Every year, I try to pick a different Shakespeare play to read with my students, preferably one I haven’t read in a long time. This year, I have one group of tenth graders, and right now we’re reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog, most of the students at my school read well below their grade level, so Shakespearean language can often be a challenge. I’ve found that Alan Durband’s Shakespeare Made Easy series does a great job at clarifying the narrative action without sacrificing too much of Shakespeare’s poetry. It presents the original text on the left side with the clarified “translation” on the right, which allows us to read and act out the play without spending too much time and effort breaking down every little (or long…) speech. Every couple of pages I’ll pick out a key passage from the original text which we’ll read and discuss. I’ve also been showing them the film adaptation that came out in the nineties (with Kevin Kline, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Christian Bale). We’re about half way through so far, and we’re enjoying the whole process.
I haven’t read this play since I was in the tenth grade, and I really didn’t think too much of it then–it certainly didn’t seem as weighty as, say, Othello, Macbeth, or Hamlet. Anyway, in re-reading it, I notice now that there’s an underlying rape motif throughout the text. For example, Theseus has captured his bride Hippolyta by seizing her in a classical rape; Demetrius threatens taking the “rich worth” of Helena’s virginity if she won’t quit stalking him in the woods; Lysander forces himself onto Hermia in the woods, and she’s barely able to keep him off. Oberon and Titania’s quarrel over the beautiful Indian boy is pretty weird, and is just one strange detail in a play full of aggressive sexuality, possibly most neatly summed up in the bestiality implicit in Titania’s affair with ass-headed Bottom. Of course, Titania doesn’t really love bottom–she’s just been dosed by her jealous hubby, who has a frat boy’s penchant for drugging people to get the love buzz going. Good stuff.
Blood Meridian is a blood-soaked, bloodthirsty bastard of a book, and certainly the most violent piece of literature I’ve read outside of the Bible and certain Greek tragedies. Cormac McCarthy’s 1985 novel passes itself off as a Western–and it is a Western, to be sure–but more than anything, it’s a brutal horror story.
Set predominantly in the 1850s, Blood Meridian chronicles the westward journey of a protagonist we know only as “the kid.” After a few false starts (including getting shot, robbed, arrested, and surviving a Comanche massacre) the kid eventually meets up with John Joel Glanton‘s “expedition”–a group of men of mixed backgrounds hired by Mexican authorities to kill–and scalp–the nomadic Apache that prey upon Mexican villages. However, led by the nefarious, larger-than-life Judge Holden, Glanton’s gang quickly descends into a relentless robbing, raping, and killing spree; they savagely massacre peaceful Indian settlements along with the Mexican villages they were contracted to protect.
I could keep summarizing the book, but I don’t see the point, honestly–a mere description of the plot could never do real justice to the weight of this book. The narrative is taut and fast-paced–in fact, at points the action is so radically condensed that I had to go back and re-read sections–and there’s no shortage of the “men doing men stuff” that McCarthy is so good at detailing–but it’s really the combination of the book’s evocative imagery and philosophical pondering that hook the reader.
Most of that philosophical pondering comes from the Judge, who waxes heavy on everything from space aliens to metallurgy. In his parables and aphorisms, the Judge comes across as part-Mephistophelean, part-Nietzschean, all dark wisdom and irreverent chaos. I found myself re-reading the Judge’s speeches several times and chewing them over, trying to digest them; for me, they were the best part of a great book.
Blood Meridian, like most excellent things, is simply not for everyone, and I don’t mean that in any snobbish, elitist sense. Any reader turned off by its freewheeling violence would be justified, and I’m sure plenty of folks out there would take issue with its ambiguous conclusion. Depictions of genocidal mania that seem to end inconclusively are not for everyone, particularly when they are rife with archaisms, untranslated Spanish, and McCarthy’s signature, apostrophe-free punctuation. I had two false starts with the novel, including one where, at about exactly half way through, I realized I had to go back and start the novel again. I owed it that much. And it was worth it.
Blood Meridian is literally stunning; perhaps the best analogy I can think of is going to see a really, really good band that plays really, really brutal and strange music that sorta melts your face off. After the show you’re sweaty and exhilarated and even unnerved; your ears are ringing and your chest is pounding. And then the band packs up, and the house lights go on, and they pump in music from a CD, of all things, and the music just sounds tinny and pale and blanched of life after the raw power you’ve witnessed. Reading anything else right after finishing Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West is sort of like that. Highly recommended.
Over the past three weeks, I read, and, alternately listened to, Philip Pullman’s fantastic His Dark Materials trilogy–The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. Here’s the short review:
If it’s necessary to critically situate and compare a fantasy or sci-fi series against precursor series–namely, The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Chronicles of Prydain, Harry Potter, etc.–and I don’t think it is necessary to critically situate and compare a fantasy or sci-fi series against its precursors, but that’s generally how these things are done–(this is turning into a monster of a “short review”)–but if it is necessary to critically situate and compare a fantasy or sci-fi series against precursor series, I think that Pullman’s His Dark Materials must be considered a new classic, an instantly-canonizable contribution to children’s literature, imaginative fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, or whatever genre you want to affix to these marvelous books.
His Dark Materials follows Lyra and Will, two children from different worlds (literally) who must work together to repair a damaged multiverse. Lyra comes from a world where people travel side by side with their daemons, spirit-images of their souls who take animal shapes. Will is an outsider in “our” world, a young fatherless boy who must take care of his mentally ill mother. The novels, in their simplest sense, detail the coming of age of these two as the traverse multiple parallel universes. In the backdrop there are witches and zeppelins, armored bears and dark specters, a compass that can point to the truth and a knife that can open all worlds, angels and scientists, and Lyra’s cruel and terrible parents, the cunning Mrs. Coulter, and Lord Asriel, whose will to kill God–The Authority–precipitates the action of the narrative.
William Blake, “Satan Watching the Caress of Adam and Eve”
As many critics have pointed out, His Dark Materials recapitulates Milton’s Paradise Lost (the series takes its name from a line from that epic poem). However, the series really reinterprets the British Romantics’ assessment of Paradise Lost. Pullman engages a host of Romantic writers, foregrounding Keats’s idea of negative capability, and prefacing many of the chapters with quotes from Romantic poetry. In particular, Pullman cites William Blake. Indeed, it seems to me that His Dark Materials effectively synthesizes many of Blake’s poems and ideas, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and Songs of Innocence and of Experience in particular. The novel also engages a number of Nietzsche’s ideas, and even, I believe, alludes to several concepts of Derrida’s (in particular, the idea of the gift of death). Additionally, Pullman weaves in the many-worlds theory, extended discussions of evolutionary anthropology, rampant infanticide, and auto-trepanation. Good stuff.
When the film of The Golden Compass (I didn’t see it) came out last year, it ignited a small controversy about the books. According to the Baptist Press, Pullman presents “a fantasy universe where witches are good, the church is bad, and at the end of it all, God dies.” This really isn’t the case, if you want to go with a precise reading of Pullman’s actual words, but, consider the source. I’m sure the controversy is healthy for Pullman’s sales; it certainly piqued my interest in the book, and I’m guessing that there are plenty of kids who, once their private Christian schools banned the books, couldn’t wait to get their hands on the verboten goods. And that’s a good thing.
William Blake, “Whirlwind of Lovers”
His Dark Materials meets and surpasses my notions of good fantasy/sci-fi/imaginative fiction: the books engage multiple complex ideas in a new and often unsettling way. Unlike the Harry Potter series, which simply operates within familiar, preexisting archetypes of fantasy, Pullman’s work consistently disrupts reader expectations, pushing set ideas about religion and science, art and fantasy into new and fantastic places. Ultimately, although many will seek to suppress this book as an “amoral” work, His Dark Materials proposes a very real set of ethics inscribed in a world of moral relativity. The characters grow up and make good, selfless choices, decisions they make independent of absolute moral authority.
From conscientious reader Dave C. ((very) minor editorial changes by the Biblioklept):
“The NY Times posted an article about an author who was outed as a fraud for writing a memoir about her life as a half-Native American, half-white gangbanger from South Central Los Angeles who escaped to the University of Oregon when she was really just an activist who at one point worked with gangs and created the characters in her memoir based on real people she had met in her real/fake life.The Times actually reviewed the book just last week and praised it.
I’ve just been pissed ever since that James Frey controversy about the idea that a supposed memoir has to be true. Does the fact that she made up portions of this book make her accomplishment any less significant? Isn’t a moving work of fiction a greater accomplishment than a moving autobiography? Are people really so concerned with whether someone actually did something that they are willing to ignore a touching, well-written narrative?
That James Frey novel, what I’ve read of it, was a tad overcooked, but about 10 people told me I had to read it because it was sooooo good. After Oprah (who made a gazillion dollars promoting his work) sold him down the river, he became a literary pariah.
Is the phrase “based on a true story” important in the appreciation of a story at all?”
I wrote a blog a few weeks ago about a few run-ins I had at an AP workshop, specifically related to teaching the canon. Anyway, that aside, during that workshop, this question came up. The mediator/instructor had the room show, by hands, their opinion on the issue. It was roughly a 70-30 split, with the majority favoring “authenticity” in their memoirs. I was, of course, in the minority.
Like Dave, I was steamed over the James Frey thing, not because I cared about the book–it looked like trash, frankly–but because he became a strange acid test for what America now thinks it needs from a memoir.
If we start from the assumption that genres impose a functional structure that inheres within the reading of a book, we’ve already made a strange, silly, and ultimately illusory set of distinctions to guide our reading. All one has to do is look at the travel literature of the sixteenth century or a science text book from the 1920s to see how quickly “validity” melts under context.
But even if we grant that genre has a meaningful or necessary purpose, and we work from this assumption, I think it’s a huge mistake to believe that “memoir” is the same as “nonfiction.” There are several simple reasons for this.
For one, to tell an effective and affecting story requires a manipulation of events–editing, hyperbole, recoloring, touch-ups, and so on. Events in life don’t necessarily unfold in a “readable” way. And I think that many, if not most readers go into a memoir understanding that the tale they read may be compressed or somehow aestheticized.
But I think a more fundamental reason that memoir shouldn’t be held to the strictest ideals of verity follows from the simple fact that memory is in no way perfect, absolute, or unchanging. We cannot perfectly record our memories, nor do they stay stable to us. Memories are always volatile, swirling; we forge our identity in every moment by reinterpreting and reimagining our past.
Any memoirist must literally reimagine their memories in order to write, and if they choose not to reimagine, but to instead imagine (invent and create) memories, what does it say about our expectations and needs as readers to judge their writing based solely on adherence to structural genre?
In the preface to Dave Eggers’s What is the What, Valentino Achak Deng foregrounds these problems. He says that the book–his “autobiography,” written by Dave Eggers (and hence not his autobiography)–must be considered a novel, as he was very, very young when many of the events recorded in the book happened. Similarly, Eggers’s own memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, repeatedly references its own flights of fiction, acknowledges its own need to invent a new imagined version of memories that never happened in order to better explain what really did happen. The Autobiography of Malcolm X was written by Alex Haley; The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equianois rife with distortions, inaccuracies and completely fabricated events; in crafting A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man–which may or may not be a memoir (although it is certainly a book…)–James Joyce wholly lifted entire passages of contemporary religious tracts.
James Weldon Johnson’s novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, illustrates how easily notions of genre–just like notions of race and stable identity–can be deconstructed. Johnson anonymously published the “autobiography” in 1912, and it was received as the true life story of an extraordinary “Negro” who shockingly was able to “pass” as a white man, to the extent that he (gasp!) married a white woman and became a major property owner. The book initiated a minor racial panic, causing some critics to insist that it must be fake because no black man could effectively “pass” as the unnamed narrator claimed to do. JWJ’s deconstruction of race and identity could not have worked in the same way had he presented it within the limits of a “true” memoir. It took fiction (masquerading as fact) to reveal a more profound reality.
A good writer makes stuff up and writes it down in a way that makes us want to read it and not put it down and keep reading it until we’ve read it all and want to read it again. If finding out the circumstances of the writing of the book do not match a set of expectations we had going into reading the book, we need to re-evaluate those expectations.
I teach four sections of 11th grade AP English Language and Composition; I’m really hard on these kids. I also teach one section of 10th graders. I see these kids dark and early every morning, and I’m not very hard on them. It’s impossible to be, really. They–and I–are still sort of asleep. So, even though the FCAT is but a week away, when one assertive young lady in the class thought to tape record the new TV movie version of A Raisin in the Sun and bring it in, I agreed to let them watch it. After all, we’d read the play in class back in November, and watched the entire 1989 filmed stage production starring Danny Glover, as well as parts of the 1961 version starring Danny Glover.
I’ve been using Lorraine Hansberry’s play in the classroom for years, with great success, I might add–the themes of race, economics, integration, assimilation, acculturation, generational change, and women’s rights continue to be as vital and thought-provoking as when the play was first produced a half-century ago. Which is why the early aughties revival starring Sean “Puff Daddy P-Diddy, No, Just Diddy (Diddy Dumb Diddy Do)” Combs seemed like a great idea. It was met with good reviews and ran to 88 performances. I know this play inside and out, and was excited to see a new version of it.
It was awful. Just plain awful. I can only hope that most of the people who saw it last week had some previous exposure. The depth of inter-generational conflict of Hansberry’s original text is drained of all energy and force, leaving only a weak trace of sappy melodrama. Both Poitier and Glover carried their versions, exploring the role of Walter Lee, a man whose dreams and ambitions are outmatched by the limited station thrust upon him. Walter Lee, properly, must be a man-child animal, lean and angry, a volcano ready to explode in rage and desperation. Walter Lee’s transformation into an adult man is painful; it almost undoes his family, metonymized neatly in the abortion his wife plans to have. Diddy, however, turns in one of the laziest one-note performances I’ve ever seen. He relies on every hackneyed trope of melodrama as a substitution for really emoting his part. In short, it’s impossible to believe that he’s Walter Lee. He’s just Diddy casually pretending to be Walter Lee. And the producers and director seem to know this. Whereas Walter Lee at least punctuates each scene of ARITS–and usually is at the forefront of catalytic action–the 2008 version reduces the scope of Diddy’s screen time, even omitting the famous “flaming spear” scene (my students were appalled at this elision–they determined that Diddy wouldn’t want to appear foolish). Furthermore, every single scene with Puffy Daddy (yes, I kept track) relies on the most saccharine of music to make sure the audience knows how to feel.
It’s left then to a chubbyish Phylicia Rashad to carry the movie, and while she’s a great actress, her Mama Younger is far too keenly self-aware. She’s simply not Hansberry’s Mama; instead, she’s Rashad’s late aughties update on what Rashad thinks a strong black woman should be. The original Mama’s ideology is defined (perhaps even limited) by the Great Migration; ARITS is largely the story of this mentality clashing with the artistic, educational, and economic aspirations inherent in the Civil Rights movement. Rashad’s Mama is never confused or even especially distraught over this changing ideology, and even some of the original lines that show her distress are cut. It just doesn’t work.
Maybe I gripe too much–my kids enjoyed it on the whole, but conceded that it wasn’t nearly as good as Glover’s take. I have to admit that I liked John “Uncle Jessie” Stamos as Mr. Lindner. He brought a silly unself-conscious humor to the role that exposed the inherent conflict of the original character: a guy whose actions are incredibly racist who can at no point recognize this racism because it’s so indelibly entrenched within him.
Still, if you’ve never seen the play before, I recommend going to the Danny Glover version, or at least the Poitier “classic.” Our inaugural post was about A Raisin in the Sun.
Readers in Northeast Florida may be interested in catching Azar Nafisi speak at the University Center of the University of North Florida at 7:30PM on Monday, March 3rd. Nafisi’s bestselling memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran recounts the Western literature course that Nafisi taught in secret to a small group of Iranian women in her house in the late 90s, and engages the events of the Islamic Revolution, the Iran-Iraq war, and the conservative cultural revolution that led to the necessity of keeping such a course on the down-low. My wife didn’t finish the book; I didn’t start it. My wife said it was good though; she told me she can’t remember why she quit reading it. How’s that for a book review? (I highly recommend Hamid Dabashi’s highly-critical and thoroughly engrossing critique of the book, “Native informers and the making of the American empire,” in which he refers to Reading Lolita in Tehran as “the locus classicus of the ideological foregrounding of the US imperial domination at home and abroad” — read the whole essay here.)
Nafisi’s lecture, “The Republic of the Imagination,” is part of UNF’s ongoing “Distinguished Voices” series (great name, by the way, guys. Lot of thought and creativity put into that one). The next speaker in the series is pretty-boy news analyst and frequent Daily Show guest Fareed Zakaria. Get free tickets for any of the lectures in the series here.
I work as a teacher for Duval County Public Schools. Last week, a 15 page document titled “Alphabetical Listing of Multimedia Material Reevaluated in Duval County” was dropped off in my mailbox; I’m not sure exactly why. The document lists well over 250 books, magazines, videos, and albums that were “reevaluated” due to complaints. Some of these books are frequent guests on the censorship block (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, “Racial,” Catcher in the Rye, “Offensive Language,” Are You There God? It’s Me, Margeret, “Religious, Sex, Introduction to Pornography,” As I Lay Dying “Profanity/Racial Slur”) and some are destined to be under scrutiny for a long time (Harry Potter, entire series, “Witchcraft, Occult, Spellcasting”). As you might expect, the dominant complaints revolve around profanity, sex, and a general sense that the book doesn’t fit in to the complainant’s worldview. Here are a few favorites of mine:
Goosebumps Series, R.L Stine — “Scary” (Yes. Correct. They’re supposed to be scary, jackass).Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond — “Bestiality/Darwinian evolution” (Natch–bestiality and Darwinian evolution go together like PB & J).
Halloween, Joyce K. Kessell — “Evil, Full of Lies” (Ach! Oh no! A fiction book that doesn’t tell the truth!)
The Butter Battle Book, Dr. Seuss — “Violence” (Admittedly, The Butter Battle Book was the peak of Seuss’s “Tarantino phase”)
Four Good Friends, Margaret Hillert — “Negative, Nonproducive tone” (What the fuck is a “Nonproducive tone”? What does that even mean?)
Learning to Swim, Ann Turner — “Erotic and Sexual Nature” (Erotic and sexual? Intriguing…)
A Light in the Attic, Shel Silverstein — “Illustrations” (Huh? “Illustrations”? Huh? This book is actually right by me, my childhood copy, proudly shelved on the mantle…let’s review these nefarious illustrations…let’s see, let’s see…An Icarian hippo, perhaps? An unscratchable itch?Rhino pen? Nah…Is it perhaps, the “Union for Children’s Rights” picture (pgs 140-141 in my 1981 Harper & Row edition)? Gotta be…unionized kids…scary!)
Kid in the Red Jacket, Barbara Park — “”Stupid” and “God”” (Again, I ask “Huh?”)
Little Red Riding Hood, Paul Galdone — “Violence/Wine” (Two of my favorite things!)
Marijuana, Martin Godfrey — “Drugs” (Really? Who knew Marijuana would contain “drugs”)
Matilda, Roald Dahl — “Vulgar, Unethical” (This is one of my favorite books. Attempting to suppress it and keep kids from reading it is both vulgar and unethical)
Our Country Spain, David Cumming — “Mediterranean Beach Picture” (Good lord no!)
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde — “Morality” (What is the problematic “morality” of Dorian Gray? Or did the offended parent have a problem with Oscar’s proclivities for the lovely youths?)
Santa Claus Mystery, John Godman — “Conflict w/ Santa Myth” (I wish they’d be more specific–what’s the conflict? Is there a “set” Santa myth? What is it?)
Tar Baby, Toni Morrison — “Sex, Violence, Myth” (Myth? Really? Myth is offensive?)
The Visitors Who Came to Stay, A. McAffee and A. Browne — “Pictures” (Again, please, be specific when you want to ban a book. “Pictures” simply won’t cut it)
Where is Gah-Ning, Robert Munsch — “Blatant disregard for moral standard” (Okay, that’s a little more specific, I guess–but still asinine).
Which Witch, Eva Ibboston; The Witches, Roald Dahl; Witches, Witches, Witches, Helen Hoke; Witches, Rhoda Blumberg; The Witches of Worm, Z. Keatley Snyder; The Witch’s Handbook, Malcolm Bird — “Witchcraft, Occult” (Duh)
Worry Worts, Morris Gleitzman — “Sexual Context” (I wonder if this book is about STDs…)
A Day No Pigs Would Die, Robert Newton — “Profanity/Hogs Mating” (Sounds like a party to me!)
Last week, millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett was declared legally dead after having been missing since fall of last year when his single-engine plane disappeared in Nevada. Neither Fossett’s body or his plane were found, but nevertheless, on November 26, 2007 his wife petitioned to have him declared legally dead.
Fossett set 116 records over his lifetime, including feats in ballooning, aviation, and sailing that still stand. His career as an adventurer is so storied and fascinating that we at Biblioklept refuse to believe that Fossett died; in fact, we propose that he’s still alive, in the midst of some new adventure, perhaps of the time-traveling or extra-dimensional exploration variety, no doubt as secret as it is mind-shattering.
So–
What do you think? Take part in Biblioklept’s Steve Fossett Fan Fiction Contest. Where is Fossett now, and what marvelous adventuring is he up to? Entries should be mailed (no attachments, please!) to biblioklept.ed@gmail.com, or, alternately (preferably) posted in the comments section below. All entries will be considered the owned intellectual property of the original author. The contest is open until a year from today. The winner of the contest, chosen by the Biblioklept and His Esteemed Council, will receive their choice of a dirty postcard or a stolen book, chosen by the Biblioklept.
Properly describing David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews with Hideous Men involves using all of those words that I hate to see in any book review: “radiates,” “pathos,” “poignancy,” “gut-busting laughs,” “existential crises of identity in the post-modern world,” and so on. Now that I have them out of the way, let me tell you why you should read this book: it will make you laugh, it will make you cry. Out loud. After you read it, you will want to press it on other people, who will say, “Yeah, sure, okay”; only their eyes’ will be slightly-slanted, their mouths just a bit crooked, even their nose will appear askew at your demand. They will hurriedly change the subject–you’ve already foisted so many unwanted books on them, and who even has time to read now?–but you will persevere! “Here,” you’ll say, “Read “A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life”–it’s only two paragraphs! You can read the whole thing in under a minute!”:
When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed extremely hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces.
The man who’d introduced them didn’t much like either of them, though he acted as if did, anxious as he was to preserve good relations at all times. One never knew, after all, now did one now did one now did one.
And, as they finish reading, you’ll beam at them and nod your head knowingly. They’ll look a little confused, perhaps bored. “It’s like an overture, see? It’s like, about loss, the inability to connect, the masks we wear to hide our hideousnessnesses.” Your victim will nod politely and begin to bring up an interesting thing he saw on the local news concerning pet ownership, but you’ll cut him off before he can get out of this. “Check out the “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” sections that permeate the book–they’re like little vignettes, interviews where you only get the interviewee’s responses. They’re funny, shocking sad–they’re really good! Also, check out my favorites– “Adult World (I)” and “Adult World (II)”–these stories are about a wife who it turns out doesn’t really know her husband at all. Just read the beginning– ”
For the first three years, the young wife worried that their lovemaking together was somehow hard on his thingie. The rawness and tenderness and spanked pink of the head of his thingie. The slight wince when he’d enter her down there. The vague hot-penny taste of rawness when she took his thingie in her mouth–she seldom took him in her mouth, however; there was something about it that she felt he did not quite like.
“See?” you’ll demand uncaringly of your now-obviously exasperated detainee, “See? Sex! It’s got sex in it! Everyone loves to read about sex, especially weird awkward sex!” Your victim will now stand up, feigning the need to visit the restroom. But you won’t let him go that easily! “There’s another series of running vignettes that unify the book’s structure, making its sum more than just a collection of previously-published stories–check out a selection from one of the “Yet Another Example of the Porousness of Certain Borders” series”–
“Don’t love you no more.”
“Right back at you.”
“Divorce your ass.”
“Suits me.”
“Except now what about the doublewide.”
“I get the truck is all I know.”
“You’re saying I get the doublewide you get the truck.”
“All I’m saying is that truck out there’s mine.”
“Then what about the boy.”
“For the truck you mean?”
Your poor visitor is now literally walking away from you, ignoring the book in your hands, yet still somehow politely smiling–though only with his mouth–his hard eyes show how much he hates you right now. As he retreats to the toilet, your feelings hurt, you comfort yourself by declaring that he doesn’t read anyway; besides, he wouldn’t be able to figure out that “Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko” was a retelling of both the Tristan and Isolde and Narcissus and Echo stories, set in Hollywood; he wouldn’t appreciate the book’s themes of child-abuse, repressed (false?) memories, and lost love. Philistine.
When he comes out of the bathroom you chit-chat a little more and then he’s ready to go. He holds his hand out toward the book. He wants to borrow the book. He wants to take your book. Oh shit. What have you done?
Today I attended the first day of a two-day College Board workshop meant to provide additional training to teachers of Advanced Placement English Language and Composition. I’ve been to a number of these over the years, and College Board’s trainers tend to be better than the average presenters we get in education. The workshops also provide an opportunity to see what teachers at other schools are doing with their students.
Anyway, the only reason I bother to write about this is because of an interesting conversation/confrontation that happened almost immediately at the beginning of the session. As per usual with these things, we were to introduce ourselves–how long we’d been teaching, where we teach, the grade levels we teach, etc. The presenter also asked us to identify the book we most enjoyed “teaching.” That was the verb used–“teaching.” We were in a circle; I was one of the last people to have to introduce myself, and I heard repeatedly “I like to teach Gatsby” or “I like to teach Night” or “I like to teach To Kill a Mockingbird” or “I teach Faulkner.” I was getting a little antsy. Here’s why: 1) I don’t teach books–I don’t even know what it means to teach a book, 2) I rarely have my students read a complete book as part of their curriculum–I abridge almost everything, and 3) I’d been in this same situation more than once, and I knew that saying this was going to rub some of these English teachers the wrong way. And of course it did rub wrong, in particular two musty hags of the old school, one of whom cut me off condescendingly in mid-sentence: “So you’re saying that your kids never read a whole book?”
As pleasantly as possible, I tried to explain that I aim to expose my students to a multiplicity of voices and themes and rhetorical styles and methods, and that I didn’t see my primary job as fostering a love of literature; rather, I believe that the main duty of the English teacher is to facilitate the development of reading, composition, and thinking. I tried to explain that, even in my AP classes, most of my students are not avid readers and most of my students do not read at their grade level, and therefore struggling through 4 or 5 novels or plays over the course of one year didn’t seem as valuable to me as working through over a hundred different writers writing in a variety of styles for a variety of purposes. I tried to explain that reading a selection on slavery from 1789 by Olaudah Equiano in conjunction with a 2005 UN report on human trafficking, and then responding to these text was a far more valuable skill than wading through a dusty “classic” hunting down “universal” themes (whatever those are…).
The response, predictably was: “You mean, your 11th graders don’t read The Scarlet Letter? They don’t read Gatsby? That’s terrible!”
Why? Why should The Scarlett Letter or The Great Gatsby be so reverently “taught” to sixteen and seventeen year olds in this country? I like both of these books–I really do (although I think Gatsby is possibly the most overrated and over-read book ever published, and I’d take Hawthorne’s fabulous short stories any day over dreary Dimsdale and Hester Prynne)–but what purpose is there in making kids read them? Are they truly that relevant, or important?
I should be clear here that I am in no way at all against students reading these books; I wish that they would read these books, in fact. Only, I wish that they would love reading so much that they would be inspired to read books that they’ve heard are great or classic. But here’s the thing: I don’t think that telling a student they must read a book and that that book is a great work of literature andthat they should enjoy or be inspired by that book is in any way a fair proposition. It leads only to anxiety, frustration, boredom, and then defeat.
Instead, English teachers should recognize that literature is just one part of reading and writing, and that most of our students are not going to go on to be English teachers or fiction writers. We should focus on a heteroglossic range of voices, styles, and purposes in introducing texts into the classroom. Students should be taught to respond to a variety of texts across a variety of disciplines, not to a few canonical authors. What happens more often than not in English classrooms is something like this: students are forced to read a work too complex for them to comprehend; they rely on the teacher’s interpretation to guide them through the novel (never having been taught a close-reading method that might give them access to the text); the student then writes a meaningless recapitulation of the teacher’s own “universalist” interpretation of the literary work, to the egotistical delight of the teacher who is enthralled that the student has “got it.” What’s lost is the opportunity to engage in relevant, “real-life” writing, writing that enters into an ongoing conversation in a meaningful way.
This is has been a straight-up rant–I’m sorry. I think that the following scene from Freaks and Geeks says it all better than I just did. Kim Kelly (Busy Phillips) critiques On the Road:
Our pal Bobby Tomorrowland recently posted a blog that lamented the passing of a time “when brainy little monographs flew off the shelves at independent bookstores, when information was shared and consumed en masse via organic materials, pressed vegetation, before we turned our economy over to the pixel and set fire to the past.” I know that Bob is a bibliophile: we’ve swapped (and stolen) books from each other for years (Bob lately moved north with my unread copy of The Wind-up Bird Chronicles, exchanging a book of anthropo-mythological film criticism in its place). Still, I was nonetheless a little perturbed by Tomorrowguy’s use of the past-tense verb “was.” Bob clarified his point in the comments thread, writing that “there’s a bittersweet realization that the ledgers, tracts and statements of the future will likely emerge in virtual — not vegetable — form.” Now, sure, “will likely” is still conditional, but it also translates to “probably.” Does Bob really believe that paper books are to be consumed by the “fire of the past”? And where does he locate the sweetness ratio of of this “bittersweet realization”?
Websites and blogs give people the ability to communicate a message to a wide audience without the annoying mediation of an editor or the complications of distributing a physical product. Just as 7″ records, once the currency of underground music, have been displaced by mp3s, zines and “little magazines” are giving way to blogs. American newspapers, in competition with both TV and the internet, increasingly find themselves in economic trouble. Writers of every stripe scramble to praise Amazon’s new e-book reader, the Kindle. Clearly, a new type of literacy based on interfacing with screen media, will certainly be a necessary skill for those seeking “professional” or “white collar” jobs in the West, in the now, and in the future (Greg Ulmer, one of my former professors at the University of Florida has dubbed this skill “electracy“). I will grant Tom Orrowland this much. But his line of logic is specifically teleological, presuming a technologically progressive future, a future shared by everyone. What are the limits of this kind of tomorrowland? Does its horizon extend indefinitely into a promised land, where everyone–that is to say, all members of all cultures, of any imposed tier or hierarchy–share access to this future? Is it not possible to imagine a future of social and technological collapse, where hand-cranked presses must serve where pixels have failed? Or, to be less dramatically eschatological–and to return to Bobby’s original vegetation metaphor –are not handbills and fliers and pamphlets the vital stuff of grassroots movements? To be sure, the internet exists as a profoundly important coeval to the print medium, but is access and exposure to such movements to be only available to those with screen media?Is it so inconceivable people without access to machines could exist fifty or a hundred or two hundred years from now? A thousand? Is electracy in fact an evolutionary threat to literacy? Will hypertext cannibalize pressed vegetation?
Maybe I react this way because I truly love books–not just their contents, but the physical objects themselves, and the thought of a future without books is ugly to me. I love my local independent book store, and I visit it at least twice a month. I love the dizzying smell of a library, the sweet slow-rot of millions of pages. I also have a fondness for severalindependentpresses out there today, publishers who understand that their audiences are genuine bibliophiles. Earlier this month, I gave props to Ursula LeGuin for her insightful recent essay “Staying Awake” in Harper’s. She wrote, and I quoted, and here requote:
The book itself is a curious artifact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can last decades, even centuries. It doesn’t have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable. If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell it to you again when you are fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you’re reading a whole new book.
I couldn’t agree more. Her argument is both simple and profound. To underscore its simplicity, would you be willing to take your laptop or Kindle into the bath with you? How about a sandy beach? Could you imagine poring over a digital version of your favorite Eric Carle book with your young child? What about all the brilliant annotations and ephemeral marginalia doodlers such as myself impose on the text? Again, I’m not presuming that there won’t be water-resistant, beach-friendly, child-friendly, doodler-savvy media interfaces in the future. I can conceive of such a thing. Only I’m dubious. With any number of futuristic fibers available, people still wear organic materials like cotton and leather. We still frame our homes with wood. Many of us prefer to eat real food instead of the edible food-like substances that abound in grocery stores and convenience marts. In short, I think that humans have an affinity and comfort with “naturalistic” products, and I’m not sure if an e-book reader or computer screen will ever be able to replicate the feeling of curling up the couch with a well-loved book stolen from a friend.
Maybe I’m just a Luddite (for the record, I still think my Sony Walkman sounds ten times better than my portable mp3 player). Maybe I’ll be proven wrong, maybe even in just a few short months. Who knows? But I’d rather be cranky and old-fashioned than accept a future without books.
I’ve been re-reading Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative, a fascinating autobiography/travel book detailing Equiano’s experiences being kidnapped from West Africa at a young age and sold into slavery. During this time, Equiano migrates all around the world, earns and loses and earns again his freedom, and eventually comes to identify himself as an Englishman, replete with English values. Today, the book is widely regarded as a key abolitionist text; it remains a fascinating document of the cruelty and inhumanity of slavery. It’s also a pretty interesting adventure story.
The early part of the book is chock full of images of consumption and sacrifice. Prominent among these images, the threat of cannibalism looms as the ultimate horror at stake in an alien encounter between two different cultures. The first image of cannibalism, however, becomes a sort of baseline of the rhetoric of cannibalism. Equiano relates the following Ibo proverb concerning villagers with bitter tempers: “if they were to be eaten, they were to be eaten with bitter herbs,” noting that many Ibo “offerings [sacrifices] are eaten with bitter herbs.” This seemingly light-hearted proverb locates the consumption of the human body as a site of holy sacrifice, acknowledging that the cost of existence always figures as a displacement of one person’s access to resources in favor of another’s. Equiano later expresses a wish to sacrifice himself to gain his sister’s freedom—“happy should I have ever esteemed myself to encounter every misery for you, and to procure your freedom by the sacrifice of my own,” here echoing the Ibo proverb’s realization of a sacrificial economy. This sacrificial economy plummets into the taboo horror of cannibalism, as a terrified Equiano, kidnapped and dragged to the West African coast, first encounters Europeans. He asks his fellow Africans “if [he] were not to be eaten by those white men with horrible looks, red faces, and loose hair.” The terror of this alien-encounter is not abated when the Africans assure Equiano that he is not to be eaten; “I expected they would sacrifice me,” he writes.
As the horror of his sea voyage increases, so does his belief that he is to be voraciously consumed by his captors. While “all pent up together like so many sheep in a fold,” Equiano avers that “We thought […] we should be eaten by these ugly men.” Equiano here figures as a sacrificial lamb, consumed by brutal barbarians. The slave-traders tap into and exploit this fear, using it to manipulate the behavior of Equiano: “the captain and people told me in jest they would kill and eat me, but I thought them in earnest.” Equiano puts his horror even more bluntly: “I very much feared they would kill and eat me.” Equiano’s horror at the threat of cannibalism contrasts greatly with the captain’s playful attitude about the eating of human flesh. The captain “jocularly” threatens to “kill” and “eat” Equiano, and also threatens to eat his young friend as well. The captain then inquires about the cannibalistic practices of West Africans, jokingly averring that “black people were not good to eat,” thus implying he had tasted their flesh before. The captain’s rhetorical technique further destabilizes Equiano’s sense of safety as well as confounding any attempt to systematize knowledge of the ethics, morality, and diet of his new captors; in short, the captain further alienates Equiano’s experience. However, a future Equiano, reflective and knowledgeable, assesses these structures of consumption and sacrifice in terms of economy. “Must every tender feeling be likewise sacrificed to your avarice?” Equiano demands of the “nominal Christians” who participate in the slave trade. Equiano thus translates the literal consumption of enslaved labor into the spiritual, emotional consumption that occurs when people cannibalize each other. The captain’s humor—and indeed, the slight and humorous tone of the Ibo proverb—both serve as defense mechanisms to psychologically mask the taboo terror of cannibalism that figuratively underscores the enslavement of human beings.
Welcome to a new feature at the Biblioklept, “Essential Short Story Collections,” in which we take a look at some, uh, short story collections that are essential (how’s that for a tautology?). Because we here at Biblioklept Headquarters USA always put Jesus first, and because his latest novel Tree of Smoke was so dang good, why not start with Denis Johnson’s 1992 collection Jesus’ Son?
Jesus’ Son is almost a novel in short story form. The unnamed narrator of the stories is an alcoholic drug addict who manages to survive through a mix of petty thievery, odd odd jobs, and straight-up bumming it. The collection opens with “Car Crash While Hitchhiking.” The title of this story is in no way misleading. And although the first story winds up with the narrator hospitalized and blacking out (initiating a motif in Jesus’ Son), the next story, “Two Men” finds him reasonably healthy and up to no good. “Two Men” is a meditation on the bonds of friendship and an outstanding example of Johnson’s tight prose:
I was being taken out of the dance by my two good friends. I had forgotten my friends had come with me, but there they were. Once again I hated the two of them. The three of us had formed a group based on something erroneous, some basic misunderstanding that hadn’t yet come to light, and so we kept on in one another’s company, going to bars and having conversations. Generally one of these false coalitions died after a day or a day and a half, but this one had lasted more than a year. Later on one of them got hurt when we were burglarizing a pharmacy, and the other two of us dropped him bleeding at the back entrance of the hospital and he was arrested and all the bonds were dissolved.
Friends! Good stuff. Other stand-outs in the collection include “Work,” a story about stealing copper wire, and “Emergency,” a tale involving copping pills from an emergency room job. Reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson, “Emergency” perfectly captures drug-addled paranoia overflowing into petty existential questing. An encounter with some normals:
A family in a big Dodge, the only car we’d seen in a long time, slowed down and gawked out the windows as they passed by. The father said, “What is it, a snake?”
“No, it’s not a snake,” Georgie said, It’s a rabbit with babies inside it.”
“Babies!” the mother said, and the father sped the car forward, over the protests of several little kids in the back.
Georgie came back to my side of the truck with his shirtfront stretched out in front of him as if he were carrying apples in it, or some such, but they were, in fact, slimy miniature bunnies. “No way I’m eating those things, ” I told him.
The last story in Jesus’ Son, “Beverly Home,” finds our narrator in a somewhat more stable position, working in a retirement home and attending NA and AA meetings. His one vice and indulgence is voyeurism; he takes to watching a Mennonite couple through their windows at night, progressing from deviant sex-obsession to pining for their mundane life:
I got so I enjoyed seeing them sitting in their living room talking, almost not talking at all, reading the Bible, saying grace, eating their supper in the kitchen alcove, as much as I liked watching her naked in the shower.
At the end of the book, moved by the strange spectacle of a man washing his wife’s feet, the narrator finds a kind of hope and redemption for the future:
All these weirdos, and me getting a little better every day right in the midst of them. I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us.
I mentioned above that Jesus’ Son can almost be read as a novel, but make no mistake–it is a collection of short stories, character sketches, vignettes that add up to something greater. The 2000 film adaptation of the movie makes this quite clear. Although the film, starring Billy Crudup as the unnamed narrator, is not half bad, the disconnected and fragmentary nature of the book–which reinforced the book’s themes of existential alienation and minor redemption–comes across as episodic and even whimsical in the movie.
I highly recommend Jesus’ Son, and I hope that people who “don’t have time to read” will make a little space in their day for this slim but substantial book. Most of the stories can be read in under half an hour, so why not pick up a copy?
Since we’ve already had our say about the best books of ’07, here’s what some other clowns thought:
The New York Times agreed with us that Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke was fantastic. They also give props to Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives, the reading of which is high on our “to do” list. In their non-fiction superlatives, they highlight music critic Alex Ross’s The Rest is Noise, as do the a couple of the folks over at Slate–although Slate‘s list fails to recognize Tree of Smoke (the book is seriously seriously good good good). The editors of Publisher’s Weekly also cite Johnson’s novel as one of ’07’s best, and they’re one of the few sites out there to mention Don DeLillo’s Falling Man. I’ve just started listening to the audiobook version of Falling Man, and I should be able to weigh in before ’07 is kaput. There’s a better-than-you-would-think-it-would-be write-up at Time of the top-ten graphic novels of 2007. The School Library Journal effectively organizes its list by grade level, a boon to teachers and parents everywhere. That bastion of literary criticism, The Economist, seems to think that Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union was something special, although we know better. The writers over at theVillage Voice are sensible enough to append the adjective “favorite” instead of “best,” perhaps excusing them from also giving a nod to Chabon’s book (although their mistaking Miranda July for an author cannot be forgiven). When you get sick of reading other people’s list, head over to Book Covers and check out the Best Book Shelves of 2007 (the images in this post are from said list).
Not only does the end of each year bring ugly barefaced consumerism, nightmare traffic, and hellish stress, it invariably leads up to oodles of lists, hierarchies, rankings, and tabulations. We here at Biblioklept are not above marshaling the cultural detritus of the year into our own list, as follows. But before we even get to all that, I have to say that The Year of the Golden Pig (whether it was really a Golden Pig year or not) was a wonderful and special year for me, thanks to the birth of my lovely little girl. So: very good year. Best Fiction Book I read in 2007
This is really tough, because I read so many great books this year. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road really stuck with me, and although I thought the end was a cop-out, I found myself thinking about the book constantly and rereading it in bits and pieces. For sheer entertainment, I also really enjoyed Chris Bachelder’s US! I also read or reread most of James Joyce’s oeuvre, and I really did enjoy Ulysses, despite the torture it put me through, and I can’t leave it out of this group. Still, I have to give the award to a book published last year, Chris Adrian’s astounding and astonishing The Children’s Hospital, a book so good that I actually had to stand up to read it at times.
Best Nonfiction Book I read in 2007
Although Consider the Lobster, David Foster Wallace’s “sequel” to his hilarious collection of essays A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, isn’t quite as funny as that earlier book of essays, it shows a maturation of scope and a control of language that I would’ve thought impossible ten years ago, simply because DFW has been such a master of words from the outset of his writing career. Great book.
Best Book Published in 2007 that I Read in 2007
Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smokewas the best book I read all year, although it’s only fair to point out that I listened to the audiobook–maybe I should put quotation marks around read, or just use the verb listen instead. In fact almost all of the books published in 2007 that I…uh…”read” were audiobooks, including two of the bigger releases this year, Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and Jonathan Lethem’s You Don’t Love Me Yet. Which brings us to…
Most Disappointing Book of 2007
Jonathan Lethem’s You Don’t Love Me Yet was pretty awful.
Best Movie I Saw in the Theater in 2007
Tie: Children of Men (yeah, I know it came out in 2006–I saw it in 2007 though) and Superbad. If you were to make a graph of emotional matrices, these two films would probably fit quite comfortably at ends opposite of each other. Still, they have plenty in common–great stories, emotional impact, and most importantly, they meet the ultimate criterion for an excellent movie: they start out great and only get better.
Best Movie I Saw on DVD in 2007
David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE. Watch it at night in the dark, preferably alone, preferably in the cold.
Most Disappointing Movie of 2007
Although it was by no means bad, I was disappointed in the Coen’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. It was a good movie–Javier Badem was fantastic, great pacing and tone–but still it didn’t blow me away like, say, Fargo or Blood Simple or Miller’s Crossing did. Ditto Werner Herzog’s Rescue Dawn. Chalk it up to hyperbolic expectations, I guess. Maybe I need to watch these films again on DVD and reconsider.
Best Album of 2007
This is always a tough one, and there were plenty of great albums that came out this year. Late in the year I found myself unexpectedly in love with The National’s Boxer, a serious album that’s still growing on me like a weird moss. Battles’s Mirrored was superb; I found myself listening to James Blackshaw’s The Cloud of Unknowing whenever I wanted my mind to mush out; Menomena’s Friend and Foe was the perfect soundtrack for a long drive; the psychedelic progrock of Frog Eyes’s Tears of the Valedictorian made me itch in a good way; and with Strawberry Jam, Animal Collective finally let us know what they were singing. Fiery Furnaces, my favorite band, put out Widow City, their most “rock” album to date, a great collection of songs about widows and hieroglyphics and mysticism and bored Spanish royals and automatic husbands and perverts in Japanese slippers. But if I had to pick just one album of the year, it would have to be Panda Bear’s Person Pitch, a gorgeous pastiche of loveliness that I consistently put on repeat. Bring your own harmonies and sing along.
Best Single of 2007
Just when I’d given up on Outkast–what with Big Boi doing that awful Caddyshack ripoff and Andre busy with his silly cartoon–they show up on UGK’s “International Players Anthem,” easily the best track of the year. From Andre’s opening meditation on the virtues of commitment to the final verse’s warnings about Paul McCartney’s messy divorce, this song is pure magic. The death of Pimp C earlier this week adds a darker shade to the poignancy and sweet nostalgia of “International Players Anthem.”
I haven’t been interested in Blonde Redhead in years, really–chalk it up to a sense of propriety stemming from following them since their earliest (and best) albums (and 7″s!)–but 23 was a dreadful bore. Ditto the Sea and Cake’s Everybody: even the addition of a few fuzzy edges couldn’t muddle the Chicago quartet’s vanilla smoothiness. But it was Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon, Devendra Banhart’s follow up to 2005’s Cripple Crow that stood out as the biggest disappointment. Banhart’s unfocused, overblown, tossed-off collection of songs copped riffs left and right without adding anything new or inventive. My wife reviewed the album best while riding in the car with me: “Why are you listening to The Doors?”
Best Network TV Show of 2007
I love NBC’s 30 Rock so much that I wanna take it out behind the middle school and get it pregnant.
Best Cable TV Show of 2007
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: bad awful people doing rotten awful things. Charlie is a personal hero of mine.
Best New TV Show of 2007
Flight of the Conchords is hilarious. That’s lousy writing/reviewing, but it’s true: the show is just really really funny. You should watch it. You’ll like it a lot (unless there’s a yawning abyss where your soul should be…)
Best Out of Control Local News Appearance of 2007
Two way tie: Tracy Morgan–
vs. Tracy Morgan–
Best Abs of 2007
With a body like that, Putin can curtail my civil liberties any time!
Best Makeover of 2007
When he’s not terrorizing bands in the studio, making awesome Christmas albums, or just having a few tequila drinks with a lady friend, Phil Spector takes time out to make sure that he’s looking fine and dandy like cotton candy.
Most Enjoyable Blog of 2007
I’ve looked forward to and greatly enjoyed each entry in Nathan Rabin’s ambitious project My Year of Flops over at the Onion AV Club. Is it too much to ask him to do this again in 2008?
I finished Denis Johnson’s sprawling Vietnam War epic Tree of Smoke the same weekend that I finished James Joyce’s Ulysses. I managed to do this thanks to BBC America’s fantastic audio book version of Tree of Smoke, read by Will Patton–there’s simply no other way I would’ve managed to read both books. After finishing Tree of Smoke, that special depression reserved for only the best of books set in (you know that feeling–where the book you looked forward to every day is now over, and you feel a little sad and want more). I immediately started listening to it again (after I finished Ulysses I simply felt exhausted–Molly Bloom’s infamous monologue was fantastic (and sexy!), and I read it in one sitting, but still…the book inspires a special fatigue. More on all of this in a future post. I only bring the two up together as they are both very long books I finished this weekend; without pretense or shame, I attest that I enjoyed Johnson’s book over Joyce’s).
I plan to buy and reread (not sure if reread is the right verb) Tree of Smoke as soon as soon as it comes out in paperback. For now, here’s a very brief review: go buy this book and read it immediately. If you don’t have time to read it, get the 18-disc, 24 hour audiobook. Will Patton’s reading is astounding. He manages to meet and express the expansive range of voices and viewpoints in Johnson’s novel–newbie CIA spooks, double agents, overwhelmed relief workers, nihilist GIs, zealous field operatives, and more–in a way that brings the appropriate depth and personality to each character without ever being obtrusive or obnoxious (as can sometimes happen with audiobooks). Patton’s reading is on par with the best audiobook readings I’ve ever heard, and those of you who frequently listen to audiobooks know the difference this can make. He seems to fully appreciate the scope and magnitude of Johnson’s piece on Vietnam (sidenote: Patton played a bit-part in the underrated and overlooked 1999 film adaptation of Johnson’s novel-in-stories collection, Jesus’ Son).
But I’m not really doing justice to Johnson’s novel here. To call it a Vietnam war novel is like calling Prince a simple R&B artist–a facile description that doesn’t capture the subject. To be sure, it is a Vietnam war novel, but one that self-consciously riffs off of both The Ugly American and The Quiet American–with shades of Apocalypse Now to boot. At the same time, Johnson deftly injects mythology and philosophy directly into his character’s voices, into their conversations and letters, into the books they read and the papers they write, without ever once clumsily forcing a theme or motif. Unlike lesser writers, Johnson never slaps the reader in the face with all his clever ideas. Instead, all his clever ideas–meditations on colonialism, war, the minotaur myth, self-sacrifice, religion, data and analysis, love and betrayal–are part of an enthralling plot propelled by the most realistic dialog I’ve heard in a long, long time. If a better book is published in 2007, please let me know. Highly highly highly recommended.
In just over 200 black and white archival photographs, Turner Publishing Company’sHistoric Photos of Jacksonville depicts a vision of the Bold New City of the South that might surprise even native Jacksonvillians. The pictorial narrative begins around the same time as the advent of popular photography, before the Civil War (or, the War of Northern Aggression, as some old-school Jacksonvillian’s might say), and continues into the late 1960s. University of North Florida history professor Carolyn Williams’s captions provide insightful but never obtrusive explanations and commentary for the images, and her short essays before each section help to explicate the historical contexts of each of the particular periods of Jacksonville’s history into which the book. Particularly engaging are the smoke-hazed photos of the Great Fire of 1901, a devastating blaze that reduced much of the city to ashes.
Also fascinating are the post-fire/pre-WWI images of Jacksonville. These detail an overlooked period when the city was a major tourist destination boasting a burgeoning film industry. Northern travelers would flock to luxury resorts like the St. James Hotel, where native Jacksonvillian James Weldon Johnson‘s father worked. When looking at photos of the crowded streets of downtown and the busy industry of the shipyards and train stations, it’s easy to feel a twinge of nostalgia for a time that passed before you ever lived, a time before the strip malls and suburban sprawl, a time before Jacksonville looked more-or-less like Every Other Place in America.
Historic Photos of Jacksonville will look great on your coffee table or on your shelf, preferably next to James Weldon Johnson‘s outstanding autobiography, Along This Way.
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