TBP BOOK CORNER

Just throwing a shoutout to a couple of recently-read books:

Gilligan’s Wake by Tom Carson. Yes, it’s (sort of) what you think it is: a Joycean spin on the seven stranded castaways as they meander through American history in the 20th century. Every character has a chapter to call their own, from Gilligan’s pathological delusion that he’s Maynard G. Krebs and it is forever 1959 in San Francisco, through the Sikpper’s service with JFK and RMN in WWII, Mr. Howell’s unwitting role as a Communist fellow-traveller, Mrs. Howell’s morphine addiction (???!?), Ginger’s disastrous night with Sammy Davis Jr at Frank’s house, the Professor . . . well, you’d just have to read one to believe it, and Mary Ann’s bizarre physical condition, all coming together in a Tommy Westphal-type ending. The book bogs about 85% of the way through, but I enjoyed it anyway.

The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation by David Kamp. Think of this as a more focused and much more gossipy companion piece to David Brooks’ Bobos in Paradise and you’ll be on the right track. Kamp takes about a fifty-year view of the figures behind the rise of the Foodie Nation, looking unblinkingly at figures like James Beard, Julia Child, Craig Claiborne, Alice Waters, and the like. (There were several points in this book where I found myself wishing he’d blinked a little. Then I consider that maybe he did.) This book isn’t about what this figures did to change the American palate so much as it is about how they did it. I feel he could have spent more time discussing the recent influence of Food Network and how it’s elevated eating and the contemplation of eating into entertainment. Or how Food Network has now descended into VH1 without Michael Ian Black or Flavor Flav. Jane and Michael Stern told the story of America’s changing tastes better in their book “American Gourmet,” but that book wasn’t as entertainingly sleazy as this one is. It’s your choice.

FIFTY YEARS IN FIFTY MINUTES?

Now up at Blogcritics: my review of a new 50-year retrospective of Car & Driver magazine.

VENI, LEGI, CONCIDI

From Steven Taylor comes his Friday Fun Meme: ‘Books I Couldn’t Finish.’ Forthwith, here are mine:

1. The Lord of the Rings. Never even made it through the first book. This, combined with the fact that I’ve never watched a full episode of Star Trek, puts a serious dent in my geek credentials.
2. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. I tried to read this one twice. It’s sort of in my field, after all. But I couldn’t get past the first 100 pages. I’m guessing they were trying to be cheeky.
3. The Novel by James Michener. If I couldn’t finish this, I figure I’ll never finish any of his other, heftier books.
4. A Man In Full by Tom Wolfe. Eventually, I got to the point where I stopped caring about how–or even if–this mess would all tie together.
5. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Given the number of people who have told me this is one of their favorite books of all time, I feel terrible that I’ve never finished it. But there just must be something I don’t get.
6. The Gospel of Thomas. It’s interesting for a while, then it just makes my brain hurt. There are parts of John’s Gospel, I’ll admit, that smack of John adding in some extra words to prove a point. But the whole Gospel of Thomas feels that way to me. Well, at least the parts of it I’ve read.

BOOK ‘EM, DYL-O

Dylan says I have to do this, so here goes . . .

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

Hmm . . . something useful; something which could protect the life of the mind in the face of a new Dark Ages . . . I’d have to go with Thoreau’s Walden. You can gag on his insincerity, but at heart, every American is a Transcendentalist wannabe.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Yes. Though I’ve finally come to the conclusion that the man’s writing talent is a touch over “hack,” Andrew Greeley has created a number of female characters that I found irresistible. Who better than a celibate to tell us what actually touches our hearts?

The last book you bought is:

I don’t buy new books, usually; Half Price Books loves me. I could not for the life of me tell you what the last new fiction book I bought was. The last not-new one was Shea and Wilson’s Illuminatus! trilogy, and I just bought that today.

Nonfiction is a different story; the last new nonfiction book I bought was James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds, which I resoundingly recommend to anyone.

The last book you read:

The Worst Rock & Roll Records of All Time by Jimmy Guterman and Owen O’Donnell. It’s a great, snark, hilarious book, but I’ll spare you the suspense: the worst rock song ever (according to them) is “My Ding-A-Ling;” the worst album, “Having Fun On Stage With Elvis;” the worst artist of all time, Billy Joel. Those are some pretty solid picks.

What are you currently reading?

Shea and Wilson’s Illuminatus! trilogy.

Five books you would take to a deserted island:

As Dylan did, I’m going to claim the Desert Island Discs exemption and assume I get the Bible and the complete Shakespeare. However, I probably won’t read the Shakespeare.

1. The Crucified God by Jurgen Moltmann. It may be the only theology book I really need. Robert Farrar Capon’s The Foolishness of Preaching is another favorite of mine, but without anyone to preach to, its usefulness would be somewhat limited.
2. Living More With Less by Doris Janzen Longacre will help me stave off the materialistic withdrawal pains; perhaps instead of thinking myself deprived on my deserted island, I’ll rejoice that I’m free of the need to keep up with anybody.
3. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. Sooner or later I’m going to feel the need to conjure up images to remind me of who I was/am; this remarkable book will lessen the frustration that often occurs when translating images from the mind’s eye to two-dimensional reality.
4. The Essential Ellison by Harlan Ellison. This is a big enough book that I can’t just blast through it in a day, plus it contains enough out-of-left-field thinking to inspire my own creativity, which I figure I’ll need to avoid going insane, since even I can’t spend all my time reading.
5. St. Valentine’s Night by Andrew Greeley. Memories of love will probably become incredibly painful, but I still don’t want to forget what it’s like. This book, flawed as it is, captures the feelings of love the way I feel them.

(Yes, yes, I know; I answered this question too literally. If whomever started this meme wanted to know my five favorite books, that would have been an excellent question to ask . . .)

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

Steve Casburn, since he’s a librarian, and the other librarian who haunts these parts doesn’t blog; Harry, who reads lots of interesting stuff; and Zombyboy, just because. Oh, and Dave Fried, because I’ll be danged if I’m going to let some meme-writer tell me I can’t issue this challenge to four people.

BOOK REVIEWS, OF A SORT

I’ve officially ejected on Gaiman and Pratchett’s Good Omens. This is the second time I’ve tried to read it, and the second time I’ve failed. Too many characters; I can’t keep them all straight. I mean, I’ve read novels with a lot more characters than Good Omens, but I could keep them straight, because I actually cared who was whom. Not with this book, though. Maybe I’m a little too close to the subject matter, but it struck me as too clever by half. It was sort of like the “Left Behind” books as conceived by Douglas Adams and, while I know this puts me in a minority, I never did care for Douglas Adams’ writing.

Ben Elton’s Popcorn was a different matter, partially because the novel only has five or six real characters, and mostly because the ridiculous plot keeps the enterprise from bogging down. Popcorn tells the story of an Oliver Stone/Quentin Tarantino archetype who makes insanely violent movies, but denies that his films have any effect on society. A pair of mass-murderers suspiciously like Mickey and Mallory from Stone’s Natural Born Killers decide that their only hope for avoiding the electric chair is to get this producer/director to admit that they are his creation; they wouldn’t have gone around killing people if he didn’t make it look so goshdarned cool. It’s an interesting concept, but Elton, a Brit, just can’t hide his contempt for Americans, their guns, and their media. In the end, the whole book gets torpedoed by the thought that TV cameras can do for these lowlifes what they did for OJ or the Menendez brothers. Following a Die Hard-style bloodbath, Elton caps off the novel with a ridiculous epilogue in which, with a heavy hand, he tries to claim that no one, ultimately would claim responsibility–or be held responsible–for the mass-murder spree. One gets the sense that Elton would like to blame Hollywood and gun manufacturers. Popcorn was, to borrow a media cliche, a real page-turner, but the conclusion is so unsatisfying that I can’t recommend it. In the real America, these two killers would fry like chickens.

Back to American authors for me. Next on the docket are Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons and Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! trilogy. Thence it’s on to the Sean Stewart book Zombyboy recommended.

SHAMELESS FEEDBACK PANDERING

OK, I’m working my way through Ben Elton’s “Popcorn” (a wonderfully depraved novel) and “Good Omens” by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Somebody give me some ideas about what to read next. Please, no military history.

DUSTY TOMES REVISITED

The rule in my house is simple: I only buy a book if I think it’s just about a sure thing that I’ll read it more than once. Otherwise, I limit myself to what’s available at the local library. Still, I make purchase mistakes from time to time–like this book, a great idea ruined by execrable writing–but those wind up being recycled at Half Price Books.

There are plenty of books I’ve read over and over, however, and I never seem to tire of them. Following are my picks of books to read over and over again.

• Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon by Joe Queenan: This is simply one of the funniest books I have ever read, or expect that I ever will read. Queenan is a first-class professional sourpuss, a writer with the gift for seeing the cloud behind every silver lining. His story of his descent into pop-culture purgatory, and his inability to free himself from same, should serve as a Distant Early Warning for anybody who’s thinking about having lunch at the Olive Garden. His other work is great, too, (well, except for My Goodness, which totally stank of a quick cash-in) but there’s something magical about seeing a top-shelf writer engage in recreational character assassination.
• The Blood of the Lamb by Peter de Vries: Talk about chilling. de Vries gets no love from contemporary irony-soaked readers, which is a shame, because the man was doing Jon Stewart before Jon Stewart was even born. While his more sarcastic works like Slouching Towards Kalamazoo or The Mackerel Plaza (source of the the most pointed barb ever aimed at Modernist religion, the Rev. Andrew Mackerel’s claim, “It is the final proof of God’s omnipotence that He need not even exist in order to save us;” sadly, I know many preachers who would agree) usually get what little notice de Vries can muster any more, The Blood of the Lamb may be the ultimate example of how humanity is forced to relate to the Almighty. The novel’s protagonist loses everyone and everything important to him in life except his eleven-year-old daughter. Eventually, she contracts leukemia. He prays for a miracle and gets it–but then she dies of a nosocomial staph infection. TOne of the truest lines ever written comes next: “There comes a point in every person’s life where they’re faced with a choice between the foot of the cross, or the barrel of a gun.” If you can get through the depression and angst, you wind up enjoying Don Wanderhope’s spiritual journey.
• The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ As the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology by Jurgen Moltmann: Along the same lines as the previous book, The Crucified God is an important work about God’s failures. Moltmann rips into the optimistic nature of North American Christianity by lifting up the nature of Christ’s abandonment on the cross, and pointing out that true Christian faith begins not in “claiming the victory” but in accepting one’s share of the defeat. To me, the aspect of the faith that I’ve always had the most trouble with was understanding why Jesus had to die in order for sins to be forgiven–couldn’t an omnipotent God simply decide to wipe the slate clean? Moltmann answers in a surprising way: by denying the omnipotence of God, at least in the way that that omnipotence is usually understood. Easter Sunday I get, but I never understood Good Friday until I read this book.
• Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There by David Brooks: It’s hip to hate on David Brooks right now, but the man knows how to track a cultural trend. This book details the rise of $5 coffee and $13,000 refrigerators in exploring how what once was countercultural became throughly mainstream. Brooks also points out the very real status/wealth disconnect that many “elites” face–you know their names and their faces, but you wouldn’t want to try to live on their paychecks. A must-read for anybody interested in current cultural affairs; i.e., everybody.
• Made In America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States by Bill Bryson: If you love words and language, you need this book. Bryson examines how American English has changed from Colonial days to the present time, exploding conventional wisdom about both our language and our history (the Puritans let unmarried couples sleep together? “Ye” as in “Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe” was actually pronounced “the” and never “yee”?) page by page. His material on Abraham Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address alone would make this a great read, but that’s only a few pages in a book overflowing with fascinating information. His earlier book The Mother Tongue: The English Language and How It Got That Way is less essential, but still interesting. Bill Bryson is the Jay Farrar of non-fiction authors: willing to lavish amazong detail on a small but illuminating detail.
• Believers by Charles Baxter: I’m going to keep pimping this book until somebody out there tells me they’ve read it. Baxter is amazing, capable of creating complete characters with just a few lines. The first story in this book, “A Kiss Away,” is the tale of a young woman, new to the city, who meets a kind man in a coffee shop, begins a romantic entanglement with him, then learns that he may or may not have a history of domestic violence. And Baxter just leaves her twisting in the breeze, never conclusively answer question “will he or won’t he attack her?”–because if she doesn’t know, why should you get to? That’s the kind of writer Charles Baxter is.
• The Book of Nightmares by Galway Kinnell: Poetry is not for wimps, and especially not this poetry. Kinnell stares down the maelstrom of 20th-century violence and tries to reconstruct a new world, one that will be safe for him, his small children, and all humanity. The images Kinnell uses are swirling and disparate, ranging from star-crossed lovers to soldiers in Vietnam attempting to wipe out villages. This is a book that will stay with you for a long time after reading it–if you can get through it, that is. Like I said, it’s not for wimps.
• Living More With Less by Doris Janzen Longacre: One of the touchstones of the “voluntary simplicity” movement, this (now-outdated) book serves as the prophet’s call to overly-materialistic American Christians, pointing out how the continual quest for “faster better more!” leads to spiritual deprivation and erodes a sense of community. Longacre even takes careful aim at the church itself, with its emphasis on buildings and programs over faith and spirituality. Reading this book is like reading Walden without Thoreau–less eloquent, but the merits of the simple life shine through, and by the end, you’ll be ready to burn half of everything you own. A new edition would really be welcome, though–difficult, since Longacre passed away some time ago. The companion cookbook is not for anybody who didn’t grow up on Midwest farm cooking, I fear.