23 posts tagged “stuff i've been reading”

BOOKS BOUGHT:

• McSweeney's #27--Dave Eggers (editor)
• The Bostonians--Henry James
• The Baron in the Trees--Italo Calvino
• Invisible Cities--Italo Calvino
• Civilwarland in Bad Decline--George Saunders
• When You Are Engulfed in Flames--David Sedaris
• Swann's Way--Marcel Proust
• Slapstick--Kurt Vonnegut
• God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater--Kurt Vonnegut

BOOKS READ:

Hotel California--Barney Hoskyns

The full title of this book is Hotel California: The True-Life Adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Browne, Ronstadt, Geffen, the Eagles, and Their Many Friends.  That's a mouthful right there.  Although I don't care even one tiny bit about David Geffen stories, I like most of the other musicians mentioned in that run-on title.  In a fit of boredom, I actually counted up the albums I had by the musicians mentioned in the title.  I came up with 94, so this book was right up my musical alley.

Hotel California examines the Southern California music scene from about 1965-75 with a close look at the rise of the singer-songwriter movement and the country-rock genre popularized by the Eagles.  It was actually a pretty good book.  My only complaint was that parts of the book paid too much attention to Joni Mitchell's voracious sexual appetites.  I don't remember exactly, but I think she had sex with everyone in the title with the possible exception of Linda Ronstadt and Neil Young.  David Geffen was gay, but I'm pretty sure she tried to get with him anyway.  When the author wasn't keeping track of bedpost notches, he was telling interesting anecdotes about all my favorites.  He also gave Gene Clark his due respect and credit.  That right there is enough for me to recommend this book to anyone with similar musical tastes.   

The Adventures of Augie March--Saul Bellow

Augie March was a great book for the first 300+ pages.  It followed the titular character's boyhood and young adulthood in Depression-era Chicago.  Special emphasis was given to Augie's relationship with his family and his many employers.  Then Augie went down to Mexico to train an eagle to catch lizards, and it seemed like all the characters suddenly stepped into a Malcolm Lowry novel.  It was strange.

Augie eventually finished up the Mexican chapter in his life and went back to Chicago.  Then it seemed like Saul Bellow didn't know what to do with the story so he just had Augie marry somebody he met down in Mexico.  It was a disappointing ending to what started off as a very interesting, well-written book.

Augie March is considered a classic in many circles.  In my mind, it's half classic/half disappointment.  I liked the author's Henderson the Rain King much more. 

One Picture for Every Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow--Zak Smith

Zak Smith got the idea of making a drawing or painting that represented what took place on each page of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.  It was a great idea, but the final result was surprisingly dull.  After about 50 pages, it became glaringly obvious that Zak Smith's art wasn't consistently interesting enough to pull off the project.  Illustrated became very repetitive.  How many pages can he represent with a black and white scribble?!  He was always sure to draw the sex parts, though.  I guess that's what happens when you let a pornographer make a book.  A much better idea would've been to commission a different artist for each page. 

I read Gravity's Rainbow about seven or eight years ago.  I didn't reread it when I read Zak Smith's book.  Maybe it would've been more interesting had I tackled both books simultaneously.  Maybe not.   

CURRENTLY READING:

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman--Lawrence Sterne
Swann's Way--Marcel Proust
The Book of Yoga--Christina Brown

Here are my synopses and comments on the second half of The Uncollected Works of J.D. Salinger.  The post concerning the other eleven stories can be found here.  I spoil the endings of quite a few of them, so tread lightly if you think you're going to track the stories down and read them.

Soft Boiled Sergeant (Saturday Evening Post, April, 1944)

In this story, a former soldier reminisces about the friendship he had with a staff sergeant named Burke.  He looks back on his first days in the military and how Burke's kindness helped ease his transition into the Army.  Salinger's main character speaks in an annoying, sloppy English ("pitchers" for "pictures", for example), but the story as a whole is a good one.

The Hang of It (Colliers, July, 1941)

This story is very similar to the one the author published the following year called "Personal Notes of an Infantryman".  Both stories feature a twist at the end where we learn the actual relationship between the characters.  Neither of these stories did much for me and I'd say they're the least of Salinger's works.

The Heart of a Broken Story (Esquire, September, 1941)

"The Heart of a Broken Story" starts out as your typical boy-meets-girl story, but the author interrupts things a few paragraphs in and addresses the reader directly.

The world needs boy-meets-girl stories.  But to write one, unfortunately, the writer must go about the business of having the boy meet the girl.  I couldn't do it with this one.  Not and have it make sense.

Then he explains all the reasons why the story would never work.  He offers some potential ways to get the boy to meet the girl, but dismisses them all as foolish or unrealistic.  The boy doesn't chat her up on the bus.  He doesn't steal the girl's purse in a desperate attempt to meet her.  He doesn't get sent to jail where he strikes up a relationship with the girl based on letters.  He doesn't get shot in the back trying to escape.  None of this happens.  They never meet.  The end. 

The Inverted Forest (Cosmopolitan, December, 1947)

This story is about a girl named Corinne von Nordhoffen who invites a boy named Ray Ford to her 11th birthday party.  The boy doesn't show up, so Corinne and her father's secretary go looking for him.  They find the boy and his mother unexpectedly moving out of town.

Nineteen years go by.  Corinne now works at a magazine; Ray is a famous poet.  Corinne calls Ray on the telephone and the couple start to see a lot of each other.  Things are going well until one of Ray's female admirers arrives in town with an endless supply of lies and charm.  The girl's name is Bunny, so you know there's going to be trouble.

Most of the uncollected stories are 3-5 pages in length; "The Inverted Forest" is over 25.  It's definitely worth tracking down. 

The Long Debut of Lois Taggett (Story, September-October, 1942)

Lois Taggett has a coming-out party.  She then gets a job as a receptionist but leaves after eleven days to go on a cruise to Rio.  She marries a handsome man who turns out to be demented.  They get a divorce and Lois marries a man who always wears white socks.  They have a baby.  It dies. 

The Stranger (Colliers, December, 1945)

"The Stranger" is another good one.  It features Babe Gladwaller and his sister Matilda, the characters from "A Boy in France" and "Last Day of the Last Furlough".  In the latter of those stories, Babe and his friend Vincent Caulfield are about to ship overseas.  In "The Stranger", Babe is out of the service and Vincent is dead.  Babe and Mattie stop by Vincent's ex-girlfriend's apartment to tell her the circumstances surrounding his death in combat.

"The Stranger" features one of my favorite lines from the uncollected stories:

There was never a way, even back in the beginning, that a man could condition himself against the lethal size and shape and melody of beauty by chance.   

The Varioni Brothers (Saturday Evening Post, July, 1943)

The Varioni brothers are a songwriting team along the lines of George and Ira Gershwin.  Sonny Varioni writes the music; Joe Varioni writes the lyrics.  Before he became a lyricist, Joe was a promising novelist.  The songwriting kept him from realizing his potential in that field.  Years after Joe's death, Sonny finds the pieces of his brother's novel and vows to put it together and have it published.

The Young Folks (Story, March-April, 1940)

This was J.D. Salinger's first published story.  It's about young people interacting at a party.

This Sandwich Has No Mayonnaise (Esquire, October, 1945)

This is another story featuring Vincent Caulfield.  In this one, he sits inside a military transport truck waiting to go to a dance with a large group of soldiers.  There are four too many soldiers, and it's up to Vincent to get the extras out of the truck.  He talks with the soldiers and tries to solve his personnel problem, but his mind is really on his younger brother Holden who is missing-in-action.

Blue Melody (Cosmopolitan, September, 1948)

As it says at the beginning of the story, this one's about a singer named Lida Louise, "who sang the blues as they have never been sung before or since." 

Hapworth 16, 1924 (The New Yorker, June, 1965)

"Hapworth 16, 1924" was Salinger's last published work.  It takes the form of a long letter written by the absurdly precocious seven-year-old Seymour Glass.  He's away at summer camp with his younger brother Buddy.  The letter reveals that Seymour can predict the future, shut off his body's pain receptors, and remember specifics from his previous lives.  It's also noteworthy in that it features the list of reading materials Seymour would like sent to camp (including the complete works of Tolstoy, Proust, and any volumes dealing with "human whirling or spinning").  He's a strange boy, that Seymour.  

"Hapworth 16, 1924" is the missing piece in Salinger's Glass family saga and worth searching out for those interested in the complete picture of one of literature's most enchanting families.  I doubt it would be of any interest to readers unfamiliar with Salinger's two Glass books and the Glass-related tales from Nine Stories.

I used to spend a lot of time in libraries poring through old issues of The New Yorker and Saturday Evening Post in search of J.D. Salinger's uncollected stories.  These are the 22 stories the author published and then let disappear from circulation.  A few of them were anthologized, but none of them were readily available at the time of my search.  My hunt through the stacks was time-consuming and frustrating as many of the stories had been ripped out of the magazines by less scrupulous readers.  I eventually tracked them all down.  The strange thing is that once the search was over, I didn't even bother to read many of the stories.  I put them in a trunk where they remained for over a decade.  I recently rediscovered the stories and decided to read them all (many for the first time).  Here are brief synopses and comments on the first 11 stories: 

A Boy in France (Saturday Evening Post, March, 1945)

An American soldier tries to make an abandoned foxhole comfortable for the night.  He cleans it up, arranges his blankets, and then rereads a letter from his little sister.

A Girl I Knew (Good Housekeeping, February, 1948)

This is one of my favorites of the uncollected stories.  In it, a college flunk-out heads to Europe to learn languages.  He befriends a Jewish girl in Vienna.  He speaks to her in his meager German; she speaks to him in something resembling English.  Their language skills are limited, so they basically have the same conversation over and over again each time they meet.  World War II comes and goes.  The young man returns to Vienna to track down his friend.

A Young Girl in 1941 With No Waist At All (Mademoiselle, May, 1947)

A young girl (with no waist at all, apparently) is on a cruise to Cuba with her fiance's mother.  She meets an employee of the cruise ship and they spend a night living it up in Havana.  She tries to forget that she'll soon be married; he tries to forget he'll soon be in the Army.

Both Parties Concerned (Saturday Evening Post, May, 1947)

This story features a young married couple out on the town.  The wife is in a bad mood because she'd rather be at home with their baby.  The husband, who appears to be some sort of yokel, would rather drink beer.  This is one that should probably stay uncollected.  Salinger's dialogue isn't up to his usual standards. 

Elaine (Story, March-April, 1945)

"Elaine" tells the story of a girl who graduates elementary school at the age of 16.  Her father died when she was young and her mother spends most of her time at the movies.  Elaine leads a sheltered life until a boy named Teddy Schmidt invites her on a trip to the beach.  This story features a wonderful first line, but it goes downhill from there.

Go See Eddie (Kansas Review, December, 1940)

As the title would suggest, this story is about a man who keeps telling his sister to go see a guy named "Eddie".  This is one of the earliest stories in the collection.  I could tell while reading it that it was an early effort.  

I'm Crazy (Colliers, December, 1945)

"I'm Crazy" is essentially an early version of the second chapter from The Catcher in the Rye (it also has parts of chapters 1 and 21 in it).  Holden Caulfield gets kicked out of school, but goes to visit Mr. Spencer, his history teacher, on his way out of town.  Mr. Spencer reads Holden's feeble essay on the Egyptians and they talk about flunking out and the grippe.  Holden heads home and sneaks up to his sisters' room.  He talks with Phoebe and a second younger sister named Viola.  The parents arrive home to find Holden there.  After the yelling, Holden goes back to his sisters' room where he watches Phoebe sleep and then lines up a row of olives on the railing of Viola's crib.  The little girl likes olives.   

Last Day of the Last Furlough (Saturday Evening Post, July, 1944)

This story features a soldier named Babe Gladwaller and his younger sister, Matilda.  I believe they're the same characters from the story "A Boy in France".  Babe's friend and fellow soldier Vincent Caulfield comes over to the house to spend the last day of the furlough with Babe and his family.  Vincent talks about how his younger brother Holden has gone missing.  Babe's father tells some WWI stories at the dinner table and Babe tries to figure out how to tell his family he's gotten his orders to ship overseas.  This is definitely one of the best of the uncollected stories.

Once a Week Won't Kill You (Story, November-December, 1944)

This is another one of Salinger's stories about soldiers just about to head off to service in WWII.  It features one of my favorite lines in all of The Uncollected Works of J.D. Salinger:

It had been three years and she had never stopped talking to him in italics.

The story is about a soldier who tries to convince his wife (of the italics) that she should take his aunt to the movies once a week while he's away.

Personal Notes of an Infantryman (Colliers, December 12, 1942)

In this one, an older man tries to enlist in the military.  It's got a bit of a twist at the end.  Even with the twist, it isn't much of a story.  It probably would've been better without the twist.

Slight Rebellion Off Madison (The New Yorker, December, 1946)

"Slight Rebellion Off Madison" has Holden Caulfied on Christmas break from Pencey Prep.  He calls up Sally Hayes and they go out on a date.  Holden has an existential crisis of sorts and suggests to Sally that they should run away and get married.  After their date has ended, Holden goes to a bar and gets drunk.  He calls Sally a couple times in the middle of the night to let her know he'd like to come over to help trim the tree on Christmas Eve.  Then he dips his head into a sinkful of water in the bar bathroom.

If you're interested in reading "Slight Rebellion Off Madison", it's now available in a collection called Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker.  I believe it's the only one of the 22 stories currently in print.

For Whom the Bell Tolls--Ernest Hemingway

It was never my intention to read For Whom the Bell Tolls, or any other Hemingway books, for that matter.  I read A Farewell to Arms and The Sun Also Rises years ago.  They were enjoyable books, but they left me feeling a bit let down.  This was, after all, Ernest Hemingway, one of the titans of 20th century American literature...and yet his books didn't touch me like I thought they should.

Earlier this year I went to a huge booksale and found a hardback copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls.  It was ragged and enveloped in the musty smell of basements.  There was even some turquoise mold growing on some of the pages.  I normally would stick a book like that right back on the shelf, but I noticed there were old pieces of paper sticking out of the side.  I opened the book up and found that its previous owner had decorated the inside covers with pictures and articles about the 1943 movie adaptation starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman.  There were a couple loose pictures, but most of them had been pasted into the book itself.  Some of them even folded out of the book.  Some of the pictures were in color, but most of them came out of a local newspaper trying to promote the movie's October 8th, 1943 Cincinnati premiere at the Capitol Theater.  It was just about the coolest thing I've ever found.  I dropped $2 and took the book home with me.

For Whom the Bell Tolls is about an American partisan (Cooper) who's given the strategic mission of blowing up a bridge during the Spanish Civil War.  He teams with a group of guerrilla fighters and falls in love with a girl in their charge (Bergman).  The love story is kind of stilted in places, but that didn't detract from my enjoyment of the book.  Even with all the outdoor screwing and pet names, For Whom the Bell Tolls is one of the best books about war that I've ever read.  The only one I can think of that tops it is Norman Mailer's The Naked & the Dead. 

It took me 471 stinky pages, but I finally understand all the hubbub about Ernest Hemingway.  (If you're a doubter as I was, I challenge you to read Chapter 10 of For Whom the Bell Tolls.)

If on a winter's night a traveler--Italo Calvino

Simply put, Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler is one of the most amazing books I've ever read.  This might sound like hyperbole, but I literally had butterflies in my stomach throughout much of it.  It felt like the author had sat down 25+ years ago to write a book for me to enjoy today.

(Thanks to Scott for telling me about it.)

 

 

Death and Restoration--Iain Pears

Death and Restoration is the sixth book in Iain Pears' seven book Art History Mystery series.  The series stars Flavia di Stefano, a high-ranking investigator in Rome's Art Theft Squad, and Jonathan Argyll, an art dealer and occasional professor.  Just about the same thing happens in all the Art History Mysteries: a painting goes missing and Flavia is called in to investigate.  Jonathan (who by the 6th book is Flavia's fiancé) supplements the investigation from a more academic perspective.  His research usually turns up a previously hidden secret about the missing painting or a far-reaching conspiracy of some sort involving monks, Nazis, or museum curators.  By the end, the painting is recovered, the international art community is shocked, and Flavia and Jonathan are one step closer to matrimonial bliss (or disfunction).

Death and Restoration has the couple investigating a burglary at a small Roman monastary.  There are harmless-looking old lady art thieves, egomaniacal painting restorers, hired assassins, kidnappers, gullible monks, and a strange family whose members have been janitors at the monastary for 400 years.  You know, the usual stuff.

If this kind of thing interests you, forget about Death and Restoration for awhile and start in on the first book in the series, The Raphael Affair.  I accidentally started with the seventh book and it really goofed up my reading.

Icelander--Dustin Long

"Never judge a book by its cover."  I often ignore that adage and read books solely because they look like they'd be good.  Conversely, I often skip over books because they're poorly presented...they've got cheap paper, lame cover art, or a picture of Chuck Palahniuk on the back.  I usually have pretty good success with this method.  Unfortunately, I sometimes get taken in by packaging.  That was the case with Dustin Long's Icelander.  The braintrust over at McSweeney's Rectangulars took a poorly-written, convoluted Icelandic murder mystery and gave it perhaps the most beautiful cover ever.  There's a gigantic fox overlooking a tiny cartoon town.  The fox has real silver flecks in his coat that sparkle at certain angles.  Fat snow flakes complete the scene.  The blurb on the back calls the book "Nabokovian" and compares it to The Crying of Lot 49.  Surely this is a book I'm meant to love.

Wrong.

Icelander was a mess of a book.  It could have used a real editor as opposed to the editor "character" who kept interrupting the flow of the story with his comments and useless footnotes.  The book was fun and creative in places, but as a whole it felt like Dustin Long was just throwing into the book all the tricks he'd picked up by reading other (far better) authors.  I'm not sure if this was an attempt to make his book hip or post-modern or whatever, but he failed.  Normally I'd sell a book like this back to Half Price Books.  I'm going to keep it, though; it looks wonderful on my shelf.

The Apocalypse Reader--Justin Taylor (editor)

As the name would suggest, The Apocalypse Reader is a collection of 34 short stories dealing with the apocalypse.  Justin Taylor defines the term very broadly, so readers will be disappointed if they're looking for a book about zombies or robots that take over the planet.  For every story about the living dead or alien invasions, there's one about Jews escaping from the Inquisition or marriages falling apart.  I came to this book hoping for stories in the same vein as The Road, World War Z, and "After the Plague".  As far as I'm concerned, too many of the stories in The Apocalypse Reader were off-topic.  

There were a few good ones, though.  Here are my personal highlights from the book:

• "These Zombies are Not a Metaphor" by Jeff Goldberg was one of the best stories in the collection.  It's the only story in the book that featured the brain-eating living dead.  Unfortunately, it was only three pages long.  Boo!
• Jared Hohl's story, "Fraise, Menthe, Et Poivre 1978" was another of the highlights.  It's about a group of friends slowly starving to death in Paris.  According to the brief biographical blurbs at the end of the book, this was the author's first published story.  I look forward to his second.
• "Crossing into Cambodia" by Michael Moorcock was also a favorite.  I thought it was going to be the usual, run-of-the-mill Vietnam story, but I soon realized it was much more than that.  It featured a chilling ending that I'm sure will haunt me for awhile.  I'd love to see that closing image on the big screen.
• "An Accounting" by Brian Evenson tells the story of a man who accidentally becomes a "Midwestern Jesus" to some post-apocalyptic rubes.  He inadvertently makes cannibalism one of the tenets of their new religion.  This was probably my favorite story in the book.
• I also liked "The End" by Josip Novakovich.  It featured a non-traditional apocalypse, but was still a quality story.  Much of the action in "The End" took place in my real-life neighborhood.

In addition to the stories mentioned above, the ones by Nathaniel Hawthorne and H.G. Wells were also worth reading.  I'm going to be honest, though.  The rest of this collection was a disappointing waste of my time.  Some of the stories were flat-out garbage.  Dennis Cooper's contribution, "The Ash Gray Proclamation", was basically 30 pages about boys selling their bodies for heroin.  I now know what "fisting" means, but I really wish I hadn't read that story.  Let's talk about comics.

The Best American Comics 2006--Harvey Pekar (editor)

I read and largely enjoyed The Best American Comics 2007 earlier in the year and decided to go back and read the 2006 edition.  The worst part of The Best American Comics 2006 was Harvey Pekar's introduction.  For some reason, he felt the best way to introduce the book was by spoiling the endings for all the stories he'd selected.  Seriously, he went through the stories one by one and basically ruined them all.  If you read this book, save the introduction for the end.  You'll be better off.

My favorite comics in the book were "The Amazing Life of Onion Jack" by Joel Priddy and "Adventures of Paul Bunyan & His Ox, Babe" by Lilli Carré.  The former features Onion Jack, a stickman superhero who'd rather be a chef.  The latter features a melancholy Paul Bunyan who'd prefer to stay inside and read Proust than go out for drinks with Babe after a long day spent kicking down trees.  Paul also bemoans his inability to find an appropriately-sized woman.  Both of these comics managed to be funny and sad at the same time.

Other personal highlights were "Dance With the Vultures" by Jonathan Bennett, "Thirteen Cats of My Childhood" by Jesse Reklaw, and "Passing Before Life's Very Eyes" by Kurt Wolfgang.

Of course, in a collection this size, there are bound to be some selections that I didn't care for.  The blabbermouth editor could have left out "La Rubia Loca" by Justin Hall, "Wonder Wart-Hog" by Gilbert Shelton, and the incredibly stupid "Busted!" by Esther Pearl Watson.  Overall, though, The Best American Comics 2006 was a worthwhile collection and slightly better than the 2007 edition. 

Deadeye Dick--Kurt Vonnegut

I bought a very old hardback version of Kurt Vonnegut's Deadeye Dick.  It came with the dust jacket, but there was absolutely nothing printed on it that even hinted at what the book was about.  There was no plot synopsis and not even a single reviewer's quote.  There was, however, a full-body photograph of the author napping on a couch.  He's wearing a beautiful button-up sweater, a brimmed cap, and no shoes.  There's a tiny dog resting on his lap.  I don't think Kurt Vonnegut was faking for the photographer.  I think he was really sleeping.  I liked the picture so much that I bought the book even though I had no idea what it was about.

I think that if you have any interest in reading Deadeye Dick, you should approach the book as I did...without knowing anything about it.  I also think you should look around and get an old copy with the picture of Kurt Vonnegut sleeping on the back.  It'll be worth it, trust me.

The Postman Always Rings Twice--James M. Cain

I read James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice because it was mentioned in the introduction to the Dashiell Hammett books I recently read.  Also, at 117 pages, it was the shortest book I hadn't read on the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels list.  Having read it, I have no idea how it made the list.  It was a well-written novella about a drifter and an unhappy young wife who team up to commit the perfect murder--and how even the best plans can unravel if a cat decides to climb up a step ladder.  It wasn't a bad book by any means, but I can't imagine that the Modern Library couldn't have come up with something with more substance to it.  If I had a section on my bookshelves labeled "Pulp Fiction", I'd place The Postman Always Rings Twice right there.    

I've now read 74 of the 100 books on the Modern Library's list.  I'm going to read The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow, but then I'll probably retire the list.  There's not much left on it that interests me.

CURRENTLY READING:

• Death and Restoration--Iain Pears
• The Pillars of the Earth--Ken Follett (audiobook)

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:

• The Adventures of Augie March--Saul Bellow
• The Pillars of the Earth--Ken Follett (audiobook)
• If on a winter's night a traveler--Italo Calvino

BOOKS READ:

Tree of Smoke--Denis Johnson

If you know me in the real world, I've probably creeped you out by giving you a copy of Denis Johnson's Already Dead as a gift.  If not, just wait awhile.  I've bought every used copy I've ever found and you'll get yours soon enough.

Denis Johnson is one of my favorite contemporary authors.  I've read all seven of his novels, his short story collection, his book of travel writings, his collected poems, and four of his plays.  Tree of Smoke is Denis Johnson's Vietnam novel.  It follows the twisted adventures of CIA operative, William "Skip" Sands, the Houston brothers, and about 40 other characters who drift in and out of the sprawling 600+ page book.  I thought it was a tough read, but ultimately rewarding.  The main issue I had with it was the sheer number of characters.  Had I known there were going to be so many, I would've kept a list of them from the beginning to help avoid confusion. 

Tree of Smoke won the 2007 National Book Award. 

Zeroville--Steve Erickson 

Steve Erickson is another of my favorite authors.  The writing he deletes or shreds is better than the best published work of Chuck Palahniuk.  I've read all eight of his novels and can honestly say they're all amazing.  Zeroville is probably my favorite so far. 

Zeroville tells the story of Vikar, a man with the image of Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor (from A Place in the Sun) tattooed on his shaven head.  He arrives in Los Angeles on the day of the Manson Family killings.  Over the course of the book, Vikar gets involved in the movie industry and ends up becoming a successful film editor.  His duties in the field eventually lead him on a search for the original version of the 1928 silent film, La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc.  (If you've never seen this movie, drop what you're doing and go find a copy.  It'll change the way you see.)

I would highly recommend this book to people interested in the history of cinema.  There are hundreds of movie references in the book and real-life actors and directors appear thinly-veiled throughout.  On top of that, it's just a fantastic book.   

The Invention of Everything Else--Samantha Hunt (audiobook)

I'd been having a lot of trouble reading since February.  Something happened to my brain and I lost my ability to read in the middle of Samantha Hunt's The Invention of Everything Else.  I finished the book, but struggled with the second half.  I switched over to graphic novels and started listening to the occasional audiobook.

One of the first audiobooks I picked up turned out to be The Invention of Everything Else itself.  I felt that I had to give the book a second try.  I'm glad I did.  It made a whole lot more sense the second time through. 

As mentioned in my original review, The Invention of Everything Else is about the last days of inventor Nikola Tesla.  He lives in the Hotel New Yorker and befriends a maid named Louisa.  They bond over a mutual love of pigeons.  Who doesn't love a book about an eccentric inventor, pigeons, and...time travel?

I can now publicly announce that there's nothing wrong with Samantha Hunt's book.  The problems I initially had were mine alone.  I would like to officially declare my adoration for everything Samantha Hunt has ever written (or ever will write) and my growing respect for the criminally neglected Nikola Tesla.  Now gather your book club friends and read this book!

Please.

The Thin Man--Dashiell Hammett

I found the Everyman's Library edition of this Dashiell Hammett collection for $2 at a Friends of the Library sale.  I don't even have much of an interest in Dashiell Hammett, but the book was too beautiful to leave on the shelf.  I couldn't resist buying it.  I'd already read The Maltese Falcon, so I started in on the second book in the collection, The Thin Man.

The Thin Man was originally published in 1934.  It was tremendously popular and eventually spawned a series of movies and television shows.  The book is famous for introducing the characters of Nick and Nora Charles, a married couple with a prodigious thirst for alcoholic beverages.  In between benders, they occasionally solve a crime or two.  The book seemed kind of quaint in places, but it was refreshing to read a mystery where the author didn't rely on the character's cell phone or internet access to solve the crime.  I also found it interesting to see how much of Robert B. Parker's writing style was copped from Hammett's. 

Drunk by Noon--Jennifer L. Knox

The owner and operator of the world's most disturbing poetry/digital arts blog recently told me about Jennifer L. Knox and suggested that I'd like her book, Drunk by Noon.  I'll read any book named after a Handsome Family song, so I ordered it from the library, walked up to get it a few days later, took it into my bathroom (the only place in my house approved for the reading of poetry--I always read poetry aloud and the bathroom has the best acoustics), opened the book up at random, and proceeded to read a poem called "Music to Watch Girls By in the Mysterious Perfect Infinitive".  The poem ends with the following line, a line so brilliant that the poem itself automatically leapt into fourth place on my All-Time Favorite Poems list (yes, I have a list):

How could I have known true love would come, briefly, on one leg, after 56 Jell-O shots in an upstate fraternity basement listening to Ted Nugent's "Wango Tango," so drunk I'd just fucked a pile of phonebooks?

I don't know anything about poetry, but I know what I like, and I like that a lot.  The complete published works of Emily Dickinson don't touch me half as much as that one demented line.  I will admit it; there were a couple duds in Drunk by Noon, but that's to be expected in any collection.  I'm happy to say that the vast majority of the poems in the book were very enjoyable.  This was the perfect poetry book for me.  Not only did it have the Handsome Family reference, but one of the poems was even dedicated to Denis Johnson himself.  I'm definitely going to need my own copy of Drunk by Noon.  I'll also keep my eyes open for the author's other book, A Gringo Like Me.  

CURRENTLY READING:

• Red Harvest--Dashiell Hammett
• 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)