This Week’s Recommended Books (7.10.2003)

For those new to Where There’s Smoke, I have a weekly newsletter called The Smoke Signal I send out that recommends three books worth taking a look at. You can sign up for The Smoke Signal here if you’re looking to get more of your read on. Comes out weekly, isn’t sold-off to anyone. The gist of it is below.

Political Fictions by Joan Didion (Vintage, $14 in paperback, 338 pp.)

Political writing bores me to tears. Unless it’s written by one of about three people I trust on the subject. Joan Didion is one of those people.

Way back in 1988, Didion was commissioned to do a series of long essays on presidential elections by the New York Review of Books. I read a few scattered across the book and was, of course, wowed by her cool, wise and (if it’s possible considering the subject) unique perspective. Didion follows candidates on foot, hangs out with airport security guards and gives a kind of New-Journalism-With-Crows-Feet take on the process that most armchair pundits don’t do for feat of getitng their hands dirty. She also avoids ideologuing and sticks with the process, one now so foreign to the roots of democracy that calling it that is as converse as calling truth fiction.

Or put simply, a book about politics for smart people not that interested in politics.

Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World by Carl Hiassen
(Ballantine, $8.95 in paperback, 83pp.)

I found this one at an east bay booksale after remembering my friend Jeremy had recommended it to me many moons ago. It’s a book length essay/rant about how Hiaasen, bestselling mystery writer and native Floridian considers Disney the 800 pound mouse leaving its droppings all over the Sunshine State.

It all amounts to little more than a well-researched rant but in the hands of a pro like Hiassen, it’s downright hilarious. And not being much of a Disney fan myself, it’s a delicious sort of cheapshot

Team Rodent was part of the Library of Contemporary Thought series that Ballantine put together several years ago. It gave well-known writers a chance to explore some issue in a small book/long essay format. I have no idea what happened to it but it’s a neat idea.

Pieces of the Frame by John McPhee (Noonday, $9.95 in paperback, 308 pp.)

I thought I was the world’s biggest John McPhee fan even though I’d only read one of his books (Levels of the Game about Arthur Ashe’s winning the U.S. Open). Then my friend Josh introduced me to Pieces of the Frame, a collection of McPhee pieces that he’d deemed his favorite. He’d read about six McPhee books and walked away with the title.

McPhee was kind of the older brother to the generation of 60’s New Journalists (Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson, Joan Didion etc.) who were all into reporters being self-consciously a part of their stories. McPhee himself doesn’t appear too often in his work with a notable exception in this book “The Search for Marvin Gardens.” here, he brilliantly juxtaposes playing Monopoly with friends and a vain search for the real Marvin Gardens. The result is a quietly devastating look at urban decay and the forgotton dreams of Atlantic City.

I wouldn’t say John McPhee is for everybody. His prose can be painstaking and he takes his take getting to the point. When you arrive, what glory. If you’re into the kind of writer who can take any subject and walk you through it with the precision, skill and wisdom of a sage, he’s for you.

• Category: Reading and Books