Buyer Beware: Vol. 8

We're on vacation until August 6th. Until then, buyer beware: this isn’t  the book you’re looking for…

Buyer Beware: Vol. 7

We're on vacation until August 6th. Until then, buyer beware: this isn’t  the book you’re looking for…

Buyer Beware: Vol. 6

We're on vacation until August 6th. Until then, buyer beware: this isn’t  the book you’re looking for…

Buyer Beware: Vol. 5

We're on vacation until August 6th. Until then, buyer beware:  this isn’t  the book you’re looking for…

Buyer Beware: Vol. 4

We're on vacation until August 6th. Until then, buyer beware: this isn’t  the book you’re looking for…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.