Category: Reading and Books

Title: “Flight”

Author: Sherman Alexie.

Synopsis: Teenage Indian hoodlum, bounced from nth foster home, finds he can travel through time to crucial points in Indian history and that of his own family.

Backstory: I wiould read Sherman Alexie transcribing episodes of According to Jim.

Verdict: A quick, funny dark read but Alexie can do better. The prose feels route and sing-songy and it doesn’t contain the longing of Long Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven or the lonely majesty of Reservation Blues. In the hands of debut author, Flight would be their finest hour. In the hands of a champion like Sherman Alexie, it’s a pause on the road to better things.

Title: “Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film”

Author: Peter Biskind.

Synopsis: Book length history of the modern independent film movement, beginning at the mid-80s foundings of the Sundance Film Insitute and Miramax Films.

Backstory: Picked up at a Green Apple warehouse sale earlier this year. The period Biskind covers picks up where my teenage crush on independent film (Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch, John Sayles) leaves off. Also stuck me as a sequel to John Pierson’s Spikes, Mikes, Slackers and Dykes which I enjoyed.

Notes: Brisk, exhaustive, insidery. Biskind doesn’t hide what he’s thinking and jabs at his subjects with a stick in trying to get their essence to leak out. It’s an effective strategy for powerful men used to being either coddled or screamed at from the margins by the press. You can argue (and I do) that his agression arrives at fairness. It also makes you never want to work in the movie business, independent or otherwise.

Verdict: I learned more than perhaps I wanted to reading this book as now, every romantic idea I’ve ever had about independent film has been ground to dust. Yes, there are committed directors, even producers like Christine Vachon who do it because they love movies and live to bring good ones to life. But the level of shit one must go through to make that happen makes the whole enterprise stink. To those committed, it’s probably just an occupational hazard. Me, I’ll stay a fan.

Biskind tells a great story propped up by reporting as thorough as Gay Talese. In places he sounds gossipy rather than informative and seems a little too pleased with smacking Robert Redford and Harvey Weinsten about the knuckles (he views them both as struggles between egomania and pathological insecurity, a deadly blend when you throw money and power in too). I

f you love movies, this book is nine course meal you eat ravenously but feel sick afterward. I’m glad I visited but I won’t be coming back.

Kurt Vonnegut is gone. He was 84 and lived an extraordinary life.

I’m diving into my old paperback of Breakfast of Champions this week in his honor.

Title: “The Republic of East L.A.”

Author: Luis J. Rodriguez.

Synopsis: Collection of short stories all set in the historically latino neighborhoods of East Los Angeles. Rodriguez is a longtime journalist, writer and community activist.

Backstory: Book was send my way by its publisher, Rayo Books, some time ago. Picked it up in anticipation of my February drive down to Los Angeles.

Notes: As vivid as a midday sun. The stories read a little preachy at times, heavy on the telling, less so in the showing. But most redeem themselves in character and sense of place.

Verdict: I knew of Rodriguez from his autobiography “Always Running” which I picked up during on of my repeated binges on reading about LA gang life. For some reason, I was only able to read this book while in LA, so specific and clear were its characterizations. I’d say if this part of the world doesn’t interest you, this book might have less pull. But if you read short stories just to get a taste a world you may not be familiar with and characters that seem equally served by truth and fiction, pick this one up. I’m glad I did.

Title: “Waterloo”

Author: Karen Olsson.

Synopsis: A colorful group of people leading desultory yet redeeming lives in the college town of Waterloo, the former name of Austin, Texas.

Backstory: Picked up at the 2005 Texas Book Festival where I sat on a panel with the author. I read it in anticipation of heading back to Austin for my annual trip to South by Southwest.

Notes: Takes a minute to get moving but when it does, reads like a mellow Tales of the City wearing cowboy books.

Verdict: Another sandwich book. It’s a little scattered at times and the controversy it thinks it’s building to is a mirage. But it’s characters are loveable, its pacing steady and smart and it’s affection for Austin thick and generous. Since I lived there for three years and feel much the same way, I liked Karen Olsson’s novel a good bit.

Today is notable for three writers who stirred a fair bit of stink in their day:

It’s the birthday of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, most famous for his play A Doll’s house. First performed in 1879, A Doll’s House is the story of the unraveling of a marriage which ends with Nora, the heroine, leaving her husband with the slam of a door. In it’s day, it left audience’s agast which is focus on domestic life rather than epic drama, on dialogue rather than monologue and its lack of faith in the exhalted Victorian institution of marriage.

Writer Kathryn Harrison was also born today. Harrison’s 1998 memoir The Kiss concerned an incestuous relationship with her father.

Today is also the anniversary of the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the bestselling book of the 19th century behind the Bible and the novel often credited with laying the groundwork for the Civil War. Published first in abolishonist newspapers, Uncle Tom’s Cabin has been labelled racist and banned more than nearly any book in the history of American literature. As testament to its impact, when President Lincoln met its author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, he said “So you’re the little lady who wrote the book that started this great war.”

(via The Writer’s Alamanac)

Title: “On a Night Like Thus”

Author: Ellen Sussman.

Synopsis: Blair Clemens is a chef in San Francisco. Luke Bellingham is a successful screenwriter, also in San Francisco. They went to high school together but barely new one another. Many years later, they run into one another, Luke on the verge of a divorce, Blair with a teenage daughter and terminal cancer. Love ensues.

Backstory: Ellen is a friend the local literary scene and Readerville. In honor of my trip down the coast last month, I wanted to read something set in California.

Notes: A quick plot heavy read. Strong sense of setting.

Verdict: There’s something to be said for a book that simply makes you want to come back to it while you’re away. I can’t say the characters or the story spoke to me but they did make me hold on. I want to know what happened next, to wolf it down instead of chew lightly.

It’s a different sort of reading experience perhaps from the books that change your life but it takes all kinds. Sometimes I want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich rather than a 9 course masterwork. And this was a damn fine sandwich.

Title: “The Tennis Partner”

Author: Abraham Verghese.

Synopsis: Dr. Abraham Verghese is an internist specializing in infectious diseases. In the early 1990s he accepted a job in El Paso, Texas. With his marriage failing and two sons to raise, he befriends a medical student and former professional tennis player David Smith. Smith, a former drug addict, relapses.

Backstory: “My Own Country”, Dr. Verghese’s first book about running an AIDS clinic in rural Tennessee in the early 1980s was a gift from my mother and a favorite of mine.

Notes: Much of the writing and storytelling gifts Verghese displayed in his first book are here (W.P. Kinsella called his prose “clear as spring water”). Short chapters will tempt you to speed up but don’t give in. You’ll throw the gentle, sad tone of the story off.

Verdict: Dr. Verghese’s writing is as strong as ever but there’s really not a booklength story here. More like a long magazine article. At times, “The Tennis Partner” feels stretched and padded to accomodate those demands. Or perhaps those of an anxious publisher, looking to capitalize on the success of “My Own Country”.

I hope Dr. Verghese has a third book in him. I wait eagerly for it.

Title: “A Country That Works”

Author: Andrew Stern.

Synopsis: Andy Stern is president of Service Employees International Union, which represents hospital and home care workers, janitors and security guards. SEIU is the fastest growing union in America. This book is his prognosis for how organized labor and corporations can work together to create a stronger, wealthier nation where “working people aren’t always getting the squeeze.”

Backstory: I heard Mr. Stern interviewed on Fresh Air and was impressed enough to buy his book.

Notes: A quick read, short, forceful, a few too many anecdotes. Mostly reads like a book-length Op-Ed piece.

Verdict: It’s clear Mr. Stern is good at what he does and the new 21st Century directions he seeks for labor (management-employee cooperation, international organizing, merit based internal advancement) are sorely overdue. But he never answers the fundamental question that hangs over this book like a downsizing: If corporations don’t play along, does any of it matter? What leverage do SEIU and its members really have over the employers? Striking and public embarassment have been around for a century and yet, according to Mr. Stern, the future for working people has gotten darker, not brighter. If his methods are the way forward, his refusal to acknowledge their conditional effectiveness is either arrogance or wishful thinking. I’m hoping for a third answer I haven’t thought of.

This is a fine book if you are interested in labor and the state of the American workplace. But you’ll probably finish it wishing there were more.

Title: “Old School”

Author: Tobias Wolff.

Synopsis: A semi-autobiographical novel of a senior at an elite New England prep school in the early 1960s. He dreams of becoming a writer and much of his semesterly excitement is the arrival of a visiting writer and a contest the school holds to offer one student an audience with that writer.

Backstory: My friend Brenden and this wise person recommended it to me. I loved “This Boy’s Life” when I read it many years ago.

Notes: Not a long book (200 pages give or take) so you could finish it quick if you wanted. But then you’d missing out on its gifts.

Verdict: Lovely, lovely book. Nearly every page has at least three turns of phrase you want to hold up to the sun like precious stones. Read with a notebook or a highlighter. Wolff gets more heart and grace out of one short novel than most writers get out of their first 3. Also should be required reading for anyone who thinks that “sophisticated writing” needs to be tangled and wordy. Wolff is as clear and refreshing as a deep breath.

Highly Recommended. Like best-book read so far in 2007 recommended.