Monday, September 12, 2011
Remembering DFW
"Both destiny's kisses and its dope-slaps illustrate an individual person's basic personal powerlessness over the really meaningful events in his life: i.e. almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of Psst that you usually can't even hear because you're in such a rush to or from something important you've tried to engineer."
Sunday, January 11, 2009
The List is life.
And as in life, goals are not always met. In this case, I didn’t come close to my goal of reading all the books on the list, but who cares. The idea of the list kept me reading which is the important thing.
Of course, Christmas (my favorite holiday, natch) brought more books which means the list has grown (and growns) a bit. The new arrivals include “The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac” (from the beautiful wifey) which is really more a nightstand/coffee table book. It’s by the people at Freedarko.com and it is awesome. The art by Big Baby Belafonte is fantastic (check out the Josh Smith/Gerald Wallace drawings) and the text is brainy fun. I especially enjoy the feature on the “2000 NBA Draft, A Legacy of Ruin and Evil” (I actually attended that draft) and “Euro for Beginners”. Comparing Tim Duncan’s career numbers to the Fibonacci Sequence is equally rad. If you love the NBA, pick this baby up.
Other books I received are “Atmospheric Disturbances” by Rivka Galchen which I am reading (and enjoying) right now and “2666” by Roberto Bolano (from Bethany). I didn’t read “The Savage Detective” but I think I’m up for this whopper which clocks in at 893 pages. “Cryptonomicon”, the biggest fiction book on the list at 910 pages, might have to wait . . .some more.
My brother-in-law and his girlfriend gave me “The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. They gave me the book because they liked it. They also gave it to me without knowledge of my list and the rules of the list which bind me to read the book. So welcome to The Shadow, at least for now, a paperback that is nearly 500 pages.
And finally, my wife gave me “Alex & Me” by Irene M. Pepperberg, a non-fiction book about Alex the African Grey parrot who died in September 2007. I read just about everything on Alex after his passing so I will devour this book I’m sure. One of my favorite stylists (journalistically speaking), Verlyn Klinkenborg of the NY Times, wrote a great piece on Alex.
http://richarddawkins.net/article,1629,Alex-the-Parrot,Verlyn-Klinkenborg
Go Atheist Bus, btw.
I mixed it up toward the end of the year, reading a Birthday List book. Yes, there is a Birthday List. I’m in the process of compiling the Birthday List and will try to post those books soon. But one book I received for my birthday this year was “Neverland” by Joseph O’Neill.
Neverland started a bit slow, but turned out to be a fabulous read. I’m not sure it was one of the best books of the year (NY Times designated it so), but I loved it. For one thing, I have a soft spot for cricket which serves as a sort of subtext. Having done a story on cricket a few years ago, I picked up on what makes the game special. I traveled to England for the story and brought back a bag of cricket books including a very underrated one, “Pundits from Pakistan” by Rahul Bhattacharya. The title itself is fun to say using a Monty Python old lady voice. Try it.
But in Neverland, O’Neill (a Irishman who grew up in Holland) more than captures the game; he captures what it means to play a sport at any age. Considering my own ventures in basketball (every Sunday morning), I felt a kinship. Left alone in New York after his wife and kid leave for the UK, the narrator Hans devotes an entire summer to cricket. He finds that many of his old skills are still there, even if he can’t hit “the cow-shots and lofted bashes in which many of my teammates specialized.” Instead, he cuts balls and keeps the ball out of the air as a batter. But he also discovers a path back to his “younger incarnation” through the game:
“But I still think, and I fear will always think, of myself as the young man who got hundred runs in Amstelveen with a flurry of cuts, who took that diving catch at second slip in Rotterdam, who lucked into a hat trick at the Haagse Cricket Club. These and other moments of cricket are scorched in my mind like sexual memories, forever available to me and capable, during those long nights alone in the hotel when I sought refuge from the sorriest feelings, of keeping me awake as I relived then in bed and powerlessly mourned the mysterious promise they held. To reinvent myself in order to bat the American way, that baseball-like business of slugging and hoisting, involved more than a trivial abandonment of hitting a ball. It meant snipping a fine white thread running, through years and years, to my mothered self.”
The wisdom in this lyricism is the real gift of the book, O’Neill’s true gift as a writer. The story which hinges on Post-9/11 New York, Hans’ relationship with his bitch of a wife and his friendship with the intriguing Trinidadian, Chuck Ramkissoon is entertaining and, by turns, sweet with emotion. But O’Neill’s gift for description (his tracking the stages of snow in a windowpane for example) is the real treat. He is a writer’s writer I would say, wordy at times, but powerful.
Of course, Christmas (my favorite holiday, natch) brought more books which means the list has grown (and growns) a bit. The new arrivals include “The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac” (from the beautiful wifey) which is really more a nightstand/coffee table book. It’s by the people at Freedarko.com and it is awesome. The art by Big Baby Belafonte is fantastic (check out the Josh Smith/Gerald Wallace drawings) and the text is brainy fun. I especially enjoy the feature on the “2000 NBA Draft, A Legacy of Ruin and Evil” (I actually attended that draft) and “Euro for Beginners”. Comparing Tim Duncan’s career numbers to the Fibonacci Sequence is equally rad. If you love the NBA, pick this baby up.
Other books I received are “Atmospheric Disturbances” by Rivka Galchen which I am reading (and enjoying) right now and “2666” by Roberto Bolano (from Bethany). I didn’t read “The Savage Detective” but I think I’m up for this whopper which clocks in at 893 pages. “Cryptonomicon”, the biggest fiction book on the list at 910 pages, might have to wait . . .some more.
My brother-in-law and his girlfriend gave me “The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. They gave me the book because they liked it. They also gave it to me without knowledge of my list and the rules of the list which bind me to read the book. So welcome to The Shadow, at least for now, a paperback that is nearly 500 pages.
And finally, my wife gave me “Alex & Me” by Irene M. Pepperberg, a non-fiction book about Alex the African Grey parrot who died in September 2007. I read just about everything on Alex after his passing so I will devour this book I’m sure. One of my favorite stylists (journalistically speaking), Verlyn Klinkenborg of the NY Times, wrote a great piece on Alex.
http://richarddawkins.net/article,1629,Alex-the-Parrot,Verlyn-Klinkenborg
Go Atheist Bus, btw.
I mixed it up toward the end of the year, reading a Birthday List book. Yes, there is a Birthday List. I’m in the process of compiling the Birthday List and will try to post those books soon. But one book I received for my birthday this year was “Neverland” by Joseph O’Neill.
Neverland started a bit slow, but turned out to be a fabulous read. I’m not sure it was one of the best books of the year (NY Times designated it so), but I loved it. For one thing, I have a soft spot for cricket which serves as a sort of subtext. Having done a story on cricket a few years ago, I picked up on what makes the game special. I traveled to England for the story and brought back a bag of cricket books including a very underrated one, “Pundits from Pakistan” by Rahul Bhattacharya. The title itself is fun to say using a Monty Python old lady voice. Try it.
But in Neverland, O’Neill (a Irishman who grew up in Holland) more than captures the game; he captures what it means to play a sport at any age. Considering my own ventures in basketball (every Sunday morning), I felt a kinship. Left alone in New York after his wife and kid leave for the UK, the narrator Hans devotes an entire summer to cricket. He finds that many of his old skills are still there, even if he can’t hit “the cow-shots and lofted bashes in which many of my teammates specialized.” Instead, he cuts balls and keeps the ball out of the air as a batter. But he also discovers a path back to his “younger incarnation” through the game:
“But I still think, and I fear will always think, of myself as the young man who got hundred runs in Amstelveen with a flurry of cuts, who took that diving catch at second slip in Rotterdam, who lucked into a hat trick at the Haagse Cricket Club. These and other moments of cricket are scorched in my mind like sexual memories, forever available to me and capable, during those long nights alone in the hotel when I sought refuge from the sorriest feelings, of keeping me awake as I relived then in bed and powerlessly mourned the mysterious promise they held. To reinvent myself in order to bat the American way, that baseball-like business of slugging and hoisting, involved more than a trivial abandonment of hitting a ball. It meant snipping a fine white thread running, through years and years, to my mothered self.”
The wisdom in this lyricism is the real gift of the book, O’Neill’s true gift as a writer. The story which hinges on Post-9/11 New York, Hans’ relationship with his bitch of a wife and his friendship with the intriguing Trinidadian, Chuck Ramkissoon is entertaining and, by turns, sweet with emotion. But O’Neill’s gift for description (his tracking the stages of snow in a windowpane for example) is the real treat. He is a writer’s writer I would say, wordy at times, but powerful.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
A man’s relationship with his books tells you a lot about him
My entries dwindling to nary one a month, one might have the idea that I’ve quit the project. Not true. After Sacred Hunger I read three books, two of which I quite enjoyed. The three were Robert Stone’s Bay of Souls, Jordan Fisher Smith’s Nature Noir and E.B. Sledge’s With the Old Breed. I could have done without Stone’s novel that really went over the top, but Smith’s park ranger memoir was great. I marveled at his descriptions of foliage. I’ve often wished I could name flora at will and that I was better versed in Roman history and Greek mythology.
Sledge’s book was by far the best thing I’ve read this year. I’ll go over it in detail in my next entry. I don’t have it right now having lent it to my father Carlton Einar Gustafson, who fought on Okinawa at the same time as Sledge. The difference being my dad was army and Sledgehammer a marine. I hesitated giving it to my dad. He’s told me a lot about his time in the army, about joining a unit and having his foxhole mates shot the first night out. He has two Purple Hearts and Bronze Star. He’s never revealed what he got the Star for. Sledge’s account pulls no punches and I wondered if my dad wanted to revisit the horror of something he experienced over sixty years ago. But he seemed keen on reading it.
Since I finished it in August I haven’t read a book all the way through. It would be safe to say I’ve fallen in and out of depression. I’ve had trouble writing, in finishing things. I’ve still been reading, mostly journalism. I think I’m going to read Netherland next which isn’t on my list, but was a birthday present this year. Recently, I’ve gone back to reading Clive James’ Cutural Amnesia. It’s been sitting on my bedside table for over a year now and I find it incredibly inspiring since, in essence, it’s about is reading. It is a book of essays on poets and writers and rulers and entertainers. But what I really like is how an essay on Montesquieu say can spiral off into a story of how Stalin refused to believe Hitler would double-cross him and how he fainted when he could no longer refute the fact that Barbarossa was under way.
In addition, at the heart of the book is something that I often brood over, the pursuit of knowledge and the way in which knowledge and talent are drained by death. Where do memories go when the vessel that carries them ceases to be? And perhaps, more importantly, is there a responsibility in reading. Is it increasingly a revolutionary act. I just read James entry on Goebbels. It’s fascinating in that he discusses the role of Wilfred von Oven, Goebbels uniformed amanuensis and how von Oven escaped to Argentina and ended up publishing Mit Goebbels bis zum Ende, a two-volume historical document of Goebbels’ insanity. James mentions how he ends up tracking down his own set fifty years on in Buenos Aires and sits down in his favorite café in San Telmo to read it.
Later, James has an incredible passage in which he notes how Goebbels threw out all the party propaganda toward the end of the war and reorganized his library (with the help of von Oven) purely according to literary standards. In the end, it’s as if Goebbels subconsciously rued the path he had taken as a man of action and not a man of learning:
“Perhaps now, with the roof falling in, he hankered for the lost past, at a level he could not examine. But the reordering of his books did the examining for him. A man’s relationship with his books tells you a lot about him, and in the case of a man like Goebbels we should pay close attention, because a crucial early choice he made was one that continually faces any of us who read at all. He chose a life of action, and his life would have been different if he had not. It could have been said that the lives of millions of innocent people would have been different too, but there we should be equally alert to the danger of optimism. The only thing different might have been that he would have had a job like von Oven’s. He might have been merely reporting on the insanity instead of helping to create it, but the insanity would have still been there. Hitler wouldn’t have needed to find someone else. Someone else would have found him. When absolute power is on offer, talent fights to get in.”
Thank you, Mr. James for this inspiration. For it is in this time, that reading is required. Not to be saved from oneself as Goebbels failed to do, but to be saved from others who denigrate learning, books, words. Just look at the McCain campaign’s assault on words (a nod to James Wood’s New Yorker piece) that somehow masks their own willingness to say anything. It could be argued that we need words, rational thought, logical arguments more than ever. Death may indeed drain us of our knowledge, but the ability to convey thoughts, to express what it is to be alive now remains invaluable to any idea of a future.
Sledge’s book was by far the best thing I’ve read this year. I’ll go over it in detail in my next entry. I don’t have it right now having lent it to my father Carlton Einar Gustafson, who fought on Okinawa at the same time as Sledge. The difference being my dad was army and Sledgehammer a marine. I hesitated giving it to my dad. He’s told me a lot about his time in the army, about joining a unit and having his foxhole mates shot the first night out. He has two Purple Hearts and Bronze Star. He’s never revealed what he got the Star for. Sledge’s account pulls no punches and I wondered if my dad wanted to revisit the horror of something he experienced over sixty years ago. But he seemed keen on reading it.
Since I finished it in August I haven’t read a book all the way through. It would be safe to say I’ve fallen in and out of depression. I’ve had trouble writing, in finishing things. I’ve still been reading, mostly journalism. I think I’m going to read Netherland next which isn’t on my list, but was a birthday present this year. Recently, I’ve gone back to reading Clive James’ Cutural Amnesia. It’s been sitting on my bedside table for over a year now and I find it incredibly inspiring since, in essence, it’s about is reading. It is a book of essays on poets and writers and rulers and entertainers. But what I really like is how an essay on Montesquieu say can spiral off into a story of how Stalin refused to believe Hitler would double-cross him and how he fainted when he could no longer refute the fact that Barbarossa was under way.
In addition, at the heart of the book is something that I often brood over, the pursuit of knowledge and the way in which knowledge and talent are drained by death. Where do memories go when the vessel that carries them ceases to be? And perhaps, more importantly, is there a responsibility in reading. Is it increasingly a revolutionary act. I just read James entry on Goebbels. It’s fascinating in that he discusses the role of Wilfred von Oven, Goebbels uniformed amanuensis and how von Oven escaped to Argentina and ended up publishing Mit Goebbels bis zum Ende, a two-volume historical document of Goebbels’ insanity. James mentions how he ends up tracking down his own set fifty years on in Buenos Aires and sits down in his favorite café in San Telmo to read it.
Later, James has an incredible passage in which he notes how Goebbels threw out all the party propaganda toward the end of the war and reorganized his library (with the help of von Oven) purely according to literary standards. In the end, it’s as if Goebbels subconsciously rued the path he had taken as a man of action and not a man of learning:
“Perhaps now, with the roof falling in, he hankered for the lost past, at a level he could not examine. But the reordering of his books did the examining for him. A man’s relationship with his books tells you a lot about him, and in the case of a man like Goebbels we should pay close attention, because a crucial early choice he made was one that continually faces any of us who read at all. He chose a life of action, and his life would have been different if he had not. It could have been said that the lives of millions of innocent people would have been different too, but there we should be equally alert to the danger of optimism. The only thing different might have been that he would have had a job like von Oven’s. He might have been merely reporting on the insanity instead of helping to create it, but the insanity would have still been there. Hitler wouldn’t have needed to find someone else. Someone else would have found him. When absolute power is on offer, talent fights to get in.”
Thank you, Mr. James for this inspiration. For it is in this time, that reading is required. Not to be saved from oneself as Goebbels failed to do, but to be saved from others who denigrate learning, books, words. Just look at the McCain campaign’s assault on words (a nod to James Wood’s New Yorker piece) that somehow masks their own willingness to say anything. It could be argued that we need words, rational thought, logical arguments more than ever. Death may indeed drain us of our knowledge, but the ability to convey thoughts, to express what it is to be alive now remains invaluable to any idea of a future.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Largo al factotum
Back in June (maybe May), I told my friend Cukes about my blog and how I was having trouble reading much less writing about it. He suggested I write about all the things that are keeping me from reading and writing. So here it goes. First, there’s the problem of making a living. That always seems to get in the way of things.
Then there’s Clyde, our cat. He goes outside now thus eliminating his need to play as soon as I rise. Still, I end up leaving my hovel, my reading and writing hovel (it is kinda dark in here) to check up on him. And occasionally he comes back in looking for me and asking why I’m not out playing with him. Yes, he talks.
Guitar. I took up the guitar just a few years ago. My teacher says I don’t have to play more than five minutes a day. Sometimes I play no minutes a day. You see the pattern here. Set goals. Fail to live up to goals. Go to sleep. Wake up and start anew. I get the bug to play sometimes but it’s not the first thing I do in morning. Maybe it should be.
Exercise. I noticed I was in much better shape this year at the beach than last. This could possibly be due to the fact that I find time to work out four to five times a week. You’d think if I spend a half hour at the gym twice a week and toddle on down to the beach for a run or two that I could write (or read) for at least a half hour a day. I usually read but I don’t write every day. Why?
Then there’s this internet thing. “Yeah, it’s the inner netting they invented to line swim trunks . . .” Ode to Carl Carlson. I’m on the web all day. The most egregious use of such time is when I follow Yankee games online at ESPN or MLB.com. It’s worse than hearing a game being recreated like Ron Reagan did back in the day because you don’t hear anything. I like ESPN though because when a ball is hit in play they try to simulate the trajectory of the ball and the scoreboard moves like a pinball machine. Can anyone tell me this isn’t a colossal waste of time? Especially with the season the Yanks are having. I go into convulsions whenever Edwin Ramirez materializes on screen as the new Yankees pitcher.
Drinking. So far I have not had a drink for two days this week. That’s a rarity but much needed after a week at the beach in which days were capped by returning to the condo to fix a margarita, G&T or colada. Dark and Stormys are always good for the beach but I ran out of Goslings and couldn’t find a place in San Clemente that sold it. I was also into making Spiced Rum Coladas using this fine NY Times recipe but I didn’t have Coco Lopez and had to use Mr. T’s. Ugh. So I started drinking Cap’n and Cokes and almost kicked the bottle . . .by myself. I don’t think I have drinking problem. Would it make you feel better if I said I did? That main way it gets in the way of reading and writing is that once I start I’m usually more apt to watch TV or play music than read. Drinking can be a night ender. But I never start before five. Ok, four on Fridays.
Tunes. My friends turned me on to last.fm recently and I like it. But I don’t listen to much music during the day. That’s when I should be reading and writing. At night though we listen to Jason Bentley on KCRW here in SaMo except on Tuesdays when they broadcast City Council meetings. I have an extensive music collection though. My iPod has about 2500 songs on it and I have probably five hundred cds and records. I used to have more records. I was DJ in college. Now, I end up burning cds for friends and spend time working on various mixes. I’ve been saying I’m going to download Audacity so I can really mix but I haven’t. I frequently tell Bethany that being a successful electronic/dance DJ must be the greatest job in the world. Everywhere you go are happy people who want to dance.
TV. I really don’t watch much TV except for sports and when I can’t sleep at night. Occasionally, I watch PTI or check what’s on HBO. Nothing is the answer. We have a saying in our household whose phrasing is borrowed from the Brits: TV is pants. It really is. We got into The Wire and ended up watching Seasons 1-4 last year before Season 5 came out. Season 5 was terrible but we still miss the show. Now, we’re into Mad Men but it’s no Wire.
Vid. Here’s something I’ve really cut down on. I really got into EA soccer for a while. And Madden and EA Hockey (took Ottawa to the Cup). Ok, it was against the computer. I also played a lot of GTA San Andreas and Katamari and some Guitar Hero. But outside of GH I haven’t play a video game since January when we got Clyde. In a way I’ve substituted reading. But not in a big way.
So there you have it. With all these other interests it’s a wonder I sleep. My real problem is I’m a dilettante, jack-of-all-trades master of none. As I wrote this I paused to go find the cat. He was climbing a tree. The sun is out. I think I’ll join him outside with a good book in tow.
Then there’s Clyde, our cat. He goes outside now thus eliminating his need to play as soon as I rise. Still, I end up leaving my hovel, my reading and writing hovel (it is kinda dark in here) to check up on him. And occasionally he comes back in looking for me and asking why I’m not out playing with him. Yes, he talks.
Guitar. I took up the guitar just a few years ago. My teacher says I don’t have to play more than five minutes a day. Sometimes I play no minutes a day. You see the pattern here. Set goals. Fail to live up to goals. Go to sleep. Wake up and start anew. I get the bug to play sometimes but it’s not the first thing I do in morning. Maybe it should be.
Exercise. I noticed I was in much better shape this year at the beach than last. This could possibly be due to the fact that I find time to work out four to five times a week. You’d think if I spend a half hour at the gym twice a week and toddle on down to the beach for a run or two that I could write (or read) for at least a half hour a day. I usually read but I don’t write every day. Why?
Then there’s this internet thing. “Yeah, it’s the inner netting they invented to line swim trunks . . .” Ode to Carl Carlson. I’m on the web all day. The most egregious use of such time is when I follow Yankee games online at ESPN or MLB.com. It’s worse than hearing a game being recreated like Ron Reagan did back in the day because you don’t hear anything. I like ESPN though because when a ball is hit in play they try to simulate the trajectory of the ball and the scoreboard moves like a pinball machine. Can anyone tell me this isn’t a colossal waste of time? Especially with the season the Yanks are having. I go into convulsions whenever Edwin Ramirez materializes on screen as the new Yankees pitcher.
Drinking. So far I have not had a drink for two days this week. That’s a rarity but much needed after a week at the beach in which days were capped by returning to the condo to fix a margarita, G&T or colada. Dark and Stormys are always good for the beach but I ran out of Goslings and couldn’t find a place in San Clemente that sold it. I was also into making Spiced Rum Coladas using this fine NY Times recipe but I didn’t have Coco Lopez and had to use Mr. T’s. Ugh. So I started drinking Cap’n and Cokes and almost kicked the bottle . . .by myself. I don’t think I have drinking problem. Would it make you feel better if I said I did? That main way it gets in the way of reading and writing is that once I start I’m usually more apt to watch TV or play music than read. Drinking can be a night ender. But I never start before five. Ok, four on Fridays.
Tunes. My friends turned me on to last.fm recently and I like it. But I don’t listen to much music during the day. That’s when I should be reading and writing. At night though we listen to Jason Bentley on KCRW here in SaMo except on Tuesdays when they broadcast City Council meetings. I have an extensive music collection though. My iPod has about 2500 songs on it and I have probably five hundred cds and records. I used to have more records. I was DJ in college. Now, I end up burning cds for friends and spend time working on various mixes. I’ve been saying I’m going to download Audacity so I can really mix but I haven’t. I frequently tell Bethany that being a successful electronic/dance DJ must be the greatest job in the world. Everywhere you go are happy people who want to dance.
TV. I really don’t watch much TV except for sports and when I can’t sleep at night. Occasionally, I watch PTI or check what’s on HBO. Nothing is the answer. We have a saying in our household whose phrasing is borrowed from the Brits: TV is pants. It really is. We got into The Wire and ended up watching Seasons 1-4 last year before Season 5 came out. Season 5 was terrible but we still miss the show. Now, we’re into Mad Men but it’s no Wire.
Vid. Here’s something I’ve really cut down on. I really got into EA soccer for a while. And Madden and EA Hockey (took Ottawa to the Cup). Ok, it was against the computer. I also played a lot of GTA San Andreas and Katamari and some Guitar Hero. But outside of GH I haven’t play a video game since January when we got Clyde. In a way I’ve substituted reading. But not in a big way.
So there you have it. With all these other interests it’s a wonder I sleep. My real problem is I’m a dilettante, jack-of-all-trades master of none. As I wrote this I paused to go find the cat. He was climbing a tree. The sun is out. I think I’ll join him outside with a good book in tow.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
The Ruler has returned with a nod to Jay-Z
I haven’t written for over a month. In the meantime I finished Sacred Hunger on June 27th and was relieved to have done so. About 130 pages from the end there is a dramatic cut in time. The whites and blacks on the ship end up in a mutiny against the captain. Of course, you don’t get the exact details of what happened until the last twenty pages of the book. Meanwhile, Erasmus Kemp, the son of the merchant in Liverpool inherits his father’s debts after the latter commits suicide. So he can’t marry the girl he’s after. He rebuilds his life, becomes wealthy, falls into a sham marriage and then gets wind of the fact that his dad’s ship didn’t sink, that the crew and the slaves set up this sorta free love commune on the edge of the Florida wilderness.
So he decides to head across the Atlantic, break up the party and see his cousin (the ship's doctor) hanged. All because his cousin picked him out the water when he was little, basically saved him from drowning. Kemp makes it across the ocean in no time. It's like when Russell Crow returns home in Gladiator and goes through about four different ecosystems in a ten second sequence. But then we have to learn all about the commune. Not that it's so bad but they speak in pidgin so it's a little slow going. There are a couple of good scenes. One with Billy and Inchebe where they're out fishing and Inchebe slips while pulling up their boat and hurts his hand. He calls kudala, or witchcraft. Billy calls it chance. But Ichebe has a great line: 'Dat anadder ting about you, Billy, same-same all buckra white man, you say dere no answer mean you have no answer.' It's a nice moment that exemplifies a difference in cultures and I wish there were more of it.
I also wish there was a bigger fight near the end. But there isn't. Overall, the book could have been much shorter. It was certainly good in spots, such as aboard the ship. But it's strange. Kemp doesn't realize his folly until the end and you're like, duh, why did you waste 600 pages getting to this bit of enlightenment. If there are so few likeable, read humanistic, characters then what is the point of the story? That everyone is greedy?
Anyway, I finished it and have now almost finished Nature Noir, a non-fiction book which I'll get to next time. Next week I'm off to the beach so I need to pick wisely. The problem is I'm running out of fiction that I'm really looking forward to reading.
So he decides to head across the Atlantic, break up the party and see his cousin (the ship's doctor) hanged. All because his cousin picked him out the water when he was little, basically saved him from drowning. Kemp makes it across the ocean in no time. It's like when Russell Crow returns home in Gladiator and goes through about four different ecosystems in a ten second sequence. But then we have to learn all about the commune. Not that it's so bad but they speak in pidgin so it's a little slow going. There are a couple of good scenes. One with Billy and Inchebe where they're out fishing and Inchebe slips while pulling up their boat and hurts his hand. He calls kudala, or witchcraft. Billy calls it chance. But Ichebe has a great line: 'Dat anadder ting about you, Billy, same-same all buckra white man, you say dere no answer mean you have no answer.' It's a nice moment that exemplifies a difference in cultures and I wish there were more of it.
I also wish there was a bigger fight near the end. But there isn't. Overall, the book could have been much shorter. It was certainly good in spots, such as aboard the ship. But it's strange. Kemp doesn't realize his folly until the end and you're like, duh, why did you waste 600 pages getting to this bit of enlightenment. If there are so few likeable, read humanistic, characters then what is the point of the story? That everyone is greedy?
Anyway, I finished it and have now almost finished Nature Noir, a non-fiction book which I'll get to next time. Next week I'm off to the beach so I need to pick wisely. The problem is I'm running out of fiction that I'm really looking forward to reading.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Arrgh, the Hunger!
Wow, it’s been three weeks. Looks like I’m really taking to this blogging thing. I guess Will Leitch was right; it is hard work. Especially, when you’re working on something else. But excuses, excuses. I’m still reading Sacred Hunger. Just starting to get in the flow. I wanted to finish it by June but it’s not looking good. I’m only 200 pages into a 630-page book. It was a little slow to begin with, the ship didn’t sail until around a 100 pages in. Now, I’ve got to look up all the nautical terms in order to correctly place each character in my mind. Scuppers, the punt, the forecastle, all that stuff. Reminds me on my wallpaper as a kid which had ships on it and my headboard which was a “real” ship’s wheel.
I’m starting to see why it won the Booker. It’s a well-written book and some of language is beautiful. There are times when I wish Unsworth would step out and take a few more chances. The book lends itself to points of magic realism but he pretty much plays it straight. There’s the beginning of Part 4 which I particularly liked: “There are moments in anyone’s life when some blend of circumstances, some consonance of surroundings and situation and character, show him in light of a peculiarly characteristic, make him seem more intensely himself–to the observer, that is: the subject will not be aware of it. He seems to us then to be immobilized, taken out of time – or he steps, rather, into some much older story.” And later in the same graph: “He is there imperishably, wild with his jealousy, vague with the peace of the day. He is always, always to be found there.”
Unsworth seems to be saying, look, notice this character here, this is his essence. And yet there is something vague about it. For you think of your own moment where you are “intensely yourself”. Occasionally, those moments reveal themselves then and there, but usually that occurs later. Maybe this will unravel a bit later in the book for he brings up the blind mulatto here who he cites in the prologue as sitting at the entrance to the labyrinth of his story.
So that’s where I’m at. I’m going to keep going but I’m thinking of adding a non-fiction book, possibly Interesting Times. All of this while the Lakers march into the Finals and my birthday, and more books no doubt, approach.
I’m starting to see why it won the Booker. It’s a well-written book and some of language is beautiful. There are times when I wish Unsworth would step out and take a few more chances. The book lends itself to points of magic realism but he pretty much plays it straight. There’s the beginning of Part 4 which I particularly liked: “There are moments in anyone’s life when some blend of circumstances, some consonance of surroundings and situation and character, show him in light of a peculiarly characteristic, make him seem more intensely himself–to the observer, that is: the subject will not be aware of it. He seems to us then to be immobilized, taken out of time – or he steps, rather, into some much older story.” And later in the same graph: “He is there imperishably, wild with his jealousy, vague with the peace of the day. He is always, always to be found there.”
Unsworth seems to be saying, look, notice this character here, this is his essence. And yet there is something vague about it. For you think of your own moment where you are “intensely yourself”. Occasionally, those moments reveal themselves then and there, but usually that occurs later. Maybe this will unravel a bit later in the book for he brings up the blind mulatto here who he cites in the prologue as sitting at the entrance to the labyrinth of his story.
So that’s where I’m at. I’m going to keep going but I’m thinking of adding a non-fiction book, possibly Interesting Times. All of this while the Lakers march into the Finals and my birthday, and more books no doubt, approach.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Sacred Hunger
So I decided to read Barry Unsworth’s “Sacred Hunger”. It’s a novel about an 18th century British slave trading ship (I should have read back-to-back with “And a Bottle of Rum”) and it shared the Booker Prize in 1992 with “The English Patient” which I really loved. I think my future wife read TEP and lent it to me or urged me to read it. We were working at the same place in NYC, a small bond trader. Here’s the thing though. We were just friends at the time. Very. Close. Friends. So I was pining for this woman, but she had a boyfriend. So I bought a copy of Jeanette Winterson’s “Written on the Body”, wrote some emotionally charged words in the front and gave it to her. She gave it back to me with a yellow sticky that basically told me where to go. But I won out in the end. I didn’t see her for ten years and then I called her up out of the blue. Then we moved to LA. Then we got married. Lucky me. There’s more to the story than that but that’s what I remember about TEP, besides the fact the film ruined a great book. Too much Willem Defoe. Oh, and I was cleaning out an old box in my closet here last year and guess what I found the sticky. I still have the sticky.
So I started the book, about fifty pages in. Big font, small chapters. The writing is a little old school for my taste but I like a good sailing/adventure story so I’m sticking with it. Plus, it’s 630 pages. When I finish it I will have completed 12 percent of my task. I have no recollection who gave me the book. I’m thinking it might be my mom or my sister. But I know I received it one Christmas along with “Perfume” which, of course, is also on the list.
So I started the book, about fifty pages in. Big font, small chapters. The writing is a little old school for my taste but I like a good sailing/adventure story so I’m sticking with it. Plus, it’s 630 pages. When I finish it I will have completed 12 percent of my task. I have no recollection who gave me the book. I’m thinking it might be my mom or my sister. But I know I received it one Christmas along with “Perfume” which, of course, is also on the list.
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