This Book Is For You

My Other Blogging Project That's Been Keeping Me From You

2009-07-16T23:28:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I decided to start a writing project that would allow me to indulge my loves of cooking, history, and collecting old Junior League cookbooks.

So, I started Cooking With the Junior League, where I've been cooking a meal from a different Junior League cookbook, past and present, every week. So far, I've done chicken mole from El Paso, a surprisingly good sauerbraten from Milwaukee, a flat-out terrifying tomato aspic from Nashville, and quite a few more.

I'm not officially shuttering TBIFY, but for the time being, I'll be writing mostly about food, and not so much about books. Check out the new site if you're interested, but if you're not, look me up on Goodreads. I do keep up with my books there.

Columbine by Dave Cullen

2009-05-14T22:43:00.000-07:00

Columbine by Dave Cullen

On April 21, 1999, I walked past an elementary school playground, on my way from my college campus to a convenience store, and I heard screaming. For a moment, my blood went cold. I ran up to the chain link fence and scanned the blacktop for guns or knives or boys in trench coats. But the screaming was just the screaming of kids who'd been cooped up all afternoon and were thrilled to be running around and playing with their friends. Everyone was happy. Everyone was fine.

It was the day after Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold came onto the Columbine High School campus, loaded up with guns and bombs and massacred their classmates. I was a student teacher at a local high school, and suddenly, I was worried about my kids, everybody's kids, in a way I'd never worried before.

Over the next few weeks, I followed the tragedy, and formed certain impressions based on the stories I'd read - troubled, outcast boys; bullied at school; little parental supervision; trench coat mafia; violent video games; popular kids and jocks targeted.

Reading Cullen's book, it's amazing how pervasive the myths about Columbine that circulated in the media following the tragedy were, and how few of them were true. In the years that have passed, more truth has come to light; however, the nation's eye was no longer on Columbine High School, and though the ideas we held about the crime have faded from our memories, they haven't much changed.

Columbine is a meticulously researched, remarkably sensitive book that seeks to create a comprehensive, rational record of the facts. It's not sensational, and there are no photographs, a hallmark of the true crime genre. It's also not an easy thing to read.

The night I began the book, I was grateful for the lack of pictures as I fell asleep. The killers' names swam up into my head, but thankfully, I couldn't conjure their faces, or any other of the images of Columbine, and I didn't want to. The account Cullen pieces together from thousands of pages of official reports and hundreds of interviews and media accounts is disturbing enough.

Cullen responsibly explains many of the stories that evolved around the massacre, and unveils the ways in which Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold fell through the safety nets of school, home, friends, and law enforcement without pointing fingers. He is slightly more damning, if sympathetic, about flaws in the police response to Columbine. After all, students' bodies were left where they fell more than a day after the shootings; Dave Sanders, the only teacher to die in the shootings, might have lived if SWAT teams had acted sooner; the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department hid and destroyed incriminating documents about Eric Harris.

Still, Cullen is hesitant to to assign malicious intent or blame to anyone involved in the response effort, or to families after the fact (the killers' included). Harris and Klebold are a different story, but Cullen also unfolds the dynamics of their personalities and their relationship in a responsible and well-documented fashion. It's almost possible to feel sympathy for Klebold, a suicidally depressed boy, who, had he not come under Harris's influence, might have gone an entirely different way. Harris, on the other hand, is portrayed as a young, but full-blown psychopath, adept at manipulation and bent on mass annihilation.

Columbine skips around in its chronology, never lingering too long on any one part of the shooting, the events that led up to it, or the events that followed, and perhaps that is what made me able to finish it.

When I bought this book, I felt like a sicko, that I'd even read a book about something so awful.

But when I'd finished it, I felt some sense of calm, that a crime I'd had so many false impressions about had been clarified for me, that I now understood both the sickness of the killers, but also, the bravery and struggle of the survivors.

And that's why I would encourage people to read it. Columbine is an example of investigative journalism at its best. It's an effort to make sense of a tragedy, relying upon a foundation of talking to and understanding the people impacted by it. It was a terrible story that needed to be told responsibly and comprehensively out of respect to those who lived through it, and Dave Cullen has done that.

Children and Steamboats: The Missing by Tim Gautreaux

2009-04-30T20:54:00.000-07:00

The Missing by Tim Gautreaux

I love Tim Gautreaux's dedication pages. In his debut short story collection, Same Place, Same Things, he writes, "For my wife, Winborne, and our two sons, Robert and Thomas. I would also like to thank the National Endowment for the Arts. I suppose I could have thanked them first, but they haven't ever baked me biscuits." Welding With Children, the second collection, is dedicated "To my teachers, who knew that every fact is a coin." And in The Missing, Gautreaux offers this dedication: "For my father, Minos Lee Gautreaux, who taught me to love children and steamboats."

These three dedications say a good deal about the kind of stories Gautreaux writes, old-fashioned tales where the best characters are not those who achieve great deeds, but those able to happily inhabit modest lives, enjoy simple pleasures, and act in a spirit of decency, kindness, and responsibility towards their fellow travelers in the world. In Gautreaux's universe, these qualities bring about their own rewards, while their inverse invite a host of miseries.

If this vision sounds impossibly naive and wholesome to you, then you've clearly never experienced the joy of reading a Tim Gautreaux book. It works because Gautreaux isn't prone to dewy-eyed nostalgia for a golden small town America, and he understands that even the best of us can't save ourselves from loss, pain, and the hundreds of small meannesses that people enact upon one another.

Sam Simoneaux, the protagonist of The Missing, is a man who has known that kind of loss. When he was a baby, Sam's entire family was gunned down in a vengeance killing, himself spared only because his father managed to hide him in a cold furnace. At the book's beginning, he and his wife have just lost their infant son to a fever. And then, on his watch as a floorwalker in a New Orleans department store, a little girl named Lily is kidnapped. It's 1921, and between spotty local law enforcement, slow communications, and widespread shady adoption practices of the time, the chances of recovering her are slim.

After the kidnapping, Sam loses his job, and guilt-ridden, tracks down Lily's parents and offers to help find her. The girl's parents are performers on a steamboat that specializes in pleasure cruises up and down the Mississippi. Suspecting someone might have noticed Lily on one of these cruises, Sam joins the crew as a third mate, responsible for frisking passengers for weapons, breaking up fistfights, and playing piano with the band whenever their itinerary takes them to a backwater where the boat's black orchestra might be in danger.

It's in these parts of the book that Gautreaux's writing feels most colorful and lived in, which isn't surprising as his grandfather was a steamboat captain and his father, a tugboat captain. All along the river, Sam puts out feelers, makes connections, and ventures into territories populated by generations of violent outlaws who operate outside the jurisdiction of any law enforcement.

As Sam's quest brings him closer to finding Lily, it also brings up old questions about his family's fate, and he faces the problem of how a good man can earn justice when the law is corrupt or indifferent, and the lawless go unpunished. The answers are hard-won, and the book's conclusion is both satisfying and bittersweet.

I checked this book out from the library, but after reading it, I plan to go out and buy a copy. Like all of Tim Gautreaux's books, I suspect this is one I'll be reading and re-reading for years to come.

And if you haven't read Gautreaux's short stories, "Floyd's Girl" and "Died and Gone to Vegas" are two of our favorites. My favorite story, "The Courtship of Merlin LeBlanc," isn't available online, but it's in Same Place, Same Things, and is well worth your time.

Live Through This by Debra Gwartney

2009-04-17T14:51:00.000-07:00

Live Through This: A Mother's Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love by Debra Gwartney

When Debra Gwartney's two oldest daughters turned 13 and 14, they began running away from home. At first, they'd stay out all night, then they'd leave for a few days at a time, hanging out with punk rockers and street kids in Eugene, Oregon. Then, after a year of tough love, wilderness retreats for troubled youth, and family counselors, the girls hopped a freight train to San Francisco, and disappeared.

Recently, This American Life rebroadcast the episode, "Didn't Ask to Be Born," which features Gwartney, and her daughters Amanda and Stephanie, telling the story of the rebellion, unhappiness, and family conflict that led the girls to run away from home, and Gwartney's efforts to hold the rest of her family together, not knowing if her daughters were dead or alive.

It was a harrowing, compelling story, and after listening to it, I ran out and picked up Live Through This. While the This American Life segment includes more details about the girls' time on the streets, the book focuses more on Gwartney's struggles on the homefront. I admire that she doesn't say much about what her daughters did while they were away, that she respects these as their stories to tell or not tell. As a result, it's not an exploitative story of how bad and wild and out of control her kids were. Instead, it's a very frank, introspective, and honest account of a worst-case family scenario.

Reading this book, I couldn't help but think of Linda Carroll's memoir about raising Courtney Love, Her Mother's Daughter, though only by its stark contrast. While Carroll tends to absolve herself of some highly ill-considered parenting decisions (e.g. sticking her kid in foster care while she moved to New Zealand to find herself, etc.), Gwartney doesn't shy away from the hard, ugly parts, the things she did wrong, the times she could have tried harder or better or differently.

And Gwartney's not a "bad mother" - far from it, in fact. She's loving, steady, smart, and supportive, and yet still completely powerless to stop her daughters once they've made up their minds to live on the streets.

It's a great book, with a powerful, hard-won resolution. Check out this interview with Gwartney to learn more about the book, and what's happened with her family in the years since Amanda and Stephanie ran away.

Laudanum is a Hell of a Drug: Drood by Dan Simmons

2009-04-06T20:32:00.000-07:00

Drood by Dan Simmons

When I've been telling people about this book over the past few weeks, it usually goes something along the lines of, "Oh my god, it's about Charles Dickens and a train wreck and mesmerism and Egyptian death cults and this shadowy, nefarious creature named Drood, and the whole thing is narrated by an unhinged, laudanum-addicted Wilkie Collins! It's great!"

The weird thing is, people seem intrigued. Either that, or my slightly manic pitch just unnerves them enough to nod their heads and smile so I'll settle down. But I'm inclined to go with the former. After all, Drood's premise is pretty irresistible.

Simmons extrapolates a fantastic and, at times, very frightening tale from true events in the lives of Charles Dickens and his friend, Wilkie Collins, particularly Dickens's last years. On June 9, 1865, Dickens was riding by rail with his young mistress Ellen Ternan and her mother when their train crashed horrifically, killing 10 and injuring 40. After the crash, Dickens's writing fell off dramatically, his health suffered, and he spent much of his last five years giving strenuous reading tours in Great Britain and the United States.

Those are the facts, but Simmons introduces a sinister figure whose presence in the story gives a dark, eerie cast to Dickens's final years. This is Drood, whom Dickens first meets in the aftermath of the Staplehurst crash. Along with Dickens, Drood is seen giving aid to the wounded... or perhaps not. Afterward, Dickens becomes obsessed with Drood, venturing into London's darkest corners, sewers, crypts, opium dens, pursuing danger, courting death, and more often than not, dragging along his good friend, Wilkie Collins.

Though lesser known, Collins was a writer and frequent collaborator of Dickens's (and his two masterpieces, The Lady in White and The Moonstone have experienced a resurgence in popularity in recent years). Collins flouted convention, living openly with one mistress, while fathering three children with another. He also suffered from a number of health problems, which he self-medicated with huge amounts of laudanum. A tincture of opium meant to be ingested a few drops at a time, Collins drank the stuff by the glassful, which sometimes resulted in hallucinations (Collins claimed he saw, among other things, recurring visions of his own double as well as a green-skinned woman with tusks).

In the genius stroke of the novel, Simmons makes this hallucinating, drug-addled, perpetual second fiddle the story's narrator. Jealous, paranoid, and particularly susceptible to the dark allure of Drood, Collins is the perfect voice for this surreal story. As his confessions become more shocking, and Drood's endgame becomes clear, the reader gradually becomes aware of exactly how unreliable a narrator Collins really is. What's true about his tale and what's not? Simmons leaves that all maddeningly, deliciously up in the air.

At nearly 800 pages, Drood is something of an undertaking, but fear not. It's also packed with action, scandal, devilry, and what Brady likes to call high-grade nightmare fuel - 800 pages are rarely this much fun.

Also, I should mention that if this book sounds at all interesting to you, you might enjoy this episode of Doctor Who (a different, but somehow not all that different take on Dicken's last days).

Working on a Long, Creepy Book

2009-03-24T23:40:00.000-07:00

I'm presently in the midst of reading Drood by Dan Simmons, a nearly 800-page fictionalized account of the last years of Charles Dickens, and his obsession with a mysterious, nefarious figure. As narrated by Wilkie Collins.

So far, it's fantastic, but it may take me a little time to get through it, and I want to save some of it for my red-eye to Pittsburgh this weekend.

So, until next week...

Staving Off the Battlestar Galactica Twitchies: Unwind by Neal Shusterman

2009-03-19T23:13:00.000-07:00

Unwind by Neal Shusterman

Though this book's been out for a couple of years, I just heard about it from Bookshelves of Doom, and it sounded like good methadone for The Hunger Games series.

I had no idea it would help me get through the next 24 hours until the series finale of Battlestar Galactica.

Like The Hunger Games, Unwind is set in a futuristic, post-war United States. Only here, the "Heartland Wars," were fought between pro-life and pro-choice factions, who eventually settle upon a highly untidy compromise.

Abortion becomes completely illegal, but when children are between the ages of 13 and 18, their parents or guardians can choose to have them "unwound." Unwinding doesn't end a "life" because, technically, the child's parts are surgically implanted into a living human being - organs, limbs, skin, hair - 99.4% of the kid will wind up somewhere else. Transplanting and grafting have become so technologically advanced that the sky's the limit. Need a lung? They can do that. Want a new arm, a different color eyes, a full head of hair? They can do that.

Kids who get unwound tend to fall into a few different categories: juvenile delinquents, wards of the state, unwanted children, and, children born into certain religious sects, called "tithes."

In Unwind, Shusterman follows a number of these kids on a journey that ought to lead immediately to a "harvest camp," but doesn't. One way or another, the kids here escape, go AWOL, and either through their own ingenuity or the kindness of strangers, end up somewhere quite different. I don't want to say too much more about the book, because it's quite twisty and suspenseful, but this leads us to Battlestar Galactica.

Let's just say that there's a character in the book called The Admiral.

And he's taken it upon himself to shepherd a number of scared, refugee kids slated for certain doom. And he puts them up in a place that's secure, though harsh and physically demanding. And his face is marked with scars, and he has perfectly straight, white teeth, and he is possessed of a demeanor that is stern, yet eminently warm and understanding. He has known great pain and great loss, and is somewhat damaged as a result. He doesn't always trust the right people, but he has an instinct for character.

I could not read Unwind without imagining The Admiral as anyone other than Edward James Olmos, aka, Admiral Adama. And that made the book all the better.

I don't know if Shusterman is a BSG fan, but if he is, this is a great homage (a tribute, and most definitely NOT a rip-off). If he's not, well, then he should be. I think he'd dig it the most.

It's a terrific book that delivers big action while at the same time providing nuanced ideas about where life begins, where it ends, and what it all means.

So say we all.

Crimes of the Centuries: True Crime: An American Anthology

2009-03-12T21:01:00.000-07:00

True Crime: An American Anthology, edited by Harold Schechter

Among true crime writers, there are those who pride themselves on their lack of literary flourish and color, and those who sensationalize every gory detail. Some focus on the victims, and others on the perpetrators. Some present a crime story with objective balance, while others are more than willing to serve as judge, jury, and executioner to perpetrator and victim alike.

In True Crime: An American Anthology, literature professor, novelist, and true crime writer Harold Schechter plucks examples from all of these types, and creates a loosely chronological record of American true crime writing over the past 350 years, from Puritan leaders William Bradford and Cotton Mather, to recent pieces from James Ellroy and Ann Rule. The anthology also includes selections from a number of figures you'd never consider to be true crime writers: Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, Calvin Trillin, and Zora Neale Hurston.

Some of the cases are still well-known today, some have faded from recent memory, and others were obscure and ignored, even in their time. Hurston's piece, "The Trial of Ruby McCollum," about an African-American woman accused of murdering her white lover, a prominent, married physician, with whom she'd had a child, is one of the collection's high points. Hurston focuses on how the black and white communities gradually come to the same consensus about how justice ought to be served (though for very different reasons), and on the show trial that's more about placating the community than uncovering the truth.

Meyer Berger won a Pulitzer for "Veteran Kills 12 in Mad Rampage on Camden Street," an account of the shooting spree carried out by a psychologically unhinged man named Howard Unruh against people he believed had "talked about him." The piece is masterfully written, and Berger's minute-by-minute account of the massacre is chilling, especially given some of its similarities to murders committed by Michael McLendon in Alabama this week.

Another excellent piece is John Bartlow Martin's "Butcher's Dozen," about the police investigation of the Cleveland "torso murders," where the murderer was never caught, and most of his victims never identified. Martin, later an ambassador and a speechwriter for Adlai Stevenson and John F. Kennedy, focuses on police efforts to infiltrate the most poverty-stricken parts of Depression era Cleveland - shantytowns, hobo camps, and clapboard rooming houses - both to find the killer, and to protect the city's most vulnerable residents from becoming victims themselves.

Schechter collects an exceptional range of pieces in this anthology, and some very good, thoughtful, complex writing at that.

I'm on a Richard Yates Kick, Apparently: The Easter Parade

2009-03-06T23:14:00.000-08:00

The Easter Parade by Richard Yates

"Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents' divorce."

Before I get to The Easter Parade itself, it's worth remarking that Richard Yates is criminally underrated as a writer. And I guess I'm not talking about criminally underrated when it comes to being a master of plot or character or dialogue, though he's certainly good at all of these things. I'm talking about sheer writing technique, and that's not a thing that usually catches my eye, at least to a point where I'd remark upon it.

Nine times out of ten, give me some crackling dialogue, and a story that moves, and I'm happy. But with Yates, I'm happy to sit back and just let the words wash over me, never mind that the stories and their characters are largely steeped in troubles that have lost some of their freshness in the literary imagination.

The Easter Parade is about two sisters who couldn't be more different, but somehow wind up equally doomed. Sarah is the more conventional sister, who falls into a great romantic love affair with an Englishman who looks like Laurence Olivier, settles down with him, and raises a family. Her happiness with Tony seems almost decreed by the Fates themselves. They "meet cute," have a stirring courtship from which the book gets its title, and engage in the endearingly annoying custom of intertwining their arms as they take their first sips from a cocktail. But over the course of the novel, it gradually becomes clear that their romance is anything but storybook.

And then, there's Emily, who fervently strikes out on her own path as a Barnard coed, a burgeoning intellectual, a career girl, and a serial siren. Though Sarah plays a large role, the story is really Emily's, and follows her through her careers and her men, each of which eventually proves to be singularly disappointing and unsuitable.

Sarah chooses marriage and family, and it goes bad. Emily chooses career and romance, and it goes bad. Unlike other books from this period, which have some agenda about what women ought to be doing with themselves to avoid malaise, Yates takes the more interesting view that certain people just aren't cut out for happiness. The happiness part is in the details, and in Yates's universe, characters are very good, and certain, at managing their major life choices, and not so good at making them work out in the day to day.

The last 50 pages of the book are among the most inevitably, quietly heartbreaking you'll ever read.

Which leads me to wonder, if you're sitting down to adapt a Richard Yates novel to film, why on earth would you choose Revolutionary Road with The Easter Parade around? While the former might have been nominated for a few awards, the latter would have swept them. Which is not to say that The Easter Parade is a discernibly better book, just that it'd make a much better movie.

Unlike Revolutionary Road, where you're trapped in a suburban house waiting for the moment when everyone cracks up, The Easter Parade moves around, and gets out in the world a little bit.

And proves that suburbia doesn't have the market cornered on unhappiness.

Why Widget is Fractious: Animals Make Us Human by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson

2009-02-25T21:41:00.000-08:00

Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson

We call our little family the Potts/McCoy house, but really, it's the Spike/Widget house. They run things around here. Potts and I can't force each other to make coffee in the morning or clean the bathroom, but the kitties can, and routinely do. If the food bowl is empty in the morning, Widget climbs into bed and pulls my hair until I get up and feed her. If I've let the litter box go a day or two without scooping, Spike will take a spiteful tinkle on the kitchen floor to alert me to the problem.

They're not our children, and they're certainly not our "furbabies" (gag), but when we took them in, we made an unwritten oath to take care of them and make them as happy and secure-feeling as possible for the rest of their lives.

Temple Grandin's books on animal behavior are uniquely useful because they seek to bridge the gaps between scientists, non-academics who work in the field with animals, and anyone who has animals in their lives, which is pretty much everybody. Grandin's insights are also unique because she is autistic, which informs her observations about animal behavior. She's said on many occasions that autism makes her think in pictures rather than words, and causes her to become highly attuned to the small details in her environment -- and these thought patterns place her more closely in synch with animal behavior than most other people.

Early in her career, Grandin was best known for her work in slaughterhouses, which puts some people off right away. However, it's worth looking closer. Grandin observed that in many slaughterhouses, cattle were going to their deaths in a state of terror and panic, forced along with electric prods. So, she designed the center-track restrainer, which nearly every cow will walk straight through without fear. It's now used in most slaughterhouses in the U.S.

If we're going to eat meat, she reasons, we at least owe the animals that we eat the best life possible, and a humane death.

In Animals Make Us Human, Grandin expands her scope to include domesticated animals, wildlife, and animals in zoos, as well as a wider range of livestock, including horses, pigs, and poultry. The premise of the book is that animals do experience four core emotional behaviors: RAGE, FEAR, SEEKING, and PANIC (Grandin always writes these out in all-caps in the book). Our job is to encourage the positive seeking and play behaviors, and to properly manage animals' environment so that FEAR, PANIC, and RAGE play as small a role in animals' experience as possible.

With a well-socialized, easy-going dog that gets a lot of attention and exercise, this is pretty easy to do. With a large animal confined in a zoo, it's a lot harder.

Grandin's chapter on zoo animals is particularly upsetting, especially when she's talking about the conditions faced by the large animals. For example, polar bears are ranging animals that will travel over 5 miles a day in the wild. So, when they're confined in zoos, it tends to affect them badly. One polar bear she writes about would spend up to 80% of his waking hours engaging in what Grandin calls "stereotyping," or abnormal repetitive behaviors. After an animal behaviorist was called in to enrich Gus the polar bear's environment, the zoo was able to get his stereotyping down to about 10%. However, these kinds of observations really call into question the ethics of keeping large animals in zoos.

On a happier note, if you have dogs or cats, you'll likely learn a great deal about their own behavioral quirks, what you can fix, and more importantly, what you probably can't.

Grandin writes that animals with light skin and eyes tend to be a little more neurotic than those with darker skin and eyes - they're recessive traits. When I read, "I've noticed that neutered orange males and females can be very affectionate. Some orange cats will rub on you all day. However, orange cats startle and scare easily," I looked up at Spike and said, "She's TALKING about you." And then Spike nuzzled my hand, and ran away. And when I read, "Sarah Hartwell, a shelter worker in England, calls black cats "laid-back blacks" and tortoiseshell cats "naughty torties," I looked up at Widget and said, "Now she's talking about YOU." And then Widget stuck her butt in my face and started to attack my feet for no good reason.

Ah, my little darlings.

It's an engaging, thought-provoking book, which I recommend to anyone who has animals in their lives, which once again, is everybody. Here's Grandin talking about the book and her work:

Throw Me Sumthin'

2009-02-24T12:45:00.000-08:00

Over at Sociological Images today, I've got a guest post up on Mardi Gras and Margaret Brown's film The Order of Myths, if you're inclined towards such a thing.

Being painfully sober and working on Fat Tuesday probably constitutes some kind of venial sin for me, so I thought I'd festive up the joint with a couple of historical images from The Chattanooga Bakery's webpage. Get over there and order yourself a box of the single deckers - chocolate's the classic, but I prefer the banana.

The Original Mr. and Mrs. Draper: Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

2009-02-19T23:02:00.000-08:00

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

I wish I could know what it would have been like to read this book in 1961, when the ideas of suburban hell and thwarted, if vague, creative aspirations and painfully loveless marriages hadn't been dissected and exorcised in books to the point where they'd practically become cliches. Would the story of Frank and April Wheeler living the life they never wanted, in a neighborhood that suffocates them, with friends they secretly hate, and jobs they openly despise have seemed fresh and honest then?

But then, I wonder if the suburbs weren't already something of a cliche in 1961. In the Los Angeles Times's "Worthy, Though Neglected, Novels of 1961," John W. Aldridge wrote that Revolutionary Road was "a rare example of an effort to be honest about suburban life in the face of the almost irresistible pressure to dress it up in one of the fashionable, ready-to-wear cliches."

I guess the story of people rebelling against conformity, complacency, and the uneasy comfort that those two provide is always a cliche. It's all in how it's done. On Mad Men, the trappings of the Draper household -- the high-powered city job, the heavy drinking, smoking, and womanizing, the housewife's malaise -- are all cliches, but the characters of Don and Betty Draper aren't. They're compellingly doomed.

Richard Yates makes Frank and April Wheeler a little too bound up in, and too self-aware of, those constructs. However, they're compelling in a different way. They're compelling, because they're also aware that they're completely ordinary, not particularly talented or creative individuals who were, somewhere along the line, led to believe that they were special and deserving of extraordinary lives. But then their ordinariness butts in and gets in the way, and fouls everything up.

The way the book is framed is particularly effective. It begins with the Wheelers at the height of their ordinariness, their nasty squabbles and their contempt for one another. And then, there's a glimmer of hope. They just might love each other, take a risk, and escape it all. And then, well, you've seen all the distraught, teary, sweaty-faced movie trailers with Kate and Leo...

Though Sam Mendes's adaptation is the first to see the light of day, Paul Wendkos, best known for directing several Gidget movies and numerous episodes of numerous television programs in the 1960s and 1970s, planned to make Revolutionary Road under the entirely inappropriate title, Love's Lovely Game in 1964. However, the project fell apart. Maybe it was the whole extramarital affair/aspiring home abortionist thing that did it in.

I haven't seen the movie, but I'm inclined to agree with the friend who gave me Revolutionary Road, and say that while it's a good book, it might make for a dull film adaptation. It's a very dialogue and interior monologue-heavy book, and while it moves along at a very nice clip on the page, I just don't think that kind of thing translates very well to the screen.

Found Objects: Telephone Service and the War Effort

2009-02-09T21:57:00.000-08:00

I found these ads in the 1944 Southern California Telephone Company phone books for West Los Angeles. While I knew about victory gardens, war bonds, loose lips, and butter rationing, this was a new one on me.

Text: "Night-time is about the best time a service man has to call home. That's a good point to remember when you feel the urge to make a Long Distance call between 7 and 10 P.M. If it isn't important, we hope you won't make it. Let the men in service have first call on the wires."

Text: "We appreciate the help you are giving us in keeping the Long Distance lines open for war calls. The production of munitions... the movement of troops... the building of ships and bombers... have put the Long Distance lines squarely up against their biggest task. Materials for building telephone lines are no longer available -- they are needed on the fighting fronts. That is why we ask that only really necessary calls be made to war-busy centers. Thank you for your fine cooperation."

(This one says pretty much the same thing as the one above)

Text: "The trained eyes and fingers of telephone operators are needed, these days, at the switchboards that are heavily loaded with war calls. Telephone equipment of every kind is deep in the war task. Will you help us to make every bit of equipment count? Here is one way: Please look in the Directory for any number you are not sure of. Please look there first before you call 'Information.' Thousands of calls daily, in which 'Information' is asked to help, are for numbers that are IN the Directory. Our foremost job is the war job. It just is not feasible to do all the things for our customers that we were able to do in peace time. We appreciate your understanding and your friendly cooperation.

Quotable Quotes

2009-02-09T21:31:00.000-08:00

"Maize is self-fertilized and wind-pollinated, botanical terms that don't begin to describe the beauty and wonder of corn sex."

Who said it?

No Happy Endings: City of Nets by Otto Friedrich

2009-02-07T23:31:00.000-08:00

City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s by Otto Friedrich

City of Nets begins with Sid Grauman, ends with Ronald Reagan, and in between, drops in on nearly every historical personality, event, and movement that figured into the tumultuous and transformative decade.

The title comes from Bertolt Brecht's libretto for The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, about a town of "gin and whiskey, girls and boys" that begins as a hedonist's paradise, but ultimately falls to destruction. Brecht himself turns up periodically in City of Nets, and his own Hollywood story is detailed by Friedrich. It's a doozy -- flight from Nazi Germany, various unsuccessful turns as a Hollywood screenwriters, and finally, a summons before HUAC.

There aren't very many happy, Hollywood endings for the people Friedrich writes about, but there are some great stories -- Bette Davis running the Hollywood Canteen; Olivia de Havilland's battles with Warner Brothers; the madcap life of Preston Sturges; the sad decline of Charlie Chaplin.

The book is also packed with stories of happy accidents, near-misses, and half-truths turned legend. Casablanca became one of the best-loved pictures of all time, despite the fact that no one involved with the film really wanted to be there. George Raft's inability to recognize a good role if it bit him on the face gave us Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade and Fred MacMurry as Walter Neff. And it will probably never be known who really stole the body of John Barrymore and propped it up in Errol Flynn's favorite chair, but Friedrich tells both versions of the story.

And then there's the labor battles and the Hays Office, the War and the war at home, the Red Scare and HUAC. Chandler, Faulkner, and Billy Wilder's awesome telling-off of Louis B. Mayer.

There's never a dull page, and chances are you'll be loading movies into your Netflix queue the entire time. City of Nets provided my happy introduction to Preston Sturges's The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, which is a smart-assed finger in the eye of the Hays Code and just about the funniest thing I've ever seen besides.

It's ON!

2009-02-04T17:48:00.000-08:00

Well, we were all thinking it - even my teenage cousins who've read all the Twilightbooks - but Steven King came right out and said it.

Wowsers.

Now I'm just waiting for Meyer to make a snide remark about hackneyed "folksy" dialogue and then maybe Wordloaf or whatever it's called can sponsor a cage match or knife fight or something. Me? My money'd be on King, even after the van accident. He's got the background knowledge, clearly is not troubled by gore, and, I dunno, seems like he'd be handy with a pig-sticker.

Although, if we're being honest, King really isn't in a position to criticize anyone's writing of what he calls in the interview "the physical side" of writing. I mean, I've read IT - you ain't foolin' me on that one, Uncle Stevie.

Battle Royale: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

2009-01-29T21:22:00.000-08:00

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Do young readers like dystopian fiction because they're morbid little buggers, or do they like it because it's the most consistently solid and inventive little sub-genre in the YA universe? Lois Lowry, Scott Westerfeld, Nancy Farmer, M.T. Anderson have all done terrific work with the subject matter, but Suzanne Collins's new series introduces readers to an even grittier, scarier, more complicated world.

The Hunger Games is set in a futuristic United States that looks more like the Dark Ages. The country has been divided into twelve territories, each singly devoted to producing particular goods and services for the convenience and comfort of those in the wealthy, dictatorial capital. After a failed revolution, those in the territories suffer more than ever, and as a reminder of their defeat, each year the Capital demands a tribute of two children from each territory, their names drawn from a bowl.

The children are then whisked away to the Capital, styled into pint-sized warriors, and then pitched into a fight to the death that's televised nationwide. Twenty-four tributes enter the battlefield, only one leaves. While some territories groom their tributes from an early age, others are unlucky, malnourished, weak, and very young (your name starts going into the hat at 11).

Katniss is a wily and hard-hearted 16-year-old from the poorest territory of Panem, roughly defined as our Appalachia. When her younger sister's name is drawn for the tribute, Katniss volunteers herself instead, and is forced into an uneasy alliance with Peeta, the other tribute from Panem.

The Hunger Games is a gripping, brutal book that succeeds because it neither underestimates its readers nor devolves into gratuitous gore. The story is sophisticated enough to appeal to an adult audience as well - I liked it better than most of the "adult" fiction I read this year, and had a hard time putting it down to do things like eat and not miss my bus stop.

One word of warning: it's best if you, unlike me, know that this is only the first book in a series going in. My reaction upon finishing The Hunger Games amused Brady to no end:

"End of Book One? END OF BOOK ONE?!?!?"

Back By Semi-Popular Demand

2009-01-29T21:05:00.000-08:00

Somehow, my little break from blogging turned into a big break. I was thinking about hanging the thing out to dry except that, over the past three months, just about every single person who reads it has asked me when I'm going to start posting again. So, I may not have many readers, but y'all are loyal and sweet and I appreciate you.

And what with the news that the Washington Post is killing "Book World" as a standalone section, well, if newspapers don't see fit to attend to this business, somebody ought to do it.

The New York Times better not get any funny ideas, or I may have to fashion a newsprint sackcloth and take to the streets ringing a bell and raving about the end times.

The Best Moment on the 2008 Campaign Trail

2008-11-03T23:25:00.000-08:00

There's an interesting round-up on Politico, of scholars, pundits, lobbyists, and heads of think tanks, all recalling the moment in this Presidential campaign that was most memorable for them.

I know mine, no question, and only one other person mentioned it: the beautiful, thoughtful, nuanced speech that Barack Obama gave in the wake of the Reverend Wright "scandal," the best political speech I have heard in my lifetime.

The person who pointed it out, Eric Liu, said of the speech, "Under even ordinary circumstances, to have offered such a transcendent meditation on race and American identity would have been remarkable; to have created it under attack and when his campaign was in grave danger was stunning."

Here's just one of the many best parts of that speech:

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time."

Prayer Pimples for Hairy Fishnuts?

2008-10-30T15:32:00.000-07:00

So here I sit, hiding from my colleagues, because the second to last "Opus" got me choked up and weepy. And now my eyes are all red and I'm dreading someone walking in and asking me what's up, to which I will have to reply, "I just saw the Starship Enterpoop, and the two hours I spent every Christmas Eve from ages 9-12 reading old Bloom County books by the wall heater before finally falling asleep came rushing back at me like a damn freight train."

(Why yes, as a child I slept with a stuffed Opus instead of a teddy bear. Didn't everybody?)

I don't think Breathed is going where it looks like he's going with this - and if he does go that route, I'm sure it will be excellent, in a heart-rending kind of way.

Or, rather, I think I know where Opus will end up, I'm just not sure how he's going to get there.

What I do know is that Opus seems to be stuck in an animal shelter at the moment, and I will probably spend some time this Sunday reading old my old Bloom County books either way. And possibly sobbing like a small child with a skint knee.

Good Eatin': A La Carte by Tanita S. Davis

2008-10-28T22:58:00.000-07:00

A La Carte by Tanita S. Davis

Davis's first novel about a teenage girl with culinary aspirations is as warm, sweet, and comforting as a piece of homemade gingerbread.

Okay, that was a cheesy way to begin this, but after reading the wonderful A La Carte, I've got food on the brain, and anyways, it's true.

Lainey isn't a unique YA protagonist because she has ambitious goals for herself, or even because her dream of being a chef with her own vegetarian cooking show is so unusual (as Lainey says at the beginning of the book, "Do you know how many African-American female chefs there aren't?"), but because she's so clearly well-suited for and up to the challenge.

Her mother is a chef-partner at a local soul food-French/Asian fusion restaurant, and Lainey spends a lot of time there, whipping egg whites, chopping onions, and slowly but surely, earning her right to saute with the big dogs. And when she's not there, chances are good that she's at home testing out a recipe for vegetable latkes or poring over her old Julia Child videos (Saint Julia, Lainey calls her).

Of course, Lainey's dreams have come at a price - she's almost totally isolated from anyone her own age, and her only friend is the hot-and-cold Simeon, who only seems to come around when he needs a favor. With anyone else, Lainey is prickly and stand-offish, but she finds herself completely helpless to resist the charms of her childhood friend. And as Simeon's requests become increasingly erratic and more troubling, Lainey finds herself driven away from the people in her life who truly care about her. Though Lainey's self-imposed desert island and her doormat behavior where Simeon is concerned are frustrating, these things also make her a believable character readers can truly root for.

And did I mention the food? Each chapter ends with a recipe, each of them more delicious-sounding than the last. And these aren't the kind of glorified nachos, mini-pizzas, and brownies recipes that usually bloat the pages of cookbooks for teens. They're challenging, "think like a chef," a la Tom Colicchio, recipes that invite experimentation and improvisation, and yet they're also perfectly within the range of a curious young cook. And what's more, they're healthy, vegetarian, and not from a box.

A La Carte is a terrific read, and was recently nominated for a Cybil for Best Young Adult Novel. Well deserved.

News Flash: LAT Readers Deserve Better

2008-10-22T21:05:00.000-07:00

When the Los Angeles Times cut its standalone Sunday book review, I was annoyed. When the Business and Real Estate sections were whittled to pale imitations of their former selves, I was confused. When scores of talented staffers and editors were laid off or offered buyouts, forcing the paper to operate on a skeleton crew, I was furious.

And now they've gone and uglied up the layout something fierce, and I've just about given up caring.

Many Angelenos angrier and better-informed than I have voiced their complaints about Sam Zell and his shameful gutting of our city's once-great paper. So never mind about the fact that I now get my book news from blogs, and preferred the New York Times's coverage of the Dodgers' postseason (and never mind that sports columnist Bill Plaschke has decided to "boycott" the World Series for reasons both mysterious and profoundly stupid - whatever).

At the heart of this is that the Los Angeles Times was one of the things that made me excited about moving to the city almost four years ago. I started reading it before the move, right around the time of the paper's Pulitzer-winning coverage about deplorable conditions at King/Drew Hospital.

I read that series and thought, that's good reporting, that's a newspaper I'll be proud to read.

And now, it isn't.

Also, it's really, really thin these days.

At-Bat Music: A Moral Question

2008-10-18T00:50:00.000-07:00

So, during the odious Game 5 of the NLCS in which our beloved Dodgers had their clocks collectively cleaned, we did find a moment to remark on Casey Blake's choice of at-bat music, as the Bearded One seemed to have selected some sort of emo rocker tune.

This was odd. More research was needed.

But fortunately, an enterprising soul has put together a list of off-beat at-bat music selections throughout MLB. And boy, oh boy, there are some doozies there.

For starters, since it was him that inspired me to track this down: Casey? The Killers? Really?

However, this was not the most egregious song choice on the list. Anyone who gets pumped up by the musical stylings of Creed or Collective Soul does not deserve to have music in their lives. Tom Glavine and Manny Delcarmen, I'm talking to you. And AJ Burnett, "Hangin' Tough?" Are you a 13-year-old girl circa 1990?

But there are some choice selections. Jeremy Sowers of the Cleveland Indians favors the Wilco tune, "Pot Kettle Black," Rich Aurilia of the Giants likes "No Sleep Till Brooklyn," and Jimmy Gobble of the Kansas City Royals has selected "Copperhead Road" by Steve Earle.

However, the best song on the list by far goes to Jed Lowrie of the Boston Red Sox, and it causes me pain to say something nice about the Red Sox, but when your at-bat music is "Teenage Kicks" by The Undertones, all I can say is, sir, you win the prize for being cool.

As for myself, I've given the matter a lot of thought, and if, after the apocalypse, I find myself somehow qualified to play on a Major League team, my at-bat music would be "Wreck My Flow" by The Dirtbombs.

Also, "Debaser" would be cool.

So, what's your at-bat music?

The Road to Anaheim: Orange County: A Personal History by Gustavo Arellano

2008-10-14T22:22:00.000-07:00

Orange County: A Personal History by Gustavo Arellano

There's a very significant difference between me, a blandly white mutt of German and Scotch-Irish heritage, and Gustavo Arellano, the son of an illegal Mexican immigrant: his family has been in the United States longer than mine has.

And while our forefathers took similarly miserable jobs, mine working in coal mines and steel mills, his picking oranges and packing tomatoes, so that their children could someday go to college and get cushy professional jobs, there's another major difference.

Nobody ever called me names, blamed me for ruining America, or tried to legislate my family out of the country. My family is American, but in the eyes of many, Arellano's isn't.

Of course, this is beyond nutso, but then again, fate would lead Arellano's family to Orange County, one of the more nutso pieces of real estate in the United States, a nest of right-wing conspicuous consumers who love the Lord, but hate the immigrants - the land of Nixon, Minutemen, and Tammy Faye Bakker.

What made Orange County this way? It's perhaps too big a question for one book, so Arellano helpfully gives us two in Orange County: A Personal History. The first story is an irreverent, mightily refreshing history of Orange County that stands in stark contrast to most of the dry, whitewashed local histories of the region. Arellano tracks the settling of Orange County from its mission and orange grove days to the massive postwar migration, and then traces all its present-day conservatism, fundamentalism, isolationism, and racism right back to its roots. In his hands, Orange County is wittily dissected as postsuburbia, the Ellis Island of the 21st century, and "a petri dish for America's continuing democratic experiment."

But the second story, told in alternating chapters, is the story of the Arellanos in America, from his great-grandfather, chased out of town by a herd of potato-slinging youths to the author himself, and his transformation from geeky OC pocho to politically-conscious and sometimes controversial author of the syndicated column, "Ask a Mexican!"

Arellano is heartbreaking, sometimes cruel, and not always easy to read when talking about his parents' limited education ("I don't want to be like you and my mom, Papi"), his father's alcoholism during his early childhood, and the typical callousness of adolescence (none of the Arellano kids went to, or much cared about their father's citizenship ceremony). But it's all in the spirit of that all-too-rare a thing, thoughtful reflection on the past and the truthful memoir. And despite the distance he's travelled from his family's roots, it's also clear that Arellano takes a great deal of pride in their journey from the rural village of El Cargadero to Anaheim.

One small bone to pick, however. Though Arellano admits he's been called immature, perhaps a bit the result of sharing a bunk bed with his younger brother until well into his 20s, there are times when he describes women that I want to roll my eyes, and perhaps toss him into an ice bath or whack him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper. When a woman tells you she's not particularly fond of your column, it's probably not okay to write in your book, "Chula, I wasn't too fond of the spare tire around your midsection," nor to discuss a girl by saying, "Then I actually met her - I'm not going to describe the gal since she's very much a sweetheart, but let's just say she wasn't my type," nor to describe a crush as possessing "hips that moved like hydraulics." Sort of icky.

That tiny bit aside, I adored every minute of the book, as I do just about anything that Arellano writes. You'll have fun, you'll learn something, and if you're a pinche gabacho, you may just come a step or two closer to understanding why we as a nation need to stomp out this nastiness about immigration once and for all.

As Arellano says:

"As Orange County goes, so goes my family, and as my family has traversed through a century or assimilation and resistance, so will the United States - not the easiest of transitions, but always moving forward. Toward the fruit of knowledge - not an apple, but an orange. Picked by a Mexican, of course."

Spy on the Luce: The Irregulars by Jennet Conant

2008-10-13T21:14:00.000-07:00

The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington by Jennet Conant

To begin, let me just say that I am sapped, utterly sapped, after watching the Dodgers lose game 4 of the NCLS in the most heartbreaking manner possible. If I'd turned off my television/radio combo (Vin Scully on the radio, Fox announcers on mute) after the sixth inning, I'd honestly say it was one of the best ball games I'd ever seen. But then, it all just went to pot, and I am totally pinning this loss on Joe Torre, who pulled the smokin' Hong-Chih Kuo for absolutely no good reason.

Now that is off my chest, I am going to put on a brave face, and talk about this lovely book.

Roald Dahl wrote extensively about his wartime experiences, especially considering that he was invalided out of the RAF very early in World War II and saw little combat. However, it was in Washington, D.C., where Dahl was stationed as an attache for the British Embassy, that his writing career got its start.

Dahl hated the Embassy, hated the work, and hated his boss, the British pastoral relic, Lord Halifax. However, he quickly discovered that he liked the United States a great deal, and quickly began to move in powerful and influential circles thanks to his new-found mentor, the newspaper magnate Charles Marsh. As Dahl was a newly published writer, and cut a fine figure in his RAF uniform, he found himself in a position to befriend a variety of Washington insiders.

This brought him to the attention of William Stephenson, aka Intrepid, director of Britain's shadow embassy, the British Security Coordination (BSC). Since 1940, Stephenson had engaged a number of British agents inside the United States in an effort to encourage U.S. involvement in the war both by disseminating propaganda to foster sympathy for the British plight, and to discredit prominent isolationists like paranoid Nazi-sympathizer Charles Lindbergh.

By the time Dahl came on board with the BSC around 1943, its most important work had already been accomplished. Still, alongside agents who included Ian Fleming, David Ogilve, and Noel Coward, Dahl managed to make a mark. He befriended Eleanor Roosevelt and Vice-President Henry Wallace, among others, and in fact, lost the very first paycheck he ever earned from a story in a poker game with Harry Truman.

In addition to Dahl's powerful friends, the BSC was not above extracting intelligence through some good old-fashioned pillow talk, and set Dahl's dashing good looks to the task of seducing isolationist Congresswoman Clare Booth Luce (whose name I always enjoy saying in the voice of Mr. Burns).

Reporting back to base on that affair, an apparently exhausted Dahl complained, "That goddam woman has absolutely screwed me from one end of the room to another for three goddam nights." Quite reasonably, his superiors told him to lie back and think of England.

It's bits like these (and there are plenty of them) that make The Irregulars such a delight to read. Conant manages both a thorough and complex narrative of wartime Washington, and a wicked, gossipy scandal sheet of social gaffes and misdeeds.

It's awfully interesting, and awfully fun.

Speaking of Poetry and Baseball. . .

2008-10-12T14:04:00.000-07:00

John Newbery's 1744 children's book, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, intended for the Amusement of Little Master Tommy and Pretty Miss Polly with Two Letters from Jack the Giant Killer, reminds us that B is, of course, for Baseball.*

And maybe it's just because I've been reading Michael Billig's Banal Nationalism, but the "moral" linking British mercantilism to base running is cracking me up something fierce.

---------------------

*Also, recall the wisdom of Uncle Shelby: "X is for xylophone, because X is always for xylophone."

The Extemporaneous Poetry of Vin Scully

2008-10-10T10:41:00.000-07:00

We've been slack of late, I know. The reason? The Dodgers.

Apropos of the playoffs, the other night Mary and I were discussing whose jersey we would purchase, were we so inclined (and moneyed - those things are like 200 bucks, and that's cash that could be better spent on tickets). Mary was leaning towards Garciaparra - a classy guy, indeed - but there's only one name I'd want on mine: Scully. He is, after all, the poet laureate of baseball and one of the patron saints of this blog.

Seriously, imagine for a moment the yarns that would be spun at a dinner party made up of Vin Scully, Eugene Walter, Everette Maddox, and Elaine Dundy. The mind boggles.

Some might deride ol' Vin for rambling on at times, being too "flowery", or talking too much.

Heathens, all.

Consider this, from the third and final game against the Cubs last week:

(transcript via LAist - we were too busy gnawing our fingernails off to take such good notes)

"And the Dodgers are one out away. One sweet beautiful marvelous out away. They will take it any way shape or form. Strike out, ground ball, fly ball, fair ball, line drive, any way they can get their hands on it. That precious thing called the final out.

Broxton delivers, swung on and missed. And now it’s not one sweet precious out, it’s one sweet precious pitch. Listen to this crowd.

No balls and two strikes to Soriano. Broxton ready. Half swing strike three called and the Cubs are dead! [...]

And as the Dodgers mob each other traditionally out in front of the mound, the lost Cubs - a lot of them, Aramis Ramirez, Derrek Lee - sitting motionless in the dugout, just staring like kids outside a candy store or like the uninvited to the party. Just staring, waiting, watching, knowing there’s nothing left but go back to the dressing room and fly back to a disappointed Chicago."

I swear, the man's voice is a time machine that takes me back to the years before steroids, ridiculous salaries, and the @)#&^% designated hitter.

So in the spirit of October goodness, here's Vin Scully's play-by-play for Sandy Koufax's perfect game in 1965 against the Cubs.

And better still, here's audio of Vin calling Hammerin' Hank Aaron's big hit - he starts at about 54 seconds in, after two lesser broadcasters whoop it up for a bit.

No Doubt About It

2008-10-02T13:16:00.000-07:00

Apparently, today is going to be a day where I write about everything except books.

I just heard that Lanny Frattare, the voice of the Pittsburgh Pirates for 33 years, is retiring.

Frattare is a big part of the reason I'm a baseball fan today, partly because I used to listen to him on the radio, and partly because he signed a baseball for me.

But mostly, it's because he was once very nice to my mom. I wrote that story down about a year ago, and you can read it here.

The Potluck Foods of Civic Engagement

2008-10-02T11:45:00.000-07:00

Tonight, Brady and I are going to watch the vice-presidential debates with some friends. This got me thinking about the debates of my youth. Bush and Ferraro, Quayle and Bentson, and my favorite in 1992: Quayle, Gore, and some other guy... I think it was Phil Hartman:

So, I wanted to bring some snacks for tonight, and all this thinking about those other debates made me realize that these snacks absolutely had to be deviled eggs and that vegetable pizza you make with crescent roll dough and cream cheese.

Two loose cannons, a live broadcast, and 80s food. I can't think of any other way I'd rather spend my evening.

Mad Men: "Six Month Leave"

2008-09-29T23:03:00.001-07:00

This week's episode of Mad Men made me think of a Sharon Olds poem from her collection The Dead and the Living.

"The Death of Marilyn Monroe"

The ambulance men touched her cold
body, lifted it, heavy as iron,
onto the stretcher, tried to close the
mouth, closed the eyes, tied the
arms to the sides, moved a caught
strand of hair, as if it mattered,
saw the shape of her breasts, flattened by
gravity, under the sheet
carried her, as if it were she,
down the steps.

These men were never the same. They went out
afterwards, as they always did,
for a drink or two, but they could not meet
each other's eyes.

Their lives took
a turn--one had nightmares, strange
pains, impotence, depression. One did not
like his work, his wife looked
different, his kids. Even death
seemed different to him--a place where she
would be waiting,

and one found himself standing at night
in the doorway to a room of sleep, listening to a
woman breathing, just an ordinary
woman
breathing.

File Under: Comics I'm Not Reading Anymore

2008-09-24T23:39:00.000-07:00

Under the able hand of Dan Slott, She-Hulk was easily one of my favorite current comic books.

There are so many reasons I shouldn't have liked it: it was a Marvel book, for starters, and a superhero one at that, and it was totally cheesecake (though always in a fun way, never a gross one).

But She-Hulk used to be so cool. It was weird and goofy and funny and meta. A good deal of this had to do with its focus not only on the brash, hard-partying She-Hulk, but on her meek, brainy, human alter ego, Jen Walters. She-Hulk fights in the streets, but Jen Walters, practices superhuman law, which is much cooler.

Except now, she doesn't. After Peter David took over the book last year, Jen Walters all but disappeared, as did the terrific setting at Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg & Holliway, her superhuman law firm, and along with it, most of the best characters there.

And now She-Hulk is a stupid bounty hunter, and the book is no longer weird, goofy, fun, or meta. It's just another stupid Marvel superhero book.

And by stupid Marvel superhero book, I mean something very specific. I've long been annoyed by Marvel's insistence in forcing its readers to engage not with a single superhero and their storyline, but with the entire Marvel universe in a very sustained and geeky way.

The old She-Hulk, at its best, would often bring in other Marvel characters (often on trial for something), but it would do so in a way that someone who only read She-Hulk would enjoy.

Not no more.*

So, can I get on some kind of mailing list to be notified when Jen Walters comes back, and she and She-Hulk go back to practicing law? Because, until that happens, I just don't even care.**
________________________
* Okay, Dan Slott was responsible for some of that, and really, the book never quite recovered from the "Civil War" crossover stuff a summer or two ago. But if I haven't completely soured you on the book, the first two trades, Single Green Female and Superhuman Law, are just about the funniest, most entertaining superhero comic books you can lay hands on, and I recommend them without reservation.
** I just re-read this post, and realize that I sound like a raving, loser nerdlinger, but I am just too broken up about how much She-Hulk sucks these days to care.

Novelty Cookbook Round-Up: Presidents and Rock Stars

2008-09-23T21:55:00.000-07:00

Politics & Pot Roast by Sarah Hood Salomon
I Like Food, Food Tastes Good: In the Kitchen With Your Favorite Bands by Kara Zuaro

With either of these two fun little cookbooks, you would expect interesting stories and factual tidbits, though perhaps not the tastiest of cuisine. However, both offer a surprisingly well-rounded collection of recipes one might actually make, despite a few stomach-churners (a la Death Cab for Cutie's Vegetarian Sausage with Peanut Butter, which they swear is good).

Salomon's is composed of brief entries for each of the 43 Presidents, including a little detail about the entertaining and family dining style of each First Family, as well as a handful of favorite dishes served in the White House during the administration.

As I read through the book, I found myself assigning Presidents to one of three groups:

Presidents with whom I would drink:

James Madison (Whiskey Sours)
James K. Polk (Bishop, Archbishop, or Pope; port, claret, or Burgandy w/ cloves and citrus)
William McKinley (a fan of the booze-soaked watermelon, which I thought was favored only by frat boys)
George Washington (mint juleps, of course)

Presidents with whom I would sup:

Andrew Jackson (Rachel Jackson's Famed Grape Salad and the adorably named Hedgehog Cookies)
William Henry Harrison (Pork Chops with Spiced Apples - Harrison was particular about his cuts of meat, and enjoyed doing his own marketing)
Zachary Taylor (Jambalaya, Corn Friters, Hominy Cheese Grits)
Theodore Roosevelt (Squash or Pumpkin Biscuits)

Presidents with questionable diets:

Grover Cleveland (his favorite dish was Bubble and Squeak, a corned beef and cabbage dish named both for the sounds it makes when you eat it, and the sounds your guts make after you eat it)
Martin Van Buren (a lover of stewed beets)
FDR (enjoyed moose w/ grape jelly; martinis with scrambled eggs)

I also found myself noticing patterns that would be described in today's media as elitism in the kitchen. To judge them only by their larders, James Buchanan was an elitist, as were the Grants, the Arthurs, the Wilsons, the Kennedys, and the Fords.

On the other hand, the Eisenhowers appeared to consume nothing but red meat and fudge, the Truman kitchen was delightfully down-to-earth, and the Carters and Clintons ate like it was Sunday dinner at grandma's house.

The rock stars were far better cooks than I would have imagined, although to be fair, most of them are indie rockers, who strike me as more likely to dice and sautee than say, Fred Durst.

Many of the recipes included in I Like Food, Food Tastes Good are surprisingly fancy-pants, though. I am very keen to try out The Rosebuds's recipe, Zucchini Slippers (a cheese, herb, and bread crumb-stuffed baked zucchini boat), as well as Camera Obscura's Vegetarian Paella.

If you're veggie or vegan, there are a lot of options for you here. But then, of course, there's The Hold Steady, bringin' it like the Midwestern rockers they are with a recipe for a Wisconsin staple, the beer brat.

And Gwen will be pleased to know that not only are the Drive-By Truckers included in this collection, but their recipe is for none other than banana pudding.

Don't worry, Gwen, as soon as I post this, I am emailing you the recipe.

Raised on Wicked Witches, and I Turned Out (Mostly) Fine

2008-09-22T20:35:00.000-07:00

Interesting article in the Boston Globe over the weekend about what happens to fairy tales when you take out all the grim, twisted parts.

The author, Joanna Weiss, describes this version of "Rapunzel," which came with a doll set she bought for her daughter:

"The book went on to spin the tale of a charmed girl named Rapunzel, who spent her days in the tower sewing dresses with a friend. She loved when the witch came to visit and teach songs, including one that made Rapunzel's hair grow longer. But tension arrived: One day, Rapunzel looked out the window and saw a fair in the village nearby. She wanted to go, but the witch was off tending to her garden and couldn't let her out. Fortunately, a prince riding by in his carriage called up to her, 'Rapunzel! Why aren't you at the fair?'"

As a good little Gen X-er raised on dark children's fare like The Dark Crystal, The Rescuers, and The Secret of NIMH, I find this both baffling and horrifying.

But I also feel lucky that popular culture and the political climate of my youth prepared me for a future where life is dark and scary, nothing is to be trusted, and I will never get to retire.

Maybe it is in our best interests as a nation to focus on scaring the bejeezus out of the kiddies every now and again.

Ken Follett Is My Gateway Drug

2008-09-18T23:35:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in the previous post, the NYT book blog, Paper Cuts, has a piece up about the books that serve as a gateway to lifelong reading. I want to play.

First: The BFG by Roald Dahl, The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin, Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

And then, those books that bridged the gap between kids' books and grown-up books: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

And then the "good" books: A Farewell to Arms, the short stories of Flannery O'Connor, Hamlet, The Grapes of Wrath, 1984

And the ones that made me realize that genre fiction was cool, too: It by Stephen King, Case Histories by Kate Atkinson, Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

But perhaps none so important as the books from the next category.

Started reading for the dirty parts, stuck around for the story: Loving Women by Pete Hamill, The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett, Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins

I was not permitted to watch PG-13 movies (and a lot of PG ones), but I did have a library card and an imagination.

Bits and Pieces

2008-09-18T23:30:00.000-07:00

- 100 Awesome Blogs for History Junkies: after reading this, I have to update my links because there is some good stuff here. In addition to one of my regular reads, CLEWS, I found blogs that taught me where the word "codswallop" comes from, who was executed on this day in history, and of the existence of a song about the McKinley assassination entitled "White House Blues".

- The Boston Globe has a review of Hannah Tinti's The Good Thief, which sounds like a humdinger.

- This should be in poor taste, but somehow isn't.

- The NYT's Paper Cuts asks, Which books were your gateways to the hard stuff?

In a few short hours, I'm bound for Chicago, where I will see my in-laws, my childhood best friend, and hopefully, the Cardinals tearing up the Cubs at Wrigley Field (although Bob has warned me to keep it on the down low, as Cubs-Cards games tend to be drunk and rowdy). I am terribly excited. Happy weekend!

How to Make a Villain

2008-09-18T23:07:00.000-07:00

Case study: Noboru Wataya of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Why We Hate Him:
1. the narrator and his wife (Noboru's sister) name their cat after him, and have a good laugh about it
2. he is accused of defiling a woman
3. he may have a thing for his dead sister
4. he has written a dull and obtuse book about economics
5. he has become famous, in a tv pundit kind of way
6. he is mean to our narrator
7. he is seen to wear green-tinted sunglasses indoors

I have never wished a minor fictional character so ill, so hats off to Haruki Murakami, who knows it's as much about the little details as the big things.

Additionally, I have never enjoyed a book so much where so little appears to be happening. Or really, where lots of things appear to be happening, but then you realize that it is a story about a man who barely leaves his house looking for a lost cat. Or is it?

Paging Dear Abby

2008-09-17T23:04:00.000-07:00

A quick diversion from the usual bookery, as I turn to you, gentle reader, for some etiquette advice.

I'm a woman with a professional career, and here, and in many other jobs I've held previously, I've wound up spending a good portion of my workday on the phone. On a near-daily basis, people that I speak to on the phone will call me "honey," "sweetie," or "dear," despite the fact that my speaking voice is neither childlike nor particularly cute.

I am not easily offended, but these interactions tend to get my blood up.

It's not just men, and it's not just people who are a great deal older than I am (in fact, with the latter, I have no problem with letting it slide) -- this happens with men and women, young and old, and it happens a lot.

So, is there a polite and inoffensive way to advise people against this behavior when it occurs?

I once asked a co-worker of mine about this, and she sighed and said, "Well, I just tell myself, they could be calling me a lot worse." I'm afraid that this might be the only Miss Manners-approved way to deal with the situation, but I'm looking for suggestions.

And as a general PSA, gentle reader, please tell everyone you know that these terms of endearment are wonderful and warm and perfectly acceptable for use between family members, significant others, and close friends. But when you use them with strangers, it's condescending, uncomfortable, and rude.

And when you use them with me, it is taking every fiber of professionalism and will in my being not to hang up on you.

That is all.

Signed,

Not Your Sweetie

David Foster Wallace: The Patron Saint of the Class of 1998

2008-09-15T19:44:00.000-07:00

Shortly before I learned of David Foster Wallace's death, I'd been talking to a co-worker about his essay "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again." We were debating the merits of cruise ship vacations, and I vowed I'd never do it, citing Wallace's essay as my reason. They're tacky and unimaginative and nouveau riche.

But the coffee's really good. That's how they get you.

DFW was much discussed among my fellow English majors during the late 90s. Many of us had attempted to read Infinite Jest, though few succeeded, and I was not among them. My friends who read the book in its entirety tended to be self-disciplined, self-consciously intellectual men, the sort who had been hopeless throughout puberty, but blossomed in their college years.

And if you didn't finish it, there was more debate -- was it the book, or was it you?

A friend of mine came up with an excellent concept for a New Yorker-style cartoon: a man sidles up to a woman in a bar, and says, "You know, I've read all of Infinite Jest." It was a very 1997 kind joke, but in 1997, what you thought about Infinite Jest said a lot about you.

In 1997, I wanted confessional poets and southern grotesques and naturalism and Vietnam fiction. What I wanted was muscles and blood. What I did not want was cerebral weightiness and agility. I wanted boxing, not tennis.

Many of my friends became... I hesitate to use the word disciples, because it sounds too slavish, and I don't want to say fans, because that's too casual, but something in between the two. And I eventually found my happy point of entry to Wallace's work through his essays, which were accessible to me in a way his prose wasn't. Which is not to say his prose is inaccessible, just that it is inaccessible to me.

Wallace was a tremendously important figure, but perhaps most important to the aspiring writers who were just beginning to flex their writing chops in the 1990s. I was particularly struck by something that LAT Book Editor David Ulin said: "He really restored the notion of the novel as a kind of canvas on which a writer can do anything."

For a young writer, that's an exhilarating and liberating idea, but it's also a terrifying one. David Foster Wallace made us realize that we could do anything in a book that we wanted, but also that maybe we couldn't, that we wouldn't be talented, smart, or hard-working enough to pull it off. And it's probably good for people who want to be writers to have someone like that, scaring them off of writing for good, or posing a challenge to try harder and do better.

He did that, and as for the rest, all I can really say is that it's sad, and that I'm sorry.

Friday Top 5: Poems I Will Read Recreationally

2008-09-11T18:57:00.000-07:00

5. "Hurt Hawks" by Robinson Jeffers

Sure, it's a little melodramatic, a little over the top in its exultation of the rough, rugged, and arrogant; but with language like this, it's hard not to get caught up in the idea.

4. "Stella oft sees the very face of woe" by Sir Philip Sidney

Ever get disgusted with yourself when a stupid movie makes you cry, and real life stuff doesn't? You know a poem is great when it's as true today as it was in the 16th century -- and the last three lines get me every time.

3. "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio" by James Wright

If you grew up in a small industrial town where all the factories and plants and mills were shutting down one by one, and that town had a high school football team, then you will understand why I love this poem.

2. "The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens

I still remember running into my friend, Dave Wheat, the day after we studied this poem in college:

Me: Dude! Wallace Stevens!
Dave: Dude, nothing that is not there!
Me: And the nothing that is!
Together: Hell yeah!

1. "Thirteen Ways of Being Looked At By a Possum" by Everette Maddox

Because the best poems aren't the ones that are trying to say big and important things in big and important ways. Reading this always makes me wish that more poets weren't terrified of being funny.

And yours?

To Acquire a Void: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

2008-09-10T17:44:00.000-07:00

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir by Haruki Murakami

Though running marathons and writing novels require a similar skill set, people respond very differently when you tell them you do one or the other. Tell people you've written a novel, and they will likely be impressed, as it's something that a good number of people wish they could do themselves. Tell them you run marathons, and they will also be impressed; however, it will be as though you've told them that you hold the Guinness World Record for being covered in bees. They may think your accomplishment impressive, but also slightly insane and pointless.

As Murakami writes, "I've never recommended running to others... a person doesn't become a runner because someone recommends it. People basically become runners because they're meant to."

For over twenty years, Murakami has run for an hour nearly every day, more if he's training for a marathon, which he does once a year. In recent years, he's added triathlons to his repertoire. And on top of that, he's also one of Japan's most celebrated and inventive authors, his work translated into 42 languages.

The book is less a collection of essays than journal entries, in which Murakami describes how he got into distance running at around the same time he decided to become a novelist. In some sections, he's talking about writing, in others, he's talking about running, but really, he's always talking about both -- and in doing so, he's talking about the kind of life that he's chosen to live.

Some things have fallen by the wayside, like the late night social life he enjoyed as the owner of a Tokyo jazz bar in the early 80s. It's a solitary, contemplative life, but he's found that it suits him.

Writing takes talent, which he acknowledges, cannot be acquired; however, it also takes focus and endurance, which can be. You can't run without these things, and you can't write without them either. In fact, he says, "Most of what I know about writing I've learned through running every day."

As a distance runner (and a modestly unsuccessful writer), I found Murakami's observations both immediately familiar and reassuring. People often ask me what I think about when I'm running, how I keep myself from getting bored. I've always had trouble answering this question, because although running keeps my mind occupied and focused, I'm never quite sure what it's focused towards.

Murakami writes about this, saying,

"But really as I run, I don't think much of anything worth mentioning. I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void... As I run I tell myself to think of a river. And clouds. But essentially I'm not thinking of a thing. All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. And this is a pretty wonderful thing. No matter what anybody else says."

It is a pretty wonderful thing, and a pretty wonderful way of talking about it.

If you liked...: On Writing by Stephen King, and/or if you're a distance runner, this book is for you.

The Past Isn't Over, It's Not Even Past: The Turnaround by George Pelecanos

2008-09-09T21:21:00.000-07:00

The Turnaround by George Pelecanos

I suppose it's probably for the best that George Pelecanos took a break for most of the fourth season of The Wire to work on his previous novel, The Night Gardener. Heartbreaking as that season of television was, if Pelecanos had been there, it would have been emotional carnage.

This isn't to say that he was the best writer on that show (in that crowd, it's nearly impossible to pick), but in all of Pelecanos's writing, he demonstrates an almost preternatural ability to turn his characters inside out, sparing the reader nothing. It's not just the characterization, though. Pelecanos's characters exist in a moral universe that's guided by a strong sense of what it means to be good, what it means to have done wrong, and what it means to live with choices and mistakes made.

The moral crisis at the heart of The Turnaround begins on a summer night in 1972 when three white teenagers, buzzed on beer and weed, goad one another into driving through a black D.C. neighborhood. One boy shouts a racial slur, and another throws a fruit pie out the window. Unfamiliar with the neighborhood, they drive down a dead end street, where they are confronted by three black teenagers from the neighborhood.

One of the white boys runs away, another is given a beating that disfigures his face, and the third is shot in the back and killed. Two of the black teenagers are sentenced to prison terms. No one gets out unscathed.

The book moves forward 35 years, and from here, focuses mainly on two of the men involved in the incident. All charges were dropped against Raymond Monroe, a hot-headed youth who'd begun running with a bad crowd. After that night, Monroe leaves his old ways behind, and goes on to become a physical therapist at the Walter Reed Hospital. His only child is serving in Afghanistan, and helping veteran amputees learn to use their artificial limbs allows him to feel he's doing something to help, even if it doesn't help to soothe his fears for his son.

The other man is Alex Pappas, the boy who was beaten, the boy who sat in the back of the car and did nothing. His scarred face and ruined eye are the visible penance for his inaction, but Pappas lives most of his life as though he's still being punished for what happened all those years ago. He, too, had a son serve in the Middle East, but now that son is dead.

Pelecanos manages to bring the surviving characters together in a way that isn't contrived -- this isn't the sort of thing that can be resolved with a talk. Some characters are seeking oblivion and escape from the past, others want payback, and the resolution that Pappas and Monroe are looking for doesn't come easily.

Unlike Pelecanos's other books, The Turnaround isn't a crime novel in any traditional sense of the genre. There is crime, and a worthy villain, but more than anything else, the book is about the hard-won redemption of ruined lives. How things are eventually resolved is somewhat predictable, but the route there is anything but.

Refreshing! A Girly Book That Isn't Girly: It Takes More Than Balls

2008-09-07T20:00:00.000-07:00

It Takes More Than Balls: The Savvy Girls' Guide to Understanding and Enjoying Baseball by Deidre Silva and Jackie Koney

Before he asked me if I wanted to do "dueling reviews" of It Takes More Than Balls, I'd always thought that Bob (he who mans The Griddle at Baseball Toaster) had a possibly unhealthy obsession with tracking instances of catcher's interference.

But thanks to Silva and Koney's book, I now know what it is, and more importantly, why it is interesting.* So, Bob, I'm sorry I doubted you.

It Takes More Than Balls is a concise, entertaining, and snarkily written overview of the sport and how it's played. Silva and Koney do a nice job of illustrating different aspects of the game, as well as the characteristics that separate the good from the great players, with examples plucked from all eras of baseball history.

There's the heartwarming story of Connie Mack agreeing to start aging pitcher Howard "Bob" Ehmke in the first game of the 1929 World Series after Ehmke said, "Mr. Mack, there is one great game left in this old arm." And sure enough, there was. And I couldn't help but feel a little twinge of respect for scrappy Pete Rose, who I learned routinely sprinted to first base when he got a walk, just like the coaches made us do in Little League.

But it's not all heartstrings and the soundtrack from The Natural. Silva and Koney also get in some nice digs at Manny, A-Rod, and the home run derby steroid sluggers, and have a good time (if a kinder one) rolling out stories of notorious errors, regrettable trades, and player foibles.

I do have one small beef with the book, which is that I'm not sure which part of it is for "savvy girls." This really has more to do with the book's packaging, as I really appreciated the absence of overtly girly content in Silva and Koney's approach. No "Omigod, my boyfriend is so into baseball, and I so totally do not know what is going on!" moments -- they respect their readers' intelligence and interest in the sport. However, aside from the memories and testimonials shared by female fans at the end of each chapter (most of which are horribly bland), this is really a book for any casual, yet enthusiastic baseball fan.

I enjoyed it, learned a few new things, lapped up some interesting baseball stats and stories, and was able to add a new piece of ammo to my unwavering, semi-irrational argument that the National League is superior to the American League.**

However, most "savvy guys" won't, because they will not buy a book with a pink cover and a title like It Takes More Than Balls.

I don't blame Silva and Koney for this -- I blame their publisher. And society.
_____________________
*Baseball-Reference.com describes catcher's interference as "a situation where the catcher hinders a batter's ability to hit a pitched ball by touching his bat. The call is automatic as long as the batter was standing inside the batter's box, as it is considered the catcher's responsibility to place himself so as to allow sufficient space for the batter to swing the bat unimpeded."

That is well and good, but I prefer the way the ladies describe it: "The batter is given first base, while the catcher is left writhing on the ground wondering why he didn't become a dentist, like his mother wanted."

**I will fight with total strangers about this. This, and my equally unwavering, semi-irrational argument in favor of "Sweet Child O' Mine" over "Welcome to the Jungle" as the superior GNR song.

Twitchy With Anticipation: Orange County by Gustavo Arellano

2008-09-02T21:59:00.000-07:00

Within a matter of days, Gustavo Arellano's new book, Orange County: A Personal History will be on sale, but that's little comfort to me because I want to read it now.

Fortunately, I have been able to tide myself over with the first chapter. Unfortunately, it's so good that it only makes the waiting worse.

Now, in nearly every case, I'm very skeptical of (and not very polite about) anyone under the age of 40 who writes a memoir. But Arellano has my blessing because, based on what I've read about the book, there isn't going to be a lot of navel-gazing in this personal history. It's a history of Arellano's family (who started sneaking across the border to work thankless jobs for meager wages in 1918), and a history of Orange County, a region of the country that will terrify and amaze you, no matter which side of the culture wars you're on.

And if you read Arellano's weekly syndicated column, Ask A Mexican!, then you know he is occasionally crass, frequently hilarious, and nearly always the smartest guy in the room.

Sometimes he writes passages like this one:

There's no real reason why what you just read and anything that follows relating to my personal life should ever have been published (reviewers: there's a pull quote for ustedes if ever there was one!). The immigrant saga, the coming-of-age rebel yell, the portrait of the artist as a young hombre -- the memoir portion of this book uses those clichés of American letters to tell its tale. But the sad beauty of this country is that we forget. We forget that dumb ethnics assimilate, that they share the goals and dreams of any Mayflower descendant. It takes a snot-nosed, presumptuous minority to kick the United States in its amnesiac britches every couple of years -- consider this your ass boot.

And then mixes them with stuff like this:

Meanwhile, American historians have long dismissed [Orange County] as America's fundamentalist wild, reviled as the place that spawned Nixon, ridiculed for the perfection that drew so many to find lives of leisure. We're historical ether -- invisible but dangerous.

And I am so, so, so excited to read more.

Back To Business

2008-09-01T22:40:00.000-07:00

Due to the Olympic Games, illness, and a generally scrotty state of mind brought about by the latter, I just haven't felt much like writing book reviews this month. Now that I'm mostly better (kids, don't EVER have an allergic reaction to a drug, because it can take weeks to get over it), I still don't feel much like writing book reviews.

Or at least good book reviews involving sustained, semi-critical thought and analysis. This week is dedicated to catching up, so first up: Nixonland

When I was in junior high, and giddy with my new-found love for Janis Joplin and tie-dyed t-shirts, I asked my mother to tell me what the 60s were like. I expected some tales involving Volkswagen buses and fighting the power, but all she said was, "It was an ugly, ugly time."

At the time, I thought, "Gee, you must have been a total no-fun-having square" (although she did tell me a pretty good story about sneaking into Easy Rider underage). But after reading Nixonland, I now understand that my mother's response to the 1960s is the only appropriate one.

Reading Rick Perlstein's Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America is kind of like taking a nature hike that turns into a forced march. Though it only covers the years between 1965 and 1972 -- starting with the Watts Riot and Johnson's sweeping civil rights and domestic policy legislation, and ending with Nixon's landslide defeat of McGovern and the beginnings of the Watergate investigation -- it feels like too much for one book.

Perlstein's a thoughtful and engaging writer, though perhaps a bit too enthusiastic a researcher. The book is at its best when it's focused on the dirty shenanigans of its titular namesake, and it's also very good when discussing the rise of the "Silent Majority" and the nasty backlash of whites nationwide against the civil rights movement.

It's amazing to realize how inaccurate the popular narrative of the civil rights movement is -- you'd think the whole thing ended in 1964, and that segregation and racial discrimination only happened in the South. And by the time Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "I think the people of Mississippi ought to come to Chicago to learn how to hate," many whites and most of the conservative establishment regarded him as a riot-starter, a Communist, and a terrorist.

Ugly times, indeed.

However, on Vietnam and the anti-war movement, and the political shake-ups during those years, Perlstein's account sometimes gets bogged down by the sheer messiness of everything that transpired.

I haven't even gotten to Nixon himself, but let's just say that this book is directly responsible for two nightmares I had in the past week involving the jowly old crook and his cronies.

And also, I've realized one major difference between the Nixon administration and our current one, which are in all other significant ways, identical. One got caught and was punished. The other got caught and didn't suffer a whit.

So, ugly as that era in American history might have been, they'll always have that on us.

Nixonland is interesting, horrifying, entirely worthy of your time; however, a) Nixon nightmares, b) super depressing, and c) forced march. Don't say I didn't warn you.

In Enemy Territory

2008-08-27T21:15:00.000-07:00

I was so horrendously ill last week that I couldn't even be bothered to update my Facebook status, much less write a review.

I will be back to reviewing next week, but for the time being, I am firmly entrenched in Rick Perlstein's Nixonland, a fat, dense, depressing, yet awesome book about American political culture in the 1960s.

And when I say I'm entrenched, I don't mean that lightly. Last night, I had a nightmare that Nixon was wiretapping me.

I sat bolt upright at 4am, and when I went back to sleep, it started up again. Apparently, I'd acquired some sensitive documents, and although I don't remember what they said, they were neatly typed on onion-skin paper, in a Courier font, and Bob Haldeman and Henry Kissinger were hellbent on my ruination.

The Original Country House Murder: The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale

2008-08-18T19:27:00.000-07:00

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale

On the morning of June 30, 1860, the residents of the Kent household woke to discover that 3-year-old Saville Kent had gone missing from his bed. After a feverish search of the ground, the little boy's body was discovered, smothered, stabbed, nearly decapitated, and stuffed down the privy in the backyard.

After a largely botched investigation by local law enforcement, a new kind of police officer was dispatched from Scotland Yard, a detective by the name of Jonathan Whicher. Though detectives are now synonymous with the famed agency, the division had only been created in 1842, and Whicher was one of only eight detectives there. In the years leading up to what would be known as the Road House Murder, Whicher had made a name for himself solving spectacular crimes -- the theft of a priceless da Vinci painting, a rash of bank robberies, a jewel heist. He was the obvious choice for a murder so grisly and high profile that it would later inspire works by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins.

Unfortunately for Whicher, the investigation would also bring about his downfall. After piecing together the little evidence that remained, Whicher announced his suspect, a member of the Kent family. By this time, the press and the public had already decided who they thought to be the guilty parties, and Whicher's reports laid out a very different scenario. By the end of 1860, charges against Whicher's suspect had been dropped, Whicher was vilified, and the murder remained unsolved -- and would continue to be until several years later.

Summerscale does an impressive job of piecing together newspaper reports and archival materials to create an account that reads with as much suspense and horror as a Victorian detective novel. She draws a full and likely portrait of the Kent family and its odd, reclusive dynamics, and also conveys the intrigue that surrounded the new figure of the Victorian-era detective and the public's awe and enthusiasm for such individuals.

However, there's one problem with the book, and perhaps one that would be insurmountable to any responsible writer of historic true crime. The characteristics that made Jonathan Whicher a good detective - elusiveness, inscrutability - make him a frustrating subject for a book. While snippets from letters and reports show Whicher to be a wry, inquisitive, and decent sort, Summerscale never really gets a handle on the central figure of her book. The Road House Murder may have been solved, but the detective who solved it remains as much a mystery as ever.

"It's Toasted": The 60s Ad Campaigns Behind Mad Men

2008-08-17T19:41:00.000-07:00

There's no denying that the writers and researchers at Mad Men do their homework, incorporating meticulous period detail as well as some of the most famous advertising campaigns of the 1960s.

I picked up a few books on advertising history, and while some titles were more informative than others, Taschen's The Golden Age of Advertising: The 60s is by far the glossiest, packed with page after page of the most enduring, most beloved, and most horrifying ads of the decade.

It's fun to see where the fictional world of Sterling Cooper crosses paths with history. There's a throwaway line in "For Those Who Think Young" about Freddy Rumsen's work on the Maidenform account (though it seems that will be visited in more detail later this season). Here's one of the ads from Maidenform's famous "I dreamed I was... in my Maidenform bra" campaign. Nice work, Freddy!:

The scan turned out badly, but I thought these were reminiscent of the scrapped Bethlehem Steel ads from "New Amsterdam." Similar concept, though I preferred Sal's WPA-style art:

And remember that Volkswagen ad that Don Draper hated so much in "The Marriage of Figaro?"

Well, turns out not all of those VW ads were so cute after all.

Mistakes Were Made: My Bad by Paul Slansky and Arleen Sorkin

2008-08-16T18:03:00.000-07:00

My Bad: 25 Years of Public Apologies and the Appalling Behavior That Inspired Them by Paul Slansky and Arleen Sorkin

Since it's Olympics time, I've been finding myself very much in need of potato chip books that I can pick up at every commercial break (can someone explain to me why McDonald's is such a big Olympics sponsor - it would seem that they are working at cross-purposes), but then just as quickly toss aside when Nastia takes to the uneven bars.

And for that purpose, My Bad is perfect reading, with chapters compiling the most shameful moments from television, radio, sports, politics, and so forth. Of course, it's rarely the apologies themselves that are notable. These tend to be fairly bland and rehearsed, unless, of course, the penitent in question is clearly not sorry, or unless the person in question is Wade Boggs, who likes to apologize in the third person.

For example, this apology offered by John "Class Act" McCain in 1998 is rather unremarkable: "I made a very unfortunate and insensitive remark. It was the wrong thing to do, and I have no excuse for it."

What prompted it, however, was that McCain said that the reason Chelsea Clinton was "so ugly" was that she was "the child of Hillary Clinton and Janet Reno."

Some chapters get a little repetitive, like the one on sports figures, for example. Apparently, there are three kinds of sporting gaffes: flipping off/physically assaulting your fans and/or opponents, committing a criminal act off the court/field, or saying appalling, racist/sexist things in interviews and then being completely surprised when people are offended.

Still, I had completely forgotten at least half the things that former Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott had to apologize for.

Along those lines, what's most entertaining about the book is realizing how quickly most scandals fade from memory as they're replaced by others. Rev. Jesse Jackson's anti-Semitic remarks in the 1980s? Forgot about them. Allegations that Gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger groped a whole bunch of women? Slipped my mind. Howard Stern? Dr. Laura? Actually forgot that they ever existed.

And it's also interesting to see how American ideas have changed in the past 25 years about what constitutes appropriate punishment for the transgressions of public persons. While sleeping with a 17-year-old girl might have necessitated an apology in 1983, it did not necessitate a resignation (see former Rep. Daniel Crane).

But some things never change. There's fairly steady representation through the decades of judges who make comments about the attractiveness of rape victims, journalists and reporters who fake news stories, and talk radio personalities who make Don Imus look like Mother Teresa.

If you need something to keep you entertained during Michael Phelps's 83rd interview, or if those Visa commercials stopped being inspiring and started being annoying by Wednesday, this book is for you.

Counting My Blessings

2008-08-15T19:28:00.000-07:00

As petulant, hateful, and baffling as some of the folks I dealt with today were, at least I didn't have a library encounter like this one.

The Last Good Day: Antediluvian Tales by Poppy Z. Brite

2008-08-11T22:14:00.000-07:00

Antediluvian Tales by Poppy Z. Brite

During my baby doll dress-wearing, 'zine-swapping, poetry slamming alterna-teen days, I was aware of Poppy Z. Brite, and though I'd never read one of her books, I did not like her. Part of this can probably be attributed to my teenage disdain for the goth aesthetic, but looking back, I think I was mostly just jealous that someone not that much older than me was already so successful and driven as a writer.

And then, ten years later, I was assigned to review the Courtney Love book Dirty Blonde, and picked up Brite's excellent biography for background research. Reading it, I realized that I hadn't given Brite a fair shake. So, I picked up her trio of Rickey and G-Man books, Liquor, Prime, and Soul Kitchen, and by the time I was through with them, not only was I shamed by my youthful rush to judgment, I had a new favorite author.

I love everything about Brite's writing. I love her dark humor, her lovably debauched, soul-searching characters, and her insights into the restaurant business and tantalizing descriptions of food. I love the way she writes about New Orleans. I love her range as a writer, and though it sounds a bit melodramatic to phrase it as such, her integrity to her craft.

Everyone in New Orleans was impacted by Hurricane Katrina, to understate it by a mile. And as the city rebuilds (or doesn't) and as people move back (or don't), it's clear that New Orleans will always be New Orleans, but it won't be like it was. Though it's only a small part of the social fabric, it's interesting to see what that means for writers and artists like Brite, whose work has always been so rooted in the city.

Antediluvian Tales doesn't spell out what that means for Brite, but in her introduction, she makes it clear that things are going to be, will have to be, different:

"After the events of 2005, though, I couldn't see pairing stories I'd written before the flood with those I'd written after; for better or worse, my life, my outlook, and, necessarily, my work has changed forever... Whatever else they may be, the stories in this little collection now seem almost impossibly innocent to me."

The characters will be familiar to those who know Brite's fictional universe. Five of them are about the Stubbs family, and two about the author's ambiguously gendered alter ego, Dr. Brite, coroner of New Orleans. However, their arrangement is eclectic. Although Brite includes an appendix which allows the stories to be read chronologically, the stories are arranged in the order she found most pleasing.

Though I liked them all, the Stubbs family stories are the strongest in the collection. Brite struck gold when she created this family, a sort of Yoknapatawpha County, NOLA-style (i.e. all the pain without any of that pretentious, beholden-to-the-past southern stoicism, which isn't as dignified as it's cracked up to be).

Standouts include "The Feast of St. Rosalie," where G-Man's lonely, divorced sister considers the connection with her beatific namesake, and "The Devil of Delery Street," a comically sinister story where the Stubbs family is haunted by a ghost that's both malicious and attention-starved. The collection also includes a nonfiction piece, "The Last Good Day of My Life," where Brite contemplates a day she spent birdwatching, eating, and adventuring in Cairns, Australia shortly before Hurricane Katrina. It's one of those seemingly insignificant, yet rare and perfect days, the kind that Brite says, "you probably only get a half-dozen or so in a lifetime, and that's if you're lucky."

And then days after that perfect day, life changed forever. While memories of that trip helped her get through much of 2005 and 2006, she's also found that since then, she has trouble leaving the city now. Brite says, "Until I overcome this, there will be no more truly good days no matter where I am. No more cassowaries or mudskippers... No more adventures except maybe the kind you're forced into. No more coming home."

However her work may change in the future, I'm glad that Brite found a home for the stories in this book. It's a slim, yet wonderful collection that ends one chapter in a writer's career, but leaves the door open for a great deal of exciting and much-anticipated work. It's also worth noting that Brite's future Rickey and G-Man books (she has planned three more for the series) will have a different, though as yet unspecified publisher. In "The Last Good Day of My Life," Brite alludes to an editor who attempted to exploit her Katrina experiences. Though I'm not sure about the particulars here, Brite ended her relationship with Three Rivers Press shortly after the publication of her last novel, Soul Kitchen.

Silly editors. Don't ever ask a southerner to exploit anything about their southern-ness, natural disasters included. Haven't they ever listened to "Outfit" by DBT?

Quarantine!

2008-08-11T14:21:00.000-07:00

Okay, so, here's the deal: Mary's been out of town since Friday, and I'm pretty much trying out for "Superflu Victim #8,432" in the Broadway version of Stephen King's The Stand here.

You know, Jaws never ruined swimming for me, but King's plague epic has pretty much ensured that every time I catch a cold or my sinuses try to kill me, there's at least a few minutes where I'm convinced that there is a superflu, it has gotten loose from some hush-hush military installation, and I've somehow managed to become Patient Zero.

Then I get ahold of myself and bust out the Neti Pot, but it's always a fun minute or so of fever-driven existential terror.

So, just for fun, here's the trailer for the 1994 TV miniseries adaptation which had a heck of a cast (Ossie Davis! Gary Sinese! Shawnee Smith!* Dr. Kelso! Kareem Abdul Jabbar!) but not so much of an ending or a script.

visit videodetective.com for more info

----------------------------
* Becker aside, I've had a soft spot for Ms. Smith ever since the remake of The Blob, which I was so not supposed to have seen at the time when it came out.

The Onion AV Club: Reviewing Stuff So I Don't Have To

2008-08-08T19:03:00.000-07:00

A while back I borrowed a friend's copy of Steve Martin's recent memoir, Born Standing Up. I had intended to write about it here, but after reading it I realized I had very little to say about the book.

This was not because I didn't like it (I liked it fine) but rather because - like a lot of Martin's prose work - it is a book that is so meticulously written that it's almost standoffish. I read it, I enjoyed it well enough, but whatever that element is that engages the reader and makes the experience of "reading a book" a mutually constitutive process, a gestalt that has more to it than simply reader + text, just wasn't there (for me, at least).

Anyways, don't take my word for it - take Nathin Rabin's over at the Onion AV Club, for a much deeper and more generous take on the book. And it probably goes without saying that if you are a fan of stand-up comedy or Steve Martin, you'll probably find it an interesting - if maybe bloodless - time.

Trading Dreams At Midnight

2008-08-05T23:16:00.000-07:00

Trading Dreams at Midnight by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

Spanning three generations of women, Trading Dreams at Midnight is a story about the way family relationships shape identity, and how one can and can't escape them.

Most of the story focuses on Nan, a woman who comes to Philadelphia in the late 1940s to find work as a seamstress, and falls in love with a man who brings her pain and joy in almost equal measure, and on Neena, the eldest of Nan's two granddaughters. However, the character at the book's center is one who is largely absent.

This is Freeda, Nan's beautiful, charismatic, and mentally ill daughter. After giving birth to two girls, Freeda twists in and out of their lives, leaving them with Nan during her unpredictable dark periods. Her presence is both exciting and terrifying. Sometimes she's lighting up rooms with her smile and painting the walls of her apartment bright pink, and others, she's hearing voices and compulsively eating box after box of Argo starch. When the girls are adolescents, she leaves for good, and disappears completely.

While Nan loves her granddaughters, she's washed her hands of Freeda, and encourages the girls to do the same. This is easy for Tish, Freeda's youngest daughter, who aligns herself with Nan, goes to college, and lands a perfect job and perfect man, never once looking back.

For Neena, though, finding Freeda becomes a lifelong obsession. She drops out of college, and spends the next fifteen years, tracking down any clue, any rumored sighting, no matter how vague or shady. As she looks for her mother, Neena pays the bills by hustling married men and shaking them down.

When Tish is hospitalized during her sixth month of pregnancy and risks losing the baby, Neena returns to Philadelphia, only to be told by Nan that her presence would probably do Tish more harm than good. Nan knows she shouldn't play favorites, but she's never been able to help herself when it comes to Tish.

Eventually, McKinney-Whetstone reunites these characters, but the journey that gets them there, and the changes they go through in the process are more important.

It's a compelling story with richly drawn characters (even McKinney-Whetstone's supporting characters are fully realized and immediately recognizable).

If you like...: frank depictions of families dealing with mental illness like 72 Hour Hold by Bebe Moore Campbell or African-American fiction with an old-school feel like The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor, this book is for you.

Cookbook Round-up

2008-08-04T23:56:00.000-07:00

Larry just sent me a link from the NTY blog, The Moment, featuring a list of the favorite cookbooks of cooking professionals.

Of course, Julia Child is well-represented, as is Irma Rombauer (The Joy of Cooking, but I was also happy to see the original Boston Cooking-School Cook Book and the New York Times Cookbook on the list.

As for the former, I've been lucky enough to hold a copy of the first edition in my hands.

And as for the latter, I just got up to check, and the pages for Lee's cold sesame noodles and Katherine Hepburn's brownies fall open by themselves, I've made them so many times.

But no Pomiane? Uncle Pommy's the best.

Since my last favorite cookbook round-up, I've added a few new favorites. The 1952 Memphis Junior League Cookbook is terrific reading, though I'm too scared of all the raw eggs involved with an icebox cake to attempt one. And for Christmas this year, my little sis got me the 1959 Milwaukee Junior League cookbook, Be Milwaukee's Guest. It is a little hope of mine to obtain a Junior League cookbook from all 50 states (do they even HAVE the Junior League in Alaska?). So far, I'm doing well with southern states, but need to branch out a little more.

My birthday is in a couple of months... just so you know.

Killing Time Meme

2008-08-03T22:56:00.000-07:00

I'm killing time while I wait for Mad Men to download from iTunes, so how about a little meme (via Bookeywookie). It's long, so I cut out the questions where my answers were boring.

1. My uncle once: misinterpreted the voicemail my mother left saying I was getting married, and instead thought I had gotten knocked up (let's just say my mother worded the news in an odd way).

He called back and began the conversation by saying, "Aw Karla, we'll love it no matter what it is."

2. I will never forget: to be grateful that Warren Zevon cancelled his show at the New Daisy, and inadvertently caused me to get married

3. Once I met: Christina Hendricks. We chatted amiably outside of a bar for a few minutes, and I had no idea who she was until about two minutes after I went inside.

4. There’s this girl I know: who used to practice karate naked

5. If only I had: thicker hair

6. When I turn my head left I see: a bunch of guitars and a well-stocked bookshelf

7. When I turn my head right I see: a framed photo of my favorite bar in Madison

8. You know I’m lying when: I'm lying. I'm notoriously bad at it.

9. What I miss most about the 80s is: Mary Lou Retton

10. If I were a character in Shakespeare I’d be: Prince Hal

11. By this time next year: I'd like to have finished a draft of my novel

12. I have a hard time understanding: money. Like, that episode of "This American Life" where they explained the subprime loan thing in plain language was awesome. For a brief, shining moment, I understood everything, and then it was gone.

13. If I ever go back to school, I’ll: probably go for something related to history and/or urban planning. But I don't think that's very likely. I like my job, but I really hated grad school.

14. Take my advice, never: as a youth, try to tan if you are pale and freckled. You will be mad at yourself when you're 30.

15. My ideal breakfast is: anything at Cafe Verona

16. If you visit my hometown, I suggest you: eat at Cafe Verona, see the Bradbury Building (it's architecture that's truly soul-uplifting), go on an Esotouric bus tour, and cheer your head off at a Dodgers game

17. Why won’t people: take public transit? Or fund it?

18. If you spend a night at my house: you will comment on how cool our historic landmark apartment is. Everybody does.

19. The world could do without: stretch Hummers

20. I’d rather lick the belly of a cockroach than: shake hands with Karl Rove

21. My favourite blonde(s) is/are: my curly-headed, precociously-vocabularied 4-year-old niece

Weekly Geeks #13: It's Time for Name! That! Author!

2008-08-02T20:09:00.000-07:00

I've been neglecting Weekly Geeks lately, but this one looked really fun. I haven't been able to guess the authors on any of the posts I've read so far, so I'm going to follow MizB's lead and provide hints.

How many can YOU name, boys and girls?

1. Favorite author

HINT: She's only written two books since her 1992 debut, but they're both killer.

2. Author of the book I'm currently reading

HINT: The English translation of her latest book was just released in July.

3. An author I've met in person, albeit briefly

HINT: I think the stuff hanging on the walls behind him should be hint enough.

4. A YouTube clip of an author I've heard speak

5. The author of the book I've most recently finished

HINT: She's a former LA Times writer.

6a. Hottest authors (male)

6b. Hottest authors (female)

HINTS: In addition to being highly photogenic, both authors released incredible books in 2008, one set in Soviet Russia, the other in 1920s Hollywood.

Buttering Me Up

2008-07-30T20:34:00.000-07:00

On the acknowledgments page of Denise Hamilton's new book, The Last Embrace, she writes,

"Hurray for librarians everywhere, those wonderfully sly, subversive supporters of literacy who are the unsung heroes of American letters today."

I promise that this bit of flattery will not prevent me from writing a fair and impartial review of the book when I finish it.

Then again, it's a book set in 1940s Los Angeles, has a nice noirish grime about it, features wayward starlets and thuggish gangsters, and was inspired by the 1949 disappearance of Jean Spangler.

The chances of me not liking this book are practically zilch.

The Southern Girl's Guide to Gracious Living: Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch

2008-07-29T19:59:00.000-07:00

Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch

I suppose I should count myself lucky that my mother wasn't a debutante, that I was never forced to go to Cotillion classes, and that when my freshman year roommate asked me if I was going to rush, I had no idea what she was talking about (after she told me how many dresses it involved, I decided against it).

Still, there's something about the southern debutante that I find myself powerless to resist, a certain trashy mystique. After all, it's not every woman who can smoke a Marlboro Light in white cotton gloves or puke up a liter of Jim Beam without messing up her lipstick.

Sarah Walters is a Charleston-born and bred deb, though she isn't very good at it. She's a little bit plain and shy, and though good manners and heavy drinking come easily to her, things like female friendship and husband-hunting are more elusive.

Girls in Trucks follows Sarah as she ditches Charleston for a lackluster career in publishing and journalism in New York, and as she embarks on one disastrous and wrong relationship after another. She keeps in touch with her fellow, former debs, Annie, Bitsy, and Charlotte, but don't let the names fool you - these are no Sex in the City-esque ladies who lunch and dish. Their lives and problems would have made Carrie Bradshaw trade in her Jimmy Choos for a rural nunnery.

Even though their lives aren't perfect, the other three still manage to have problems glamorous and interesting enough to match their successful lives. Sarah, on the other hand, is a floundering wreck, her problems the products of self-absorption and a frustrating inability to make good life choices.

And that's the biggest problem with Girls in Trucks. Because Sarah sees herself as mediocre, plain, and a failure, the reader will, too. And while I found myself rooting for every tertiary character in the book, I couldn't root for Sarah because I knew she'd find a way to defeat herself no matter how promising her prospects. There are lovable losers, and then, there are just losers.

Still, I read the book in a single sitting (or rather, during a long day of subway connections and doctor's office waiting rooms), and really enjoyed Crouch's descriptions of debutante culture and social class hierarchies in the South.

If you like...: books about southern life and love like Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen, or books about women who just can't seem to get it together like The Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld, this book is for you.

Mad Men, Season 2, Episode 1: "For Those Who Think Young"

2008-07-27T23:18:00.000-07:00

"I realized that watching Mad Men each week had become one of those rare delights, like watching The Simpsons from Season Two to Seven, or Lost in Season Four, where I approached each new episode the way I might approach a wrapped gift." - Noel Murray, The Onion's TV Club

Not only do I approach each new episode of Mad Men like a wrapped gift, I approach them like a book I've been looking forward to for a long time, and have finally laid hands on. It's like the way I feel when I find out there's a new Megan Abbott book coming out, except that it happens every week.

The end of summer has officially, and unthinkably, become the most wonderful time of the year.

Thoughts on the first episode of the new season:

1. If there isn't already one out there, some enterprising seamstress should start selling reproductions of anything Christina Hendricks wears on the show. They would make a killing, and I would be first in line.

2. Tonight, Brady bought a box of Junior Mints in honor of the Junior Account Executives on the show. I hope none of them are phased out in favor of hipper, younger fellows in fishermen's sweaters because I'd only just started to love Harry, Paul, and good ole Cosgrove.

3. And then, there's Pete Campbell, the Junior Account Executive who will never be loved by anyone except his wife, and even she's probably rethinking things. He is a low, nasty sort. Even before he told his wife to open the chocolates because he wanted one, I was, like, "You got your wife a box of chocolates for Valentine's Day? You incredible tool!"

4. That face Don Draper makes when Betty walks down the stairs of the Savoy for their Valentine's Day date: that is the face of a man who is doing penance, whether his wife knows it or not.

5. Oh, Miss Peggy Olson. You had a rough first year at Sterling Cooper, and I wish only good things for you now. And if you have to become a little bit of a monster to accomplish that, I absolve you completely.

6. Oh, Salvatore. That's not going to end well. Same goes for you, Joanie.

True Crime and the Smart Set

2008-07-26T13:25:00.000-07:00

I've been reading Savage Grace by Natalie Robins and Steven M.L. Aronson, the 1985 true crime classic about the Baekeland family, heirs to the Bakelite fortune. For those unfamiliar with the story (or the 2007 film adaptation starring Julianne Moore), in 1972, Barbara Daly Baekeland was murdered by her son, Antony.

After the murder, all kinds of horrifying things came out about the family. Barbara had enlisted women to bed her son, who was gay, in an attempt to "fix" him, and there was some speculation that Barbara had seduced Antony herself. And then there was Barbara's husband, Brooks, who ran off with one of Antony's "girlfriends." That barely scratches the surface, but you can Wikipedia that business to learn more.

The surprising thing about the book is that Robins and Aronson got access to court proceedings, confidential medical records, Antony's letters written from prison and mental institutions, and pretty much the entire Baekeland family and their smart set friends for the book, which is edited as a compilation of these papers and interviews.

The interview subjects are like something right out of Cheever, bon vivants, idle rich jet-setters, wealthy artistic sorts, and the tossers-off of the well-placed beau geste. While talking about the crime, their stories are peppered with meals eaten, art purchased, places summered, parties thrown. As for the murder itself, it's spoken of as though it were an unfortunate, unpleasant thing, not a brutal, twisted crime. And Tony, that poor lamb.

Despite this tone, most of the subjects are rather keen to chat and make a good showing in the story. To read their accounts of the murder, you'd think that they'd personally been stabbed in the chest in a London kitchen, but that the whole thing had been rather a nuisance.

I haven't decided whether this is interesting or highly annoying yet, but I'll give it a few more chapters.

Punk, 1924-Style

2008-07-22T14:42:00.000-07:00

From the Los Angeles Times, Feb. 27, 1924

Happy Birthday Poppa

2008-07-21T22:11:00.000-07:00

Were he still alive, Ernest Hemingway would be 109 today.

Wrap your mind around that one.

Also, check out these photos from the 28th Annual Hemingway Look-Alike Contest, held at Sloppy Joe's Bar in Key West. Why my father-in-law has not ever entered this, I do not know. He'd walk away with the title.

I celebrated Hemingway's birthday by reading some Dawn Powell, his "favorite living writer," and going out for a cocktail after work with friends. The odd thing is, while I was doing these things, I had no idea that it was Hemingway's birthday.

Clearly, Poppa Hemingway commands me from beyond the grave.

Eatin' Crow, Staying Positive

2008-07-21T08:20:00.000-07:00

Going to veer from the stated Purpose-of-Blog for a sec:

The new Hold Steady album is so good it makes me feel bad about snotty things I may have said about the previous ones.

It is like a Midwestern Decoration Day.

Like Cameron's dad's car, it is so choice.

In short, it is eight thirty in the morning and I've already listened to it all the way through.

I'm All Lost in the Supermarket: What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn

2008-07-20T21:39:00.000-07:00

What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn

What Was Lost is partly a mystery and partly a ghost story, but more than anything, it's a story about characters whose lives should have turned out otherwise.

At the heart of it, is a precocious 10-year-old girl and aspiring detective named Kate Meany, who lives with her grandmother in a Birmingham neighborhood full of shops, but no families or children her own age. Largely unsupervised, Kate spends her days stalking the nearby Green Oaks Shopping Center for potential jewel thieves and ne'er-do-wells, a stuffed monkey named Mickey and a notebook at her side.

Her only friend is Adrian, a young man who returns home to work in his father's newspaper shop after college, and Kate spends hours in the shop talking to him. Until the day she doesn't come home. Unable to find other leads, suspicion falls on Adrian, though police never press charges. Still, the moment he can, Adrian disappears, too.

After a remarkable beginning, the book jumps ahead 20 years to 2003, where we meet Lisa, Adrian's sister. Like most other working people in Birmingham, Lisa was unable to avoid the mind-numbing stability of Green Oaks. She's the assistant manager of a record store, a job she initially took for a year to save up money to travel -- now, she's been there for years, working for a petty tyrant boss, and is living with a co-worker boyfriend she neither likes nor dislikes. Alongside Lisa is Kurt, currently serving the thirteenth year of his sentence at Green Oaks as a security guard. Kurt is haunted by the death of his wife, and by the image of a little girl with a stuffed monkey who appears on the security cameras.

Predictably, their stories come together; however, the secrets that are revealed when they do are markedly unpredictable. O'Flynn spends a good deal of time in the day to day lives of the shopping center employees, an endless cycle of cramped breakroom lunches, malfunctioning elevators, cold wars with annoying customers, and the threat of unannounced mystery shoppers who never arrive. The accounting of this tedium, which will ring true to anyone who's ever worked retail, lulled me into believing that nothing important could possibly happen here.

However, it does, and it will snap you out of your shopping mall stupor in nothing flat. The resolution is perhaps too abrupt and quickly handled, but O'Flynn's eye for detail and storytelling chops make What Was Lost more than deserving of its many accolades and awards (the book was first published in the U.K. in 2007).

If you liked...: Case Histories by Kate Atkinson or What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman, this book is for you.

My History Hysteria

2008-07-17T12:37:00.000-07:00

Did anybody else catch Andrew Ward on The Daily Show the other night, promoting his new book The Slaves' War: The Civil War in the Words of Former Slaves?

(Oh, who am I kidding, we watched it on Hulu yesterday afternoon. Cable's for suckers.)

As Ward described his book I turned to Mary and said something along the lines of "Holy crap, I must read this immediately, as of yesterday, stat!" I think I may have startled her, actually. But my eyes were popping out for a good reason: not only does Ward's book look painfully interesting, but I'm guessing it makes a nice corrective to the time-honored "great man" approach that old-school Civil War historians reliably trot out, towards which my sociologically-trained brain is somewhat suspicious.

I think I'll put it, along with Chandra Manning's What This Cruel War Was About: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War - an examination of Union and Confederate soldiers' attitudes towards slavery as a cause of the war, as evidenced in their letters, diaries, and regimental newsletters - on a new summer reading list.

Better still, this would be the perfect opportunity to read the rest of Shelby Foote's military history (I've only read the one on the Siege of Vicksburg, which is probably grounds for familial excommunication, but there you go). I suspect the comparisons will be enlightening, to say the least.

What Do You Do With an Anorexic Eel and Other Quandaries: The Rhino with Glue-On Shoes

2008-07-16T21:52:00.000-07:00

The Rhino with Glue-On Shoes: And Other Surprising Stories of Zoo Vets and Their Patients, edited by Lucy H. Spelman, DVM and Ted Y. Mashima, DVM

If you ever dreamed of being a veterinarian when you were little, chances are pretty good that you didn't think about restraining fractious tabbies or using a rectal thermometer on a gerbil or palpating an arthritic cocker spaniel. No, you probably imagined yourself living with the gorillas or swimming with the dolphins or shooting an anesthetic dart into the lion with the thorn in its paw.

One summer scooping kennel poop in a clinic is usually enough to steer all but the very hardcore away from the job. And even for those that decide to go through with it, the relative stability of a small animal clinic usually looks more appealing than the prospect of moving to Botswana, or of working insane hours with dangerous creatures in a zoo. But still, there are some who opt for these careers and the lifestyle that comes with it. And those are the vets writing about their experiences in The Rhino with Glue-On Shoes.

There's the vet who climbs into a habitat with a wide awake, unrestrained 17-foot crocodile for the express purpose of scraping off a few diseased scales. And there's the one who transports two full-grown whale sharks to Georgia from Taiwan, and another who tracks the nearly extinct Bactrian camel in the Gobi Desert.

Of course, not all of the stories are about exotic and rare animals. Many of the vets write about trying to do things that stretch the limits of medicine, as well as the imagination. Like, say, the difficulties associated with giving an octopus an MRI, or anesthetizing a poison dart frog.

I will warn you, a lot of the essays are pretty badly written, but I hesitate to fault the authors too much. After all, with most of their writing experience coming in report or academic journal form, it's unlikely that many have been asked to engage in much formal storytelling. However, the stories themselves are so fascinating that it's not that difficult to overlook the clumsy passages.

The Rhino with Glue-On Shoes is one of those potato chip books that you can dip into, and pick at to your heart's content. I found it to be excellent subway reading, and was happy to recommend it to my friend who's currently in vet school. She was quite excited about it, but then again, she spent last summer castrating bulls in Zimbabwe, and can probably relate.

Weighing In On the Whole New Yorker Thing

2008-07-15T22:18:00.001-07:00

Tons and tons of people have had their say about the satirical New Yorker cover, saying that it's racist or offensive, that it fueled popular misconceptions and flat-out untruths about the Obamas, that it didn't succeed as satire for any number of reasons, or that it did succeed as satire, and would everybody just shut up already.

So far, my favorite has been Carolyn Kellogg's post at Jacket Copy about all the fiction writers, poets, and journalists whose work this week will reach a wider audience than it otherwise would have.

As for me, I didn't care for the cover. Is it satire? Sure, mission accomplished, crystal clear. But New Yorker cartoons and covers always strike me as decidedly smug, humorless, unfunny, dull, and most of the time, irrelevant and dated.

Cartoons in the New Yorker are like the jokes your rich, yet progressive Baby Boomer uncle saves up to tell at Thanksgiving dinner, and he thinks he's being so outrageous and such a card, so everyone just has to humor him and chuckle politely because it's Thanksgiving, and it's an institution and no one wants to cause any unpleasantness. So you quietly turn to Dad for Current Affairs, or maybe to Cousin Margot for a little Fiction, but as soon as you do, your uncle is right there interrupting the story with another crummy joke.

Actually, I think the artwork might have worked as the cover of a whole bunch of other publications, but because it was on front of the New Yorker, it just took on some of that publication's smug, humorless, unfunny taint.

For me anyways. I loathe New Yorker cartoons.

Brady says it's because I don't get them. I say, are they not funny because I don't get them, or do I not get them because they're NOT FUNNY?

Context is important to consider, though. If this artwork had appeared on the cover of the National Review or The New American, I imagine the outcry would have had a slightly different flavor.

Or maybe the NYT is onto something when they say that, with the exception of Stephen Colbert, white comedians and political humorists simply haven't figured out how to make Obama funny yet.

Science With a Rock and Roll Heart: The Wisdom of Whores by Elizabeth Pisani

2008-07-13T21:34:00.000-07:00

The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS by Elizabeth Pisani

In her exceptionally candid, accessible, and fascinating book, Pisani talks about her work in the field as an epidemiologist, studying patterns of HIV infection in Indonesia, China, East Timor, and the Phillipines, and developing policies to combat it. The book is filled with conversations, both enlightening and troubling, with waria, heroin users, sex workers, and the employees of public health organizations, and ventures into methodone clinics, red light districts, and needle exchange programs.

But despite the diverse range of people and places Pisani comes into contact with, the book's most important idea is a simple one: outside of East and South Africa, most new HIV infections are contracted through the buying and selling of sex, unprotected, unlubricated anal sex, and the sharing of needles; however, most of the billions of dollars that governments and other organizations provide for prevention and treatment do little or nothing to target the groups most at risk.

Because, as Pisani puts it, there are no votes and no political goodwill to be gained by doing nice things for junkies, prostitutes, and gay men.

In the mid-1990s, money for HIV and AIDS research became plentiful, when it was feared that the disease would rampage through the general population (despite the fact that in most of the world, this wasn't the case). However, much of that money came, and continues to come, with strings attached. While Pisani lauds the Bush administration for actually putting the money on the table and persuading other governments to do the same, she is scornful of abstinence-only prevention programs and governments' refusals to fund needle exchange programs. In developing Christian and Muslim countries, it's much more difficult to achieve high levels of consistent condom use among at-risk populations because governments stand in the way.

She is equally frustrated by programs adopted to slow the transmission of HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa that target the disease as a "development problem," focusing on gender inequality and poverty. In truth, she says, HIV in Africa is spread because most people aren't circumcised, older men have sexual relationships with young women, spreading the disease across generations, and people tend to have "nets" of sexual partners, rather than "strings." Many Christian African governments don't want to talk about these sexual behaviors, and other organizations believe these ideas to be racist; however, many programs currently in effect on the continent will do nothing to prevent people from dying of AIDS for the sake of religious and political ideology.

It's tempting to go on about more of Pisani's arguments and observations, but I'll save the rest of those for readers. Instead, I should probably mention Pisani's writing style, which may put off the prudish or those who believe these are issues that should be spoken of with grim faces and finger-wagging. She's frank, foul-mouthed, and sometimes, funny. Also, it's important to remember that Pisani is concerned with public health, which is more concerned with national and global patterns than in individual cases. At times, this may seem impersonal and callous, but Pisani is not. Her in-depth work with at-risk populations and her obvious compassion for the individuals she works with should make that much clear.

Pisani doesn't flinch, doesn't judge, and is passionate about the collection of good, reliable data and the use of HIV/AIDS funding where it will do the most good - she's a scientist with a rock and roll heart.

A Baseball Top 10 and Bottom 5

2008-07-13T17:37:00.000-07:00

We here at the blog have been attending Dodgers games like mad this month, thanks to a massive sale on tickets. Seats that would ordinarily cost $30 were going for $6, so we took advantage. Baseball on tv is okay, but there's something about going in person... mostly good and a few bad.

Favorite things about baseball games:

1. Heckling
2. Base stealing
3. the Kiss Cam
4. Double plays
5. Dodger Dogs
6. Hero/villain players (the Nomar Garciaparra/Andruw Jones effect)
7. Watching pitchers bat
8. Odd facts learned about players on the Jumbotron (did you know that Paul Hoover is fluent in American Sign Language?)
9. High-fiving strangers
10. singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" as loud and off-key as I can

Least favorite things about baseball games:

1. the Wave
2. People who get up in the middle of every inning to get food
3. Walks
4. Foul balls
(#3 and #4 tend to lead to increased instances of #1 and #2)
5. When the person who sings the National Anthem goes for the extra high note on "land of the free"

Half a Review and Some Other Stuff: Who Hates Whom by Bob Harris

2008-07-06T22:55:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling sort of obligated to post, on account of it's been nearly a week. And yet.

I have no books to review because I spent the past week re-reading World Without End, that big, fat medieval Ken Follett book, which I checked out from the library because I thought I'd be on jury duty (alas, summoned, but not called to serve).

On a second read, I noticed one annoying little thing. Follett has this habit of describing minor characters with a single distinctive trait (e.g. strapping arms, a rat-like face, a jolly bosom), and then mentioning that trait every single time the character appears in the book. In a 1000-page book, this begins to grate.

I'm currently reading Who Hate Whom: Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts, and Various Things Blowing Up: A Woefully Incomplete Guide by Bob Harris, author of a book much-loved on the blog, Prisoner of Trebekistan.

Harris admits from the get-go that this is not the book he intended to write. He'd had something in mind along the lines of odd sports and recreation of the world, but his editor nixed it. Then he casually mentioned how useful he would find a book that explained "which parts of the planet are currently explosive and why," to which his editor said, "That's not a bad idea, actually."

And while the fact that this was not Harris's first choice for a book does come across a bit in the writing, it is proving to be an exceptionally handy little book. Harris is a smart dude, and very good at explaining complex things in succinct, funny, and brain-sticky ways without grossly oversimplifying things (and when he does, he's the first to announce "by the way, I'm grossly oversimplifying things here"... as the title of the book itself might suggest).

Between it and Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea, I now understand the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan with far more sophistication than what was provided to me by the news I read and watched. And I haven't even gotten to the regions of the world that aren't in the news every day. What's going on in Liberia?

Soon, I will know.

Civilized Oddities

2008-07-01T22:34:00.000-07:00

While I post the occasional link to Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities, I cannot urge you strongly enough to stick this link in your bookmarks, your Bloglines, your Google Reader, or just drop by every now and again. I promise you will not be disappointed.

It's the blog of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale, and the posts highlight interesting documents and artifacts from their collection, and nearly every one is my new favorite.

However, it may take some doing to top The Book of Accidents: Designed for Young Children (1831). Imagine a 19th century Edward Gorey without a sense of irony - I've never laughed so hard.

Hats off to Tim Young and Nancy Kuhl, curators of the blog (among other things), whose finds consistently delight and amaze.

Deja Vu All Over Again. And Again.

2008-07-01T10:16:00.000-07:00

I've had Richard Milhous Nixon on the brain lately, and that is no way to live. Between my dissertation and the research job I've taken for the summer, I see that jowly crook everywhere, which is why Kim McQuaid's The Anxious Years was such a pleasant surprise, being the fourth book concerning Watergate I've read in the last two weeks and a heck of a read at that.

Actually, McQuaid's book is about much more than Watergate. Starting with the Democratic Party's self-induced Vietnam meltdown and the string of assassinations of civil rights leaders and Kennedys in 1968, McQuaid shows how a combination of American hubris, institutional failure, and political fecklessness put the country in a mess that, the attentive reader will notice, has never really gone away. As the Vietnam War dragged on and the New Left imploded, McQuaid argues, Nixon and his cronies brought the lessons they learned in the foreign policy area into the domestic arena and voilà: guerrilla war becomes guerrilla politics.

(Seriously, read up on 1973. It will depress the hell out of you and feel shockingly familiar.)

While the academic in me would recommend the book for its trenchant analysis and thorough, yet concise, recounting of key events in the titular "anxious years," the reader (and rabble-rouser) in me has to mention the prose itself: McQuaid takes some deft and well-deserved potshots at American civil religion, which as often as not in recent years has been expressed as a peculiarly optimistic and aggressively xenophobic self-righteous nationalism. It's not quite a polemic, but McQuaid has some justifiable axe-grinding to do, and it makes for a fiery read. (Well, for a history professor it does.)

Consider, for instance, this passage regarding the prospect that (gasp!) we might not "win" Vietnam as easily and bloodlessly as we'd blithely assumed, relying on our technological might and American know-how and resolve to carry the day:

"What did American leaders intend to do if fortune was not with them, if victory was not as easy or automatic as almost all presumed it would be?. . .Should contingency plans be formulated for such a disengagement? All this would follow the common sense maxim that one who plans only for victories and never for defeats is either a raving optimist or a fool.
"Raving optimism and foolishness, however, it was. The Best and the Brightest trapped themselves in a war they could not win - on any limited basis that had any meaning - but which they also could "not afford to lose." Official Washington's bland assurance of victory was followed, all too predictably, by lavish anxieties about possible defeat. Defeat- what to do next if things went badly - had never been conceived of as a possibility by the upper reaches of the foreign-policy elite. Here, truly, was a price tag for the Arrogance of Power.
"By early 1968...the widespread sense of social emergency and panic that flowed from these misperceptions and unasked questions was a feverish factor in America's domestic and international affairs. Americans faced a profound shock to their sense of identity and self-esteem, to their view of themselves as citizens of a uniquely favored land that "had never lost a war," and to their belief that they and their leaders had the know-how and know-when to apply U.S. principles quickly, concisely, and compellingly throughout the world."

What can I say? I'm a sucker for good history with a populist bent. McQuaid combines a willingness to call shenanigans when he sees it with astute cultural and political analysis to produce a book that I found not only enlightening but fairly rage-inducing, given that nobody seems to have learned a damn thing.

PS: Also, the term "ratf**king"? Coined at USC (Go Trojans!) by a couple of Young Republicans to refer to their dirty tricks and student election fraud. One of them later wrote the Canuck Letter. Charming. Better still, that led to Edmund Muskie's famed "crying speech," which helped lose him the election. Muskie, of course, is all over my dissertation by way of his participation in the Hurricane Camille Relief and Recovery Senate hearings. It's all connected!

Bridget Jones of the 1950s: The Dinner Party by Gretchen Finletter

2008-06-29T22:27:00.000-07:00

The Dinner Party (From the Journal of a Lady of Today) by Gretchen Finletter (1954)

Every now and again, one stumbles onto a book about The Rich and Their Problems, and though these problems are annoying in that they are both trifling and particular to the rich, one sits back and begins to enjoy reading about them.

One of the many things I enjoy about books about this class from this time period is the habit of somewhat Arbitrary Capitalization that their authors tend to favor. Even the reviewers seem to fall prey to it. In the review of The Dinner Party that appeared in Time in 1955, the author writes, "Dinner Party is charming chatter, with just a lemon-twist of real wit. It is the kind of book a woman likes because it is So True, and may even beguile an idle husband."

The author of the journal, and our narrator, is a perpetually bewildered woman in her 40s, who has moved to the country with her husband who is working on His Book. Though she generally means well, and tries her best to embody the virtues of gracious living, our narrator is a hopeless case, terrified of confrontations with the cook, flustered by the prospect of hosting a dinner party, and never quite taken seriously by anyone, even her own family.

However, the jams that our lady finds herself in are frequently hilarious. In my favorite of these, she is given the task of managing the bake sale for her daughters' school. In order to drum up extra business, she commissions her next-door-neighbor to pose as an Egyptian fortune teller and set up a tent behind the bake sale table. I won't spoil how it happens, but suffice it to say, she nearly succeeds in getting her neighbor (who is neither Egyptian nor a fortune teller) vaccinated and deported.

Her journal entries are written in the crisp, breezy prose of a woman who has things Under Control, but like her Less Fortunate descendant Bridget Jones, the contents reveal a woman who is anything but. In one entry, the lady writes,

"Make up my mind to be clear-headed and authoritative and write out on pad what I plan to have for dinner party. Will then go into kitchen and simply Tell Roza. Rehearse conversation. Must not begin with 'Oh by the way, Roza, we are having a few people in,' which is cowardly, nor 'Give me your suggestions, Roza,' which is craven, but go into kitchen, say 'Good morning,' bring out my pad and list, and tell her, pleasantly of course, that we are going to have a small dinner of about eighteen people...

Decide instead to go to Mary Jane's Beauty Shoppe. Know it is several days before the party but do not wish Mrs. Pullman to imagine that the dinner is so important to me that my hair has been especially waved for it, and feel it is more worldly to have it on the night either a bit over-ripe or under-done."

Like Ms. Jones, the narrator is a woman who is constantly plagued with doubts about her appearance, her abilities, her relationships. However, the narrator of The Dinner Party would probably trade places with Bridget in a heartbeat. Despite her foibles, Bridget Jones is a singleton who eventually realizes that if she is not her own champion, no one else will be, while the narrator is a married, settled, and moneyed woman who, despite her privilege, is always in danger of becoming invisible and taken for granted.

And unlike Bridget Jones, our narrator does not possess the Inner Resources to pull herself up by the bootstraps. She can only face her future with self-deprecating wit, a brave face, and a healthy measure of resignation.

Readathon Shoutouts

2008-06-28T14:08:00.000-07:00

Readathon is going on today, with over 60 lit bloggers and devoted bibliophiles committed to reading for 24 hours straight.

I meant to sign up to be a cheerleader for participants, but forgot. Therefore, I am going to cheerlead in an unofficial capacity. Here are just a handful of folks doing Blogathon today. If you get a chance, stop by, see what they're reading, and lend them some moral support:

So Many Books, So Little Time and Books Are My Friends: Mother-daughter book bloggers! How cool is that?

Biblio File: a librarian whose last post was about As I Lay Dying; if she's reading Faulkner for Readathon, she is a brave woman indeed.

This Redhead Reads
The Inside Cover
Caribousmom
A Striped Armchair
Tripping Towards Lucidity
Books I Done Read

Books I Hate

2008-06-26T21:15:00.000-07:00

There was an interesting feature in the Times Online this week where critics wrote about their least favorite books. Whether these titles were actively loathed (such as Ian McEwan's Atonement) or just frequently given up on (more than one person chose Crime and Punishment), I didn't see anything on the list I disagreed with. But I feel the need to add a few of my own:

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

Listening to teenage girls talk about Edward, I begin to think that Elvis might have had more luck with the ladies had he been a brooding fictional vampire. I paid little attention to Edward's charms, being unable to look past the lazy writing, dull plot, and annoyingly passive and bland narrator. My intense hatred of Twilight is more thoroughly documented here.

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

I'm prepared to catch hell for including this one, but let me just say that I don't *hate* The Moviegoer, I just fall asleep every time I try to read it.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The year I taught 11th and 12th grade English my top priority was to teach my students how to write well. My second priority was to protect them from The Scarlet Letter and to do all that was in my power to keep it out of the curriculum. We read The Crucible instead, and everyone was grateful.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

The pervasive sexism is bad enough, but the thing I could never get past in this book is that Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty are basically the 1950s equivalent of suburban white boys who sit around listening to 50 Cent and talking about how they are all gangsta and whatnot.

Any book by Philip Roth that is not Goodbye, Columbus

I find his writing to be uniformly nasty, ugly, misogynist, and willfully unlikeable, though I will always have a soft spot for "The Conversion of the Jews."

Johnny Come Lately

2008-06-25T22:07:00.000-07:00

From a sort of recent Publisher's Weekly, "A Day in the Life of a Book Publicist":

8:30 a.m. Stop at Starbucks. Order venti latte and think about how ridiculous it is that the store sells The Kite Runner. Who hasn't read that yet?

8:46 a.m. Get on subway. Notice that the person sitting across from you is reading Eat, Pray, Love. Again, who hasn't read that yet?

I thought of this while sitting on the bus today reading Eat, Pray, Love, which I recently received as a gift from my oldest and dearest childhood friend. She wrote a lovely inscription, admitting that, yes, this was totally a commercial Starbucks kind of book, but that in it, Elizabeth Gilbert reminded her of a cross between the two of us. It was so sweet and thoughtful, how could I not pick it up immediately?

Still, I couldn't help but feel that at least one of my fellow commuters was probably judging me.

The Precision of Language

2008-06-25T21:33:00.000-07:00

I recently heard about Ammon Shea's new book coming out this August, Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages. In it, Shea documents the most bizarre, obscure, and lovely words and definitions to be found in the behemoth dictionary.

Today, I stumbled upon one myself. A patron called the library to ask whether the word "handsome" could be used to describe a girl.

"Yes," I said. "Well, you probably wouldn't use it to describe a girl. You could use it to describe a woman, though."

"Why?" he asked.

I couldn't exactly put my finger on that part, so I turned to the OED, and found among the definitions one that explained the connotation perfectly:

Handsome: "beautiful with dignity."

"So, that wouldn't apply to a girl?"

"Not usually," I said.

Not Hilarious, But Who Cares?: When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

2008-06-24T20:27:00.000-07:00

When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

Note: I meant to write a short footnote about the problems associated with reading David Sedaris books in public, but accidentally wound up posting one of my most Sedaris-esque life experiences here. While I could hope this would land me an appearance on TAL, I believe they already did a segment on the disturbing lives of relay operators.

Even as people rush out by the thousands to purchase the new book by NPR darling and New Yorker enfant terrible, the needling has already begun: he's mined all of his material, Hugh isn't as funny as Lou, Lisa, and the Rooster, and what if he exaggerated his stories?

On the first point, yes, he has possibly run low on stories about his family, but this new collection certainly isn't short on new stories to tell about, you know, his life as a grown-up.

On the second, it's true that I experienced no moments where I truly embarrassed myself while reading the book in a public place.*

However, I smiled broadly on many occasions, in an airport, no less, and no one smiles broadly in an airport unless they are reuniting with a long lost friend or unless they are reading a David Sedaris book. And besides, I don't require Sedaris to be a nonstop hoot; in fact, I rather like his explorations of longterm monogamy and find the periodic one-liners and nice turns of phrase to be as satisfying as the story of Dinah the Christmas Whore.

As for the third, I truly couldn't give a shit.

But getting to the collection itself, I found myself enjoying Sedaris most in the essays when he appears to be at his most solipsistic, as in "Crybaby," where he is seated in first class with a passenger who is loudly grieving for his dead mother, or in "Town and Country," where he finds himself passing judgment on a lewd cab driver. In his essays, Sedaris is excellent at whipping himself into a good, self-conscious, yet self-righteous lather before turning the hose on himself in a way that exposes more generally applicable human shortcomings.

However, my favorite essay in the collection is "Road Trips," which begins when Sedaris goes to a function back in his old North Carolina neighborhood hosted by the family of a flamboyantly gay teenager. Having come of age before the existence of high school GSA groups, when coming out was murky, uncharted territory, Sedaris marvels at this comparative openness in a passage that contains my favorite line from the book:

When I was a kid, you'd be burned alive for such talk. Being a homosexual was unthinkable, and so you denied it, and found a girlfriend who was willing to settle for the sensitive type. On dates, you'd remind her that sex before marriage was just that, sex: what dogs did in the front yard."

From here, Sedaris springboards into a creepily funny story about the first people he comes out to, a pair of aging swingers who pick him up hitchhiking. This leads to another story, which Sedaris also sets up as creepily funny; however, the essay's last few paragraphs reveal far more, and do so in the most unexpected, poignant, best writing Sedaris has done yet. I loved it, and have come back to it more than a few times since first reading the book.

It won't split your guts, but then, there wouldn't be such a fuss about David Sedaris if all he did was tell funny stories. In this collection, Sedaris allows humor to become the background music for the other aspects of his writing that keep us coming back.
___________________
* I was in a 2-week job orientation for exactly the kind of position Sedaris might have held during his cleaning service/moving company days, and the orientation was filled with boring speakers and lots of downtime in between them. During one of these, I was reading the essay "Jesus Shaves" from Me Talk Pretty One Day, and came to the part when Sedaris's fellow students in a language class attempt to share how people in their country celebrate Easter in stunted French vocabulary.

At the line, "They nail the good man to two morsels of wood," I completely lost it, and then was called upon to explain to the rest of the class what exactly was so funny.

As a postscript, the position was as an operator for a telecommunications service, ostensibly for the deaf, where I would have messages typed to me by a caller, then relay them to the other party. However, this being 2001, they had not yet figured out how to bill for these calls. Quickly, people around the world realized that they could use our service to obtain free long distance, so long as they weren't particular about the voice coming through on the other end of the line.

And that is how I came to be the madam of a Pakistani brothel for a day.

Zombie Summer Reading: It's People! PEOPLE!

2008-06-23T17:54:00.001-07:00

I'll admit it: Almost nothing makes me happier than the literary equivalent of an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. If Tom Servo and the gang ever started recording commentary on audio books, I'd probably keel over from sheer joy.

Mary knows of my addiction, and from time to time she picks up some truly sublime crap for my amusement. A couple of weeks ago, she emailed me from work - indecently pleased with herself - to tell me that she'd be bringing home Harry Harrison's Make Room! Make Room!, perhaps better known as the book upon which they based that most often mocked entry in the Charlton Heston oeuvre, Soylent Green.*

Oh happy day.

So imagine my surprise and consternation when I finish the book and nowhere in it has anyone screamed "It's people!!" In fact, there is no sinister plot in which people are ground up and pressed into tasty wafers at all. The titular green crackers are made from seaweed, and "It's made of Kelp! KEEEEELLLLLLP!!" just isn't very likely to inspire much dread or revulsion.

In fact, the only soylent in Make Room! Make Room! comes in the form of soylent steaks (soylent = soy + lentil). I can get those at the Ralph's down the street; again, not so scary unless you count the price of corn these days. (Zing!)

All griping aside, it may turn out that the price of corn actually is the scariest thing about Harrison's novel. Written at a time when the population explosion was the apocalypse du jour, the book's dystopian vision of the U.S. in 1999 - overcrowded, starving, and Hobbesian in the extreme - is certainly unnerving: homeless families crowded into abandoned parking garages to live in abandoned cars, water shortages, food shortages, utterly overwhelmed civic institutions, refugees living on fleets of cargo ships permanently converted into floating cities in the NY harbor, etc.

The plot - your basic cop-on-a-murder-case story - is pretty unremarkable and serves mostly an excuse to explore Harrison's starved new world. Likewise, the characterization is also fairly underwhelming. Our Hero is a bit of a cipher and the rest of the players relentlessly conform to stock types: fallen woman with a heart of tarnished gold, honorable mob bodyguard, crotchety old man sidekick, impoverished kid in over his head. Like a lot of third-tier science fiction, this is a novel written at the intersection of "pretty great idea for a book" and "not the world's greatest writer."

Still, it's worth taking on the bus if sci-fi dystopia is your thing. For one, it makes for an interesting noir companion to Issac Asimov's trio of Elijah Bailey novels. Harrison has a far more bleak vision of a terminally overcrowded Earth than Asimov, but it's interesting to see what the two writers do with the same basic premise.

And of course, given that the book and the film part ways around page 50 you can go into it without knowing the ending, which - sadly - is not this:

---------------------------
*Also, oddly enough, this makes another movie adaptation of the work of a Zombie Summer Reading author that stars Edward G. Robinson as a cop. He's the Kevin Bacon of the golden age of cinema, apparently. I think that we must schedule a Soylent Green/Harness Bull double feature.

Of Course, It Took a Journalist to Figure This Out About Libraries

2008-06-20T23:48:00.000-07:00

Chicago Tribune writer Julia Keller has an excellent article in the May issue of American Libraries (though the article itself isn't available online), about how the gooey warm feelings of yesteryear that tends to surround most library testimonials has nothing to do with the institution of the library as it exists today.

"Such nostalgia is touching but ultimately perilous. This sentimental approach contributes to the image of libraries as antiquated placed, places sealed off like time capsules circa 1943."

And, as Keller writes, "Nostalgia won't pay the electric bill."

She should know, because newspapers are in the same boat, the victims of sepia-toned tableaus involving the whole family circled around the breakfast table listening to Father rant about the day's headlines.

And believe me, I know all about it. As a librarian, I've heard my share of tales from people involving misunderstood youth who found their solace lurking in the stacks, and of beautifully transcendent library reading rooms that filled a person's heart with silent awe. And sure, I love these stories, but they have very little to do with what I actually do on the job, and who I help on a daily basis.

Around this time last year, I participated in Blogathon to raise money for the ALA Hurricane Katrina Library Relief Fund, and as part of this, I asked people from the libraries affected in those areas to write about what their libraries meant to them.

Their stories had nothing to do with finely waxed fixtures or childhood nostalgia. They were real and immediate and vital.

From Jefferson Parish, one library patron wrote, "The Jefferson Parish Library opened soon after Katrina....it was a welcome home to many. No carpets, few staff, but the books were ok, and the computers were in full use. This was great, when so many people couldn't get into their homes."

From New Orleans, one patron wrote about the librarians at her local library who traveled into the midst of the destruction after Katrina to check on the local history resources. She wrote, "I remember the first day the library opened after Katrina. There was a rush to enter and people were lined at the door. There were no need to speak words of thanks, we could tell in each other's eyes, the smile on each other faces, the firm hugs we received, that we were all where we needed to be."

The Hancock County Public Libraries said: "Immediately after Katrina, many residents needed to contact family and friends by using the satellite telephones or the computers with wireless Internet access. Others needed copier and fax services or a table to spread out documents and fill out forms, or just a quiet, air conditioned building with clean restrooms. Some just needed a respite from the devastation outside and came in to read a newspaper, find out about friends, enjoy the air conditioning and the clean restrooms."

That's what the public library is all about, Charlie Brown.

The Hard Road to Justice: Wicked City by Ace Atkins

2008-06-19T21:18:00.000-07:00

Wicked City by Ace Atkins

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." - Edmund Burke

A sleazy hive of bootlegging, illegal gambling halls, houses of prostitution, political corruption, and dirty cops who turned a blind eye, Look magazine called Phenix City, Alabama the "wickedest city in America." The town's innocent citizens were too afraid to challenge the status quo until 1954, when the Democratic candidate for attorney general, a reformer named Albert Patterson was gunned down in an alley by persons unknown.

Patterson's death marked the beginning of the end for that status quo. It was too egregious, too much of a finger in the eye to ignore, and it was undeniable proof that the good could not live alongside the wicked in Phenix City and do nothing.

Though Atkins's account is fictionalized, the major events are true and many of the principal characters are real. In a short note that prefaces the novel, Atkins writes, "No author could ever exaggerate the sin, sleaze, and moral decay of Phenix City, Alabama, in the fifties or the courage of the people who stood up to fight it."

It's good that he says it, because the extent of the vice that Atkins is about to describe boggles the mind with its sheer audacity. Young women and girls picked up for loitering are taken to prison, where the inside of their lower lip is tattooed, and their names are taken down for the Sheriff's records -- he gets a cut of their future profits when they're conscripted into prostitution. Madams, law enforcement, club owners, and elected officials form a twisted alliance of civic leadership, and everyone gets a cut.

Powerful and harrowing, Wicked City is not without flaws. Characterization emerges slowly, and it's difficult to distinguish many figures from one another, particularly the corrupt officials. Atkins also makes a narrative choice that I didn't care for, interspersing limited omniscient points of view with the first person narration of Lamar Murphy, a former boxer and filling station owner who becomes Phenix City's interim sheriff. Sometimes these changes in perspective occur within the same chapter, which is distracting and clumsy-feeling. However, these quibbles become less important, charging towards Phenix City's inevitable, yet satisfying purge of evil and vice.

Atkins's website features some excellent orientation to the real Phenix City of the 1950s, including newsreel footage of some of the key figures and images of its greatest villains and heroes.

If you liked...: Hell At the Breech by Tom Franklin, this book is for you.

A Music Writer Just Ruined My Life

2008-06-18T17:18:00.000-07:00

My good buddy - aesthetic ninja, culture warrior, and all around raconteur Stephen M. Deusner - just introduced me to the Magical 1990s MTV Simulator.

Clearly, it's a good thing that I've just finished reading my second Zombie Summer Reading pick.

Because I will never get anything done or read ever again.

But it got me thinking...decades have albums that go along with them pretty indelibly in the minds of music junkies. And it's the same way with books, I'd wager - whether the author is being held up as the voice of a generation (cough...breteastonellis...cough) or not.

So here's a fun game for your next erudite cocktail party or bar conversation: match 1990s books with 1990s albums. You can do it on the basis of how they fit into their respective aesthetic landscapes, or on any other axis - similarities in themes, styles, or maybe you just read one while listening to the other.

I'll start: Howard Stern's Private Parts and Joey Lawrence's Joey Lawrence. Both were evidence that you should probably dance with the one that brung ya, artistically speaking, and both of 'em sold a hell of a lot of units to people who liked saying things like "Bababooey" or "Whoa!".

Also, both make me weep silently into my hands.

Surely someone else can do better?

Cyd Charisse, 1922-2008

2008-06-17T14:53:00.000-07:00

Cyd Charisse passed away today in Los Angeles at the age of 86.

Those moves. That green dress. Those legs. Always sultry, always classy.

Oddly, my introduction to Cyd Charisse came not from her best-known role in Singing in the Rain, but from the Gingerbread series by Rachel Cohn, featuring a mucho fabulous teen hellion named after the dancing legend.

I think I'll be checking Gingerbread and Shrimp this evening. It's a strange tribute, but a fitting one, I think.

Last of the Love Goddesses: The Zany Adventures of Liz Renay

2008-06-16T19:32:00.000-07:00

My Face for the World to See (1971)
My First 2,000 Men (1992)

In most people, self-awareness is a good quality, but thankfully for us, and probably for her as well, Liz Renay never believed herself to be anything other than a fabulous glamour girl just on the verge of becoming the next big thing. Until her death in January 2007, Renay frolicked through life with happy-go-lucky aplomb, even after a series of setbacks -- treacherous husbands, bad boyfriends, gangsters, grand juries, jail time, a thwarted film career, and family dramas -- that would have sent most people spiraling into depression and self-doubt.

But perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. For those who don't yet know Miss Liz, a little background, described far more colorfully in My Face for the World to See. Born Pearl Dobbins in Chandler, Arizona, our young heroine was raised by strict evangelical parents, but fell away from the church at an early age after her first visit to the local skating rink, which she's been told was "Satan's palace." Renay writes, "In one wave of nausea, my religious belief was swept away. Every value the church had taught me was crushed under the rolling wheels of those innocent skates.... This place was not evil or sinful or wrong. Common sense made that obvious."

Heady with freedom, Renay went a little wild, running around with soldiers stationed in the area, marrying two of them, and giving birth to two babies before the age of 18.

However, Renay's love affair with notoriety began in earnest in the 1950s when the newly single mother began dancing burlesque in New York City to pay the bills, and caught the eye of Tony "Cappy" Coppola, bodyguard for Murder Inc. head Albert Anastasia. After letting Cappy down easy, Liz hoped to break into the movies, and headed to Los Angeles where her gangster buddies arranged for Mickey Cohen to help her settle in. The two hit it off immediately, and Liz got off to a promising start, captivating no less a person than Cecil B. DeMille.

Unfortunately, Liz made the mistake of loaning Mickey Cohen some money, which landed her in front of 13 grand juries on both coasts and into the headlines of national newspapers as "Mickey Cohen's girlfriend." Eternally naive, she enjoyed the attention and photo ops, but got her testimony mixed up in front of one of those juries, and found herself pleading guilty to perjury. She was given probation, but wound up having to serve a three year sentence at Terminal Island after pleading guilty to an unrelated charge of disturbing the peace*.

Between the jail time, the mobster associations, and the fact that she was pushing 40 by this time, no major studio would touch Renay. Undaunted, she went back to dancing burlesque, painting, appearing in B-movies like The Thrill Killers and Blackenstein, and her favorite pastime, men.

My Face for the World to See was published in 1971, but germinated during Renay's prison term. In fact, the portions of the book devoted to this period are the high point, as we see Renay leading the prison's theatre and art classes, painting portraits for her fellow inmates, fighting off the attacks of the "Butch Broads," and getting locked in solitary over a fight for religious freedom behind bars (Renay does apologize for her harsh words against homosexuality in My First 2,000 Men).

Renay's second memoir is just as entertaining as its predecessor, but only if you skip the chapters where she's giving romantic advice and stick to the ones where she's telling tales about her lovers. Another reason I find myself utterly enchanted by Renay is that, although she certainly bedded a number of celebrities, and even devotes a chapter to them, she's no groupie and no star chaser. She writes about the men who treated her best, were most generous, most bizarre, most exciting, and a few who were just oddballs and perverts, and fame or lack thereof seems to play no part in how Renay feels about her conquests.

And how can you not love a book that begins, "There've been so many talented, charismatic men in my life, it's hard to know where to begin. I'll start with Burt Lancaster."

Though self-absorbed and unselfconscious, Liz Renay was a giddily irrepressible barrel of fun, and her memoirs are, too. Definitely worth a skim.
_____________
* Renay really got a bad deal on this count, and again, her naivete got her into trouble. She went to a hotel for what she believed to be a "photo shoot," and discovered that the photographer had ulterior motives. There was a ruckus which drew the police, and Renay was charged with disturbing the peace. Bobby Kennedy was under some pressure to get mobster convictions and harsh sentences, and though Renay's actual involvement with the mob didn't go beyond dating its membership, she got three highly undeserved years in the pokey.

I was reading these books around the time that the 40th anniversary of RFK's assassination was being commemorated, so it was rather a surprise to come across sentences like, "My greatest contempt was for hypocrites like Robert Kennedy," and "It sure is awful about poor Marilyn. I'm sure that jerk Robert Kennedy had something to do with this."

In Case You Didn't Know

2008-06-13T01:56:00.000-07:00

Author David Hajdu (The Ten Cent Plague) popped up on the Colbert Report the other night.

Also, according to the episode, giraffe is now considered kosher.

Who knew?

TBIFY Summer Reading Round-up Extravaganza

2008-06-10T22:05:00.000-07:00

I'll be out of town for the rest of the week, basking in the considerable cuteness of my niece and nephews, and enjoying long runs in the rural countryside without fear of being sideswiped by some fool trying to text while driving. It'll be nice to get out of L.A. for a few days.

And, of course, getting a jump start on my summer reading on the flight to Pennsylvania. In my absence, here are a few of this summer's best-looking books, some for now, and some to look forward to.

June

What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn
Definitely this summer's What the Dead Know.

The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS by Elizabeth Pisani
"With wit and fierce honesty, an epidemiologist talks about sex, drugs, and the mistakes surrounding international AIDS prevention. Pisani reveals how easy it is to draw wrong conclusions from "objective" data and how much money is spent so very badly."

When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
"In essay after essay, Sedaris proceeds from bizarre conundrums of daily life to the most deeply resonant human truths. Culminating in a brilliant account of his venture to Tokyo in order to quit smoking, his sixth essay collection is a new masterpiece of comic writing."

The Rhino with Glue-On Shoes and Other Surprising True Stories of Zoo Vets and Their Patients by Lucy H. Spelman and Ted Y. Mashima
"A moray eel diagnosed with anorexia…A herd of bison whose only hope is a crusading female doctor from Paris…A vet desperately trying to save an orphaned whale by unraveling the mystery of her mother’s death…This fascinating book offers a rare glimpse into the world of exotic animals and the doctors who care for them."

July

The Last Embrace by Denise Hamilton
"Lily Kessler, a former stenographer and spy for the OSS, comes to Los Angeles to find her late fiancé's sister Kitty, an actress who is missing from her Hollywood boardinghouse. The next day, Kitty's body is found in a ravine below the Hollywood sign. Unimpressed by the local police, Lily investigates on her own. As she delves into Kitty's life, she encounters fiercely competitive starlets, gangsters, an eccentric special-effects genius, exotic denizens of Hollywood's nightclubs, and a homicide detective who might distract her from her quest for justice. But the landscape in L.A. can shift kaleidoscopically, and Lily begins to see how easily a young woman can lose her balance and fall prey to the alluring city's dangers"

Real World by Natsuo Kirino
"Psychologically intricate and astute, dark and unflinching, Real World is a searing, eye-opening portrait of teenage life in Japan unlike any we have seen before."

Stalking Susan by Julie Kramer
"Television reporter Riley Spartz is recovering from a heart-breaking, headline-making catastrophe of her own when a longtime police source drops two homicide files in her lap. Riley suspects a possible serial killer and stages a bold on-air stunt to draw him out."

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
"By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, this memoir is both for fans of this masterful yet guardedly private writer and for the exploding population of athletes who find similar satisfaction in distance running."

The King's Favorite: A Novel of Nell Gwyn and King Charles II by Susan Holloway Scott
"Nell Gwyn has never been a lady, nor does she pretend to be. Blessed with impudent wit and saucy beauty, she swiftly rises from the poverty of Covent Garden to become a sensation in the theater. Still in her teens, she catches the eye of King Charles II, and trades the stage for Whitehall Palaceand the role of royal mistress."

August

The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti
"A Dickensian cast of characters in 19th-century New England comes brilliantly to life in this wondrous debut novel about an orphaned boy and the colorful con man who claims to be his brother."

Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea
I'm going to bring this one home just to listen to Potts complain about it. Yeah, I know, Sherman was a thug.

Just the facts, man: Homicide by Leslie T. White

2008-06-09T16:08:00.000-07:00

I came to Leslie White's Homicide by way of the Black Lizard Book of Pulps, or as I like to call it, "the Bible of Awesome." White's short story "The City of Hell" was...well, it was like a caper/heist flick mixed with Red Harvest and written on an ultimately wholesome bender. Sure, some yeggs get new buttonholes in their coats, and there is much talk of rats devouring certain characters' faces, but our heroes don't drink that much and won't let the family men in the group take the real risks. I quickly flipped to the little author blurb to discover that Mr. White also wrote novels, Homicide and Harness Bull (the basis for the film Vice Squad, in which Edward G. Robinson plays the cop for a change) among them. He also wrote Me, Detective in which he presents his own take on the Doheny murder case, having worked it as an investigator for the Los Angeles District Attorney's office.

Me, Detective was clearly the book I had to read for this week's Zombie Summer Reading.

Well, sometimes you brain the zombies and sometimes the zombies eat you. Me, Detective only made it through the first edition and is thus a little pricey if you can find a copy, and the reference copy at the library was A.W.O.L.

Homicide nevertheless made a dandy substitute: burglary cop Steve Muttersbach is detailed into a murder investigation when a nightclub owner/lady of ill-repute is found strangled in her coupe, shortly after he investigates a break-in at her apartment.

Sure, it's a little hacky. The prose is nothing to write home about, the plot is a parlor mystery in hardboiled clothing, and it lacks the inspired lunacy of "The City of Hell."

But what it lacks in style it makes up for in concept: the chapters are a series of letters and telegrams from our clearly-out-of-his-depth hero to a retired Homicide Detective buddy, with interview transcripts, police reports, and newspaper clippings attached. (Someday, somewhere, a graduate student will use the novel as evidence that postmodernism was blossoming in the pulps before it ever hit the academic presses.)

And there's something charming about Muttersbach, a cop whose chance to step up to the show came a few years too late but who nevertheless dives into the investigation like a catcher with bad knees and one last shot at the pennant.* The comic subplots involving a flirty tabloid reporter, Muttersbach's increasingly estranged relationship with his wife, and the indignities visited upon our hapless flatfoot by his superiors when he roughs up a politically connected suspect, also liven up the proceedings considerably.

All in all, Homicide reads like the source material for what could have been an excellent Warner Brothers B-picture, which I guess is kind of what it is. It's not a lost classic by any means, but it reminds me of a number of records by local bands that never really went anywhere: the production isn't so great, the songs aren't all quite there yet, and they should never have let the bass player sing on that one track. But it's quirky and odd, and clearly a labor of love by a talented amateur, and - despite what Harlan Ellison thinks - it's evidence that "not very good" can be worthwhile in its own right, if it's done with care.

------------
* Why yes, I did enjoy Major League when I was a kid.

Don't Diss My Dodger Dogs

2008-06-08T00:52:00.000-07:00

This weekend, the NYT's Peter Meehan wrote an ambitious and cholesterol-packed feature on the highlights and atrocities of ballpark cuisine, complete with a super cool, drool-inducing interactive map laying out best and worst bets at 30 major league baseball stadiums.

DO NOT look at this right before lunch, as even the plastic cheese nachos and soggy BBQ sandwiches will start to look good to you.

While I was not particularly astonished that Dodger Stadium didn't come out on top, I was horrified by Meehan's description of the park's legendary Dodger Dog as "contemptibly bad (salty, greasy and tepid)."

I beg to differ, as Dodger Dog cravings carry considerable weight each time Potts and I debate whether to shell out the dough to attend a Dodgers game. I've never found a Dodger Dog to be either greasy or tepid, and aren't hot dogs supposed to be salty?

Meehan's winning stadiums include San Francisco, Seattle, and Milwaukee, and while I can vouch for the bratwurst at Brewer Park, I suspect our palettes may differ somewhat. The Seattle Sea-Dog (a cod hot dog), which he loved, sounds like poison to me, and I would never, ever in a million years eat sushi at a ballpark unless I was in Japan.

Alongside Los Angeles, Chicago, and Baltimore fared poorly with a crab cake sandwich at Oriole Park written up as "the worst dish I had the displeasure of sampling at a ballpark."

After checking out the map, though, I'm suddenly inspired to travel to St. Louis for the sole purpose of going to Busch Stadium for a "bratzel," a bratwurst wrapped in a pretzel and served with spicy mustard. I looked at a picture of it over 12 hours ago, and haven't stopped thinking about the yummy-looking thing since.

Husband of the Year

2008-06-06T18:22:00.000-07:00

How do you rate as a husband or wife of the 1930s? I'm actually a little surprised that I scored so highly in wifery, and flat-out astounded that I'm a "Very Superior" husband.

It's more difficult to score high as a good 30s wife on this test because you get points for doing things ("Keeps self dainty, perfumed, and feminine"), while "husband points" are mostly earned by not engaging in oafish behavior ("Fails to brush teeth regularly or keep nails clean.")

As a 1930s wife, I am
Average

Take the test!

As a 1930s husband, I am
Very Superior

Take the test!

Via Shaken & Stirred

Thirteen Ways of Looking At a Tragedy: Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

2008-06-05T21:53:00.000-07:00

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

Two weeks after Hannah Baker commits suicide, her classmate and one-time crush Clay Jensen receives a box of cassette tapes in the mail, tapes Hannah sent out the day she died. Clay puts in the first tape, and hears Hannah's voice:

"I hope you're ready because I'm about to tell you the story of my life. More specifically, why my life ended And if you're listening to these tapes, you're one of the reasons why."

Hannah goes on to give two instructions: everyone has to listen, and everyone has to pass the tapes on to the next person on the list. "Hopefully," she adds, "neither one will be easy for you."

And it isn't.

Hannah unfolds a series of slights and betrayals, each one more serious and troubling than the last, and each implicating another person in Hannah's death.

Although the haunting premise might lead the reader to expect a mystery, the story stays firmly rooted in the world of high school.

It's a story about how Hannah perceived those slights, disappointments, and betrayals, which probably didn't mean much to their perpetrators, and how they affected her. But more than anything, it's a story about the dark, tunnel-vision world of a suicidal person who doesn't want to be rescued -- or doesn't believe she can be. Hannah doesn't kill herself to teach anyone a lesson, or expose any hidden scandal. Hannah kills herself because she wants to die.

In the book, it's easy to look at the incidents Hannah pinpoints as those that led to her suicide and think of people you know who have moved past worse. And it's easy to let many of Hannah's friends and classmates off the hook. They couldn't have known, so they couldn't have helped. However, that's not the point.

By incorporating Hannah's voice, Asher examines a suicidal person's frame of mind, and the ways that isolated incidents matter, as well as the ways that they don't. Asher also turns this premise into a way of exploring the guilt and remorse of those impacted by a friend or family member's suicide, with Hannah's tapes pointing towards a common survivors' experience -- what was the moment, the missed opportunity, when you could have made that person change their mind?

The approach is a daring one, and it usually works, though at times the conceit of the tapes glamorizes teen suicide more than I'm sure Asher intended. However, Thirteen Reasons Why is a haunting and thought-provoking book, tightly written and difficult to put down.

Where's MacGyver When You Really Need Him?: Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski

2008-06-03T22:21:00.000-07:00

Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski

By page 7, there's a body on the floor and a villain. But that's not the only body, and not the only villain that Severance Package has to offer - they multiply like bloody, diabolically evil bunny rabbits.

The book's premise is simple, yet inventive. One Saturday morning, David Murphy summons seven critical employees to the 36th floor of a blandly modern Philadelphia office park. There, he reveals to them that their office is a front company for a government intelligence agency that is being deactivated, and as a precautionary measure, he has to kill all of them before offing himself.

Now, David has gone to the trouble of whipping up poisoned mimosas that will dispatch each of them quickly and painlessly, but to stifle any troublemakers, he's also set the elevator to bypass their floor and rigged the fire stair doors with sarin gas bombs.

As one might expect, the employees do not take the news well. However, it's not a simple case of joining forces to outwit their murderous boss. These are, after all, employees of a secret government intelligence agency, and each one has his or her own agenda, vendetta, or mission to carry out.

Mostly. There is one employee who never quite fit in with the others, one who doesn't carry himself with government-trained killing machine competence. Even David Murphy isn't quite sure why this man has been included on his kill list.

His name is Jamie Debroux. He's a happy husband and new father. He writes press releases. And now, he is marked for death. Our Jamie is no MacGyver, no John McClane, no Jack Bauer. He is a soft-bellied office schlub with no previously untapped resourcefulness, bravery, or ingenuity. Jamie is screwed, or he would be, if not for an ace up the sleeve so secret and perverse, even Jamie doesn't know about it.

Duane Swierczynski is a relatively new voice in the neo-pulp genre, and it's a voice that is lurid, violent, cinematic, and big as day. And also, it is wicked awesome. Though I've never read a book with action quite so relentless, Swierczynski also paces everything brilliantly, with a twist ending that I guarantee, you'll never see coming.

Alongside Child 44, Severance Package is my top recommendation for a hardcore summertime read.

If you've ever secretly imagined that if the bomb, the zombie apocalypse, the killer bees, the rogue virus, the Big One, ever hit, YOU'D be the one to escape with all your loved ones, pets, and precious momentos intact, this book is for you.

Yes, this has nothing to do with books, but so what?

2008-06-02T14:22:00.001-07:00

Okay, clearly I'm getting far afield of the stated purpose of this blog, but if you can't take a moment to memorialize Bo freakin' Diddley, what's the point of the internet?

Oh, right: it's so that stuff like this is easily available:

Damn.

Arsenic and Axes: Blood in the Parlor by Dorothy Dunbar

2008-06-01T14:54:00.000-07:00

Blood in the Parlor by Dorothy Dunbar (1964)

While half the fun of the Zombie Summer Reading Program is finding the weird books yourself, when the recommendation comes from Donna Tartt, it's worth following up on. A recent Village Voice feature asked writers to list their favorite obscure books, and while there were many fine contributions, Tartt's caught my eye:

My mother has had this book since I was a little girl, but no one else I know has ever heard of it, and it's almost impossible to find. Each of the 12 stories is an account of a 19th-century murder told with a light, macabre sense of humor. I'd love to see it back in print with illustrations by Edward Gorey.

I was intrigued, and delighted to find a very ratty copy available at the Los Angeles Public Library.

Like the inimitable Edmund Lester Pearson, Dunbar has a very particular vision of what makes a "good murder." Weary of "I'll-blow-your-guts-out" detective stories and 20th century crime in general, Dunbar longs for the evildoers of a more gracious age, a time when murderers were more likely to employ an axe or a bottle of chloroform than a revolver. But the 19th century crimes she chooses to write about interest her because of their distinctive Victorian quality. Dunbar writes, "In most Victorian murders, murder is the act of removing an ugly fact to maintain a pleasant fiction, the grim reality of a dead body, or bodies, contradicting the fantasy of high-flown or obscure motives."

Medical students are likely criminals, as evidenced by the tale of Scott Jackson, a Cincinnati dental student who dispatched his inconveniently pregnant mistress, saving her head for his own research, or by Theodore Durrant, a monstrous medical student/church librarian who seduced pretty young women and stashed their bodies in the well-ventilated church belfry.

Though Dunbar isn't so obsessed with murderesses as Pearson, the Victorian period certainly had a number of fascinating ones, including Florence Maybrick, who may actually have been innocent, and Lydia Sherman, who certainly wasn't. And of course, no book would be complete without some discussion of Lizzie Borden, whose guilt Dunbar doubts not for a moment.

Blood in the Parlor was Dunbar's only book, which is a shame because she's an intelligent, wry, and very funny writer. In her account of the Lizzie Borden murders, Dunbar writes,

"There are many elements of horror in the Borden case, but one of the worst was the August fourth breakfast - mutton, sugar cakes, coffee, and mutton broth."

Her introductions to each chapter tie the cases, in grandiose terms, to classic myths, obscure historical facts, and literary and historical figures. All are giddily over the top. Combined with the book's occasional typos and factual errors, the enthusiastic result is rather endearing.

I had a great time with my first pick for the Zombie Summer Reading Program - next week, the two memoirs of that irrepressible streaker, Liz Renay!

Better Ten Innocent Men Should Suffer: Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

2008-05-29T19:59:00.000-07:00

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

Typically, the crime novel operates on the basic set of assumptions that wrongdoing has been perpetrated, and that wrongdoers must be sought out and punished to uphold a moral code, agreed upon by the state and the public. However, when the crime novel tweaks those conventions, interesting things happen.

The recent Tokyo Year Zero by David Peace deals with a detective's search for a serial killer in Tokyo in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Here, the horrific crimes of one man are blunted against the backdrop of death and devastation of a less sensational and individually targeted nature.

Child 44 explores similar ideas, played out in a very different setting - the last days of Stalin's Soviet Union in the early 1950s. Like Peace's novel, the serial killer here is loosely based on a real life murderer; however, the basic premise of that human life is valuable and criminals should be punished is challenged by an entirely different set of constructs. How can the State pursue a serial killer when the State itself is guilty of murdering thousands of its own citizens? And moreover, how can a Communist state pursue a serial killer when crimes like murder are supposed to be byproducts of capitalism?

There is no crime, so therefore, no crime has been committed.

At the beginning of the book, Leo Demidov is a high-ranking official in the MGB, the State Security force responsible for investigating suspected traitors, dissidents, and spies. Leo is unwaveringly loyal to the Party and assumes that, if he's asked to arrest someone, there must be a good reason. When the son of another MGB officer turns up mutilated with soil stuffed in his mouth, Leo is sent to convince the family to keep quiet about their suspicion that it was murder.

Leo's not cruel and he takes no pleasure in the brutality of his job -- he just knows how the system works, and what happens to people who make too much noise, people who get arrested.

Though this murder and others like it are central to the story, Leo initially has very little to do with them. The first half of the book is actually devoted to the series of events leading to Leo's loss of faith in his government and his subsequent fall from the Party's grace. It's an unusual choice, but Smith isn't simply treading water here in the build-up to the murder investigation. This section of the book does an excellent job of establishing the culture of paranoia and perpetual fear, as well as shattering Leo's assumptions about nearly every aspect of his life, including his marriage.

Once Leo is in a position to begin investigating the series of murders, all children, all mutilated with soil stuffed in their mouths, the book becomes more of a straightforward thriller. However, because of circumstances I won't spoil here, the stakes are very high and the reading experience very, very tense.

There's been a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and hype about Smith's Child 44, all of it deserved. There's a cinematic quality to the story (in fact, the rights have already been purchased by Ridley Scott, with Richard Price set to write the adaptation), but it never reads like a screenplay. The writing is complex, powerful, and sometimes devastating. It's a fascinating premise for a crime thriller, and Smith delivers on every bit of the story's promise.

A Reason to Go to Claremont, CA

2008-05-27T23:28:00.000-07:00

This summer at the Claremont Museum of Art, Vexing: Female Voices from East L.A. Punk:

Taking its name from the all-ages music club The Vex, once housed within East Los Angeles’ Self Help Graphics and Art, Vexing is an historical investigation of the women who were at the forefront of this movement of experimentation in music, art, culture and politics, while exploring their lasting legacies and contemporary practices.

I watched The Decline of Western Civilization tonight, which served only to remind me that the L.A. punk scene was 90% stupid and/or hate-mongering hacks. Fortunately, X and The Bags were in there (members from each are taking part in Vexing), ably representing the 10% that was awesome.

Seven Days....

2008-05-26T20:15:00.001-07:00

Next Monday, the second incarnation of the Zombie Summer Reading Program begins. We've been browsing the shelves at our lovely (and now fully funded) local library, and have dug up some likely corpses to kick things off: the life and loves of a 1960s burlesque dancer, the Victorian criminal mind, and some very regrettable cookbooks, to name a few.

The Zombie Summer Reading Program has only two rules:

1. The book must be dusty, moldy, neglected, overlooked, and/or forgotten.
2. It must be written by someone you've never heard of.

The fun starts next Monday, and lasts all summer long.

"When there's no more room in closed stacks, the out-of-print will rise up and walk the earth."

Suburban Nightmares: The Shadow Year by Jeffrey Ford

2008-05-26T20:03:00.000-07:00

The Shadow Year by Jeffrey Ford

The Shadow Year starts off with tremendous promise, reminiscent of two terrific novellas - Stephen King's The Body and Joe Hill's Voluntary Committal (from 20th Century Ghosts).

Like King, Ford creates what is truly a child's world. Set in the early 1960s, follows three siblings through one cycle of the kid year, which always begins on the last day of summer vacation. But it's a year marked by a string of mysterious disappearances, a malevolent stranger, and a neighborhood peeping Tom, and the three children decide it's up to them to investigate. Jim is the kind of older brother everyone wants - full of ideas, wise to the ways of the world, and protective of his younger siblings. The unnamed narrator is the middle child, quieter, more observant, and always scribbling in his notebook. The youngest, Mary, chain smokes and has an alter ego named Mickey - she's in a special class because her teachers can't figure out whether she's mentally disabled or a genius.

Mary also has a strange ability when it comes to Botch Town, and here's where the Joe Hill comes in. Botch Town is Jim's miniature re-creation of their neighborhood and the people who live in it. When the peeping Tom appears in the neighborhood, they make a figure for him and move it around the board to the houses he's visited. When the narrator notices he's being followed by a white car with fins, they add that to the board, too. However, Mary seems to know where to move figures around Botch Town that she shouldn't, and what's more, she knows where the stranger in the white car is going to turn up - and who he's watching.

The build-up is terrific, but unfortunately, Ford doesn't carry it through. Interesting plot lines fizzle out, characters that never quite gel are added late in the story, and the last 50 pages are so disappointing that it's almost like reading an entirely different book. The writing gets clumsy here, too, and though I suspect Ford had a very clear vision in his mind of what was happening to his characters, the action and intensity of the final scenes is a hard-to-follow muddle.

I'd recommend reading The Shadow Year, but only if you stop around page 225 and make up your own ending.

For Your Memorial Day Lazing About

2008-05-26T09:55:00.000-07:00

The good people over at Black Mask magazine have put a number of old stories online in .pdf format, with the original artwork.

THRILL to the fevered fisticuffs and boisterous brawling!

GASP at the horrors of the unknown!

SNICKER at some of the more ludicrous plot twists!

And, if you're like me, FERVENTLY WISH that more of this stuff was available.

A Q&A with American Eve Author Paula Uruburu

2008-05-21T15:58:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week, I reviewed Paula Uruburu's American Eve, and it knocked my socks off.

The story of America's first supermodel, Evelyn Nesbit, her tragic relationships with architect Stanford White and coal heir Harry Kendall Thaw, and the brutal crime that thrust her into the public eye in a way her photographs never had would appeal to any true crime fan or history buff. However, Uruburu's account digs beneath the sensation and spectacle to uncover much more -- not only the circumstances leading up to the 1906 murder, but also a critical side of the story that's previously gone untold -- Evelyn's.

Uruburu, an English professor at Hofstra University, was kind enough to answer a few questions about the book, and on top of that, she also sent some wonderful images that didn't make it into American Eve (including one of Harry Thaw's very scary mother). Enjoy!

Even though the events of American Eve took place over 100 years ago, your narrative has a very intimate, in-the-moment feel -- the scenes where you describe Stanford White's parties for Evelyn come immediately to mind. Was there a moment in your research when you began to understand the figures in this story on a deeper level, and if so, what brought it about?

Ghosts can be very instructive if one pays attention. It also helps to live so close to Manhattan where so much of the story takes place and have a passion for true crime and -- I would hope -- a sensitivity to gender issues and what I call in the book “the currencies of power” that saturate and define American culture – power, money, sex, beauty and celebrity. After spending ten years with Evelyn’s own writing in memoirs and letters, tons of contemporary newspaper accounts and subsequent articles, family reminiscences, the original trial transcripts (which had not been seen in 100 years) I really did begin to live in the period and put Evelyn into the larger cultural context she herself could not see while in the moment.

It also helps that as an English professor with a specialization in the Gilded Age and turn of the century literature and culture, I already had an intimacy with the language of the times, the social milieu, etc. I have a background as well in art history and theater, which also helped me write about a world I felt I knew on a deeper level and wanted to recreate as faithfully as possible. I eventually got to a point where I wanted a steak and glass of champagne from Delmonicos.

How did you track down the photographs, postcards, and ephemera used in the book, and of these, what was your most exciting find?

I had to become what I call a stealth detective, often entering into dark dusty places off the beaten track (and as I say in my notes, in a pre-Ebay, pre-internet world). My research required a lot of traveling to libraries, historical societies, archives, various sub-cultures of different kinds of collectors, to finding people who knew Evelyn, even to the former asylum Harry was in which is now a correctional facility in upstate New York. I have a great deal more material than is even evident in the book, and almost think I need to write a book about the experience of writing American Eve (think Flaubert’s Parrot or the film Adaptation).

My most exciting find early on was the original first trial transcript (all 6000 pages) which the generous grandson of the original judge in the case let me copy. The other exciting find has to be uncovering the private collector who had 400+ letters that Evelyn wrote. He also generously let me use them as source material for the book. Just seeing her own handwriting, her incredible wit and sense of humor in these letters helped me continue when I realized she never gave in to the idea of being a victim. They made me want to reveal the human being behind the myth and the Mona Lisa smile.

I couldn't believe how quickly public sentiment turned against Stanford White during Harry Thaw's trial, especially considering how unsympathetic a figure Thaw was. Of course, White wasn't around to defend himself, but why do you think the people chose to stand behind a madman who brutalized chorus girls and was shunned by most of the upper crust?

“Timing is everything” as they say -- and it is also the reason why I think the book is incredibly relevant today -- tragically and depressingly so. Not only did new technology make it possible for the Thaws to wage a media war in Harry’s defense, led by the indomitable Mother Thaw and her dead husband’s millions, but it was a culture in crisis. The so-called new Century of Progress was ripe for change and class wars -- and social/culture clashes were inevitable. The Thaws, with their well-paid alienists and spin-doctors, created a media blitz (using everything at their disposal including sheet music, postcards, pulp-type accounts, film, etc.) that the old-money old guard would not have sullied themselves with -– and as you said, Stanford White wasn’t around to defend himself. Those who might have tried to defend him high-tailed it out of town to avoid any guilt by association.

In addition, the invention of the female force of reporters that I describe in the book (the sob sisters) saw an opportunity in Evelyn’s pathetic tale to break into the newspaper business, playing initially on the melodramatic, almost operatic aspects of a battle of the sexes being played out in public for the first time. It took a while for people to realize that Harry was not the knight in shining armor but rather something much, much darker and that White was not the wholesale villain the Thaws wanted to promote to save Harry from the electric chair.

You mention in the acknowledgments that Evelyn's surviving family members were very supportive in helping you with this project. What were their thoughts when you first approached them, and what do they think of the book, now that it's finished?

When I contacted the person I thought was Evelyn’s son, Russell, it turned out to be Evelyn’s grandson, also named Russell (his father had passed away a decade before). He was initially reluctant to talk to me, having been burned in the past by unscrupulous collectors and “just plain kooks” every time Evelyn resurfaced in the popular culture (first in Doctorow’s Ragtime and again in the 1981 film –- he was too young to remember much about the time when The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing came out starring Joan Collins as Evelyn).

But I eventually gained his trust (it helps to be sincere and have credentials as a university professor) and he then invited me to visit, to look through family artifacts, home movies, photos, etc., and to talk to his mother, whom Evelyn lived with for twenty plus years. I was of course very anxious about the family’s reaction but am happy to say they appreciated it on several levels —- in fact Russell really liked it (including the writing style), saying that at first it was very weird, looking over my shoulder into his own family’s history and his grandma’s life and the “wicked, wicked” circumstances that always threatened to engulf her. He also thanked me for showing how she was the victim of powerful men and social forces and not the vixen she has been made out to be historically. It was extremely rewarding and quite a relief.

American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, the Birth of the "It" Girl, and the Crime of the Century, Riverhead, May 2008

Also, American Eve is on YouTube -- more great images from the book.

A Quick Detour Into the Exciting World of Exploitation Film: She Shoulda Said No!

2008-05-19T21:01:00.001-07:00

After reading about Evelyn Nesbit in American Eve, her story reminded me of another beautiful young woman sacrificed on the altar of fame and celebrity scandal, Lila Leeds.

At the beginning of 1948, Leeds was poised to take Hollywood by storm. She'd had a small role in Lady in the Lake, and her looks drew comparisons to Lana Turner and Jean Harlow.

But then police busted up a marijuana party at her Laurel Canyon cottage, hauling in Leeds, and much to their delight, Robert Mitchum. Mitchum and Leeds were both convicted and sentenced to 60 days in prison. Both feared their careers were over; when Mitchum was asked to state his occupation for the police report, he replied, "Former actor."

However, Mitchum's studio rallied around him, and though some disapproved, the arrest gave his bad boy reputation even more cred.

Things would not go so well for Leeds, who was thrown under the proverbial bus. Even her agent, Louis Shurr said, "She had a promising career and was headed for success, if she had only behaved differently. It looks now as though she's blown her chances sky high."

Still, Leeds got one little break after prison - the chance to star in a sensationalized anti-drug movie in the spirit of the oft-mocked Reefer Madness. There was some trouble settling on a title. It was initially called The Devil's Weed, and for its Los Angeles premiere, it was titled Wild Weed, but the title was eventually changed to She Shoulda Said No!.

And sure, it bears many classic marks of the anti-drug exploitation film: teens smoke a little pot, get frisky, and smash up their cars; people go into marijuana "withdrawal," and a jittery fellow tries to throw himself out a window. However, She Shoulda Said No! is actually a pretty little terrific film, mainly because of Leeds's performance.

Leeds plays Anne Lester, a good girl working as a dancer to put her lazy, mooching brother through art school. Of course, the friendly neighborhood drug dealer, Marky, stops by the dressing room to give the girls their fix, and wants to meet Anne the moment he lays eyes on her. One of Anne's dancer friends throws together an impromptu party, Marky gets Anne high, and before you can say Jack Robinson, she's his drug-dealing sidekick.

Leeds is perfectly lovely as a good girl, but it's once Anne Lester turns bad that the character really starts to shine.

When the cops try to pressure her into giving up Marky, Anne tells them where to stick it with such venom and contempt that it's almost like watching an interrogation scene from The Wire. Obviously, Leeds's memories of prison are still fresh here, but it's also clear that the gal has some acting chops.

In most movies like this, the Anne Lester character winds up a martyr, a junkie, a jailbird, or a repentent, wounded little sparrow, but She Shoulda Said No! avoids resigning her to any of these fates. And that's the best part of all.

Unfortunately, Leeds herself wouldn't be so lucky. Shortly after the release of She Shoulda Said No!, all the acting jobs dried up, and Leeds left California for over 15 years, during which time she was repeatedly arrested for drug possession and soliciting. For a time, she found an unlikely savior in the figure of Chicago madam Kay Jarrett, who helped Leeds hide from the press and care for her infant son shortly after she'd been abandoned by the child's father.

The story has a semi-happy ending, though I haven't yet uncovered the bulk of it. In the 1960s, Leeds returned to Los Angeles, sober and working as a minister with an evangelical church. She died in Canoga Park in 1999, and I'm still trying to fill in a lot of those missing years.

But in the meantime, add She Shoulda Said No! to your Netflix queue. You won't be disappointed.