We're on vacation until August 6th. Until then, buyer beware: this isn’t the book you’re looking for…
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Buyer Beware: Vol. 11
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Buyer Beware: Vol. 10
We're on vacation until August 6th. Until then, buyer beware: this isn’t the book you’re looking for…
Monday, July 29, 2013
Buyer Beware: Vol. 9
We're on vacation until August 6th. Until then, buyer beware: this isn’t the book you’re looking for…
Friday, July 26, 2013
Buyer Beware: Vol. 8
We're on vacation until August 6th. Until then, buyer beware: this isn’t the book you’re looking for…
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Buyer Beware: Vol. 7
We're on vacation until August 6th. Until then, buyer beware: this isn’t the book you’re looking for…
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Buyer Beware: Vol. 6
We're on vacation until August 6th. Until then, buyer beware: this isn’t the book you’re looking for…
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Buyer Beware: Vol. 5
We're on vacation until August 6th. Until then, buyer beware: this isn’t the book you’re looking for…
Monday, July 22, 2013
Buyer Beware: Vol. 4
We're on vacation until August 6th. Until then, buyer beware: this
isn’t
the book you’re looking for…
Friday, July 19, 2013
Review: The Monkey Wrench Gang, by Edward Abbey
So,
I’ve mentioned the Monkey Wrench Gang
a couple times already, but now that I’m
through with it I might as well put a few thoughts together by way of review.
What an entertaining book! It’s its own strange mix of humor and melancholy, hope
and defeat, beauty and crassness.
Dubbed
by Larry McMurtry as the Thoreau of the American West, Abbey can paint effortless
word pictures like this one…
“He remembered the real Colorado, before damnation, when the river flowed unchained and unchanneled in the joyous floods of May and June, swollen with snow melt. Boulders crunching and clacking and grumbling, tumbling along on the river’s bedrock bed, the noise like that of grinding molars in a giant jaw.”
…
and a minute later, refer to a truck’s “seared differential scrota” without
batting an eyelash. The biggest coups he manages to pull off, though, are the well-drawn,
memorable characters: the loveable Jack-Mormon river guide, the crude PTSD-stricken
Viet Nam vet, the refined and aging surgeon, the beautiful yet aimless female Brooklyn
transplant, and of course, the stunning, forbidding, alluring canyon country of
southern Utah and northern Arizona, which is perhaps the most important
character of all. Even the villains jump off the page and make a deep
impression.
There’s
plenty of pastoral contemplation coupled with truckloads of surprise and
suspense, and the whole time the reader is drawn right into the characters’ eco-activist
conspiracy. There are cliffhangers (like, literally) and a surprise ending that
made me want to go right out and buy the sequel. (There really is one!) Anyway,
I highly recommend it.
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Books on Screen
We hope you're making time for a few literary adaptations in between summer blockbusters, moviegoers. Here are a couple I've recently watched.
On the Road (2012)
I
loved this book, and I was really looking forward to the film. After I missed it
in theaters, though, it was kind of hard to get a hold of until it popped up on
my On Demand offerings—I hoped this scarcity meant that it was just too awesome
for the unwashed masses to appreciate, but that I would still love it. Alas,
no, it was just okay. And it was a bit depressing. And it was kind of boring. I
mean, look, there are moments in the book like this one:
“At dawn I got my New York bus and said good-by to Dean and Marylou. They wanted some of my sandwiches. I told them no. It was a sullen moment. We were all thinking we’d never see one another again and we didn’t care.”
…that
clearly show there were some lulls and some downers in Sal’s adventures. But to
see those moments pervade the entire film was a bit of a letdown. Here’s the other
thing: what excitement there was, was mainly focused on drugs, sex and fast
driving, all of which were played up disproportionately compared to the book.
But where was the unbridled exuberance? And the sense of wonder? Where was the
fun? They tried to sell us on Sal’s and Dean’s friendship with lots of intense,
heartfelt man hugs—a constant coming and going where locked eyes and sincere,
sullen glances were supposed to communicate everything. They didn’t. I thinkall
but the most hardcore Kerouac fans, and even a good number of those, can skip
this one.
The
Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952)
Ten
years before he became Atticus Finch, Gregory Peck played the role of Harry
Street in the adaptation of Hemingway’s classic short story. But while it
starts off true enough to the original—the necrotic leg injury, the vultures,
the desperate wait for a plane—it takes some liberties that rubbed me the wrong
way. For one, the flashback action was just a cheap rehash of Hemingway’s own
life story: Spanish Civil War, expat Paris, big game hunting, bullfights in
Pamplona. I guess if you’re trying to get Hemingway nuts into the theater, that’s
one way to do it. But it cheapens the work of fiction that’s supposed to be
played out on screen.
And while the trail of tortured romances opened up roles
for Ava Gardner and Susan Hayward, that’s not what the story’s really about. Snows is about examining one’s life, finding it
wanting, resolving to change and redeem oneself… only to have the chance whisked
away at the last second. Bittersweet brilliance. Which brings me to the most
egregious crime of all: the ending. Instead of flying off into the metaphorical snows of Kilimanjaro, a peaceful resignation to death and dying, Harry Street
(and his romance!) are saved. The plane arrives, the vultures disappear, and
all’s well that ends well. I haven’t had a film betrayal like that since The Grapes of Wrath , the movie.
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Makin' it Twain!
Here’s
a fun fact for you: At a time when the average household income was less than
$500 per year, that venerated man of the people, Mark Twain, had household
expenses in excess of $30,000 per year. Sixty times the median. In today’s
dollars, that would be more than $3,000,000
per year. And he still had to hit the lecture circuit to make ends
meet.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Literary Devices with Edward Abbey
A
couple choice excerpts from Abbey’s The
Monkey Wrench Gang:
“They roared down the high-centered road, bristly blackbrush and spiny prickly pear clawing at the truck along the greasy perineum of its General Motors crotch.”
“The enemy, only a few miles behind, out of sight but closing the gap, spurred on with extra vigor by the indignity of singed bottoms, scorched automotive coccyges, seared differential scrota, would soon come round the last bend in the trail and see them—Hayduke and Smith, Inc.—crawling slow and beetle-like up this improbable exit way.”
Gotta admit, the man has a way with words. Of course, the
technical term for this literary device is "anthropomorphization." And for those interested in further study, its
commercial application, can be explored here.
Labels:
Edward Abbey,
From the pen of,
Humor,
Literary Devices
Sunday, July 14, 2013
J.K. Rowling & Little Brown: 1, Honest Business Practices: 0
In
case you haven’t heard, J.K. Rowling has been unmasked as the true identity behind
“Robert Galbraith,” a Little Brown author who recently released a detective
novel to mostly positive reviews. The news is being hailed far and wide as the
greatest literary coup since Stephen King took up the pen name “Richard Bachman”
back in the 80s. But there’s an important question no one is asking: Is this kind
of thing actually ethical?
Because to me it stinks to high heaven.
Not
the use of a pen name, mind you. Let me state at the outset that I am all for the use of pen names. If an author has a
reason to stay incognito, power to them. We’ve covered that topic here. But
when the publisher goes so far as to fabricate an author bio in
order to lend credibility to an unknown author, I have to admit that as a
reader, I’m a little miffed. Here is what Little Brown says about Mr. Galbraith
while pitching his book on their site:
“A remarkable debut…” (LIE)
“Robert Galbraith is married with two sons. (LIE) After several years with the Royal Military Police (LIE), he was attached to the SIB (Special Investigation Branch) (LIE), the plain-clothes branch of the RMP. He left the military in 2003 (LIE) and has been working since then in the civilian security industry. (LIE) The idea for protagonist Cormoran Strike grew directly out of his own experiences and those of his military friends who have returned to the civilian world. (LIE) Robert Galbraith is a pseudonym. (TRUE! But all the lies above kind of lead us to believe the pseudonym is simply a necessity in Galbraith’s line of work, so… LIE!)
Did the fabrications accomplish what Little Brown wanted it to? Sure. Getting reviewed as a “major new talent,” or having your work praised as an “auspicious-” or “stellar-” or “remarkably mature debut” is a heckuvalot better than getting reviews that say, “J.K. Rowling seems to have righted the ship after her last non-Harry Potter project, which actually had a lot of her fans quite worried.” But it’s patently dishonest. Fiction is what’s inside the book. We expect the packaging and the credentials on the outside to represent the publisher’s best, but honest, effort to get us to buy what’s inside. Lying to me about the author’s background so that I’m more likely to pick up the book, is two or three kinds of shady.
After
all, where do we draw the line? Can a publisher pull non-existent blurbs out of
thin air to sway potential readers? Can they throw “New York Times Bestseller” on
the cover if it will help them sell copies? How about an Oprah’s Book Club
seal? Or “Winner of the Man-Booker Prize?” Made-up snippets from national media
outlets? Or outlets that sound like national media authorities?
I’m
happy the Rowling’s written a great book, but as long she uses snake oil
salesmen to hawk it, I’m not buying.
Friday, July 12, 2013
Another Month in the Can!
Yesterday
marked the end of our 19th month on the web. That’s well over 500
posts in just over a year and a half. Thank you to all our regular, intermittent,
and accidental readers. We hope you keep coming back for more. Above are the
authors we’ve mentioned in the past 30 days, and below are the five most
popular posts from that period:
- Practice Shelf Actualization this Summer— sincerely, Science
- The Tour (de France, in literature)
- What They Were Reading: Wallace Stegner
- Review:The Sea Is My Brother, by Jack Kerouac
- Don’t let me make you sad
And,
as always, some of the many-splendored search terms that led people here:
- Delicate nostrils >> Madame Bovary had them
- Doesn’t W.B. Yeats look like Steve Martin? >> Yes. Yes he does.
- B-25 Mitchell crew armor >> In the nose with Captain Yodarian
- First line establishes character >> Well, yes. It certainly can.
- Voice of Rudyard Kipling >> Retiring bank clerk? sniveling apothecary?
- Art Garfunkel in sunglasses >> With sunglasses you might not see thedifference
- Lord Jim Analysis >> leads you here, or here, or maybe here
- Chris McCandless route Krakauer >> our first maps post
- Great white whale >> Mine was the great white whale himself
- Jane Eyre vs. Wuthering Heights >> The epic beatdown
Thursday, July 11, 2013
"A Ruse of One's Own" or Virginia Woolf: Practical Joker
You
learn something new every day. Today, for example, I learned that 28 year old Virginia
Woolf helped perpetrate a hoax on the British Navy that got attention around
the world. Not merely as a planner or supporter, mind you, but as a
cross-dressing imposter prince in black-face. That’s right. Take a closer look
at that sleight fellow on the far left below. That is not
an Abyssinian prince. But the officers
of the HMS Dreadnought thought it was. And hilarity ensued.
You
can read more about the Dreadnought Hoax here and here. But my favorite detail
is this: the Navy couldn’t scrounge up an Abyssinian flag anywhere, so the Honor
Guard used the flag and national anthem of Zanzibar. Naturally.
—Via
Retronaut
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Buyer Beware: Vol. 3
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Review: Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
In
his book Palm Sunday, Kurt Vonnegut
once gave out letter grades to his own works. He handed out some Bs, Cs and Ds,
but he also gave Mother Night , God Bless You Mr. Rosewater and
Jailbird a grade of “A.” Of those, I’ve
only read Mother Night , and absolutely
loved it. So far so good.
To
two other books, he awarded “A+”s: Slaughterhouse-Five , which is kind of a
universally accepted no-brainer, and Cat’s
Cradle , which I hadn’t read until this week. So the question I naturally kept
asking myself was this: is Cat’s Cradle really as good as Slaughterhouse–Five? And is it really better than Mother Night ?
And
even though it was nominated for a Hugo Award, the answer I kept coming back to
is… not a chance. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, mind you, but I don’t think it really
measures up. Now, it’s certainly as
funny as either one of them, but I just got the impression it wasn’t really about anything.
He
starts out strong, unraveling a mystery for the reader that is equal parts
family history and geopolitical intrigue, and piecing together the fictional
religion of Bokononism, which is wildly entertaining and has, I suppose, some decent
satirical purposes. But from there we’re just kind of sucked through a vortex
where everything happens so suddenly, and ends so quickly, that it almost left me with the impression Vonnegut was too bored to follow through and make it a book about something
important. Either that, or he wasn’t sure how to end it, so he just cut it
short in a “betcha-didn’t-see-that-coming” sort of a way.
Anyway,
it’d be fine as a beach read. It packs a few punches, and it will definitely make
you laugh. But if you’re looking for A-level Vonnegut, you might want to look
elsewhere. Just my $0.02.
Monday, July 8, 2013
Meeting your literary hero...
I’ve
always wondered, would it go something like this?
Friday, July 5, 2013
"Don't let me make you sad"
"Really our Fourth of July is our day of mourning, our day of sorrow. Fifty thousand people who have lost friends, or who have had friends crippled, receive that Fourth of July, when it comes, as a day of mourning for the losses they have sustained in their families.
“I have suffered in that way myself. I have had relatives killed in that way. One was in Chicago years ago—an uncle of mine, just as good an uncle as I have ever had, and I had lots of them—yes, uncles to burn, uncles to spare. This poor uncle, full of patriotism, opened his mouth to hurrah, and a rocket went down his throat. Before that man could ask for a drink of water to quench that thing, it blew up and scattered him all, over the forty-five States, and—really, now, this is true—I know about it myself—twenty-four hours after that it was raining buttons, recognizable as his, on the Atlantic seaboard. A person cannot have a disaster like that and be entirely cheerful the rest of his life. I had another uncle, on an entirely different Fourth of July, who was blown up that way, and really it trimmed him as it would a tree. He had hardly a limb left on him anywhere. All we have left now is an expurgated edition of that uncle. But never mind about these things; they are merely passing matters. Don't let me make you sad.”
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Happy Fourth!
“I began to occupy my house on the 4th of July, as soon as it was boarded and roofed…”
—from
Walden , by Henry David Thoreau
“Noiseless as a flower opening, a rocket burst above the hills. She sat up, watching the white stars curve and fall. Then BOOM! All the night air between her and the town, two and a half miles of it, trembled with the delayed report.
“…Another rocket seared across the sky at an angle and bloomed with hanging green balls. Another went up through the green shower and burst into an umbrella of red. Then three together, all white. Then one that winked hotly but did not flower. BOOM! Went the cushioning air. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
“…Above the town, streaks of smoke were lighted by the rocket bursts. Under the sodden booming she heard a continuous musketry of firecrackers, big and little. She could imagine the boys and drunken men who would be darting around through the crowds on the Capitol grounds throwing cannon crackers under the feet of tied horses and dressed-up girls, and into the buggies of the dignified.
“…And yet from a distance how beautiful! There was a colored mist all above the unseen city, as if the smoke of the explosions were now lighted by fires from below.”
—from
Angle of Repose , by Wallace Stegner
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Author Look-Alikes: Vol. 17
Theodore
Dreiser and Carl Reiner. If you don’t see it, I don’t know what to tell you:
Zora
Neale Hurston and Queen Latifah: the cheekbones, the nose, the smile, the eyes…
it’s all there:
Vladimir
Nabokov and Alfred Hitchcock are not a bad match:
Neither
are Alexander Solzhenytsin and Edward Norton Jr.:
And when I look at this picture of Charles Dickens all I hear is Vincent Schiavelli
screaming for me to get off his train:
Labels:
Author Look-Alikes,
Charles Dickens,
Solzhenitsyn,
Theodore Dreiser,
Vladimir Nabokov,
Zora Neale Hurston
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
"A platinum blond Jesus with spaniel eyes"
"During my trip to Ilium and to points beyond—a two-week expedition bridging Christmas—I let a poor poet named Sherman Krebbs have my New York City apartment free. My second wife had left me on the grounds that I was too pessimistic for an optimist to live with.
"Krebbs was a bearded man, a platinum blond Jesus with spaniel eyes. He was no close friend of mine. I had met him at a cocktail party where he presented himself as National Chairman of Poets and Painters for Immediate Nuclear War. He begged for shelter, not necessarily bomb proof, and it happened that I had some.
"When I returned to my apartment, still twanging with the puzzling spiritual implications of the unclaimed stone angel in Ilium, I found my apartment wrecked by a nihilistic debauch. Krebbs was gone; but, before leaving, he had run up three-hundred-dollars’ worth of long-distance calls, set my couch on fire in five places, killed my cat and my avocado tree, and torn the door off my medicine cabinet.
"He wrote this poem, in what proved to be excrement, on the yellow linoleum floor of my kitchen:
"I
have a kitchen.
But
it is not a complete kitchen.
I
will not be truly gay
Until
I have a
Dispose-all."
—from
Cat’s Cradle , by Kurt Vonnegut
Monday, July 1, 2013
What's a Marmon?
Glad
you asked:
Everything about that behemoth was an anachronism—hand choke, starter button on the floor, a switch instead of a key, a hinged hood that lifted up on both sides, a chrome radiator cap in the form of a naked lady who leaned into the wind. Sid unscrewed the lady, stuck his finger down the pipe, and screwed her back on. He lifted one side of the hood and found the dipstick and pulled it out and carried it to the light and squinted at it and brought it back. With one foot he flattened the folding luggage rack on the running board, opened the door, and climbed in. Squinting down into the shadow, he pulled out the choke. I heard his foot pump the throttle three times.
“Hail Mary full of grease,” he said, and stepped on the starter.
A subterranean grinding, heavy and hoarse. I could imagine pistons the size of gallon jugs trying to move in the cylinders. Sid took his foot off the starter, adjusted the choke, and stepped down again. The grinding resumed, went on patiently for a good minute, grew slower, weakened. Another tired half turn—uh-RUG!—and on the last juice from the battery she coughed, raced, faded, caught again, and was running.
“Ha!” Sid said. He sat nursing her, easing the choke in until she talked to us comfortable. Looking in under the propped hood I could see that the engine was not twelve in line, as I had always half believed, but a V-16. It would have pulled a fire truck. At every stroke a stream of gasoline as thick as my finger must be pulsing through the carburetor. She panted at us in the whiskey-and-emphysema whisper of an Edith Wharton dowager. “Dollar-dollar-dollar-dollar-dollar,” the Marmon said.
—from
Crossing to Safety , by Wallace Stegner
Dr. Breed told me that Dr. Hoenikker, as a very young man, had simply abandoned his car in Ilium traffic one morning.
“The police, trying to find out what was holding up traffic,” he said, “found Felix’s car in the middle of everything, its motor running, a cigar burning in the ash tray, fresh flowers in the vases . . .”
“Vases?”
“It was a Marmon, about the size of a switch engine. It had little cut-glass vases on the doorposts, and Felix’s wife used to put fresh flowers in the vases every morning. And there that car was in the middle of traffic.”
“Like the Marie Celeste ,” I suggested.
—from
Cat’s Cradle , by Kurt Vonnegut
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