8 posts tagged “mcsweeney's”

I stayed away from the computer last weekend and spent most of my extra time reading.  It's amazing how much I could get through when I wasn't checking my e-mail every twenty minutes.  I finished up Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest, read McSweeney's #25 in its entirety, and then read the majority of Robert Coover's A Child Again (which I finished up today).  I usually do my "Stuff I've Been Reading" post at the end of the month, but I have horrible recall for the things I read, so I've decided to cover these three books while they're still fresh in my mind.

BOOKS READ:

Red Harvest--Dashiell Hammett

Red Harvest was the third and final novel in my Dashiell Hammett collection.  The other two, The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, were good, but I thought Red Harvest was much better than either of them.  Not only did the book add the phrase "blood-simple" into our lexicon and partially inspire the Coen Brothers' Miller's Crossing, but it also featured one of the highest body counts of any novel I've read.  In fact, one of the chapters was actually called "The Seventeenth Murder".  There were still a lot to go, too.

Red Harvest sees the Continental Op (we never find out his real name) arrive in Poisonville only to discover that the man he was supposed to meet has been murdered.  The detective quickly solves that crime, but he's annoyed by the locals in the process, so he decides to stick around and rid the town of its criminal element.  The criminal element in Poisonville consists of bootleggers, loan sharks, heads of industry, hookers, hitmen, thugs, bookies, crooked boxers, and just about the entire police force.  Why does the Continental Op stick around when he could just as easily head home?  For "fun", of course.  He's a bad-ass...and something of a criminal himself.  Before the book ends, he's breaking laws left and right, planning murders, playing sides against each other, and even taking hits of laudanum.

I understand that the Continental Op appeared in a number of Dashiell Hammett short stories.  I'm definitely going to look for a collection.  I'm not usually interested in the crime genre, but I've been very impressed with everything I've read by Hammett, and I think I'd enjoy the further adventures of his character. 

McSweeney's #25--Dave Eggers (editor)

I'd been putting off reading this collection because it featured a short story by David Hollander.  He wrote a novel called L.I.E., which was, by far, the worst book I have ever read in my life.  I hated it so much that I ripped it in half and threw it in the garbage when I finished.

Fortunately, David Hollander has improved a bit since 2000.  His story in McSweeney's #25 was actually one of the highlights.  That's not saying a whole lot, though, as this issue was something of a dud.  Like many recent issues of McSweeney's, it looked pretty (ahh, shiny gold and silver!), but didn't offer much worth reading.

In addition to the Hollander story, the only other highlights were "The Ape Man" by Alexander MacBride and "A Death in Custody" by Chloe Hooper.  The former was a brief look at the darker side of the Tarzan legend.  The latter was a non-fiction piece about Australian police brutality; it was an update to a story originally published in McSweeney's #21.

A Child Again--Robert Coover

A Child Again is a collection of short stories that update some of our most enduring fables and fairy tales.  In "Sir John Paper Returns to Honah-Lee", Robert Coover looks in on the characters from "Puff the Magic Dragon".  Jackie Paper, who long ago lost interest in his dragon friend, has grown up and become a famous orator.  Puff, on the other hand, spends most of his time setting towns on fire and eating virgins.  In "The Invisible Man", the titular hero gets sick of fighting crime and becomes a thief and a voyeur.  In "Alice in the Time of the Jabberwocky", Alice tires of Wonderland and grows old, fat, and grumpy.  I don't even want to think about the sordid activities Prince Charming engages in with his wife's little friends in "The Dead Queen".

My personal favorite was "The Return of the Dark Children".  That story revisits the town that refused to pay for the Pied Piper's rat-removal services.  Years have gone by and a new generation of children has replaced those lost to the Piper.  Everything is gradually getting back to normal...and then the rats return.

All of the stories mentioned above were inspired and a lot of fun to read.  There were a couple in the collection, however, that I could've done without.  I didn't know the story revisited in "Playing House", so I didn't get much out of that one.  There was also one called "Suburban Jigsaw" that didn't seem to fit in at all.  Still, as a whole, A Child Again was a great collection and one I'd recommend to anyone interested in new takes on some old childhood favorites.   

CURRENTLY READING:

• The Apocalypse Reader--Justin Taylor (editor)
• The Pillars of the Earth--Ken Follett (audiobook)

BOOKS BOUGHT:

• Sacred Games--Vikram Chandra
• The Invention of Everything Else--Samantha Hunt (audiobook)
• The Book of Yoga--Christina Brown
• Caricature--Daniel Clowes
• Pussey!--Daniel Clowes
• McSweeney's #26--Dave Eggers (editor)
• Where to Invade Next--Stephen Elliott (editor)
• 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die--Stephen Jay Schneider (editor)
• The Pillars of the Earth--Ken Follett (audiobook)

BOOKS READ:

• The French Lieutenant's Woman--John Fowles

The French Lieutenant's Woman tells the story of Sarah Woodruff, a woman who becomes a pariah after having inappropriate relations with a shipwrecked Frenchman.  The book looks at the aftermath of that disastrous relationship and follows the new one Sarah has with a local gentleman, Charles Smithson.  Mr. Smithson is engaged to an heiress, but begins to question that engagement as he spends more time with Sarah.  You can take it from there.  Oh wait, maybe you can't just take it from there.  Did I mention the book has three different endings?  It's kind of like a Choose Your Own Adventure book for adults.

This was my third novel by John Fowles.  The first two, The Collector and The Magus, are among my favorite books.  The French Lieutenant's Woman isn't a bad book, by any means (it's ranked #93 on the Top 100 Novels list the Radcliffe Publishing Course put out in 1998), but I still didn't like it nearly as much as the other John Fowles books I've read.

By the way, The French Lieutenant's Woman should've been entitled The French Lieutenant's Whore.  That's what everyone in the book calls the "woman" of the title.  I suspect they called the book what they did because most people wouldn't want to be caught buying or reading a book with the word "whore" in the title.

• Caricature--Daniel Clowes

I've recently been tracking down some of Daniel Clowes' pre-Ghost World material.  I picked up Caricature and Pussey! this month and they helped me through the weeks of not being able to read real books.  I've been writing too much about comics and graphic novels lately, so I don't want to go into much detail on these.  I'll just say that Caricature was excellent.  It was similar to Twentieth Century Eightball in that it featured short stories (as opposed to one long story like Ghost World).  The stories were all good except for "Gynecology".  I had no idea what was going on with that one.

 

• Pussey!--Daniel Clowes  

This book was really little more than a funny title.  The story looks at the rise and fall of a comic book penciller named Dan Pussey.  It was funny in places (particularly the chapter "Dan Pussey's Masturbation Fantasy"), but mostly it was a let-down.  Pussey! is still better than 99% of things to be found in a comic book store, but it's not nearly as good as the other Daniel Clowes books I've read.

I'm not sure what I'm complaining about, though.  Pussey! only cost $10.  Most of the other Clowes books cost twice that much. 

  

• Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, etc.--Ted Thompson (editor)

My mom bought this off the McSweeney's website for $3, and I stole it off her bookshelf and took it home with me.  The full title of the book is Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things That Aren't as Scary, Maybe, Depending on How You Feel About Lost Lands, Stray Cellphones, Creatures from the Sky, Parents Who Disappear in Peru, a Man Named Lars Farf, and One Other Story We Couldn't Quite Finish, So Maybe You Could Help Us Out.  Upon first glance, it appears to be a children's book.  The stories are short, illustrated, and often feature children as the main characters.  Further reading reveals that these young characters often end up decapitated in the woods or abandoned by their parents, so I'm not really sure it's a children's book.  Maybe it's a demented children's book.  It's hard to say.

I have no idea what to make of Noisy Outlaws, but I certainly enjoyed reading it.  It was probably my favorite book of the month.  With the exception of Jon Scieszka's "Each Sold Separately", the stories were all enjoyable and worth reading. 

• Gentlemen of the Road--M-----l Chabon

I was incredibly disappointed with The Yiddish Policemen's Union.  It was my least favorite book of 2007.  M-----l Chabon is still one of my favorite authors, though, so I decided to give Gentlemen of the Road a try.  It's an adventure story along the lines of Robin Hood or Don Quixote.  The working title of the novella was Jews With Swords.  That tells you a lot.

The main characters in Gentlemen of the Road are Zelikman, a skinny doctor with a hat fetish, and Amram, a gigantic Abyssinian warrior with an ax called "The Mother-Defiler".  These two mismatched travel partners get tangled up with an usurped Khazar prince who wants to reclaim his family's throne.  There are some adventures and some battles.  There are elephants.  You get the idea.  

It seems like strange subject matter for a Pulitzer Prize winner, but at least he's not writing about Alaska anymore.  Gentlemen of the Road was actually a good book.  It doesn't make up for The Yiddish Policemen's Union, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

• McSweeney's #26--Dave Eggers (editor)

Imagine that you're used to getting an awesome mixtape in the mail four times a year.  They're usually full of wonderful new songs by musicians you've mostly never heard before.  Imagine that many of your current favorite musicians were originally discovered on these mixtapes and you always look forward to the day the next tape will show up in the mail.  Then imagine that your most recent mixtape consists of little more than demos, backing tracks, and the first part of a really long song that you'd have to buy for $22 if you want to hear how it ends.

That's what McSweeney's #26 was like for me.  The issue was divided into two 120 page pocket-sized booklets.  Many of the stories enclosed were excerpts from works-in-progress.  In fact, the first 40+ pages of the second booklet was a selection from John Brandon's upcoming novel, Arkansas.  The novel is going to be published by McSweeney's, so they're basically using the Quarterly Concern to hawk their upcoming publishing projects.  I don't mind if they ship along free samples of future releases (as they've done in the past), but including the teasers in the issue itself is shady...especially when the hawked story isn't very interesting in the first place.

Fortunately, there were a few good stories in #26.  I especially liked "Porcus Omnivorus" by Ismet Prcic and "Charity" by Wayne Harrison.  The former tells the story of an ex-soldier who accidentally ends up at a backyard barbeque thrown by his enemies.  The latter tells why you should never hire a meth-head to work in your autoshop. 

Oh, I forgot to mention that your most recent mixtape inexplicably includes Rupert Holmes' "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)".  Garry Craig Powell's short story "Moving Crucifixion" blatantly rips off the 70s pop classic.  I can't believe the story got published as is.  

• Where to Invade Next--Stephen Elliott (editor)

This strange little book came packaged with McSweeney's #26 (although it can be purchased separately).  I guess the editors felt bad for their lackluster issue and decided to send along a free book to lessen my disappointment.  The fact that the freebie was a book about which country America should attack next came as a surprise to me, but it actually made for intriguing reading.  The information inside was legitimate and well-researched.  The editors at McSweeney's probably did a better job researching these seven countries than the Bush Administration did researching Iraq prior to invading a few years back.

I'm going to vote for invading Venezuela.  Maybe Sudan, too.  Then I would send some top-secret assassins to off some other despots.

CURRENTLY READING:

• Tree of Smoke--Denis Johnson
• The Invention of Everything Else--Samantha Hunt (audiobook)

BOOKS BOUGHT:

• Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans
• Story of the Eye--Georges Bataille

BOOKS READ:

• Jar City--Arnaldur Indriðason

I spent some time in Reykjavik a few years back, and came away with an interest in Icelandic culture that remains to this day.  I've read Icelandic authors as diverse as Halldór Laxness (yeah!!) and Hallgrímur Helgason (boo!!).  SteveP mentioned Arnaldur Indriðason's Jar City a couple months back, and I knew I had to track down the book and read it.  I'm glad I did; it's one of the best crime novels I've read in a long time.  I look forward to reading the rest of the Inspector Erlendur books.      

• Goodbye, Columbus--Philip Roth

I originally purchased Goodbye, Columbus as a present for my brother's birthday.  Then I remembered he hadn't bothered to give me a present for my birthday, so I ended up keeping the book for myself.  Of course, keeping the book meant I had to read the thing.  I was a bit hesitant as I haven't always enjoyed the Roth I've read.  I liked Goodbye, Columbus a lot, though.  The titular novella was excellent.  The remaining five stories were also impressive.  They all dealt with Jewish culture and the problems of assimilating into post-war America.  It's not subject matter I thought I'd find interesting, but I did.

My favorite was "The Conversion of the Jews" which had a young boy named Ozzie questioning some of the illogical tenants of his religion.  I don't want to spoil it for you, but Ozzie ends up on the roof of his synagogue while his classmates down below encourage him to jump off.   

• Pastoralia--George Saunders  

I first became interested in George Saunders when I watched the second season Christmas episode of NBC's The Office.  In it, Ryan buys a Saunders book to give to Toby for Secret Santa.  I thought to myself, "What kind of book would Ryan buy for Toby?"  I had to find out.  Unfortunately, the episode wasn't clear as to which book Ryan actually bought.  I picked Pastoralia because it was short and had a deer and a caveman on the cover.

Pastoralia is a collection of six short stories.  They were all hilarious and weird.  (The stories reminded me a bit of the work of T.C. Boyle.)  In the first story--also named "Pastoralia"--a man and his co-worker while away their days in a live caveman exhibit.  The thing is, no one ever comes to see the exhibit.  Would you act like a normal person if no one was looking, or would you spend all day in character just in case someone showed up?!  These are among the questions Saunders asks the reader.

Oh, while I'm writing about Pastoralia, I feel I must quote from the story "Sea Oak".  In it, some of the characters watch a television program called The Worst That Could Happen.  The show is described as follows:

...a half-hour of computer simulations of tragedies that have never actually occurred but theoretically could.  A kid gets hit by a train and flies into a zoo, where he's eaten by wolves.  A man cuts his hand off chopping wood and while wandering around screaming for help is picked up by a tornado and dropped on a preschool during recess and lands on a pregnant teacher.

If you can find the humor in that, then you'll probably enjoy Pastoralia.        

• Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans

The full name of this book is Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney's Humor Category.  As the name would suggest, it's a collection of humorous bits from the McSweeney's Quarterly Concern and website.  I bought this collection because it made me laugh outloud in the bookstore four times.  The collection of lists at the end of the book was particularly funny.  The best part, though, and the part that made this book worth purchasing, was the essay by J.M. Tyree called "On the Implausability of the Death Star's Trash Compactor".  Yes, this guy wrote four whole pages on why it didn't make any sense for the Death Star to have a trash compactor.

• I Am Legend--Richard Matheson (reread)

All the kids are talking about the upcoming movie version of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, so I thought it would be a good time to revisit the book.  For a science fiction/horror story originally published in the 50s, I Am Legend stands up better than most.  (It occurs to me now that I have no frame of reference here.  I Am Legend is probably the only science fiction/horror story from the 50s that I've ever read.  I'm just assuming it's aged well.)

I had a couple issues the first time I read I Am Legend, and those issues remain even after the second read.  First of all, I think Matheson did a poor job of explaining the differences between the two types of vampires.  This comes into play during the story's ending and left me a bit confused.  Second of all, the parts where Neville tries to scientifically explain the vampire phenomenon are just flat-out boring.  Other than those two issues, I Am Legend is an exciting and interesting take on vampires and one of the best post-apocalyptic tales out there.

My copy of I Am Legend features some of Matheson's short stories tacked on at the end.  I read the stories the first time I read the book and hated them all.  They are among the worst stories I've ever read.  I didn't bother reading them a second time.      

• Angle of Repose--Wallace Stegner

I was on a reading roll at the beginning of November.  In fact, all the books mentioned above were read in the first ten days of the month.  My roll promptly crashed to a halt when I picked up Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose.  It took me twelve days to read the first chapter.  At that rate, it would have taken me 416 days to finish the book.  Most people would have dumped the book and moved on to something else.  I'll quit jobs and relationships without a thought, but I've never quit a novel once I've started reading it.  I plow on through.  It's what I do.

I'm glad I didn't quit.  Angle of Repose turned out to be one of the top two or three books I've read this year.  It tells the story of Lyman Ward, a historian struggling with the results of a divorce and a bone disease that have left him crippled and immobile.  He settles into his grandparent's old house and begins writing the story of their marriage.  He uses his grandmother's letters, old newspaper articles, and his own childhood memories.  The story that results is sad and beautiful.

Here's one of my favorite lines (it's Lyman speaking to Shelly, a neighbor who works as his secretary):

How do I know what you should do?  You'll do what you think you want to do, or what you think you ought to do.  If you're very lucky, luckier than anybody I know, the two will coincide.

I like that.

Angle of Repose won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1972.  I'm not exactly sure what other books were up for the honor that year, but I'd have to say the board got it right.        

CURRENTLY READING:

• The World Without Us--Alan Weisman
• A Bend in the River--V.S. Naipaul

I've been reading too much lately, so I've decided to divide this month's SIBR post into two parts.  This is the first part and covers all my book-related activities up through October 19th.  The second part will cover the rest of the month.  I'll post it in a week or two.

BOOKS BOUGHT:

• The New York Trilogy--Paul Auster
• Angle of Repose--Wallace Stegner
• A Bend in the River--V.S. Naipaul
• Disgrace--J.M. Coetzee
• Blood Meridian--Cormac McCarthy
• Jar City--Arnaldur Indriðason (thanks to SteveP)
• The Book of Pilates--Joyce Gavin
• The Walking Dead: Vol.5--William Kirkman
• Pastoralia--George Saunders
• The Studs Lonigan Trilogy--James T. Farrell
• Ticknor--Sheila Heti
• The Middle Stories--Sheila Heti

BOOKS READ:

• Search Party: Collected Poems--William Matthews

William Matthews was a poet born in Cincinnati in 1942.  He died ten years ago.  I'm usually not much of a poetry reader, but my cousin recommended William Matthews to me and I decided to give him a try.  I bought and read Search Party: Collected Poems.  My favorite poems in the collection were the ones written about seeing Charles Mingus perform.  I also enjoyed "The Penalty for Bigamy Is Two Wives", "Nabokov's Death", and the hilarious "A Poetry Reading at West Point".  Some of the later poems were too long and dense for me to figure out in the time I gave them.  That's my fault, though.   

• Giotto's Hand--Iain Pears 

Giotto's Hand is the fifth book in Iain Pears' seven book Art History Mystery series.  I made the mistake of reading the seventh book first, so the surprise twist at the end of Giotto's Hand wasn't as surprising as it otherwise would have been.  It was still a good, quick read.

• McSweeney's #24

McSweeney's #24 was divided into two sections.  The first featured a bunch of authors trying to convince me that Don Barthelme was a great writer.  I read his 60 Stories collection last year and didn't care for it at all.  In fact, it is probably my least favorite short story collection ever.  For some reason, though, I didn't mind reading other authors fawning over Barthelme.  I may not enjoy his writing, but it sounds like he was an interesting man.

The second section of McSweeney's consisted of six short stories full of violence and murders.  I don't want to spoil anything, but bullets fly in all six stories.  It was very un-McSweeney's, but it made for good reading anyway.  I especially enjoyed "Bored to Death" by Jonathan Ames.

• The New York Trilogy--Paul Auster

My brother recommended The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster.  It's a collection of three interrelated detective novellas.  These aren't your typical detective stories, though; these are flat-out weird.  They actually reminded me a bit of Franz Kafka's novels The Castle and The Trial.  All the characters seemed to be mentally unstable with a slightly screwy grasp on reality.  I think The New York Trilogy is supposed to be "postmodern", but I've honestly never understood what that term meant.  I always thought it was just a fancy thing that grad students said to get me to punch them in the throat.

But anyway, the stories were confusing, but ultimately worth reading.  I didn't really "get" the book until I finished it and was able to see how the stories and characters were related.  Even now, I'm not sure I understood everything.    

• God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian--Kurt Vonnegut

My uncle told me about God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian by Kurt Vonnegut.  The book is based on a series of brief essays originally aired on NPR.  In them, Vonnegut repeatedly "dies", interviews famous dead people in the afterlife, and then gets brought back to life by Jack Kevorkian so he (Vonnegut) can tell us what the dead people had to say.

I went up to the bookstore to buy God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian and saw that it was a thin volume printed in a huge font with a lot of blank filler pages.  I sat down in a chair and read the entire book in the store.  It only took me 20 minutes and I saved $10.  

• Disgrace--J.M. Coetzee

I have a book called 1000 Books You Must Read Before You Die.  It features essays on books the editors consider to be essential reading.  In skimming through the book, one of the things I noticed was that there was a lot of J.M. Coetzee in there...eleven books, in fact.  I'd never read anything by the author before, so I went out and bought a copy of Disgrace.  I picked it over his other books because it had a "Winner of the 1999 Booker Prize" emblem on the front.

Disgrace is about a South African professor whose life falls apart after he has an affair with a student.  He loses his job and ends up going to live with his daughter on her farm.  He volunteers at an animal shelter and tries to write an opera about Lord Byron.  Just when he thinks it can't get any worse, real tragedy strikes.

Disgrace was a great book and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.  Maybe the 1000 Books editors were on to something.

• The Book of Pilates--Joyce Gavin

This was just a book I bought to familiarize myself with the basic concepts and techniques of Pilates.  It served its purpose and one of the models was cute.  There's not much else to say about it.

• Blood Meridian--Cormac McCarthy

I was out book shopping and a crazy lady came up to me and told me I should read Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.  I've enjoyed McCarthy in the past and I'm always willing to listen to crazy people, so I bought a copy.  Wow!  I thought No Country for Old Men was a violent book; it doesn't even come close to Blood Meridian.

Blood Meridian follows the adventures of "the kid", a young gunslinger who hires on with the Glanton gang, a real-life gang that was contracted to kill Indians near the Mexican border in the mid-1800s.  The Glantons scalp their kills and get money from the government for each scalp they bring in.  Before you know it, they're killing everybody...men, women, children, infants, the elderly, horses, donkeys, each other, etc.  Glanton himself is one of the most depraved characters I've read, but he pales in comparison to Judge Holden, a huge, strangely gifted man who leaves a trail of raped and murdered children wherever he goes.  The Judge makes Patrick Bateman look like an altar boy. 

I must admit that I didn't enjoy Blood Meridian.  It wasn't even the violence that turned me off; I just had trouble following the story.  The other Cormac McCarthy books I've read were easy reads.  Blood Meridian was a tough one and it seemed even tougher because I wasn't expecting to have to concentrate so much.  There was also a lot of untranslated Spanish that gave me trouble.  I don't quit books once I've begun them, though, so I pushed on through.  I'm glad I did.  The last chapter was absolutely amazing.  It was one of the best endings I've ever read.  It was so good that I'm seriously considering going back and reading the entire book over again.

CURRENTLY READING:

• The World Without Us--Alan Weisman
• The Middle Stories--Sheila Heti
  

  October books

This column covers my book-related activities for the first three weeks of June.  I left for a cross-country journey on the 22nd; everything I bought or read during my trip will be covered in a supplemental post.

BOOKS BOUGHT:

• The Birthday Sonnets--Renee Zepeda
• On The Road--Jack Kerouac (audiobook)
• No One Belongs Here More Than You--Miranda July
• The Bernini Bust--Iain Pears
• I Love You, Beth Cooper--Larry Doyle

BOOKS READ:

• Freddy and Fredericka--Mark Helprin
• McSweeney's #23
• No Country For Old Men--Cormac McCarthy
• The Beautiful and Damned--F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Birthday Sonnets--Renee Zepeda

Mark Helprin stopped by my local Joseph-Beth Booksellers when he was on his Freddy and Fredericka tour last year.  I'd never read anything by him; I only knew him as the author of A Soldier of the Great War, a gigantic book that had been sitting neglected on my shelf for almost a year (I still haven't gotten to it).  I walked down anyway to hear what he had to say.  The idiot woman who introduced him pronounced his name as "Mark Hemp-er-un", so he then proceeded to give a 45 minute lecture on all the ways language can be mangled by writers and speakers.  It was an interesting and entertaining presentation, but enough time has passed that I've forgotten most of the specifics.  The main point here is that I ended up with a copy of Freddy and Fredericka.

I'm not sure why I bought it.  It's a 553 page book about Britain's royal family.  I tend to steer clear of 553 page books and I have absolutely no interest in the royal family of Britain, or any other country for that matter.  It didn't sound like a book for me.  I thought about selling it to a used bookstore.  In the end, I dumped it off on my mom.  I asked her to give it a try and tell me what she thought.  She read it in just a few days and thought it was hilarious.

She gave it back to me and I started in on it.  It rarely happens in things literary, but I'm going to have to agree with my mom on this one.  Freddy and Fredericka is hilarious.  With the possible exception of J.P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man, Freddy and Fredericka is the funniest book I've read this year.  It's a long book, but I found it to be an easy, quick read.  It only took me about five or six days to get through.    

McSweeney's #23 was nothing special.  I enjoyed Roddy Doyle's "Black Hoodie" and Shawn Vestal's "About As Fast As This Car Will Go" (which featured one of the best opening lines ever), but the rest of the stories didn't do much for me.  I don't think they were bad stories; I just wasn't in the mood to read them.  The best part of the issue was actually the dust jacket.  It folds out into a poster with art on one side and brief short stories by Dave Eggers on the other.  There must be fifty tiny stories.  I taped the dust jacket up to my wall (see image) and made my way through all of them.  The one about the immortal housefly was the best.

I used to be a huge Coen Brothers fan, but their two previous movies (Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers) were mediocre, so I'd lost some of my interest.  All my interest was rekindled when I found out they'd adapted Cormac McCarthy's novel, No Country For Old Men, for their next movie.  It sounded like a good combination to me: one of my favorite contemporary authors with my favorite contemporary filmmakers.  I rushed out and bought a copy of No Country For Old Men.

The book is about a Vietnam veteran who stumbles upon a drug deal gone horribly wrong.  He steps over the bodies and walks away with millions of untraceable dollars.  Of course, it wouldn't be much of a book if he was permitted to buy himself an island and live happily ever after with his wife.  Soon there's a bounty hunter hot on his trail.  It's not your typical bounty hunter, though; this one carries around a pneumatic stungun that pops holes in the skulls of any who get in his way.  Heads implode.  Heads explode.  Things get messy.  The bodycount in No Country For Old Men has to be in the twenties or thirties.  This is Cormac McCarthy, but I get the feeling that Oprah won't be putting her seal of approval on this book anytime soon.  It gets my seal of approval, though.  I thoroughly enjoyed No Country For Old Men and am really looking forward to the movie's fall release.

I have now read all four of F. Scott Fitzgerald's finished novels.  The Beautiful and Damned isn't as good as The Great Gatsby, but I prefer it to This Side of Paradise and Tender Is the Night.  The Beautiful and Damned tells the story of Anthony Patch and Gloria Gilbert, a young married couple who waste their lives waiting for a huge inheritance that may or may not be coming their way.  Anthony pretends to be a writer, but he's no good at it and isn't motivated to get any better.  He prefers to get drunk and make an ass of himself.  Gloria pretends to be an actress, but fails to realize that there is actual skill involved in acting; she thinks she can be a successful actress just because she's pretty.  Their lives gradually fall apart.  Anthony tries (and fails) to sell motivational pamphlets.  Gloria is turned down for a tiny role because she's too old.  The couple is not only defeated, their lives are ground up and spit out.  It's sad.  Of course, there's still the shaky promise of millions on the horizon.

Renee Zepeda is a fellow Voxer who writes poetry and is currently working on a novel.  I bought a copy of her poetry collection, The Birthday Sonnets, last month.  I'll be honest here; I don't usually care for poetry.  I like some e.e. cummings and the Billy Collins poem about the barking dog, but that's about it.  I bought The Birthday Sonnets as a gesture of support.  I didn't think I'd actually enjoy it.

Well, I'm happy to say that I did enjoy The Birthday Sonnets.  I didn't always understand the poems, but I was still able to feel the beauty of the words and the artistry in their composition.

My favorite line in any of the poems occurs in the very first one.  I read the line over and over again, and it just blew me away.  I have absolutely no idea what Renee was trying to convey with the line, but I have my own interpretation and I love it.  It touches me in that dark place where my heart is supposed to be.  I was surprised to find the line repeated in poem IX...and XXX...and XXXIII...and XXXVII.  The exact same line is in all five poems.  Some might call that needless repetition.  It would be except that all five poems are different and the line ends up taking on different meanings in each.  I don't know if that kind of repetition is a common technique in poetry; this was my first time with it and I thought it was brilliant.

Other highlights for me were "XXVI. Solo" and "XXVII. 'When I Consider Every Thing That Grows'".

CURRENTLY READING:

• The Bernini Bust--Iain Pears

This is my second "Stuff I've Been Reading" column.  The column for the month of April (featuring the exciting origin story) can be found here. 

BOOKS BOUGHT:

• Lolita--Vladimir Nabokov (replacement copy)
• The Berlin Years--Marcel Dzama
• No Country For Old Men--Cormac McCarthy

BOOKS READ:

• McSweeney's #21
• The Yiddish Policemen's Union--M-----l Chabon
• The Collected Stories--Amy Hempel
• The Berlin Years--Marcel Dzama

I have now read all the McSweeney's issues except #10 and #23.  I can honestly say that McSweeney's #21 is one of the best in the series.  The McSweeney's gang sometimes loses their focus and publishes issues that are more concerned with eccentric packaging than with presenting quality short stories.  McSweeney's #21 manages to avoid the pitfalls that have plagued some of the previous issues.  It presents fourteen stories (and some amusing fan mail to Ray Charles) and there's not a dud to be found.  I don't remember the last time McSweeney's published an issue that didn't contain at least one crap story.  Personal highlights include "The Strange Career Of Doctor Raju Gopalarajan" by Rajesh Parameswaran, "I Feel Free" by Greg Ames, "Snakebite" by Arthur Bradford, and a demented little tale by Miranda July called "Majesty".  If you're not familiar with the publication, McSweeney's #21 would be a good place to start.

M-----l Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union was originally supposed to be released in the spring of 2006.  Then, a couple months before the scheduled release date, they pushed it back an entire year.  This made me bang my head against the wall in frustration.  My most highly anticipated book of 2006 quickly turned into my most highly anticipated book of 2007.  I waited and waited and waited.  Eventually the release date came and I rushed out to Costco to pick up my copy.  Ooh la la!

Ewhh la zzzzz, is more like it.  The Yiddish Policemen's Union is the dullest book I have read since Matthew Pearl's The Poe Shadow.  Matthew Pearl is a literary hack, so it's to be expected that he'd write an incredibly boring crime novel.  M-----l Chabon, however, is one of the best writers around and has a Pulitzer Prize sitting on his mantel.  It's shocking to me that he'd release a book as dull as The Yiddish Policemen's Union.  I don't even want to talk about it.  I'm so disappointed.

Amy Hempel's The Collected Stories was named "One of the 10 Best Books of the Year" last year by The New York Times Book Review.  I'd never even heard of her until I read that article.  It piqued my interest, so I bought a copy of the book and have been slowly making my way through it over the last few months.  The Collected Stories compiles everything from Amy Hempel's four previously published short story collections.  A couple of those collections are out-of-print, so this new edition was certainly warranted.

Amy Hempel's stories can be deceivingly simple.  They tend to be short, but don't think for a moment that they're lightweight or hastily written.  The author has the ability to write absolutely perfect sentences.  I was blown away by the power she manages to convey with so few words.  The stories are heartbreaking and hilarious (sometimes simultaneously).  Here's a brief excerpt from "In The Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried":

I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands.

In the course of the experiment, that chimp had a baby.  Imagine how her trainers must have thrilled when the mother, without prompting, began to sign to her newborn.

Baby, drink milk.

Baby, play ball.

And when the baby died, the mother stood over the body, her wrinkled hands moving with animal grace, forming again and again the words: Baby, come hug, Baby, come hug, fluent now in the language of grief.     

I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in quality writing or the short story as an art form.  It's right up there with T.C. Boyle's Stories and The Stories Of John Cheever on my list of best short story collections ever. 

I'm not even sure that the last book I read this month actually counts as a book.  The Berlin Years is a collection of 32 prints by the Canadian artist Marcel Dzama (you may have seen his cover art for Beck's Guero and Guerolito).  The package also includes a reproduction of one of his early notebooks; it's full of sketches, doodles, cartoons, and random writings.  I got The Berlin Years sent to me as a free gift for renewing my subscription to McSweeney's.  It was the perfect gift for me.  Marcel Dzama is one of my favorite artists working today, and I had no idea The Berlin Years even existed.  (Had I known, I would've bought it already.)  The prints are populated by the usual bears, sharks, sea monsters, draculas, and ent-like tree-men that have made Marcel Dzama famous.  I bought a frame, so now I'm ready to display a new print each week for 32 weeks.  My front room is now an art gallery.  

CURRENTLY READING:

• Freddy And Fredericka--Mark Helprin

I occasionally flip through The Believer at the bookstore.  For the most part, the magazine doesn't interest me, but I always read the "Sedaratives" and "Stuff I've Been Reading" columns.  Amy Sedaris is insane and hilarious, and her fake advice column is always the highlight of the magazine.  Nick Hornby, is saner, but far less interesting.  I like how he uses his column to brag about all the books he's been reading.  I'm something of a braggart when it comes to books, so I've decided to add a "column" here that copies the format of The Believer's "Stuff I've Been Reading".  April was a big month for books, so let's get started. 

BOOKS BOUGHT:

• McSweeney's #23

BOOKS READ:

• Cloudsplitter--Russell Banks
• Rabbit, Run--John Updike
• The Cossacks--Leo Tolstoy
• Years Of Minutes--Andy Rooney
• Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn--Mark Twain
• Farmer--Jim Harrison
• McSweeney's #20
• Werewolves In Their Youth--M-----l Chabon

The 758 page Cloudsplitter had been sitting on my shelf for a long time.  It's the size and weight of a cinder block, and I must admit that I was afraid to start it.  I've got a (stupid) personal rule that requires me to finish any novel I begin, so I tend to get cold feet with the big ones.  The book is about John Brown, the abolitionist/terrorist who led anti-slavery insurrections prior to the Civil War, and is told from the sometimes unreliable point-of-view of his son, Owen.  I'm usually not one for historical fiction, especially 758 page historical fiction, but this book hooked me from the first chapter.  I read an average of 40-50 pages daily, but I read 300 pages of Cloudsplitter that first day.  I thought the book would take me the entire month of April, but I finished it in four days.  It was my favorite book of the month, and probably the best thing I've read so far this year.  I'd highly recommend it to anyone interested in the events leading up to the Civil War, or anyone interested in the horrible things men do to each other when they think the voice in their head belongs to God.

John Updike's Rabbit, Run is ranked #97 on the Radcliffe Publishing Course's Top 100 Novels list.  I've been picking books off that list for a few years now, and they haven't let me down yet.  This was another good one.  Rabbit runs, returns, runs some more, returns, and I'm not sure if he's running or returning at the end of the book; it's sort of open to interpretation.  Now I'm left wondering if it would be worth my while to read the three Rabbit sequels.  Any advice regarding this matter would be greatly appreciated (as if anyone's actually reading this).

I love 19th century Russian literature.  I've read most of the big books by the guys with big beards.  The Cossacks is a short book (172 pages) by the guy with the biggest beard of all, Leo Tolstoy.  It tells the story of Olenin, an aristocrat who volunteers to fight with a tribe of Cossacks in southern Russia.  He falls for a Cossack girl.  I don't want to spoil it for you, but it's Russian, so it's safe to say that things don't end well.  The Cossacks was worth reading, but I found it boring in places.  I finished reading it a couple weeks ago, and I've already forgotten most of it.                

Years Of Minutes is a collection of Andy Rooney's essays from 60 Minutes.  I'd been reading this book off-and-on for a couple years, and I finally finished it this month.  Years Of Minutes is a great book for reading in the bathroom.  I kept my copy on the cistern and read an essay each time I was on the toilet.  The essays were never longer than a couple pages, so it worked out perfectly.  Unfortunately, there's a downside to this set-up.  Due to some Pavlovian mix-up, I now have the urge to use the bathroom every time I see a commercial for 60 Minutes.  Oh well.  

Jim Harrison wrote Farmer in 1976.  Today he's mostly known for having written Legends Of The Fall, but he should be famous for having written Farmer.  I loved this book.  It was recommended to me a couple years ago buy a friend who generally has good taste in things.  I searched and searched for my own copy, but it's long out-of-print, and I never was able to find one.  I eventually gave in and ordered a copy from the downtown branch of the Cincinnati library.  Farmer is about a man who farms and teaches and is struggling in a love triangle with a student and his best friend's widow.  It's just about the manliest book I've ever read.  It made me want to shoot guns and haul rocks with my bare hands.  It's a short book and it only took me a day to read.  The next day I went over to the house of the guy who recommended the book to me.  I thought we would drink beers and discuss the book, but instead the night ended with him falling asleep on the couch while his son and I watched Peter Pan.  Hmm.

I couldn't remember if I'd read The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn when I was a kid, so I bought the Everyman's Library edition that features both novels in one sharp-looking hardback cover.  It's a lot of book for $6.98.  It turns out that I'd already read Tom Sawyer, but it was so long ago, that I had no idea how it was going to end.  (SPOILER: They find gold!)   

The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn tells the story of Huck and Jim's raft trip down the Mississippi River.  They get themselves tangled up with family feuds, con artists, and slave catchers.  It's a great book until the very end when Tom Sawyer shows up and ruins everything by being a total chucklehead.  Huck Finn has one of the worst endings I've ever read.  It was worth reading and I'd recommend it, but feel free to stop as soon as Tom shows up.

Every issue of McSweeney's is just about the same to me.  10% of the stories are incredible.  10% are crap.  The remaining 80% are somewhere inbetween.

The last book I read in the month of April was Werewolves In Their Youth, a collection of short stories by M-----l Chabon.  There wasn't nearly as much random gay sex in these stories as there usually is in Chabon's work.  I appreciated that.  I've got nothing against gay sex, but I've always found it odd how he manages to get his male characters into bed with each other.  Mostly I read this book in anticipation of the release of The Yiddish Policemen's Union, M-----l Chabon's new novel which is finally coming out on May 1st.

CURRENTLY READING:

• The Collected Stories--Amy Hempel
• McSweeney's #21    

I am happy four days a year, and today is one of those days.  Why?  Well, McSweeney's #22 arrived on my doorstep this afternoon.  Sure, I haven't actually read #20 or #21 yet, but it's always exciting when the new issue arrives.  McSweeney's #22 consists of three small books encased in a hardback cover.  The three books are entitled:

• From The Notebook: The Unwritten Stories Of F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The State Of Constraint: New Work From Oulipo
• The Poetry Chains Of Dominic Luxford: Poets Choose Poets Till We Have Fifty

I have no idea what Oulipo is, and I'm picky about poetry, so the second and third books probably won't interest me much.  The first book sounds fantastic, though.  The McSweeney's braintrust has gotten seventeen contemporary authors to write short stories based upon some of F. Scott Fitzgerald's unused story ideas.  I'm particularly interested in reading Salvador Plascencia's take on the following phrase from Fitzgerald's notebook: "***** ***** running away from it all and finding that the new ménage is just the same".  Salvador Plascencia's The People Of Paper was my favorite book of 2005, and I've been craving something new from the author.

Oh, and did I mention that the individual books are held in the cover with magnets!