Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dikötter

On tap for the summer I’ve got two tomes on Communist atrocities.  I kicked it off with Frank Dikotter’s Mao’s Great Famine, which explores the devastating policies of The Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) during which roughly 45 million people died.  The book is a thorough exploration of the Party’s follies in this period.  In large part, Mao was motivated by Kruschev’s maneuvers in this period.  With Stalin dead, Mao felt he could become the leading light of the Communist world.  When Kruschev vowed to outproduce the US in short shrift, Mao responded by claiming the Chinese would soon outproduce Britain.  What followed were a series of policies of sheer madness.  Mao called for a rapid collectivization of agriculture and industry. Personal property and farms were seized.  Collective farming began. The party handed down  experimental farming techniques like close cropping and deep plowing to help increase rice and grain yields.  Of course, yields declined in a devastating fashion. Foolish water conservancy projects were enacted.  Backyard steel manufacturing came next.  Output dropped and the quality of goods produced were terrible.  Putting on a brave face to the outside world, the Chinese honored all their trade agreements, exporting grain while their own people starved. In short, everything went wrong and people paid with their lives on a grand scale.The book does a great job chronicling the policies, analyzing Mao’s role in the debacle, looking at the party bosses, examining the brutality of the local cadres, exploring the culture of fear, and showing how such devastation could come to fruition.  The book is not so successful in exploring the lives of the millions that die.  The book doesn’t have that personal quality or the human touch that many historical works carry.  The book showcases the “complete lack of connection between people and party”, but the book’s focus clearly lies on the side of the party.  That’s valid.  The level of hubris, fear, and folly within the party is staggering.  I also imagine the tales of survivors and the dead would be hard to come by.  Were these ever documented by the party? If they were, in all likelihood they would be sealed tightly in a vault somewhere.  That said, throughout the book, you get lists of atrocities within a region, followed by a short paragraph or anecdote focused on a citizen.  These little glimpses into the lives of the people are spread throughout, and though they are enough to give you a true sense of the calamity on the ground, there is a clinical remove at play.  I would have liked the book to get to the heart of the horror just a little more.  

I’ll take a couple weeks away from this grizzly fare, but Voices From Chernobyl  loom in my future.

Under The Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk by John Doe & Tom DeSavia

Under the Big Black Sun is an essential rock document.  It chronicles the formation of the LA punk scene, focusing on the years between 1976-1980.  The book consists of essays by the folks who were there.  John Doe, Exene, Dave Alvin, Mike Watt, Jane Wiedlin and plenty others.  In fact, don’t bother reading the book, you’d be better off listening to it.  The audio version features the authors lending their own voices to the proceedings.  The audio book drips with enthusiasm, personality and authenticity.  I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about this history, but there was still plenty of fresh material to be gleaned.  Most fascinating was discussion around how the introduction of hardcore into the scene really changed the face of the LA punk world.  In Under the Big Black Sun, hardcore, epitomized by Black Flag, brings about less inclusion.  The scene becomes more violent, less open, less friendly to women, minorities, and the lgbqt scene.  Things unravel as the kids from the beaches and the suburbs roll into town.  Rollins gets his say, but unlike in Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life, which champions Black Flag as such a seminal band to the development of the indie rock industry, in Under the Big Black Sun, Black Flag takes on a much more villainous role.   Good stuff.

Pulitzer Prize Smackdown: The Sympathizer vs. The Orphan Master's Son

I was really taken with Viet Than Nguyen's The Sympathizer.  Winning a Pulitzer and an Edgar was enough to make me check it out.  The Sympathizer is a fresh look at the Vietnam War, told from a Vietnamese perspective. The book opens with the fall of Saigon and the escape of a cadre of South Vietnamese military to America with their families.  Amidst that crew is our narrator, a North Vietnamese spy who has been embedded amongst this military group. The book jumps between scenes of atrocity in Vietnam, and the narrator's time spent in America, where he is keeping tabs on the South Vietnamese exiles who are plotting to take back their country by organizing a military insurgency from the Laotian border.The Sympathizer, however, is more than just a war story. It’s a book about immigrants, refugees and minorities making their way in America and in the world. The narrator, born of French father and Vietnamese mother, was never wholly accepted in Vietnam, viewed as a bastard.  As a supporter of the communist North Vietnamese, yet living amongst the South, he's a figure constantly torn between two worlds. Once he arrives in America, he fully becomes the "other".  Nguyen's insights into identity politics and the plight of the "other" are the moments when the book really sings.  The standout scene may be when he is brought in to consult on a Hollywood film about the Vietnam War.  He's given a script where the Vietnamese do nothing more than merely scream in pain. Though the film is ostensibly about their war, they get no lines.  This passage is a brilliant condemnation of the white washing of Hollywood, of the entertainment universe systematically removing the voice of minorities.  Though the book is firmly planted in the Vietnam and post-Vietnam years, The Sympathizer seems fresh.  Given all the race baiting happening in this country right now, given the fear of minorities, and given the plight of millions of people seeking refuge from a war they didn't create, The Sympathizer is a timely read. 

I can't say the same for another Pulitzer Prize Winner, Adam Johnson's The Orphan Master's Son.  I found this to be a pretty tedious read.  I read it a couple month's back, so excuse me if my memory is a bit foggy.  The book is a satirical look at navigating the politics and day-to-day living in Kim Jong Il’s North Korea. The book follows the travails of an orphan and his unlikely journey into the upper echelons of the North Korean political spectrum. Alas, the satire is so broad, I had trouble getting a sense of what really goes on in North Korea.  So many of the scenarios seemed so absurd, that the book never seems grounded.  It ultimately comes across as silly rather than biting.  It had its moments that could suck you in for a spell, but my attention and level of caring wandered throughout.  Pretty sure he was going for a Joseph Heller or Vladimir Voinovich vibe. Alas, without being familiar of the reality of life in North Korea, the satire falls short.

Of Walking In Ice by Werner Herzog

I hate to admit to being underwhelmed by anything Herzog, but Of Walking In Ice just didn’t do it for me.  In 1974, Herzog walks from Munich to Paris, presumably because he feels that if he does so, he can help keep alive esteemed German film critic Lotte Eisner, who has fallen ill in France.  In and of itself that’s great.  Plus the weather sucks.  That adds drama.  Along the way he keeps a journal.  It is a diaristic ramble, to be sure.   He breaks into houses along the way to sleep.  That’s kind of cool in a 70s way.  There are definitely some prime Herzogian philosophical nuggets, but for me, it was pretty darned unfocused.  What kept me going was the scant page count.  I know I will be hated and hunted down by the lovers of cinema for this review.  But I’ll take my chances.

Black Hole by Bucky Sinister

Bucky Sinister is one of my all time favorite poets, both on the page and at readings. After years slugging it out in the poetry trenches, he’s just published Black Hole, his debut novel. Exciting stuff. 

Black Hole is fantastic.  Sinister would be the first to admit that it owes a debt to Philip K. Dick.  A Scanner Darkly jumps to mind, as Black Hole is drenched in drug-fueled sadness as we bear witness to a character losing his mind, and quite disturbingly, his hold on time. Black Hole features an ageing hipster, Chuck, with an insatiable appetite for drugs.  But the drugs that he dabbles in are new designer drugs, the side effects not quite known. Chuck has not quite figured out how to grow up. He’s a 40 year old drug addict who hasn’t given up the party. His friends are either dead or have grown up, shedding their punk rock leathers for family man garages. On top of that, his beloved Mission is undergoing a rapid change. In with tech, out with warehouses, squats, and Mission eccentrics. He's at a loss how to move into middle age. He's become the weird old guy at the party. 

Chuck is at loose ends, and as he dabbles with new designer drugs, he spins in and out of control. The drugs are making him black out.  When he awakes he seems to be skipping through time.  He time travels to the near past, forced to relive the mistakes and trials of his youth over and over again. He gets opportunities to fix his mistakes, but he’s not that smart or lucky.

Black Hole is at its best when it addresses how we approach middle age, especially for those who cut their teeth in the punk universe. What happens when you recognize that the world around you has changed, but you can’t figure out how or where you fit into the new order of things? Worse yet, what if you realize there is no place for you? 

How we approach change is central to Black Hole and as Chuck grapples with change at the personal level, he is confronted with a rapidly gentrifying San Francisco. Black Hole becomes a great vehicle for exploring the current changes in the Mission.  No worries though, Black Hole is not shrill or didactic.  It’s equal parts funny and melancholy.  Sinister has been honing his chops as a stand-up comedian for the last ten years and Black Hole is full of funny.  It features a world where the nouveau tech crowd are clamoring to buy mini whales, the hottest status symbol pet on the market. It also laments a world where a crazy person, running around the Mission covered in feces, is no longer acceptable. 

Ultimately though, Black Hole is filled with longing and sadness. It’s a toast to a time gone by, a time that is being brushed under the carpet of history. It’s not a condemnation of the new Mission, but a rumination on how we experience change and stagnation. 

Inherent Vice vs. Play It As It Lays

I’m on a 60s LA kick.  Just finished up Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays and Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice.  Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives is on deck, which could serve as a nice capper to this run.

Play It As It Lays and Inherent Vice share a frayed vision of the 60s, but the similarities stop there.  Play It As It Lays is desperate, sad, and heartbreaking. It is steeped in melancholy.  If the 60s were supposed to be liberating and life affirming, the characters in this book never got the memo.  It’s a crashing dream.  We get snippets of the life of Maria.  Model turned actress turned Hollywood wife heading for a crack up.  All the booze, the drugs and loose morals do nothing but undermine her self-worth.  It’s a haunting book.  Play It As It Lays, written in 1970, seems ahead of its time in re-evaluating the 60s or certainly poking holes in the Eden-esque 60s mythology.

Inherent Vice, on the other hand, fully plays into that myth.  Free love and free drugs abound.  Surf music is on the radio, rock and roll is in the streets, and revolution is in the air.  But this is a crime novel, so not all is well.  A Cointelpro sting, a drug ring, and a bizarre real-estate scandal threaten the stoners’ surf paradise. However, Pynchon’s characters remain oblivious to the menace, having a rollicking good time.  They all are just too stoned to be too concerned.

Plopped down in 1969, months after the Manson murders, Inherent Vice is a hazy, drug-fueled noir.  It owes a huge debt to Raymond Chandler, but floats in a psychedelic fog. I loved it at times, but at other points the haze got a bit thick.  With an intensely convoluted plot, filled with oodles of characters, the narrative slip slides around in a cloud of pot smoke, oft times obscuring the narrative.  At some level that approach leaves you with some impressionistic scenes, but with so many plot turns to keep track of, confusion ensues.  Interestingly, I heard an interview with Paul Thomas Anderson, who adapted Inherent Vice for the screen last year.  I have yet to see the movie, but he talks about using Robert Altman’s 1973 adaptation of The Long Goodbye as a model for his film.  This completely informed my reading of Inherent Vice.  Altman’s take on Chandler is narratively challenged and heavy on vibe.  It’s elusive and hard to pin down.  I was never the hugest fan, but the mood of that film has stuck with me years after viewing.  Though I didn’t love Inherent Vice throughout, it actually has fueled my interest to take in the movie.  It seems ripe for the screen, a dizzying visual ride, prone to slipping in and out of the narrative fold.  I can get behind that.

On a side note, I haven’t read Pynchon since college.  I loved him then, but haven’t read any of the comeback novels.  I couldn’t help being struck by how wacky and goofy Inherent Vice was.  Great heaps of Carl Hiaasen craziness abound in these pages.  So my question is whether Hiaasen’s books are hugely influenced by early Pynchon or whether Pynchon has succumbed to influences by more modern writers?  And speaking of modern influences, there a bit of James Ellroy and bit of The Big Lebowski floating around in this Inherent stew.

Karl Ove Knausgaard. Believe the Hype?

No question that the Karl Ove Knausgaard hype is in full effect.  The Norwegian memoirist is everywhere from guest writing spots in The New Yorker to the lecture circuit.  For those not in the know, Knausgaard has penned a massive memoir called, of all things, My Struggle.  It’s a six volume odyssey, each volume clocking in around 600 pages.  I just finished Book 2 and, if I’m honest, 1200 pages in, I’m still not sure what I think.  In fact, after Book 1, I decided that I wasn’t going to commit to the full monty.  But a couple stellar reviews by friends, and coming across it on the library shelves (shocked that it wasn’t checked out), I decided to give Book 2 a go.

My struggle with Knausgaard is this - On the one hand, he’s an excellent writer.  His prose has flow. He’s easy to read.  He continually gives great insights into the little moments of life, all the while struggling over larger philosophical conundrums.  

On the other hand, the narrative structure of these books is all over the map.  There isn’t a conventional narrative thru line.  There are thematic thru lines, but if you’re looking to sink into and be pulled along by a swiftly rushing narrative current, Knausgaard will frustrate.

Book 2 is all about parenting. Knausgaard struggles with the perception of himself as a stay-at-home father.  He struggles with his wife as they deal with parenting challenges.  Though he dives head long into parenting, it cuts against the life he wants to lead as an artist. This dichotomy is at the heart of Book 2.  He has to fight to carve out a space that allows him to write.  As I read Book 2, it vividly brought back many of the challenges and triumphs of raising young children. 

But the narrative is loose.  The book opens at a kid’s birthday party.  We’re at that party for a good 80 pages, and suddenly we slide into ruminations on Kanusgaard’s own childhood, and suddenly we careen into his first meeting with his wife, and all of a sudden we’re finding about his leaving Norway to come to Sweden.  Some of these narrative excursions are 10 pages, some 50 pages.  You never know how long of a ride you’re in for.  You never know if a thread will come back. 

For all the great writing, and there is plenty, sometimes the book is hard to pick up without that solid narrative thread to pull you in.

Will I read Book 3? It might be a game time decision.

Girl In A Band by Kim Gordon

Just tore through Kim Gordon’s bio, Girl In A Band.  It’s a good read. It’s a quick read.

As a bio, it hits all the stages in her life, but it does so with a light brush.  It’s not a drama-fueled bio à la Mary Karr. It’s not as philosophical, nor does it delve as deeply and shed a light onto a specific time period like Patti Smith’s Just Kids.

At times it feels like a hit and run overview, but within that, it’s all good. The book is very much about Gordon’s development as an artist and her quest to live the artistic life.  I use the word “artist” consciously, because though Gordon is best known as a musician, it’s her interest in other art forms that serves as her wellspring.  To be fair, Sonic Youth always came across as “arty”.  I always liked that about them.  Gordon doesn’t shy away from this conceit.  Her inspiration comes from folks like Mike Kelley, Dan Graham, and Gerhard Richter.

The book is framed by the dissolution of her marriage, and that story gives the book its arc.  Gordon has moved on from Sonic Youth, is starting new bands, has re-focused her energies on her art career, and is moving towards a different stage in her life.  That change is lurking everywhere in Girl In A Band.

For those looking for the comprehensive Sonic Youth tell-all/tome, this is not it.  Gordon takes the stance that the band’s history has been well documented elsewhere.  She moves through the band’s career by devoting chapters to specific songs and/or albums that resonated with her.  It’s not the broad view that she takes, but the more personal glint into the world of Sonic Youth.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.  It does leave you wanting more stories and insights, but what’s on the page is strong.

Gordon is pretty open talking about the challenges and triumphs of rock and roll parenting, as well.  Though she doesn’t regale the reader with story after story, her take is insightful and heartfelt.

Finally, art is the core for her.  It informs her work as a musician and artist throughout her career.  Personally, I love when artists take their inspiration from mediums that are not their own.   This is Gordon’s m.o., so I loved that aspect of the book.  If I have any complaint is that the photos in the book aren’t that strong, and the book is devoid of any telling photos of her artwork.  As much of a fan as I am, I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know her work as a fine artist.  She talks enough about it in the book, that some photos would have been nice.

Small quibbles for sure. 

Gulag: A History & My Promised Land

For the past month I’ve been laid up with a herniated disc.  Two weeks of being bed-ridden were followed by a little spine surgery, which has been followed by a couple more weeks of spending a lot of time lying flat on my back.  I haven’t tied my shoes, washed dishes, or worn big-boy pants in a month.  I have, however, done a lot of reading and a modicum of viewing.  In the next couple of days, I’ll be rolling out what I’ve learned.

Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum

Looking down the barrel of a surgeon’s knife, I decided to tackle a 500 page tome on the Soviet prison camp system.  I figured that a) not being able to move would help/force me to plow through this bitter and brutal history, and b) from a personal perspective, I figured that though I was laid up and facing a surgery with potentially scary side effects, that I would be reminded that things could always be worse.  Reading Gulag: A History, there is no question that things were worse.  Gulag is an exhaustive look at the history, the inner machinations of, and the politics surrounding the gulag.   The gulag was the soviet prison system.  Driven by Stalin’s political paranoia, the system filled up with millions of Soviets.  Though there were some hardened criminals, many of the prisoners were arrested on dubious pretenses.  Indiscriminate sweeps of Ukranians, Poles, Balts and Jews landed many innocents in the gulag.  The system was also filled by political prisoners who were accused of being enemies of the state. The gulag was not only driven by Stalin’s paranoia, but there was the false hope that the gulag could be an economic engine for the foundering Soviet Union.  Prison labor was slave labor that the Soviet Union hoped could mine precious materials from the land, build vast public works projects, like canals, fell timber, and help drive the economy.

Applebaum, who penned the excellent Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956, does a great job discussing the politics that brought on the birth of this prison system, looks at the leaders and administrators who ran the system, and how the system transforms as Soviet Politics transform.  Though the gulag was at its peak between the 1920s and 1950s, Applebaum traces the dissolution of the system through Glasnost and looks at how the prison system transforms through the 80s.  Gulag also traces the life of the prisoner from arrest, transport to the camps, and acclimation to the camps.  It focuses on the types of work, the types of rewards and punishments.  It looks at the life of the guards, and it looks at the possibilities of escape.  Gulag also looks at and differentiates the types of prisoners from political prisoners to hardened criminals to peasants whose arrests were brought on because they bristled at the notion of forced collectivization. Regardless of their point of origin, life in the camps was brutal.  Food was scarce, tools to do the work were rudimentary to non-existent, clothing was threadbare, living conditions were frightening, there was violence amongst the prisoners and between prisoner and guard, and if you were placed in a northern camp above the arctic circle, life was mighty cold. In short, it was a brutal life.

One fascinating element is the number of memoirists who emerged from the gulag.  Each chapter is lead off by a beautiful poem or piece of writing encapsulating the chapter to come.  I found that to be a nice touch.  Gulag is worth the read.  But be forewarned, it is long.  At times it feels like a very detailed master’s thesis. Applebaum is an excellent writer who is at her best when she takes the long view, analyzing and looking at the big picture.  She kills it in the intro and the epilogue.  At times though, the body of the book feels like a long list of atrocities.  It’s a list that people need to hear, but when your done, you will feel release.

My Promised Land by Ari Shavit

While mired deep in the Gulag my dad sent me Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel.  I picked it up, read the first chapter and was hooked, and thus began my pas de deux, simultaneously reading two historical books.  I rarely read two books at once, but it was quite enjoyable.  The gulag by day, Israel by night.

My Promised Land is an enthralling look at the history of Israel and the Zionist endeavor.  Given the current state of politics, Israel and the Occupation are hot potato topics.  There is much anger and vitriol, and courtesy of social media like Facebook, a lot of ranting and raving. Everyone has an opinion, but I always wonder how much people really know about the situation.  I certainly know a bit of the history of the Middle East, but I’ll be the first to admit that I have large blind spots, and a perspective informed by being from a family whose grandparents came from Poland and the Ukraine to help settle Palestine in the 20s.  I think everyone, regardless of political stance, could probably stand to know more about the situation, myself included.

I loved My Promised Land, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone looking to gain some perspective on current day politics and the history that got us to this moment in time.  It is by no means an exhaustive look at the history, but Shavit looks at critical moments and events in Israeli history, explores them deeply and tries to relate them to today’s conflicts.  He does so as someone who believes in the State of Israel, but someone who sees big flaws in the State and its politics.

Shavit is a Haaretz reporter, and a peacenik who squarely comes out against occupation.  That said he is proudly Zionist and believes in the necessity of the state of Israel.  The book starts by looking at the Zionist movement of the early 20^th century and how its fueled by the hostility towards European Jews and the coming holocaust that will wipeout 6 million Jews. Against this backdrop the necessity for a Jewish homeland seems paramount.  Shavit spend a lot of time looking at the early Zionists, their fierce determination, their collective spirit, their relationship to the land and to the Arabs in the land.  At the crux of My Promised Land is Shavit’s realization that if one believes in the necessity of the Jewish State, displacement of part of the Arab population is wrapped up in that belief.  Though we spend so much time focused on post-1967 occupation, at the core of the challenge of modern Israel is 1948. Zionism was all about finding a safe haven for Jews in a hostile world, but the ultimate and unfortunate byproduct of that desire was the displacement of an Arab population.  The book continually circles back to this premise and Shavit spends much time trying to understand this dichotomy.

The book is a fascinating history of the development of Israel from its 20s roots to its modern complexities.  My Promised Land looks at the various waves of Jewish immigration and the political movements that have shaped Israeli politics and culture.  Shavit continually looks at all those movements though the lens of where we are at now politically.  He looks at key moments of the early Zionists, he looks at key battles in 1948, he looks at the budding prosperity of the 50s, the nuclear program of the 60s, and the critical wars of 1967 and 1973.  Interestingly he points to the failures of the Yom Kippur war as the turning point in Israeli politics, at how that defeat and the ensuing political malaise gave birth to the settler movement.  He interviews key players in the early settler movement and explores the Occupation. He explores the peace movement and looks at his time as a soldier in Gaza in 1991.  He also spends time trying to understand the ultra-orthodox movement and how shifting demographics and economics are continually affecting modern Israel.

This was a great and eye opening read that delves deep into Israeli history and the Israeli psyche.  No matter what side of the political debate you’re on, I’d highly recommend My Promised Land.

That's Not Funny, That's Sick by Ellin Stein

Just finished barreling through That’s Not Funny, That’s Sick, a history of The National Lampoon.  All told, it’s a fascinating read.  The National Lampoon sprung out of the college humor magazine, The Harvard Lampoon. College humor mags had been kicking around since the 20s, but as the 60s rolled along they were primed to take advantage of the 60s cultural zeitgesit.  The college humor magazine was a great format to poke fun at changing societal values.  Magazines like The Lampoon were in a great position to take the piss out of both sides of the cultural divide.  Juvenile, puerile, but intellectual, The Harvard Lampoon and its ilk spoke to a younger, increasingly cynical, anti-authoritarian generation. Recognizing that their generation’s worldview was not being expressed by other magazines, a group of Lampoon graduates decided to take The Harvard Lampoon national.

Anyone interested in comedy and satire in print, TV, and movies will find many points of entry here.  As The Lampoon gained its footing as a satire and parody mag, it also began producing stage productions and comedy albums.  People getting their start in various Lampoon endeavors include SNL stalwarts, Chevy Chase, John Belushi and Dan Akyroyd, SCTV lynchpins Joe Flaherty and Harold Ramis, directors Ivan Reitman, John Landis, and Christopher Guest, to name but a few.

For me, the book was most interesting when discussing how The Lampoon fit into the broader comedy movements of the 60s and 70s. The Lampoon isn’t seen in a vacuum. That’s Not Funny, That’s Sick looks at how The Lampoon related to other magazines like Mad and The Realist, and to comedy troupes like Second City, The Committee, The Credibility Gap, The Firesign Theater, and Monty Python.  Likewise, as The Lampoon embarks on video projects, we see how they fit in with more political video pioneers like TVTV.  If anything, I would have loved to see an even broader view of the comedy landscape.

The book also takes a long look at the early years of SNL and the careers of Chase and Belushi, in particular.  These were great sections of the book, but part of me felt like it was a little bit of a cheat.  Granted, Chase, Belushi, and SNL writers Michael O’Donoghue and Anne Beatts came through The Lampoon, and Donoghue and Beatts were absolutely central in both the development of The Lampoon and early SNL, but the book seems to veer away from The Lampoon and capitalize on the notoriety of its more popular, younger rival in SNL for long periods of a time. 

That’s Not Funny, That’s Sick does have its rough patches.  It often wanders away into contributors’ non-Lampoon projects for stretches, and it could also be tighter. It doesn’t always find the right balance of Lampoon history and in-depth descriptions of particular articles and issues.   Regardless, it charts a progression of art, politics, and culture from the early 60s through the early 80s, and does so through the lens of comedy movements and satire, shining a unique perspective on those eras.

112 Words about Peter Mattheissen's The Snow Leopard

I know so many people who love The Snow Leopard.  I’ve been meaning to read it for years.  Should I feel bad for not feeling the same way?  I finished it, but it was a bit of a slog for me.  Matthiessen recounts his travel to the Himalayas with zoologist George Schaller.  Matthiessen yearns to see the snow leopard.  Saunders is there to document the rutting habits of the blue sheep.  There is the outward journey and there is the inward journey.  Much discussion of Eastern Religions ensues.  It was interesting, yet not so engaging.  Yeti were discussed and I even found my mind wandering then.  That can’t be a good sign.

Charles Willeford's I Was Looking For A Street

I love books set in the LA of the 1920s and 1930s.  I love hobo tales.  Charles Willeford’s I Was Looking For a Street falls right into that wheelhouse.  That said, I liked I Was Looking for A Street well enough, but I didn’t love it.  It’s a memoir of Willeford’s childhood years.  Orphaned by parents who succumbed to TB, Willeford was raised by his grandmother. Because times were tight, he spent much time at a school for boys when she couldn’t afford to keep him.  His reminiscence of weekend visits with his grandmother are particularly sweet and touching.  Though he was close to his grandma, the Depression took a toll on the family and Willeford, at the ripe old age of 14, lit out to the rail yards to tramp across the Southwest to make his own way.

Street contains a hint of Edward Bunker’s Little Boy Blue.  There’s a hint of Jack Black’s You Can’t Win.  Willeford’s writing is spare.  He doesn’t dress up the prose.  But, alas, there’s something light and surface level to the tale.  The book, which clocks in at 150 pages, feels like an anecdote rather than a fully realized memoir.  There are potent incidents, yet they don’t build in a wholly satisfying fashion.  I Was Looking For A Street is an easy read and an enjoyable read, but it left me wanting more.

Black Snow by Mikhail Bulgakov

Black Snow is one of those books that is easy to read but hard to pick up.  You know the type.  Fun, light, well-written, but for some reason you’re just not sucked in.  You look at it sitting on the nightstand, beckoning you, but you just groan and waste a little more time checking Facebook or hustling up another Words With Friends game.  Black Snow is a farce by Mikhail Bulgakov, writer of the brilliant The Master and Margarita and Heart of a Dog.  Black Snow is a fictionalized account of Bulgakov’s attempt to adapt his novel The White Guard for the stage at the Moscow Art Theater.  It’s clear that his experience was frustrating.  There are some funny parts, but it’s so absurd, and so many characters flit in and out of its pages, that it’s hard to care too much about the travails of Bulgakov’s alter ego Maxudov.  Without a doubt Bulgakov has many scores to settle, but perhaps the 1920s microscene squabbles of the Russian theater world don’t have the impact they should in 2014.  Bulgakov’s biggest target in Black Snow is none other than theater great Konstantin Stanislavski.  There’s something exciting about this feud and Bulgakov is merciless, treating Stanislavski like a fool. At the end of day, I wish Black Snow was more biting, but somehow it just seems silly. 

Crab Monsters, Teenage Cavemen, And Candy Stripe Nurses: Roger Corman: King of the B Movie by Chris Nashawaty

Roger Corman is a legend of the cinema.  Corman started his career in the early 50s and is still active today.  Along the way he has managed to direct and produce hundreds of films, rarely losing a dime on any of them.  They were cheapies, they were B movies, they were exploitation, they were direct-to-video.  Monster movies, biker movies, and women-in-prison movies were just some of the genres Corman dabbled in during his heyday. The films had great names (A Bucket of Blood, She Gods of Shark Reef, Naked Angels), they had eye-popping posters, and the films always had great tag lines: “Their bodies were caged, but not their desires. They would do anything for a man—or to him,” boldly declares the poster from The Big Doll House starring Pam Grier.  

Crab Monsters, Teenage Cavemen, And Candy Stripe Nurses: Roger Corman: King of the B Movie is an oral history of the Corman universe.  It’s a fun peek into the world of shoestring production, told by those who lived to tell the tale. 

Corman’s longevity was a result of having a finger on the pulse of what would sell, as well as his ability to expertly navigate the changing landscape of cinema.  He knew how to produce B movie fodder for double bills and drive-ins in the 50s.  He saw a market for biker films and psychedelic films during the rise of the counter culture in the 60s.  Once Hollywood started making his kind of sci-fi and monster movies, but with huge budgets  (Star Wars, Jaws), he knew he had to reposition himself.  He became one of the first producers to take advantage of the nascent VHS market, making straight-to-video exploitation in the 80s.  He also got in on the ground floor, selling films to cable providers in the early stages of that market. Most recently he has been working directly with cable networks like Syfy looking for low-budget, genre-specific productions.  Piranhaconda, anyone?

However, Corman’s biggest contribution to cinema may be what is referred to as the “University of Corman” or “The Roger Corman School of Filmmaking”.  Corman had a keen eye for evaluating, or perhaps exploiting, talent. He routinely gave young film students an opportunity to write, direct, and act in feature length films.  In the 50s and 60s, the Hollywood system was hard to crack unless you had connections. If you were willing to work hard, work smart, and work cheap, Corman was willing to work with you, and he opened his studio doors to a bevy of passionate young folks wanting to break into the film biz. Luminaries who cut their teeth on Corman productions include Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdonovich, Martin Scorcesse, James Cameron, Penelope Spheeris, Ron Howard, John Sayles, Jonathan Demme, Jack Nicholson, and Robert Towne to name just a few.

Crab Monsters weaves together the stories of all of these major players and then some.  It’s a loving tribute from Hollywood hot shots who openly admit that they owe much of their success to the opportunities that Corman gave them, and from how much they learned under Corman’s tutelage.  Also touching was the general consensus that once these youngsters got a couple of productions under their belt, Corman actually encouraged them to leave and head on to better projects with bigger budgets.  Corman was under no illusion about the kind of work he was making. That said, what makes so many of the Corman productions rise above base levels of exploitation is that those making the films were giving it their all, because they knew the value of the opportunity they were being given. 

Though Corman’s films were exploitation and gratuitously breast heavy, Corman opened the doors for women as well.  Says Gale Anne Hurd (producer Aliens, The Terminator, Walking Dead), “At the time, he was the only person in Hollywood who would ask a woman coming in for a job as an executive assistant, ‘Ultimately, what kind of career path do you want to take?’ I didn’t think there was a career path! It hadn’t occurred to me.  And I said, ‘Roger, I’d like follow in your footsteps and be a producer.’ And he said, ‘Tremendous!’”  Many of the women and men interviewed for Crab Monsters attest to the fact that the number of women on Corman productions from directors to writers to producers to crew exceeded what was happening elsewhere in the Hollywood system.

Also of interest is that in the 70s Corman started distributing European art house fare in America.  Fellini, Kurosawa and Bergman made it to the theaters courtesy of Corman’s support.  Corman liked the films, and the ever savvy businessman in him realized that there was money to be made.

Crab Monsters is beautifully laid out with hundreds of pages of photos, posters and graphic goodies befitting Corman’s oeuvre.  Needless to say, the book is filled with fantastic anecdotes.  Death Race 2000 is one of my favorite Corman productions.  Sylvester Stallone tells a great story about straying from the script and inserting his own dialogue into Death Race, confident that he could get away with it because he knew the production was too cheap to do second takes. Stallone then credits that experience with building up his confidence to write the Rocky script.  

Corman, too, was willing to improvise in his own way.  Alan Arkush (director of Rock ‘N’ Roll High School) relates a great anecdote about Cockfighter.  The film was one of the few Corman bombs.  The opening weekend was a disaster, but Corman was undaunted.  Says Arkush, “We were on the phone with Roger and he’s saying, ‘You know the scene where Warren Oates leans back and closes his eyes? Cut in some naked nurses and some car crashes like he’s dreaming of that.’ We thought he was kidding.” Corman was not.

Ron Howard does a great job summing up Corman’s low-budget but loving ways. “I was fighting with Roger at one point on Grand Theft Auto, trying to get a few more extras in our climactic demolition-derby scene in the stands.  Everyone was supposed to be rioting.  And he wouldn’t give me more than forty-five extras.  The grandstand was supposed to seat a thousand people.  And we talked about cheating the angles.  But I kept begging for more.  And finally he just put his hand on my shoulder in a very paternal sort of way and smiled and said, ‘Ron, I’m not going to give you any more extras. But know this: If you do a good job for me on this picture, you’ll never have to work for me again.’” 

And that’s why you’ve got to love Roger Corman.

The Fever by Megan Abbott

Over her last three novels, The End of Everything, Dare Me and, her latest, The Fever, Megan Abbott has become expert in mining the perilous crossing between teen and adulthood.  For her, it’s a territory where every moment is dripping with possibility, with desire, and with newfound powers and observation.  Yet doubt is also part of the equation. Friends outwardly share every detail, yet they still hold tight to their innermost secrets.  It’s a world where bold action couples with insecurity.  It’s a world of teen girls, on the brink of adulthood, inscrutable and mysterious to the boys and men in their midst.

The Fever centers on a group of 4 friends, Deenie, Lise, Gabby and Skye.  The four are seemingly tight knit, but fissures begin to appear in the group dynamic as they circle closer and closer to the precipice of sex.  After Lise has a frothing-at-the-mouth seizure in class, the group dynamic is rent.

But Lise’s seizure does more than shine light on the secrets the girls keep.  It captivates their sleepy suburb and transforms The Fever from a teen coming-of-age novel to a creepy, dystopian look at the modern day suburban experience in a post-industrial society.

Lise’s seizure is near fatal, landing her in the hospital.  Soon after, other girls begin to succumb to similar conditions.  The doctors are stumped or covering up, the school is in damage control, and as more and more girls are felled, rumors abound about the seizure’s causes. Is the school riddled by toxic building materials? The town’s once thriving lake, now contaminated, has been cordoned off to the public.  Is the polluted lake water seeping into the community’s drinking water?  Perhaps, the most disturbing and persistent rumor is that the girls have received a tainted batch of the HPV vaccine, a vaccine that the school mandated for all enrolling girls.

Teen life is hard enough to navigate without the hidden dangers waiting to blossom in the playing fields of 21^st century America.  Abbott’s willingness to bring modern day dystopia to a teen novel makes The Fever a great read.

The Whispering Muse by Sjon

Without a doubt, Sjon’s The Whispering Muse is the oddest, little book I’ve read in a long, long time.  It’s protagonist, Valdimar Haraldsson is a puffed-up, self-absorbed intellectual who has written a 17 volume set on the correlation between Nordic superiority and Nordic fish consumption.  He is a man who cares only about eating fish, talking about fish, and foisting his theories on those around him.  He’s strange, he’s cocky, he’s pathetic, and he’s funny.  He gets invited to spend time on a Danish merchant vessel, touring Norwegian waters.  Once on ship he gets distressed due to the lack of fish on the dinner the menu. Such is the life of a man who once wrote a book called Memoirs of a Herring Inspector.  At night, one of the mates regales the guests with stories of his involvement in the Jason and the Argonauts saga.  It turns out the mate is none other than Caeneus, he who sought the Golden Fleece with the mythical Jason.  Keep in mind, the book is set in the 1940s.  It’s not quite magical realism, but the book seamlessly weaves myth and modern sensibilities.  It’s all a little bonkers. Quite often I found myself wondering, “why?”.  The Whispering Muse clocks in at a compact 130 pages, there’s not much of an arc to the story, but the writing is good, the characters keep you guessing, and it’s strangely compelling.

Black By Design: A 2-Tone Memoir by Pauline Black

In the early 80s, I loved British Ska. I couldn’t get enough of the likes of the Specials and The Selecter.  I can’t say I listen to those bands much any more and I haven’t been tempted by any of the reunion tours cycling around.  Regardless, they all have a place deep in my heart.  Out book shopping recently, I came across Black By Design, an autobiography of Pauline Black from The Selecter. I picked it up on a whim, figuring it would be a good summer read.

The first third of the book is very strong. Black’s upbringing is a truly interesting window into England of the 50s and 60s, particularly since Black views it from the perspective of a black woman.  Black was adopted by white working class parents in the 50s.  This was not a common occurrence in England at the time, and though her family was, by all accounts, loving, her black heritage was a mystery.  She was the only black girl in town and she felt the sting of racism.  However, she could share her feelings with nobody.  Not family or friends.  She was aware that her blackness set her apart from her contemporaries, but her nascent black pride could only be nurtured alone.  She was fascinated by the race issues in America and looked to the black power movement in America as a guidepost for her own behavior.  Though her parents were kind, they did not love when Pauline would assert her blackness. Once she left for college, she never looked back.

The middle part of the book talks about her time in The Selecter and the 2-Tone scene that was exploding in Coventry where she was based.  While I enjoyed this section of the book, I really wanted more.  Granted it’s a memoir, and Black talks honestly from her perspective, but I felt I wanted deeper insight into why the movement was happening, who all the players were, and what fueled the coming together and the division of the various audience groups (the punks, the mods, and the skins).   Black addresses it all, but not with the depth I hoped for.  I’d be up for a juicy oral history from all the players of that scene.

It’s also interesting to note that The Selecter’s time in the limelight was incredibly brief.  The Selecter track that appeared as a b-side on the first 2-Tone release was a hit.  But that track was really a solo endeavor by guitarist Neol Davies using the name The Selecter.  Once he had a hit, he needed a band.  The band was still being formed even though they were already in demand and on the rise, riding the coattails of The Specials.  Almost from the outset, the band is at odds with each other, fighting about producers and musical direction. The band implodes in about two years time.  The rise and fall is equal parts exciting and dour.

Black is at her best and most passionate when she talks about the difficulties of being a black artist and a woman artist.  The 2-Tone ethos was the perfect vehicle for her message.  After the break up of The Selecter she struggled finding her way.  Musical projects were mostly ignored.  She found her way to the stage and television.  She was moderately successful in those arenas. She found her way.  Not as exciting as The Selecter in their heyday, but she made inroads as a working artist.  The book, however, gets a bit dreary for my likes.  It becomes the memoir of someone struggling, but eking out a living.  The highs aren’t that high. The lows aren’t that low.  I have nothing but respect for all that Black has done, and her political view of the world is spot-on, but the writing isn’t strong enough to elevate this into a must read.  

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Ah, The Goldfinch, a 700+ page tome that many are hailing as the book of the decade and beyond. Of course there are also those that think Donna Tartt is overrated and overhyped.  Who doesn’t love a good literary dust up?  I was a big fan of Tartt’s The Secret History and just finished The Goldfinch, so I suppose I must weigh in.  This will be a pretty thin review because I don’t want to give away any spoilers.  When I read The Goldfinch, I knew absolutely nothing about it, not one plot point.  One of the big joys of The Goldfinch is how the plot twists and turns, travels through time, and trots across the globe. I was glad not to know what to expect around any corner, so I promise not to spoil.

Tartt is an excellent writer with a vivid imagination and The Goldfinch’s plot is testament to that.  The book tracks Theo Decker from teen years to adulthood.  We first meet Decker as a thirteen year old. He’s a liberal, cultured New York kind of kid.  Hints of a Salinger and Fitzgerald protagonists are in his DNA.  He’s a sensitive boy.  This is no surprise based on the prep-school milieu Tartt’s work seems to inhabit.  Theo’s mother instills in him a love of art, and much of the plot revolves around their connection to Carel Fabritius’s Dutch masterpiece The Goldfinch.  Tartt gets a big thumbs up from me for focusing her story around a piece of art.  The book makes us question the importance of art in culture, in society, and addresses how we interpret and value art.  That’s good stuff as far as I’m concerned.

But this isn’t some navel-gazing art salon universe.  Theo’s path gets violently altered at the outset of The Goldfinch, and his journey from boyhood to adulthood is painful. My one issue with the book is that for the bulk of the novel, after his life-altering episode, Theo becomes a bit of jerk.  He’s a fairly unlikeable character for much of the novel’s 700+ pages.  I have no problem with unlikeable and conflicted protagonists, but I just felt that the character he becomes for the bulk of the novel is not in keeping with the character we meet at the outset.  Similarly over the novel's final 30 pages, Theo looks back and reflects on his experiences in a thoughtful and philosophical manner.  He's regained the grace of his younger self, but it seems like such a sudden about face given the hellish path he's walked down.

Ultimately, The Goldfinch is an excellent read, so it’s a minor point to be sure, but I felt that given the grand scope of the novel and the Pulitzer Prize and all, that there was some fraying around the edges of this one.

Carsick: John Waters Hitchikes Across America

Nobody symbolizes the American Dream better than John Waters.  I’m sure I’ve said that before, but every time he makes a new movie, publishes a new book, or heads out on a new tour, I think it bears repeating.  Waters has managed to turn his perverse obsessions into semi-fame and semi-fortune.  At the time it would have been unimaginable that the guy who made Desperate Living or Female Trouble would ever sniff mainstream success. Waters has managed this feat without ever compromising or “selling out”.  In fact he seems to be getting more randy with age.  From his last film, A Dirty Shame, to his previous book Role Models, to his latest book Carsick, the tawdry tales keep getting more graphic.

The conceit of Carsick is pretty great.  Waters decides to hitchhike from Baltimore to San Francisco and document the proceedings in a book.  Carsick is divided into 3 parts; a novella where the idealized version of his trip plays out, a novella where his nightmare trip unfolds, and the final version based on what really happened.

The two novellas are pure Waters.  The novellas’ chapters recount each fictitious ride he receives along the way, and they play out like classic scenes from his movies.  In his “good ride” novella, Waters partakes in a bank robbery, becomes a sideshow freak at a hipster carnival filled with malfunctioning rides, reconnects with Edith Massey, and has a sexual encounter while in the passenger seat of a car in a demolition derby.  At 66 years of age, Waters still revels in shedding light on the weirdest subcultures and fetishes.  At one point he gets a ride from an “alternative librarian” distributing obscure genres of literature such as “womb raiders”.  “Are you familiar with that genre?” the librarian asks.  Waters replies, “You mean women who tell their husbands they’re pregnant when they’re not and then follow real pregnant ones, kill them, cut out their babies and take them home claiming they’ve just given birth.”  Carsick is a real joyride, let me tell you.

The brilliance of Carsick is that if you listed the characters he meets in the “good ride” version of his trip alongside the miscreants he meets in the “bad ride” version of the trip, you’d be hard pressed to figure out which people belonged to which novella.  Everybody seems like a renegade from a Pink Flamingos universe.  In the nightmare novella, his past literally comes back to haunt him. In one case, a killer he has made fun of in Shock Value is back from the dead, picking him up for a ride, and out to seek her revenge. It’s fun to watch Waters’ discomfort as he tangles with some of these fantastic creations.  

Waters’ actual hitchhiking experience is a far cry from either of his novellas.  The drama and tension revolve around mundane hitchhiking concerns.  Will he get a ride?  Will it stop raining? Will he have to sleep in the bushes?  Will he ever get out of Kansas? Waters seems humbled by the experience and comes across as grateful for every ride he receives.  Sometimes he’s recognized and sometimes he’s not, but he is actually coming into contact with big parts of America that he has never dared step foot in.  He shops at a Walmart, dines at Ruby Tuesday’s, and meets people he would otherwise never come into contact with.  It may not be as dramatic as the offerings in his novella, but dare I say, it’s sweet. 

Now, Voyager by Olive Higgins Prouty

I can’t get enough of the Femmes Fatales book series on Feminist Press.  They’ve been reissuing classic noir novels from female writers.  I’ve started with the books that were adapted into films.  In A Lonely Place was haunting.  Bunny Lake Is Missing was dripping with gas light paranoia.  In many respects Olive Higgins Prouty’s Now, Voyager is a departure from those first two titles.  It’s not really a noir at all, but a classic 40s romance.  The book follows Charlotte Vale, a spinster aunt who embarks on a European cruise after a stint in a sanitarium where she was recovering from a nervous breakdown.  Courtesy of her caring sister-in-law, Charlotte has a new wardrobe and a new hairdo. Over the course of the cruise she starts to regain her lost-confidence, in large part due to her dalliance with the henpecked JD Durrance. There’s honesty to their blossoming romance.  Durrance has also suffered from a breakdown in his recent past and his married life is a shambles.  Now, Voyager’s strength comes from watching our two leads crawl from the wreckage of their lives, trying to find a place for themselves amidst a world that hasn’t been kind to them.  To be sure, Now, Voyager has some dark underpinnings. Their romance seems doomed due to Durrance’s marital status, and the threat of emotional relapse gives the novel a sense of disquiet, particularly once the cruise ends and each must return to their formerly lonely lives.  The first half of the book is a carefree escapade that gives way to the book’s second half and it’s more mundane realities.  It wasn’t part of my summer plan, but, hey, I just read a summer romance novel!