No passable argument I can imagine could persuade me otherwise. However, this book (which is consistently ranked among his best) did not really do it for me. It was too long for one thing, and a lot of the metaphysical passages were just kind of banal and self-indulgent.
Don't get me wrong. There are some really great, really astonishing parts to this book. But overall, it's just weighty and slow. I felt buried by it. The Sound and the Fury is a far superior work (and I hear its greatness is multiplied a hundredfold when followed by Absalom! Absalom!), and As I Lay Dying is one of the best novels I've ever read.
In these latter two, the metaphysics are even more present than they are in the book in question. The difference is that the musings in As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury ring true and knock you out, instead of just piling it on.
I think that some of this may be due simply to structure and point of view. The Sound and the Fury is broken up into four parts, all in first person, and As I Lay Dying is made up of several chapters, once again all in first person and from the point of view of characters, but this time shifting around between all the major characters and some of the minor ones. Light in August is in a weird cousin of third-person omniscient: the narrative voice simply cannot make up its mind whether or not it is inside the heads of the characters. It tells you exactly what they ARE thinking sometimes, other times what they MAY be thinking, and still other times what they are APPARENTLY thinking. I think that something like this could conceivably work if there were a purpose to it, but the narrator's level of character access changes so much and so suddenly that it feels completely indiscriminate, like a movie made up entirely of jump cuts, aerial shots, and close-ups: interesting for a while, then completely insufferable.
This odd narrator talks a lot about the difference between knowledge and memory. Some of this is very cool, and may justify some of the narrative jumble. But after a while the knowledge and memory passages get a bit dreary, and the novel's structure goes down with the ship.

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

Remember when I said that Roth was the best living American author? McCarthy knows I shouldn’t have said that. The proof is in this book. Right on page 59. “I dont see how you can say somebody is just flat out the best.” The man must be watching me. And that scares the crap out of me knowing all the sheer terror he arouses in me just reading his words. He creates a lot of black-souled characters (e.g. Chigurh from No Country; The Judge from Blood Meridian) who really curdle your blood or else good people who experience truly horrifying things (The Road), which curdles your blood as well. He’s good at that. He’s also good at other things: winning awards, being reclusive, slouching during an interview (suck on that body language, OPRAH), and not graduating from the University of Tennessee.

But this book, let’s talk about this book. Teenage cowhands, John Grady Cole and Lacy Rawlins decide to venture out on their own and cross the border into Mexico to find work at a hacienda. John Grady starts fancying the owner’s daughter, and although I haven’t seen the movie, I think the movie really romanticizes this relationship, but in the book, it’s not the biggest part of the plot but rather just one aspect. John Grady and Rawlins eventually have to part ways and it is, in a word, heartbreaking. John Grady then finds himself in a Mexican prison and this is where classic McCarthy shows himself and we see the horrible measures John Grady has to take to exonerate himself by force.

One of the many things I liked so much about The Road was the deep and caring filial affection the man showed for the boy. Given the circumstances, I think it was a father-son relationship at its best with the man showing a hardy resolve and not expecting his son to be any older than he was. Without being cloying, McCarthy makes John Grady and Rawlins’ friendship much of the same and it is fun to see them tackle difficult situations, especially as young men, together.

The writing is also incredible. It’s so minimalist and again reminded me of Carver of the west, although McCarthy does take more liberties with his talent and will occasionally type up long descriptive sentences that are usually breathtaking. I highly recommend this book to anybody and I stress anybody because I can’t picture anybody not liking it. It’s amazing and the best part is that it’s the first book of the Border Trilogy so there’s plenty more gold to mine.

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

Somewhere out there is a true and living prophet of destruction and I dont want to confront him. I know he’s real. I have seen his work. I walked in front of those eyes once. I wont do it again. I wont push my chips forward and stand up and go out to meet him.

You might recognize some of the quote above from the beginning of the awesome movie for this book. Tommy Lee Jones narrates a shortened and slightly modified version of the start of the book at the start of the movie. Interspersed throughout the book are other ruminations like this one by one of the three main characters, Bell, the sheriff, who realizes more and more that times are changing and the bad guys are getting badder. That’s the clear theme that gets acknowledged much more in the book than the movie. Both of these works are beautiful pieces in their own fields, but I think seeing the movie first really handicaps the book. Going through each of the scenes in the book, I already had images in my mind from the movie, and I think this precludes one from fully enjoying a book. Conceiving your own images from reading a book is a lot of the fun.

But this book is still really good in its own right. It’s notorious for being a quick read but I found that I had to slow down my pace because McCarthy could be real vague at times and lose you if you weren’t careful. But this minimalist style is what makes him so great. He reminds me a lot of Carver in this book, and I’m not sure if that comparison has been made a lot by literary critics or not at all but this kept recurring to me. I do know, though, thanks to Jon, that McCarthy is considered the successor to Faulkner, but I can’t speak to that because I’ve yet to read him. I really like how McCarthy will make his characters have some pretty deep conversations but using simple, colloquial language that’s true to their personalities. These discussions can range from the nature of life to how God works to what a girl really wants. And they’re so good.

The movie was a faithful adaptation save for one character being condensed in her role. Chigurh comes across as much darker and more ruthless in the book. Also, all of the funny parts in the movie came from the genius of McCarthy, who apparently has a good sense of humor. A lot of the dialogue in the movie comes verbatim from the book. Cormac’s the man.

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth

And I couldn’t just go and sign one out from the playground back of the school unless we were going to use it right there, so what I did—I who’d not stolen anything so far other than some change from my parents’ pockets—what I did without a moment’s hesitation was to stroll down Kerr avenue to where there were one-family houses with front and back lawns and case every driveway until I saw what I was after—a football to steal, a real leather Wilson football, scuffed from the pavement, with worn leather lacing and a bladder you inflated, that some kid with money had left unattended. I tucked it under my arm and tuck off, tearing all the way up the hill to Summit Avenue as if I were returning a kickoff for old Notre Dame.

Mmm… Philip Roth. I love Philip Roth. Just looking at that cover image makes me froth with joy. The Plot Against America. How corny is that? If somebody told me they were reading a book called this, I’d think, Oh you read those types of books. But then below the title is the bold, almost protruding, ROTH—a freaking monosyllabic force—and then you know this book is about to punch you in the stomach. If you’ve read the novel you’ll know that that actually doesn’t make any sense and I don’t know where all this worthless rambling is coming from but “I already typed it so it’s staying.”

In the book, Charles Lindbergh, aviation hero, is elected President in 1940 instead of FDR. Lindbergh ran on a “keep America out of the European war” platform, and, when he won, scared the crap out of American Jews for it appeared that he was an Anti-Semite, albeit much more subtler than Hitler. This is all set up in the beginning of the book and it’s extremely interesting and then we are introduced to the Roth family (the fictional version), who are the microcosm of all Jewish families in America at the time, and eventually a little civil war breaks out in the home. The first third of the book is absolutely incredible. I really can’t understate how much I liked it. The rest is still good but is more frantic. A lot more people involved in the “plot” are introduced and Roth seems to really be tying up all the loose ends of his mastermind hypothetical history and I think this makes the book less tragic. But, like I said, it’s still really good; it’s just that the first hundred twenty some pages are especially amazing.

The writing, of course, is top shelf. Roth’s command of his story is beautiful. It’s so incisive and sharp that the words seem to exist on their own, without a creator, and that, my friends, is the pinnacle of good writing. It reads so effortlessly and you can tell that this is a mature author writing at his most comfortable. I think the best word to describe the writing is lucid. It’s definitely the most clear and articulate stuff I’ve read this year.

This and American Pastoral make me want to scream high above the mountaintops: Philip Roth is the best living author publishing in the English language. Now you might say, “But Zach, how can you make such a bold proclamation unless you’ve read every book by every author?” And after shoving my groin in your face, I would probably say, first of all, What have YOU read? and second, the proof is in the pudding—once you’ve tasted the best, you know it can’t be topped. “But Zaaccchhhh.” “But Zach nothing, Roth cannot and will not be beat. It’s gotta be either him or McCarthy… Mary McCarthy that is.” (I’m obviously kidding. I always see her books beside Cormac’s and although she’s renowned she’ll always be the lesser McCarthy.)

Seriously, folks, I really recommend this. You might try American Pastoral first but either way you’re winning the lottery.

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon

On the heels of the last sentence of my last post, I decided to read something lighter and fun. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh was just that—a real feel good story—while still possessing some serious matters. It takes place entirely in the summer, between school years for the main character Arthur. Arthur is pretty typical for his age—callow and living solely for the moment. He has a father whose line of work is incredibly dubious, yet never fully explained, a best friend, also weirdly named Arthur (I guess Chabon really likes that particular name and also American cities—hence the title and another B character named Cleveland), and he picks up a sort-of girlfriend, named Phlox, during the book.

In a nutshell, the book is all about growing up and growing into yourself. Arthur eventually succumbs to his best friend’s sexual advances even after starting to date Phlox and he can’t ever seem to figure out which flavor of ice cream he really likes. His relationship with his father is also intriguing. His father seems sincere in wanting to care for Arthur but never really lets him get too close because of his career; maybe to protect his son but maybe not. Consequently, Arthur knows father but he doesn’t really know him.

So yes, this book was fun and easy to relate to (apparently there's a film adaptation as well). The writing is sharp and witty and especially impressive considering it was written when Chabon was only 24. He’s also a pretty good friend of Franzen’s and I think they are considered among the top of American letters for their generation. The title is pretty gay, but take this book to the beach and I think you'll like it.

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

On the surface level, The Corrections appears pretty commonplace and maybe even boring to some. It is the story of the Lamberts, Alfred and Enid, both elderly, and their three full-grown children. The book undertakes a big scope looking into the individual stories of each of the five members of the Lambert family, each possessing different sets of problems. Alfred is incorrigibly obstinate and suffers from Parkinson’s disease. Enid is, in a word, delusional, disbelieving anything bad can happen and is dead set on a fairy tale ending, which in this life is having the whole family together for one last Christmas. Gary is a successful broker but whose marriage is a daily battlefield. Chip, a former university professor has fled the country caught up in a scheme that defrauds American investors. And Denise is a coveted restaurant cook who struggles with her sexuality.

So there’s the plot. I liked this book but didn’t really love it. Each different part was interesting enough but when the book culminated with the last Christmas and everybody present, it didn’t equal the whole I was waiting for. Moreover, Franzen, at least in this book, has such an ostentatious way of writing that was annoying and hardly readable at times. It seemed as if he was trying to be too witty, too smart, and too clever with his phrasing, and the result were sentences and words that appeared forced. Sometimes Franzen’s turgidity could ramble on for a quarter of a page.

Still, many people love this book, and like I said, I didn’t hate it. At about a fourth in, I actually thought it was gonna end as a terrific book. Most people, I think though, will either love it or hate it. Which, at 650 pages, makes it a big risk to even begin reading. My suggestion: read it anyway. No matter what side you take, this book will engender much more perspective than any light read.

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

I will endeavor to remember what I can (under protest), and to write what I can (also under protest); and what I can’t remember and can’t write, Louis (his butler) must remember, and write for me. He is an ass, and I am an invalid: and we are likely to make all sorts of mistakes between us. How humiliating!

The above is a pretty sweet quote from the funniest of the book’s dozen different narrators. This one’s name is Mr. Fairlie and he really is an invalid, a very sarcastic, hilarious one that induces literal lol’s, so I’m guessing Louis really is an ass as well. But like I said this book is told through the eyes of its many different characters, but probably not in the interesting way you’re thinking, which is many people giving their perspective on one single situation. (Something akin to a very funny story concocted in sophomore English with Mr. Williams… “I passed by the window completely unnoticed.”… “I definitely just saw a man pass by the window.”) It’s more like the story being told by one character and then another character picking up the chain exactly where it was dropped. So as you can see this allows ol’ Wilkie get heavy in the plot all the while using the first person and different voices, which had to be fun, because, at one point, he got to write as an invalid.


This book is a solid archetype of the Victorian age, so you can imagine its proper prose and old words, but overall it’s beautifully written. The main kicker though is the plot, which was the main reason I picked up this handsome copy from a used bookshop. It’s loaded with twists and turns and gets a little complicated, attesting to how brilliantly it was orchestrated. That’s the main thing going for this thriller, so I can recommend this book if you’re into that, although it is a bit daunting at 650 pages.

What’s also kind of peculiar is that the text is subtly misogynistic, but never too offending (but who am I to say?), and actually pretty funny. The examples are mostly just one-line snippets and there were some really good ones in the first of the book but I only started dog-earing the pages about halfway through. Anyway, here’s one example:

“It holds with animals, it holds with children, and it holds with women, who are nothing but children grown up.”

I should add that while sentences like this are riddled throughout the book, Collins does make one of his female characters very strong, independent and sharp.

Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver

I started reading this when I first got to New Zealand and stored it in my host family’s living room for lonely minutes. A story here, a story there… and now, unfortunately, I’ve come to the end. Jon has covered Raymond Carver pretty thoroughly so I won’t restate our love for this man all over again but I guess I will offer a few thoughts.

I liked Jon’s metaphor on Carver’s writing and houses, and building on this (pun definitely intended!!!), there would be nothing in Mr. Carver’s house just because it looks pretty. While writers like Nabokov and Updike can go into long, beautifully descriptive paragraphs, Carver only gives us what is necessary to know. What he’s got inside his simple post and beam house may not drop your jaw, but it’s all working, all practical, and part of the plan. There’s nothing fancy here, folks, but you will indeed feel very comfortable.

What I also like so much about Carver, and I could probably think of a million sentences that start this way, is that it doesn’t even seem like he’s trying. While many authors draw up elaborate plots or explosive climaxes, Carver says, No, I think I’ll just write about a man going over to dinner at his coworker’s. And that’s it. And he gets us with that. And it’s brilliant because it’s a hyper-realistic portrait of ourselves. The light turns on, there is some minute action, and then the light turns off. Doesn’t get any more minimalist than the Carver pen. Now my sentences have become completely fragmentary. I’ll stop there and, keeping with the precedent, furnish this post with a handful of stories that I specially remember (but be it told: they’re all exceptional):

Nobody Said Anything
Fat
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
Fever
Distance
So Much Water So Close To Home
Cathedral
A Small, Good Thing
Menudo
Elephant

One more thing: I include this particular cover image not for the sake of variance but because this is what my old copy looks like and it is just ghastly hideous. Without a doubt the fugliest looking book on my shelf yet one of the most cherished.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

So he’s got one trick where, when the frisbee’s coming, he’ll just lay down on his stomach for as long as he can, and then, at the last possible moment, he’ll stand up and then . . . take a few steps and go catch the Frisbee. That’s it. It’s a pretty stupid f@*$ing trick, right?

This book is cool. Vernacularly speaking, it’s quite hip and Dave seems like a pretty cool guy. But think his memoir of sorts comes up short, way short. I like how he doesn’t try to start at the first of his life and bore us with all that David Copperfield crap (Can a brother get an amen for that Holden Caulfield reference?), so I have no problem with him just throwing us in the middle of something. That something was the death of his parents as he described how they, the mother slowly and the father unexpectedly, came to the end. Dave’s (I honestly think he’d prefer I use his first name) life changes as he now, while still in college, decides to raise his 10-year-old brother basically on his own, with some help from his sister. That’s more or less the plot. Of course there are still other sideline happenings such as his work with Might magazine and his tryout for The Real World, the boring transcript of which is almost exactly 1/8th of the 400+ page book.

First of all, there is definite talent in this writing and really the only thing keeping all else afloat at times. But through these anecdotes, I kept asking myself, What’s the point? And this usually means that what’s happening is not entertaining or the person is not interesting enough. This is a problem! I like how he doesn’t try to fill in all the blanks in this memoir by trying to connect each event to the next to make it all linear, but, ironically, the events just aren’t that great themselves. Most of them entail a situation where Dave panics a little bit in a funny way—usually by going, “Oh, f$%*. God. Jesus Christ.” He’s never serious and always reveals the humorous side but I’m guessing most people found this funnier than I did. It was funny at times but, let’s be real, Maddox of thebestpageintheuniverse.com is much better at meandering.

I bet if you’ve read this that you don’t remember any of the characters’ names because there not developed all that well. There are lots of death related situations—friend on the verge of suicide, friend put in a coma, and another actually dies, I forget how—which is all good and fine to write about but at least make us care about that person so we can care about whether they live or not. I dunno. Dave the character is likeable, and Dave the writer is good and kinda funny—I like the quote I inserted—but there wasn’t much happening for me in this book. I thought the ending was pretty brilliant but it really only amounted to hanging a pretty picture in an empty room.

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee

Hmm… this book has a lot going for it. It’s short, fast-paced, relaxed (yes, both), fun, and profound. David, a university professor in Cape Town, South Africa(?) and two-time divorcée, begins an affair with one of his female students and it isn’t long before the school finds out and starts hashing out how to deal with the situation. This process is actually pretty hilarious as the deans want David to give a genuine apology but he can’t bring himself to do it. Obviously disturbed by this, the administration decides to discontinue his term at the college so he moves in with his daughter, who shelters homeless dogs, in a rural area. They are soon the victims of a robbery and something more serious. The plot thickens…I just realized that it’s pretty hard to talk about this book without giving too much away, but it as at this point that we see how people act in fear and how senseless it can make us. Despite his disgrace at the first of the novel (and it happens again later on) and his so what perspective on it, David becomes more of the voice of reason. Yet we also get interesting ways of looking at situations in other characters.

I think this book also says a lot about the political landscape of Africa, that of which I know nearly nil about. One of my friends, though, was studying abroad in Botswana and one night he and his friends were walking down the street when a car advertently started coming right for them. My friend didn’t get run over but somehow (I’m not exactly sure) he gashed up his head and was bleeding pretty profusely. His friends had a cell phone but couldn’t speak the native language so they looked at a bystander and motioned for him to use their phone to call the hospital. So they handed him the phone and he ran off with it, stealing it while my friend lay bleeding in the street. This reveals just how cutthroat modern day Africa can still be. And I suspect this is a big motif of this book, though I can’t speak in depth about it.

I will say that Coetzee (phonetically: coo-tsee-uh) has an utterly smooth voice. Beautiful sentences without being showy or complicated at all. The plot is direct and I really like how he doesn’t muck around. For instance, there was both the meeting of the student and the undressing of the student within 20 pages. He also puts in these rhetorical questions in his writing that are absolutely spot-on to the situation. I wish I could extract one for you as an example but I don’t have my copy of the book handy so you’re just gonna have to read it. Love it, though—coming across these rhetorical questions was one of my favorite things about reading this novel. I recommend it. It’s a quick read and, even though serious, it’s quite fun. If my word isn’t enough, this book was the recipient of the 1999 Booker Prize and Coetzee won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003. You might find it hard to see where everything is going in the beginning and maybe even through the middle, but see it to the end. It feels so complete with the last paragraph and the more I think about this book, the more I like it. And I really like thinking that he didn’t put any effort at all into this title. But maybe he did. I dunno. It’s a good one either way.

Just found out that there is a 2008 film adaptation of this starring John Malkovich and holy freaking crap, that's awesome. It also won the International Film Critics' Award.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues.

So reads the back of this book, and it is this crime that Truman Capote painstakingly reconstructs to make a “nonfiction novel.” The result is pretty much a masterpiece in my opinion. It’s compulsively readable, in part because it is a true story but largely in how it is presented. Leading up to the murder and aftermath, Capote weaves the narrative of the Clutter family and the people of Holcomb with that of the killers, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, making an overwhelmingly suspenseful and harrowing account. You can tell that Capote engulfed himself in these murders and investigation by how tight-fitting his research was—although it’s a 350-page book that concerns itself mainly with an event that took place in a couple hours, the information and interviews never seem tangential or boring. Furthermore, although Capote became good friends with people involved in this murder—friends of the family, detectives, and even the killers—his reporting is entirely objective and it never occurred to me that there was any hint of his opinion inserted or some kind of spin put on the tale. And that is why I think this book has stood the test of time, because it reads like a novel, except it actually happened.

A note on Capote’s writing: it is vivid throughout and usually lucid, but I felt at times that he was trying to pack too much information into one sentence using multiple commas and whatnot. So at first I had to go back and reread a few times to make sure I got everything but eventually the style proves effective. If you begin to read the first few pages of this book then I highly doubt you’ll be able to not finish it. This is one of those books is seriously hard to put down. Moreover, unlike most true-crime books, this one is addicting without really being a “perfect murder” or one that involves a long or ingenious investigation. The main draw is the motives. What makes two guys brutally murder a whole family whom they don’t even know? Especially considering the year being 1959 and the place being probably smaller than Newland. However, despite how ruthless these killers were, don’t be surprised if you feel empathy for them at the end. It’s genius.

I watched two movies related to this book as well, with one being the actual film adaption that came out right after the book and the other being a story on the story—how the town of Holcomb wrapped its arms around flamboyant Capote while he researched the crime. The former is black and white and a pretty terrible adaption as far as they go. It was faithful and all but not terrifying in the least. The book actually chilled the blood much more, which I think is harder to do in writing than in movies. The two actors who played the killers were spot-on to what I envisioned them, but I would recommend just going ahead and skipping this outdated movie altogether. Capote, the other movie, which came out just a few years ago, however, gives brilliant insight on Capote, the man, and how involved he was in this work. It took over 5 years to complete, partly because Capote knew how good this book could be and didn’t want to miss his chance to open up a new territory of literature but also because the legal proceedings of the killers and their eventual death sentence took long to carry out with appeals, brought about by Capote himself, and whatnot. Describing this process does get a bit hairy and drawn out in the last section of the book, especially considering the main point of the book has nothing to do with it, but eventually it does lead to the inevitable hangings of Smith and Hickock. A big part of the movie is about the relationship Capote concocted with these killers and although he tries to convince others and even himself that he deeply cares about them as people, it’s clear that he only sees them as complicated puzzles that need to be pieced together. Capote is portrayed as the life of the party and is absorbed entirely within himself who feigns modesty but really knows the power of his personality and his talent. Yet, save his style of writing, none of Capote comes out in In Cold Blood. He, himself, became a huge part of this true story but he is able to forget that and instead chronicle everything like a very smart fly on the wall. That is what makes this a breathtaking work and it is easier to appreciate this fact when you read the book and watch Capote. There is also a featurette on the DVD that has some film of the real Truman Capote that is further insightful. It also reveals that Philip Seymour Hoffman’s impersonation is bulls eye.

According to the last few moments of the movie, In Cold Blood made Truman Capote the most famous writer in America at the time and after completing it, he was never able to finish another book; perhaps daunted by the expectation of equaling it, let alone topping it. Can’t blame the man—this is a magnum opus.

Marry Me by John Updike

Breath left her; she felt the skin of her face as one wall of a sealed chamber bounded by the brown ledge holding the pennies, the low violet clouds against which the elm’s twigs showed pale, the rectangle of glass slashed by raindrops. Jerry’s voice called, ‘Hey?’

As you can see from the quote above, John Updike rather has a way with words and can easily turn even descriptions of mundane, everyday activities into beautiful paragraphs that scream to be excerpted and put into posts like this. So it is really a crapshoot in an Updike novel (Confession: I’ve actually only read this one, but it’s a safe presumption) to find passages like the one above and the one from Jon’s The Music School review. He certainly has a superior command of the English language and, as Jon noted, intricate precision is the adorned result. However, as Jon noted as well, Updike was once described as a major stylist and a minor novelist, and sadly that seems to fit the bill for this book.

It has a brilliant start as we are introduced to Jerry and Sally, who are in love, but goshdarnit, they also happen to be married to other people. Their affair takes a typical path, and Sally seems to be more invested in it while Jerry still appears to love his wife, Ruth, as well. But then the pair decides to let the cat out of the bag and tell Ruth but leave Richard, Sally’s husband, in the dark. This is where the book becomes quixotic and the characters much less likable. The nature of the divorce conversation is one of small talk over coffee yet it doesn’t lack indifference. It’s hard to explain this part and perhaps this is to show just how capricious our hearts can be; but it still all seems very unlikely that something of this consequence could be talked of lightly while both parties still say they love each other. For instance, Jerry in one moment will be talking candidly and genuinely to Ruth of his true love for Sally, but in a disrespectful way, to which Ruth, in rightful rage, will tell him to get out. The next moment Jerry will kiss his wife after telling her of his feelings for another woman and his wife will let him pathetically kiss her a second time even though she couldn’t be angrier. Behaviors in this book weren’t consistent with my views of reality. Again, perhaps Updike was intent on showing how unpredictable our hearts can be but on the surface level the plot was weak—the idea is there but its execution proves not very gripping. Furthermore the four characters couldn’t be more craven, arbitrary cowards. On a brighter note, it had a nice ending and I think the last chapter was exceptional—a perfectly tied bow on a perfectly wrapped package despite there being, at least for me, not much inside.

Regardless of my qualms with the plot, I can’t say I didn’t like this book. Even with not much substance, Updike’s writing can carry any moment and it is a pleasure to read. If you find writing like this, writing that’s prose begging to be poetry, then look no further than Mr. Updike; however, I can easily see how flowery sentences can be excessive to some people so be warned. I’m looking forward to reading the Rabbit books sometime soon, which aren’t supposed to have much plot, but this isn’t usually a problem for me. I just like for the characters to not be, without explanation, completely irrational, and all of Updike’s characters I’ve encountered (in his short stories) have been rational in their context until this book. I’ll give it a 6.5 of 10.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

I took somewhat of a hiatus from reading because I was throwing back about 3 or 4 hundred pages a week, which was fun, but, alas, my mind has limitations and was ready to implode at that pace. So I said, Alright mate (talking to my wearied mind here), I’ll let you have your break, but when we get back I’m gonna hit you with a off-putting story about a brother-sister romance and the hermaphrodite narrator it spawned two generations later. So that brings us to where we are now, Middlesex. Why would anybody want to read such a weird story? I guess many people ask the same question about Lolita, but in that we find that Nabokov not only pulls off a readable and enjoyable story about a pedophile, he somehow makes us sympathize with ol’ Humbert Humbert and his perversity as well. Middlesex is sort of the same way. But I wouldn’t say necessarily in the sense that you feel sorry for the main character, Cal, but more in that he is part of an incredible story.

For those who haven’t read any blurbs on this Pulitzer Prize-winning work, I will briefly summarize it. The story is told in first-person as Cal traces back the roots of his unfortunate genes to the attraction of his grandparents, who were lovers, but also siblings, and thus very disgusting. He tells the story of their romance in Greece and then their emigration in the 1930’s to Detroit, where they dispose of their identities as brother and sister and start anew as husband and wife. They have sex a couple times, probably more, and then out come two children, without defects, who incredulously are not attracted to each other. However, the boy grows up and eventually marries his cousin, and it is out of this wedlock that a girl, Callie, is born. But astute readers will note that Cal is telling this story and it is he that this Callie turns into late into his teens. Cal then narrates his flee from normal life and attempt to start a new one as a boy.

This is obviously a very dumbed-down summation and I actually feel slightly guilty because this book is really good and contains a story that at times felt so real and true that I had to remind myself that it was just a novel. Before I read this book I was a little turned off by the fact that it traces generations before getting to the main point, but now I can safely say that this journey is worth it and even brushes up on your 20th century US history in doing so. When the page finally turns to Cal, about 3/5ths deep, you actually feel a lot more appreciation for him as a character before he has even set eyes on the world. As I said before, Eugenides surrounds the plot with clues that make it all seem like a real account, which I think really boosts its likability in some way.

There is one flaw in the actions of one of the characters that I thought wasn’t really accounted for, but I can’t really divulge it here without giving away too much of the plot. It may be not be too significant for some but it did make me question, Would he really do that? over and over. If you ever read this book, ask me about it. I think that’s all I wanted to say about this book although it’s a little stale on my mind. I do recommend it though, especially in comparison to the other multiple generation spanning, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver

I've prattled on about my love for this man's work enough. This is of course an amazing collection. That should be obvious. I'll just give you some new favorites, in no particular order:

Nobody Said Anything
So Much Water So Close to Home
Errand
Blackbird Pie
Elephant
Intimacy
Menudo
Neighbors
Fat
The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off
What's in Alaska?
Collectors

Guess I'll stop now, or else I'll end up listing almost all the stories.

And Zach has mentioned it before, but check out that gaze. That's a man who saw things.

Short Cuts by Raymond Carver, Stories and Poem Selected and with an Introduction by Robert Altman

First of all, I include the part about film director Robert Altman because the whole reason for the existence of this collection is to gather the stories that inspired the film Short Cuts. I didn't actually read most of the pieces in the Short Cuts book itself, but looked up the list of them and read them in other Carver collections, as I couldn't find a copy of this collection in the library. But I did finally come across the book yesterday, and I read the last story I had left, Tell the Women We're Going, and Altman's introduction.
That whole first paragraph is fairly irrelevant I suppose. No matter. Two of these stories (Vitamins and A Small, Good Thing) I read in Cathedral, about which I have already posted on this blog. If you remember, I was particularly enamored of A Small, Good Thing. I have an admission to make: I didn't actually re-read either of those two stories. I kind of wanted to get all the stories read so I could watch the movie, about which I am very excited. Admittedly, this is not a very healthy attitude with which to read fiction. Oh, well. It is what it is.
I don't know why I keep giving all this personal back story. It's probably pretty boring, but I've already typed it so it's staying. Anyway, all the stories here are very good. And I'm not at all familiar with Carver's poetry, but Lemonade, the only poem in here, is absolutely amazing. I was shocked. Apparently, during his lifetime he was pretty respected as a poet, although that's fallen by the wayside as he has come to be considered one of the best American short story writers ever. Anyway, this book is a great, slim introduction to Carver's work and it provides context if you want to see the film like I want to so much.
It should be mentioned that the film is supposed to be amazing. It's already in the Criterion Collection, 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, and Altman is supposed to be a consistently brilliant director. Of course, none of this really guarantees anything, but it surely makes it likely that the film is good (perhaps some logical cause and effect errors in there, but you know what I mean). I really enjoyed Altman's introduction essay as well. He talked about how he spoke with Tess Gallagher, a poet who was married to Carver (and if I'm not mistaken was his editor at some point), every step of the way through the movie to make sure it would be consistent with Carver's vision.
However, the film, according to Altman and critics, is very much it's own piece of art. That is to say, the film as it is would be great even if the Carver stories didn't exist. You don't have to be a Carver fan or even have read his stories to like the film. Apparently. As I've said, I haven't actually seen it yet. According to Altman, the stories that inspired the film are just that: inspiration. Many liberties are taken with the story lines and characters, names are changed, new characters and story lines invented, and many characters originally from one story find their way into other ones. The cast is huge and amazing. So many great actors. Even Tom Waits is in it! Altman says that each actor brings their own thing and changes the stories in wonderful ways. It sounds like a truly collaborative effort. But Altman, and ultimately Carver, are the forces behind this thing. Supposedly. I haven't seen it.

Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney

"You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge. All might come clear if you could just slip into the bathroom and do a little more Bolivian Marching Powder. Then again, it might not. A small voice inside you insists that this epidemic lack of clarity is a result of too much of that already."

Let me say this first - Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City was not what I was expecting. That's not to say it was bad. It turned out that my initial understanding was wrong and the result was a better novel than I went in thinking it would be.

Critics label McInerney as a member of the 1980's "Literary Brat Pack," but he is so much more versatile than that. Bright Lights, Big City is noted for its use of the second person to describe the New York City cocaine culture of the electric eighties. Strikingly, this gimmick does not detract from the humanity found within the protagonist. Unlike fellow "Brat Packer" Bret Easton Ellis, McInerney doesn't write post-modern from a nihilistic perspective. His characters have flaws, but they also have regrets and desires to become a better people.

Bright Lights, Big City follows the narrator through his job as a fact-checker for a literary magazine. The story borrows heavily from McInerney's own time as a fact-checker at the New Yorker. At night, he goes out to clubs and does cocaine with his best friend. He has his dreams as a writer, but the rejection of his submissions to the magazine's fiction department coupled with the recent separation from his model wife, Amanda, drives him further into his hedonistic lifestyle. At first, the country girl Amanda did not take New York City's nightlife or the modeling career seriously, but the face of the city slowly creeps over and changes both.

Bright Lights, Big City is a quick read. At 180 pages, you can race through it. Over the course of the book, you are going to actually feel for the protagonist or at least acknowledge his inadequacies. While the novel is not what I was initially expecting, I do want to read more by Raymond Carver's understudy, particularly, Brightness Falls and Story of My Life, which is based on the life of Rielle Hunter, with whom Jay McInerney had a brief relationship and would later go on to have an affair with 2008 presidential candidate John Edwards.

Oddly enough, this book is getting remade into a film in 2010 according to IMDB. The novel was inspiration for the film of the same name in 1988 that starred Michael J. Fox, Keifer Sutherland, and Pheobe Cates. It was crazy enough to attempt to make Bret Easton Ellis' short story vignette collection, The Outsiders, earlier this year. I'll hold my opinion, but I don't have huge expectations.

The Music School by John Updike

Do you remember a fragrance girls acquire in autumn? As you walk beside them after school, they tighten their arms about their books and bend their heads forward to give a more flattering attention to your words, and in the little intimate area thus formed, carved into the clear air by an implicit crescent, there is a complex fragrance woven of tobacco, powder, lipstick, rinsed hair, and that perhaps imaginary and certainly elusive scent that wool, whether in the lapels of a jacket or the nap of a sweater, seems to yield when the cloudless fall sky like the blue bell of a vacuum lifts toward itself the glad exhalations of all things. This fragrance, so faint and flirtatious on those afternoon walks through the dry leaves, would be banked a thousandfold and lie heavy as the perfume of a flower shop on the dark slope of the stadium when, Friday nights, we played football in the city.

First of all, that's the smallest clear image of the cover I could find (though it's not the cover of my edition), so keep your comments to yourself. (Zach edit: Cover image has been corrected and author has been warned.)

Up top in italics are the first two sentences of this collection (and currently comprise the entirety of my Favorite Quotes section on Facebook...whatever). Yes, two sentences. Go back and see for yourself. They come from the story In Football Season. The recently departed Updike has always been famous for this type of high-style prose, and he is a master of it. In fact, he has been often criticized for focusing so much on style that it sometimes takes away from plot. Harold Bloom, whom I respect immensely (the man is clearly a genius) but with whom I sometimes disagree, went so far as to call him "a minor novelist with a major style." While I can't speak to his novels, as I've never read any of them, I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed this collection, one of his lesser known. I had been wanting to read an Updike book for a long time, and came upon this one at an amazing book sale. That's why I chose this one as opposed to Trust Me, The Same Door, Pigeon Feathers, or the recently released My Father's Tears and Other Stories.
Let's remember that to be called a major stylist by one of the world's foremost literary critics and theorists is nothing to sneeze at, even being called a minor novelist in the same breath. One thing is for sure: Updike can write a sentence. And in my opinion the man can write a story. I can certainly understand why people say his plots are pretty lightweight. There basically isn't one in In Football Season, as well as The Morning or Leaves. However, I absolutely loved the first and the last of those, and the other wasn't bad. The only story that I truly didn't like was The Indian. It just seemed sort of pointless. But I did read it in the dark in a bed in a dorm room when I was exhausted, so I may have missed a lot.
I read the first three stories of the book while still in school and just recently picked it up and read the rest. Some of my favorites, other than the ones mentioned, are Giving Blood, The Bulgarian Poetess, Harv is Plowing Now, Twin Beds in Rome, and The Christian Roommates. Mr. Updike claims that he never thought of how he wrote as style. Rather, he just wanted to make things perfectly precise. My friends, he does just that. There are so many moments when you'll know exactly what he means and think that you were the only one who saw it that way. Lightweight plots sometimes (but by no means always), but complex characters (Frank Bascombe is sometimes thought of as the new Rabbit Angstrom (who is not a character in any of these stories, but I just thought I'd mention that as it is an Updike character)) and wonderfully rich and precise sentences.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

With a sudden movement she bowed his head and joined her lips to his and he read the meaning of her movements in her frank uplifted eyes. It was too much for him. He closed his eyes, surrendering himself to her, body and mind, conscious of nothing in the world but the dark pressure of her softly parting lips. They pressed upon his brain as upon his lips as though they were the vehicle of a vague speech; and between them he felt an unknown and timid pressure, darker than the swoon of sin, softer than sound or odour.

Wow. Isn’t that beautiful? Great stuff, right? I could feel genius pouring out of my fingertips as I typed that. That passage seems really Nabokovian. (Or maybe Nabokov is Joycian since Joyce came first, but I read Nabokov first, so…) Anyway, I was unfortunately only able to comprehend little of the supposed brilliance in this book but liked it anyway. It is the story of Stephen Dedalus, whom we get to see brief moments in his life from when he was three to when he is in university. The plot gets really interesting when he decides to go to a brothel but then instantly wants to repent after hearing a passionate sermon, one that the reader gets the entire 15 pages of. But it is really good. I didn’t instantly recognize that this was intensely good writing because the text became more like a vortex that just sucked me in and I didn’t even realize how drawn in I actually was until the preacher’s fervor stopped overflowing and the monologue ended. It was really cool, moving stuff that could only be rivaled by the very similar church scene in Moby Dick, albeit that one was much more centered, no doubt, on whales. Though I will add that this block of the book could go either way with its readers—I could just as easily see somebody getting distracted during it. For me, though, I was able to follow it as closely as a shadow.

I was reading this book to gear up for Ulysses but after reading Portrait I don’t really feel more prepared; rather I feel pretty despondent so I’m not sure if I’m ready to undergo that great literary endeavor. I want it to be more enjoyment than torture so I don’t think I’m ready, not yet.

The Sportswriter by Richard Ford

Mid-Marchish, this year: I go into a bookstore with Jon and ask him to pick me out a book to read. He selects about a dozen, narrows it down to three, and lets me decide. The Sportswriter by Richard Ford, an author I had not heard of before, is one of the finalists and looks compelling but I ultimately choose American Pastoral—a decision I would soon not regret. 1.
Maybe a couple days later, possibly a few weeks, I’m in a used bookshop in Winston-Salem with Hunter. As if it is calling me, I randomly come across The Sportswriter. Six bucks? Why not. 2.
I pack for New Zealand and throw in The Sportswriter along with other books. 3.
One month later, Hunter, while amidst Cheever and his “big red book” of short stories, says via e-mail that the story, Reunion, by Cheever, is one of the most beautiful things he’s ever read… Or something to that effect. OK, I decide, I’ll check it out. 4.
I search Reunion and very luckily find a New Yorker fiction podcast where the story is read and discussed by none other than Richard Ford. Hey, I think, that name sounds quite familiar! Was he our 37th or 38th President? 5.
I agree, Reunion is absolute bliss. In the podcast, Ford mentions that the story inspired one of his own stories also called Reunion. I decide to search that as well to see if it’s anything like the other. 6.
Awesome. Ford’s Reunion is completely awesome. One of the best I’d read in a while. I decide to check out more of this Ford guy. 7.
I find another of his stories published in The New Yorker circa 2005. Another fine piece of work. 8.
I rediscover, sitting on my table, The Sportswriter by Ford whom I’ve come to love through the back way despite Jon holding open the front door for me the whole time. I’m massively pumped to read this book. 9.
I READ THE SPORTSWRITER! 10!

That was just a long way of saying that I couldn’t tell you how excited I was to read this book because of how much I liked Ford’s short stories and also because I had this book sitting on my table while I didn’t even know how much I liked the author. I didn’t mean for that list to be 10 points long but it conveniently worked out that way—like it was intentional. Anyway, enough of that.

The book follows a middle-aged, divorced sportswriter, Frank, over the course of a very busy Easter weekend. Briefly, Frank is lost in the world. He used to be a writer, as in a fiction writer, and actually published a well-acclaimed collection of short stories before deciding to jump to sportswriting, although it is clear that he is simply running away from expectations. He had a good life with his ex-wife, who is named only as X, but it still wasn’t complete in some way. It was missing some piece that didn’t make Frank whole and this is evident in the reason why X left him. It is actually no use in trying to describe the plot because it is so inconsequential to how deep and multidimensional the character of Frank is. That is the book—trying to figure Frank out. He is a habitual liar in trivial matters, looking more to please or avoid awkwardness more than anything. Yet what I think is so great is that I can’t feel sorry for Frank. Although I wish he was still with his ex-wife and writing novels and he seems to secretly want that too, Richard Ford always shut the door on sympathy by putting him in a situation where he isn’t very likable. Even though I have some strong opinions on Frank, I can’t do him a quality character analysis (spent way too much time on that introduction list) but what I can do is highly recommend this book. He is a character that, I think, will stay in your mind a while because he is so human and everything that comes with that.

The writing is also top-notch stuff. It’s highly readable in the sense that it flows effortlessly from one line to the next and does so with a very easy vocabulary. I’m quite interested in the sequel, Independence Day, which won the Pulitzer in… 1995?
If you read this book, look out for all the times that Ford describes a woman as having big breasts. I believe every woman’s body he describes (at least 4) is well-chested.

The King of Madison Avenue by Kenneth Roman

“In writing ads, act as you would if you met the individual buyer face to face. Don’t show off. Don’t try to be funny. Don’t try to be clever. Don’t behave eccentrically. Measure ads by salesmen’s standards, not by amusement standards.”

Who is David Ogilvy? Many, including this reader, proclaim him as their main inspiration for entering the advertising field. Why? There are three reasons: 1) Ogilvy’s working philosophy was not the 1960s smoke-filled business pitch as seen in AMC’s Mad Men. He always professed to “sell” the product through detailed feature descriptions and speaking directly to his audience. 2) He interacted and had meaningful relationships with so many assorted major thinkers of the twentieth century that these experiences could be distilled into a damn good film on their own right. 3) The subject of this biography lived nearly 30 years of his life in one of the oldest châteaux in France, Touffou.

David Ogilvy was larger than life and his mixed heritage only accounts for part of his eccentricities. Born on June 23, 1911 in England to a Scottish father and an Irish mother, Ogilvy would eventually attend Oxford on scholarship before eventually dropping out to work numerous jobs in Paris. Finally settling down as a waiter at the elusive Hotel Majestic, Ogilvy learned the art of presentation and preparation. When his successful brother ordered him back to England to help him sell Aga Cooker Stoves. Ogilvy offered free cooking lessons to all housewives who allowed him to demonstrate the stove’s features at their home. He was an instant hit and turned the product into an exclusive status symbol almost overnight in England. Even the Queen wanted one.

Widely considered the most famous automotive ad of all time and Ogilvy's best. The ad was so successful for Rolls-Royce "they don't dare run the ad again for fear of running completely out of stock."

Throughout his career, Ogilvy became known as the odd man out in the world of American advertising when he moved to New York City and opened a small shop. Before Ogilvy, British advertising borrowed heavily from whatever sold in America. Ogilvy’s work consistently proved that the consumer was smart and should be treated as such. He was also one of the first to hire a multi-racial staff. He was also one of the first to decry advertising awards as “distracting” and offered monetary awards to his staff for sales generated over “creativity.”

The man in the Hathaway shirt. His famous eye patch helped to sell more shirts in the ad's initial run than were available.

Kenneth Roman, the former chair and CEO of Ogilvy & Mather (pronounced May-ther), Ogilvy’s ad firm, has created a startling case for his former boss. Ogilvy was a dynamic creature that never held back in expressing his colorful opinions. Ogilvy would tell that you he is only remembered because he “outlived his betters.” Ogilvy is remembered because he was so productive even until his death. He never quite left the public eye or stopped writing.

Early ad for the Aga Cooker featuring Edouard Manet's Luncheon on the Grass. Both were considered controversial when they were first released.

Ogilvy wrote two autobiographies during his lifetime but it is Roman’s that offers the Ogilvy we cherish. There are many parts of Ogilvy’s philosophy that I disagree with, but it is hard to criticize a person that placed as much value on research as he did. Almost nobody bested Ogilvy in any argument and he was self-aware of his genius. Perhaps that is his most admirable quality.

One of Ogilvy's most famous quotes with the Russian dolls that inspired it.

If you are going to read any book on advertising, it should be Ogilvy’s Confessions of an Advertising Man. If you want to read a biography on the man who helped to form much of our contemporary view of core principals of brand image this is your book. Roman was in the best position as a friend and co-worker for so many years to write Ogilvy’s “second opinion” biography. The book is worth a read if only to check out his teen years and the section detailing Ogilvy’s involvement with the OSS during WWII.

Hiroshima by John Hersey

“In a city of two hundred and forty-five thousand, nearly a hundred thousand people had been killed or doomed at one blow; a hundred thousand more were hurt. At least ten thousand of the wounded made their way to the best hospital in town, which was altogether unequal to such a trampling, since it had only six hundred beds, and they had all been occupied. The people in the suffocating crowd inside the hospital wept and cried, for Dr. Sasaki to hear, “Sensei, Doctor!,” and the less seriously wounded came and pulled at his sleeve and begged him to go to the aid of the worse wounded. Tugged here and there in his stockinged feet, bewildered by the numbers, staggered by so much raw flesh, Dr. Sasaki lost all sense of profession and stopped working as a skillful surgeon and a sympathetic man; he became an automaton, mechanically wiping, daubing, winding, wiping, daubing, winding.”

John Hersey may be remembered as one of the forerunners to the New Journalism movement that swept America during the 1960s and 1970s with magazines such as Esquire, Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. Fusing elements of storytelling with cold, hard fact created more compelling works in stories that demanded an element of warmth and elaboration. The cover of my 1989 edition of Hersey’s Hiroshima (1946) boldly states, “Everyone able to read should read it – Saturday Review of Literature.” Frankly, I was sold at the word Hiroshima. It was when I brought the book home and my dad told me how it was required reading at his high school that fully sold me. This book should still be required reading alongside Esther Hautzig’s The Endless Steppe.

The book follows the day the atomic age began on August 6, 1945 through the personal accounts of six different citizens of Hiroshima that survived the blast. These six accounts included (as recounted from the book’s inner jacket):

Miss Toshinki Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just turned her head to chat with the girl at the next desk.

Dr. Masakazu Fujii, a physician, had just sat down to read the paper on the porch of his private hospital.

Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura, a tailor’s widow, was watching a neighbor from her kitchen window.

Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, a German priest, lay on a cot in the mission house reading a Jesuit magazine.

Dr. Terufumi Sasaki, a young surgeon, walked along a hospital corridor with a blood specimen for a Wasserman test.

The Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, pastor of the Hiroshima Methodist Church, was about to unload a cart of clothes at a rich man’s home in the suburbs.

Hersey went to great pains to paint an accurate picture of the horrific events leading directly up to and the days following the explosion over Hiroshima. The Japanese are reclusive when it comes to documenting horrible memories and we should commend the author for getting honest accounts that do not seem doctored or censored. There is no shortage of passages that caused me to grimace or make exclamations aloud.

I read the updated version from the 1980s that includes an extra chapter that details each of the six respondents’ lives in the years following Japan’s recovery. Hersey’s exhausting quest for the truth is not lost in time and the new section fits well with the original text. There are some books in life we are instructed to read no matter what your preference for books is. They might be Huckleberry Finn or Night or even All Quiet on the Western Front. Hiroshima certainly fits into this category. Whether you are knowledgeable about the aftermath of the only atomic weapons used in war or you want to know a bit more from the Japanese perspective this book is for you.

The Breast by Philip Roth

I am a breast. A phenomenon . . . took place within my body . . . and converted me into a mammary gland disconnected from my human form.

Yes, it is true, the main character in this book transforms overnight from a healthy middle-aged man into a 155-pound breast, complete with a 6-inch nipple and all. I picked this up at a secondhand bookshop for a few bucks and it was well worth it. It’s only about 100 pages and can be read entirely on a Sunday afternoon, but in that time Roth, à la Gogol (The Nose) and Kafka (The Metamorphosis) describes what life would be like as a very popular part of the female body. I shouldn’t say much on this book because it is so short and should simply be read instead of any review on it, but I will say that Roth does not hold anything back in his prose. After reading this and American Pastoral and about Portnoy’s Complaint (in which the main character, at one point, masturbates into the core of an apple), I can safely say that there seems to be no subject that embarrasses him as an author. And though at times it seems he may be going out-of-bounds, I don’t think he would put it in unless it was important and part of the story. He has an uncensored mind, but for those who can stand it, the rewards are vast.

The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien

I was a bit more excited coming into this book than I should have been; this probably due to finally watching The Fellowship of the Ring movie and really liking it. So I was pretty engrossed in the story at that point. But then I started reading The Two Towers. And it’s no secret that I wasn’t much for Tolkien’s very descriptive way of writing. Personally, it’s a problem of idea and execution. Not to say that Tolkien did not execute the story of the ring well—certainly history speaks volumes that he did—but that I just don’t really get into orcs and wizardry when it comes to reading 300 (and eventually 1000) pages on them. I think it all sounds fascinating, especially considering the fact that Tolkien was so meticulous in his creation of Middle-earth, but I caught myself constantly losing myself in the text. So as much as I want to like these books, I cannot bring myself to; while Jon, on the other hand, stands just two feet away from me, yet on the other side of the fence, saying that though he wasn’t enthused by LOTR, he cannot bring himself to say that he didn’t like them.

But for me, I think it’s the classic breakup excuse of, “It’s not you, it’s me.” Though when most people say this they are usually lying, I think it may be true in my case. I read in an article recently that fantasy, right behind romance, is the second-best selling genre these days. And that fact is hard to ignore in this age when a love-seeking vampire (Twilight), convertible machinery (Transformers), and fledgling wizard (Harry Potter) are main characters in very popular books and box office rockers. But what book has done more for its genre than LOTR has done for fantasy? I may not be qualified to make that claim but it seems that the answer would be no other book. Naturally, LOTR is the best place to crack that genre and I have found that it is not for me. I think I have found my niche in literary fiction.

But what is there to say specifically about The Two Towers? For starters, I missed the not so polite banter between Gimli and Legolas that was in The Fellowship. In this book they are much closer and more like brothers then enemies. Also, Gandalf confirmed himself as the biggest A-hole wizard in both Middle-earth and our own earth (though no wizards I know). His quick temper actually kinda pissed me off in some parts, I’m not gonna lie.

I watched the movie a few days ago for the first time and really liked it. I think it smartly condensed the history to simply the bare necessities and was easier to follow. It omitted some parts but on the whole was a fairly faithful adaptation. One very noteworthy omission, though (and I’m curious if anybody else caught this), was the end because in the book, Frodo and Sam are lead by Gollum into the spider’s cave where stuff happens and Sam falsely thinks Frodo is dead. Frodo’s body is picked up by orcs and Sam uses the ring to escape them. This, I thought was a good cliffhanger to lure the reader into the third part but it was left out of the movie so I guess it will be shown in the next. Anyway, I thought the dialogue in the movie was absolutely brilliant. All in all, the movies so far have really pulled me in while the books have loosed me.

In conclusion, I am content to deduce my problem with this book simply as one of a lack of interest on my part, but, to be sure, the minute details Tolkien insists the reader know don’t help much. Though his imagination, I can’t help but admire.