This week's book:
White Bread by Aaron Bobrow-Strain
Grade: B+
It's become an insult, 'white bread,' and it's become insulting, food that isn't really food. If you think white bread you think Jerry Springer, you think Wal-Mart, you think lowbrow, beer-swilling, toilet-on-the-front-lawn kind of folks. But it wasn't always that way.
This book examines the relationship Americans have with the commercial white bread loaf, from the beginning back even into the mid-Nineteenth Century up to the modern day. I was drawn to this book because in the opening pages the author wonders whether the white bread we eat today, with all its chemicals and synthetic ingredients could even really be said to be food any more. It's a sentiment that I've expressed often, and nothing makes a person like someone else more than being agreed with.
Also, the author finds a strong strain of white elitism in the foodie movement, in those people who shop at Whole Foods and local farmers' markets and congratulate themselves for it, and who believe with what conviction they can muster that if only the unwashed masses could be convinced to behave exactly like their betters the listing ship of America would right itself. I've noticed this myself - I've shopped at Whole Foods and still try to find farmers' markets - where instead of seeing community I see a whole lot of other people who look just like me. Nobody talks to anybody else and you're just as likely to see award-winning guacamole and gourmet cookies as you are fresh carrots. So I'm with the author here.
Matter of fact, I agree with the author on almost everything he puts forth in this book. It's meticulously researched, and he meshes bread-baking ideas and trends across decades expertly, following changes and evolution in American dietary habits and social consciousness like a detective tracking twists and turns in a murder mystery. He finds social and political influence in the public's attitudes towards white bread, and ties those influences into the subsequent trends in politics and social movements. It's a book that took years to research and years to write.
It's a very, very well-done book, probably the standard by which other such research will be measured in years to come.
So why the B+?
It's just so dry. Dry like a day-old baguette.
The past several non-fiction books I've reviewed I've graded A or higher. These were books written either by journalists who write for public consumption every day, or by a professor who's particularly adept at turning crazy complicated ideas into something non-mathematicians can understand. 'White Bread' is written by an academic, currently engaged in academia, and it shows. Dr. Bobrow-Strain, PhD, writes well, and he writes concisely, and he writes completely. But he doesn't write in a particularly entertaining fashion. He's not grabbing headlines, he's defending his research. His job is to be a professor, and this book reflects that; about 20% of the book is end notes and an index.
I would recommend this book to anyone* interested in modern food movements: locavores, raw foods, gluten-free, what have you. You'll find that you're not so trend-setting as you wish you were, Americans have been advocating your agendas for over one-hundred years. I'd also recommend this book to any executive in Big Food, because you'll see that we know what you're doing and why you're doing it. And knowing is half the battle. I'd also recommend this to anyone who likes a solidly-researched non-fiction book, who is also not bothered so much by books that are half-textbook.
Next week:
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
I'm moving into modern sci-fi and leaving the old school behind. Hope it doesn't suck.
* mostly well-off white folks, don't pretend it's not true
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Sunday, April 21, 2013
A Book A Week - Week 16: The Interestings
This week's book:
The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
Grade: A
Huh. This is the first 'A' I've given to fiction since Week 9: The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I have to say, I enjoyed this book very, very much. And that surprised me very, very much.
Let me 'splain. I chose this book because it wasn't a book I'd normally read. Normally I like my fiction to... I don't know... move. To have things happening. To take me out of my regular life and set me somewhere else. I want my fiction to be masculine, I suppose. All about purpose and goals and what have you, bearded fiction with steely eyes and big shoulders. This book, however, is the exact opposite of that. This book is very feminine, all about examining the unexamined life, about trying to make sense of the relationships people have with one another and how those relationships change over time. Not exactly my cup of tea. At least, not that I knew before now.
I really like this book. Yeah, it's weird to me too.
Meg Wolitzer is an excellent writer, and I only say that because I can't think of an adjective that means 'better than excellent' and still get my point across. Her prose hangs together like it had always been there and she just discovered it and decided to let others see what she found. It is, at first glance, the story about friends and how their lives either work out well, or terribly, or just kind of go along at the same mediocre pace. Underneath, however, you'll find an assessment of the place of art in society, and how the value of art does not necessarily match the value of commercial success.
It's a meander, reading this book, going from place to place and time to time, but I never got bored. I was immediately invested in the characters and their lives, and I was eager to see how things would play out for them in the end. These were real people to me, all of them, and even when a few of the characters became wildly more successful than their old friends at camp the situation felt perfectly plausible and real.
The author starts the story at the beginning, back at sleep-away art camp in the 70's, and ends in the present day, but in between the narrative takes wide shifts in time. With other books, this device feels forced, a purposeful obfuscation on what would otherwise be a linear narrative, but with 'The Interestings' it's a necessity, and it works. Going back and forth is necessary because, taken linearly, the story would seem like it was barreling towards an inevitable conclusion. This is a compliment, because once you learn the entire story, it seems like there's no other way things could have worked out. Taken in bits and pieces, out of time order, the author lets the reader sneak up on the truth the story lays out. Pretty clever.
Because the author is a writing instructor, I will allow myself two pieces of nit-picky criticism:
I found a few places in the middle of the narrative where the POV shifts focus from character to character within the same scene, and a few times from paragraph to paragraph to paragraph. Kind of jolting, to have one character be the focus and then have that focus moved to another few characters and back again in the space of two pages.
Also, the characters have the habit of sometimes telling rapid-fire jokes, like this was an episode of the to-me-impenetrable 'Gilmore Girls.' The author reins in the tendency, but I happen to really, really hate cleverness for its own sake, and sometimes this crept in. And it wasn't always entirely in character.
Who should read this book? Well, everybody. If you're a woman you're going to love it, I think. Yes, that sounds sexist, but, as I mentioned above, this is a very feminine book, and there are no spies or aliens or international peril but lots of interpersonal interaction, and tons of secret-keeping, and older characters looking back on their younger selves. But I also think that if you're a man you'll love it too, if only because I did and this is so far out of my genre comfort zone it might as well have been in a different language.
Buy the damn book, already.
Next week:
White Bread by Aaron Bobrow-Strain
This is not fiction, this really is about white bread. Stick with me, I think is going to be very interesting. Seriously.
The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
Grade: A
Huh. This is the first 'A' I've given to fiction since Week 9: The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I have to say, I enjoyed this book very, very much. And that surprised me very, very much.
Let me 'splain. I chose this book because it wasn't a book I'd normally read. Normally I like my fiction to... I don't know... move. To have things happening. To take me out of my regular life and set me somewhere else. I want my fiction to be masculine, I suppose. All about purpose and goals and what have you, bearded fiction with steely eyes and big shoulders. This book, however, is the exact opposite of that. This book is very feminine, all about examining the unexamined life, about trying to make sense of the relationships people have with one another and how those relationships change over time. Not exactly my cup of tea. At least, not that I knew before now.
I really like this book. Yeah, it's weird to me too.
Meg Wolitzer is an excellent writer, and I only say that because I can't think of an adjective that means 'better than excellent' and still get my point across. Her prose hangs together like it had always been there and she just discovered it and decided to let others see what she found. It is, at first glance, the story about friends and how their lives either work out well, or terribly, or just kind of go along at the same mediocre pace. Underneath, however, you'll find an assessment of the place of art in society, and how the value of art does not necessarily match the value of commercial success.
It's a meander, reading this book, going from place to place and time to time, but I never got bored. I was immediately invested in the characters and their lives, and I was eager to see how things would play out for them in the end. These were real people to me, all of them, and even when a few of the characters became wildly more successful than their old friends at camp the situation felt perfectly plausible and real.
The author starts the story at the beginning, back at sleep-away art camp in the 70's, and ends in the present day, but in between the narrative takes wide shifts in time. With other books, this device feels forced, a purposeful obfuscation on what would otherwise be a linear narrative, but with 'The Interestings' it's a necessity, and it works. Going back and forth is necessary because, taken linearly, the story would seem like it was barreling towards an inevitable conclusion. This is a compliment, because once you learn the entire story, it seems like there's no other way things could have worked out. Taken in bits and pieces, out of time order, the author lets the reader sneak up on the truth the story lays out. Pretty clever.
Because the author is a writing instructor, I will allow myself two pieces of nit-picky criticism:
I found a few places in the middle of the narrative where the POV shifts focus from character to character within the same scene, and a few times from paragraph to paragraph to paragraph. Kind of jolting, to have one character be the focus and then have that focus moved to another few characters and back again in the space of two pages.
Also, the characters have the habit of sometimes telling rapid-fire jokes, like this was an episode of the to-me-impenetrable 'Gilmore Girls.' The author reins in the tendency, but I happen to really, really hate cleverness for its own sake, and sometimes this crept in. And it wasn't always entirely in character.
Who should read this book? Well, everybody. If you're a woman you're going to love it, I think. Yes, that sounds sexist, but, as I mentioned above, this is a very feminine book, and there are no spies or aliens or international peril but lots of interpersonal interaction, and tons of secret-keeping, and older characters looking back on their younger selves. But I also think that if you're a man you'll love it too, if only because I did and this is so far out of my genre comfort zone it might as well have been in a different language.
Buy the damn book, already.
Next week:
White Bread by Aaron Bobrow-Strain
This is not fiction, this really is about white bread. Stick with me, I think is going to be very interesting. Seriously.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
A Book A Week - Week 15: The Grand Design
This week's book:
The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking
Grade: A if you're into science books
C if you're like most Americans
Stephen Hawking is getting old. He's in his 70's now, and had to retire as the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge (Unversity rules, evidently, not his choice). He's written several books, and this is, perhaps, his last one, as his condition deteriorates and he gets closer to the time when even those without ALS see the finish line coming up fast. But as his possible last book, The Grand Design is his best. And his most controversial.
Here's the spoiler: in this book Hawking lays out the reason why he thinks there is no God.
I think he saved this one for last because this book is a distillation of his work to date, his understanding of the entirety of physics, not only the icing on the cake but the cake itself, and the table the cake rests on, and the building, and the planet, and the solar system... you get the idea.
I loved this book. I did not agree with some of it - Hawking like most physicists is entirely too accepting of the concept of the wave-particle duality - but there's nothing I love more than a well-reasoned argument, and this book is certainly that. He starts out with mythology and moves through Greek science to Renaissance rediscovery and the creation of modern scientific method through Newton and Einstein to present day theories. His stated aim at the beginning of the book is to answer three specific questions:
Why is there something rather than nothing?
Why do we exist?
Why this particular set of laws and not some other?
Does the author answer these questions?
Well... that depends. If you're a fundamentalist of any sort, Christian, Muslim, or whatever other religion allows fundamentalism, then, no, he does not answer those questions. Matter of fact, everything he has to say would make you want to scream and run from the room. But then, if you're a true fundamentalist you wouldn't be asking those questions or talking to Professor Hawking in the first place.
If you're a reasonably smart person and not personally invested in superstition and intolerance disguised as religion, then it certainly does seem as if he answers those questions. He advocates the strong anthropic principle, or at least ends up there after presenting his arguments. Essentially, the answer to those three questions is: we exist in a universe rather than there being a void (Q1 and Q2) because the universe is specifically tailored to produce beings who could ask those questions in the first place (Q3).
Hawking reasons his way around to it very elegantly, but he still concludes with what is, at its base, a tautology. There's more to it, of course, and the author presents his case in an entire book while I've summarized in a sentence. You'll get more out of it when you read the book.
If you like science books I would definitely recommend The Grand Design. It's not too long, but it is very well-written. The crowning achievement of an impossible career.
If you don't like science books give it a pass. Seriously. It's written plainly as possible but if you don't like this sort of thing, this book is definitely not going to change your mind.
Next week:
The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
This is absolutely not a book I would ever choose if I were not reading a Book A Week. Let's see how much my horizons are expanded.
The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking
Grade: A if you're into science books
C if you're like most Americans
Stephen Hawking is getting old. He's in his 70's now, and had to retire as the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge (Unversity rules, evidently, not his choice). He's written several books, and this is, perhaps, his last one, as his condition deteriorates and he gets closer to the time when even those without ALS see the finish line coming up fast. But as his possible last book, The Grand Design is his best. And his most controversial.
Here's the spoiler: in this book Hawking lays out the reason why he thinks there is no God.
I think he saved this one for last because this book is a distillation of his work to date, his understanding of the entirety of physics, not only the icing on the cake but the cake itself, and the table the cake rests on, and the building, and the planet, and the solar system... you get the idea.
I loved this book. I did not agree with some of it - Hawking like most physicists is entirely too accepting of the concept of the wave-particle duality - but there's nothing I love more than a well-reasoned argument, and this book is certainly that. He starts out with mythology and moves through Greek science to Renaissance rediscovery and the creation of modern scientific method through Newton and Einstein to present day theories. His stated aim at the beginning of the book is to answer three specific questions:
Why is there something rather than nothing?
Why do we exist?
Why this particular set of laws and not some other?
Does the author answer these questions?
Well... that depends. If you're a fundamentalist of any sort, Christian, Muslim, or whatever other religion allows fundamentalism, then, no, he does not answer those questions. Matter of fact, everything he has to say would make you want to scream and run from the room. But then, if you're a true fundamentalist you wouldn't be asking those questions or talking to Professor Hawking in the first place.
If you're a reasonably smart person and not personally invested in superstition and intolerance disguised as religion, then it certainly does seem as if he answers those questions. He advocates the strong anthropic principle, or at least ends up there after presenting his arguments. Essentially, the answer to those three questions is: we exist in a universe rather than there being a void (Q1 and Q2) because the universe is specifically tailored to produce beings who could ask those questions in the first place (Q3).
Hawking reasons his way around to it very elegantly, but he still concludes with what is, at its base, a tautology. There's more to it, of course, and the author presents his case in an entire book while I've summarized in a sentence. You'll get more out of it when you read the book.
If you like science books I would definitely recommend The Grand Design. It's not too long, but it is very well-written. The crowning achievement of an impossible career.
If you don't like science books give it a pass. Seriously. It's written plainly as possible but if you don't like this sort of thing, this book is definitely not going to change your mind.
Next week:
The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
This is absolutely not a book I would ever choose if I were not reading a Book A Week. Let's see how much my horizons are expanded.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Princess Gwyneth - What's The Big Deal Anyway?
I know I'm very late to the 'Gwyneth Paltrow just doesn't get it' party, but I've been thinking about stuff lately, and it was late at night, and my browser just sort of got stuck on 'goop'* and... I finally read it. Yow.
I'm of two minds about Princess Gwyneth. First, I don't really see the problem with her website or the things her lackeys - let's not pretend she does it herself - put up for public consumption. I don't begrudge her the right to post whatever she finds interesting or imagines might be enlightening to others. Second, though... I see the creeping, insidious hand of everything that's gone wrong with the US since 'voodoo economics' became 'trickle down' and ruined the middle class. I know, that's a lot of weight to put on the shoulders of a waifish actress, but she's the one who decided she wanted to have a website promoting $200 jeans and $2000 leather jackets.
First argument - Gwyneth. So what?
If you don't like 'goop'* don't surf there. If you don't like her don't follow her Twitter feed or watch TV interviews with her. Don't give any grief to people who do like her, because it's none of your business. It seems lately there's a strong streak of pettiness and meanness in public discourse. We want to hear about our celebrities so we can tear them down. Honestly, you have better things to do. She's just one woman, with no more or less a clue about how to get by than you or I have, she just has a lot more money to try to figure it out.
Second argument - Gwyneth, harbinger of doom
Dig a little deeper, read a little more closely. You will see that, yes, she Does Not Get It. The 'It' here is the fact that she sits in the gilded tower shouting down advice to peasants working the fields below. She genuinely thinks her situation is not all that different from yours or mine. Who doesn't wander through the penthouse of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai? What working mother doesn't jet to Paris to go to an art and design fair? It's her world, and for her it's perfectly normal.
This is oblivious, impenetrable privilege. This is the 1% telling the rest of us it's possible to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps while never suspecting that most people don't have boots. It's third- and fourth-generation wealth enjoying their unearned and undeserved inheritance from ancestors they never met. It's trickle-down that never quite trickled down. And yet, she pretends that she's a harried working mother, just trying to bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan.
This is why Princess Gwyneth annoys so many people: she wants to present herself as 'just one of the gals' and at the same time recommend those gals spend $475 for satin shorts to wear for 'a nighttime occasion.' It's this kind of willful ignorance of her very real and very obvious advantages over, essentially, every other person on the planet that makes people resent her.
So what is the big deal? It's not the woman herself, not really. It's hard to believe anyone takes her seriously at all, with her to-the-minute directions for the week leading up to a dinner party. But what she represents we should all take very seriously indeed. There is nothing more un-American than an hereditary aristocracy - it's what our Founding Fathers started a Revolution to escape from - and yet we have one, or at least the beginnings of one. If we don't call it out when we see it, if we don't try to stop the seed now, and Lord forbid we accept it as normal, it's only going to find a patch of bare ground to germinate and then send corrupting, destructive roots through our entire Republic. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
* not capitalizing it makes it friendlier and more approachable
I'm of two minds about Princess Gwyneth. First, I don't really see the problem with her website or the things her lackeys - let's not pretend she does it herself - put up for public consumption. I don't begrudge her the right to post whatever she finds interesting or imagines might be enlightening to others. Second, though... I see the creeping, insidious hand of everything that's gone wrong with the US since 'voodoo economics' became 'trickle down' and ruined the middle class. I know, that's a lot of weight to put on the shoulders of a waifish actress, but she's the one who decided she wanted to have a website promoting $200 jeans and $2000 leather jackets.
First argument - Gwyneth. So what?
If you don't like 'goop'* don't surf there. If you don't like her don't follow her Twitter feed or watch TV interviews with her. Don't give any grief to people who do like her, because it's none of your business. It seems lately there's a strong streak of pettiness and meanness in public discourse. We want to hear about our celebrities so we can tear them down. Honestly, you have better things to do. She's just one woman, with no more or less a clue about how to get by than you or I have, she just has a lot more money to try to figure it out.
Second argument - Gwyneth, harbinger of doom
Dig a little deeper, read a little more closely. You will see that, yes, she Does Not Get It. The 'It' here is the fact that she sits in the gilded tower shouting down advice to peasants working the fields below. She genuinely thinks her situation is not all that different from yours or mine. Who doesn't wander through the penthouse of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai? What working mother doesn't jet to Paris to go to an art and design fair? It's her world, and for her it's perfectly normal.
This is oblivious, impenetrable privilege. This is the 1% telling the rest of us it's possible to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps while never suspecting that most people don't have boots. It's third- and fourth-generation wealth enjoying their unearned and undeserved inheritance from ancestors they never met. It's trickle-down that never quite trickled down. And yet, she pretends that she's a harried working mother, just trying to bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan.
This is why Princess Gwyneth annoys so many people: she wants to present herself as 'just one of the gals' and at the same time recommend those gals spend $475 for satin shorts to wear for 'a nighttime occasion.' It's this kind of willful ignorance of her very real and very obvious advantages over, essentially, every other person on the planet that makes people resent her.
So what is the big deal? It's not the woman herself, not really. It's hard to believe anyone takes her seriously at all, with her to-the-minute directions for the week leading up to a dinner party. But what she represents we should all take very seriously indeed. There is nothing more un-American than an hereditary aristocracy - it's what our Founding Fathers started a Revolution to escape from - and yet we have one, or at least the beginnings of one. If we don't call it out when we see it, if we don't try to stop the seed now, and Lord forbid we accept it as normal, it's only going to find a patch of bare ground to germinate and then send corrupting, destructive roots through our entire Republic. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
* not capitalizing it makes it friendlier and more approachable
Sunday, April 7, 2013
A Book A Week - Week 14: Slam
This week's book:
Slam by Nick Hornby
Grade: C+
Have you ever watched a TV movie - not just one on TV but one made for TV - and it wasn't really good and it wasn't really awful, and you ended up wondering exactly what the writer and director intended you to come away from the experience with? That was what happened with me and 'Slam.' I understand the story, but I'm not quite certain why it's a story that needed telling.
A few weeks ago I read 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower,' with a fifteen-year-old boy as the main character. 'Slam' also has a fifteen-year-old boy as its main character, but the stories could not be more different. Sam - in 'Slam' - is English, lives in London, and is a skate punk. He meets a girl, they go out, end up having sex, and the girl gets pregnant. Because Sam doesn't have a lot of friends, and because he's the product of a single-parent household, and because he's living at the bottom end of the British class system, the only person he can confide in is Tony Hawk.* Or, rather, a poster of him. Tony Hawk's poster image 'responds' with lines from the real Tony Hawk's biography, which Sam has read so many times he memorized every line.
That's the set-up. And I don't know if I missed something along the way, but that's pretty much the wrap-up too. The story moves along, but it's about how this confused kid tries to come to grips with the fact that he's going to be a father before he's even done being a kid himself.
Oh, and there's the time-travel.
Say what... ? Yup. Some force - perhaps the poster of Tony Hawk - sends Sam forward a few months in time to after his child is born. Matter of fact, he goes forward twice. It's not a 'Christmas Carol' thing, where Sam watches himself, he's pushed forward in time and takes his own place. This is what agents, editors, and publishers call 'magical realism' and readers call 'some weird stuff happens.' Sam's gritty, lower-class English life is invaded by time travel. I wanted to say 'altered by' time travel, but it's not. It's not and he's not. Both time-travel episodes end with nothing changing about Sam's present, and nothing changing about Sam himself. So what was the point of it all, really?
'Slam' comes from skate punk slang, meaning to wreck really badly and spectacularly. It's what happens to Sam's life when he gets Alicia pregnant. Or at least that's the metaphor the author intends. But because Sam goes to great lengths to lay out just how far down on the socio-economic ladder he feels his family already is, the fact that nothing really changes in his life except for the fact that he has a son doesn't feel like much of a slam at all. It almost feels like something that is so normal for him that it would have been more remarkable if it hadn't happened.
I had a friend in college who was already well on his way to being a rambling old man. He would start telling a story, and it was only when you were five minutes into it that you realized he had no point. He was just telling you a bunch of stuff that happened, in the order that it happened to him. No life-changing revelation, no humorous anecdote, no urgent peril, he just wanted to talk about the time he bought a brand-new ice chest for the fishing trip.
This book felt to me like talking to Craig again. A decent way to pass the time, but don't expect to learn anything new or to be entertained all that much.
Maybe this book just isn't intended for me. It's certainly well-written, but it didn't speak to me or to my experiences. I'd say it would be a decent read for someone who already had an established taste for 'magical realism.'
Next week:
The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking
Back to non-fiction with the legendary physicist's latest book.
*grandparents, Tony Hawk is a professional skateboarder. Yes, that is a real occupation, and Tony Hawk is a real person who is also a multi-millionaire. Makes you wish you'd been nicer to the neighborhood kids doing jumps off your curb, doesn't it?
Slam by Nick Hornby
Grade: C+
Have you ever watched a TV movie - not just one on TV but one made for TV - and it wasn't really good and it wasn't really awful, and you ended up wondering exactly what the writer and director intended you to come away from the experience with? That was what happened with me and 'Slam.' I understand the story, but I'm not quite certain why it's a story that needed telling.
A few weeks ago I read 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower,' with a fifteen-year-old boy as the main character. 'Slam' also has a fifteen-year-old boy as its main character, but the stories could not be more different. Sam - in 'Slam' - is English, lives in London, and is a skate punk. He meets a girl, they go out, end up having sex, and the girl gets pregnant. Because Sam doesn't have a lot of friends, and because he's the product of a single-parent household, and because he's living at the bottom end of the British class system, the only person he can confide in is Tony Hawk.* Or, rather, a poster of him. Tony Hawk's poster image 'responds' with lines from the real Tony Hawk's biography, which Sam has read so many times he memorized every line.
That's the set-up. And I don't know if I missed something along the way, but that's pretty much the wrap-up too. The story moves along, but it's about how this confused kid tries to come to grips with the fact that he's going to be a father before he's even done being a kid himself.
Oh, and there's the time-travel.
Say what... ? Yup. Some force - perhaps the poster of Tony Hawk - sends Sam forward a few months in time to after his child is born. Matter of fact, he goes forward twice. It's not a 'Christmas Carol' thing, where Sam watches himself, he's pushed forward in time and takes his own place. This is what agents, editors, and publishers call 'magical realism' and readers call 'some weird stuff happens.' Sam's gritty, lower-class English life is invaded by time travel. I wanted to say 'altered by' time travel, but it's not. It's not and he's not. Both time-travel episodes end with nothing changing about Sam's present, and nothing changing about Sam himself. So what was the point of it all, really?
'Slam' comes from skate punk slang, meaning to wreck really badly and spectacularly. It's what happens to Sam's life when he gets Alicia pregnant. Or at least that's the metaphor the author intends. But because Sam goes to great lengths to lay out just how far down on the socio-economic ladder he feels his family already is, the fact that nothing really changes in his life except for the fact that he has a son doesn't feel like much of a slam at all. It almost feels like something that is so normal for him that it would have been more remarkable if it hadn't happened.
I had a friend in college who was already well on his way to being a rambling old man. He would start telling a story, and it was only when you were five minutes into it that you realized he had no point. He was just telling you a bunch of stuff that happened, in the order that it happened to him. No life-changing revelation, no humorous anecdote, no urgent peril, he just wanted to talk about the time he bought a brand-new ice chest for the fishing trip.
This book felt to me like talking to Craig again. A decent way to pass the time, but don't expect to learn anything new or to be entertained all that much.
Maybe this book just isn't intended for me. It's certainly well-written, but it didn't speak to me or to my experiences. I'd say it would be a decent read for someone who already had an established taste for 'magical realism.'
Next week:
The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking
Back to non-fiction with the legendary physicist's latest book.
*grandparents, Tony Hawk is a professional skateboarder. Yes, that is a real occupation, and Tony Hawk is a real person who is also a multi-millionaire. Makes you wish you'd been nicer to the neighborhood kids doing jumps off your curb, doesn't it?
Monday, April 1, 2013
A Book A Week - Week 13: Homer & Langley
This week's book:
Homer & Langley by E.L. Doctorow
Grade: B
Sorry, I'm a day late with this. Easter. And being lazy.
I didn't quite know what to expect, I haven't read any of E.L. Doctorow's work before, and this is one of his later efforts. I did like it, but... I don't know...
A few years ago I went to a staging of an unreleased Tennessee Williams play. I forget the name, but it was not 'Streetcar' or 'Menagerie' or any of the others he's famous for. This one never made the cut. Someone had secured the rights to the play and found a willing director and talented cast, and bada-bing, bada-boom, a new work by Tennessee Williams. I sat through it, and I loved the actors, they were great, but the material left me cold. I loved the work, but I hated the play. That's kind of what's happened with me and this book.
The story is, at first blush, the story of two Manhattan brothers as they live across the 20th Century. The younger brother, Homer, goes blind early in life, and has to depend on his older brother, who comes back from World War I a shattered man with a weak grasp on sanity. The story's kind of like Forrest Gump, in that the two brothers live through most of the decades of the 20th Century as events swirl around them. As things change over the years the brothers become increasingly isolated - they're hoarders - and Langley, the soldier, grows crazier and crazier.
I loved the writing, but I did not love the story. It was a pleasant read, very easy and effortless, no tortured metaphors, no cardboard characters, no cliche situations. But the message... I think the author veers into heavy-handed symbolism with the brothers and their rat-trap prison of a house. Langley's decline parallels the decline of America, at least as I think the author sees it. The actual Collyer brothers* died in 1947 amid the squalor of their hoarding, but in his fiction Doctorow extends their lives into the 1980's, and that's not just for the sake of imagining what their lives would have been like. The brothers are relics of the 19th Century, a more genteel time the author romanticizes in the first chapters. The Great War changes everything, not just for Langley but also for America, and Langley's descent into madness and hoarding parallels the country's loss of its morals and guiding principals and its increasing preoccupation with buying and keeping stuff. Langley represents materialism run amok, and Homer, in his blindness and increasing deafness, represents the American public's willing participation in its own decline.
I don't think I'm reading too much into this, Doctorow is an accomplished novelist more than up to the task. I do think this metaphor and symbolism is what he intended, I just didn't care for it. It seems to me almost a cranky old man's rant, 'things were better back then.' Except things weren't better, they were just different.
I would absolutely recommend this book to a friend, especially someone of a more-literary bent. I'll also probably go read some of his earlier work, outside of my Book-a-Week effort.
* yes, they were real people
Next week:
Slam by Nick Hornby
He's the 'maestro of the male confessional,' evidently. I'll read it anyway.
Homer & Langley by E.L. Doctorow
Grade: B
Sorry, I'm a day late with this. Easter. And being lazy.
I didn't quite know what to expect, I haven't read any of E.L. Doctorow's work before, and this is one of his later efforts. I did like it, but... I don't know...
A few years ago I went to a staging of an unreleased Tennessee Williams play. I forget the name, but it was not 'Streetcar' or 'Menagerie' or any of the others he's famous for. This one never made the cut. Someone had secured the rights to the play and found a willing director and talented cast, and bada-bing, bada-boom, a new work by Tennessee Williams. I sat through it, and I loved the actors, they were great, but the material left me cold. I loved the work, but I hated the play. That's kind of what's happened with me and this book.
The story is, at first blush, the story of two Manhattan brothers as they live across the 20th Century. The younger brother, Homer, goes blind early in life, and has to depend on his older brother, who comes back from World War I a shattered man with a weak grasp on sanity. The story's kind of like Forrest Gump, in that the two brothers live through most of the decades of the 20th Century as events swirl around them. As things change over the years the brothers become increasingly isolated - they're hoarders - and Langley, the soldier, grows crazier and crazier.
I loved the writing, but I did not love the story. It was a pleasant read, very easy and effortless, no tortured metaphors, no cardboard characters, no cliche situations. But the message... I think the author veers into heavy-handed symbolism with the brothers and their rat-trap prison of a house. Langley's decline parallels the decline of America, at least as I think the author sees it. The actual Collyer brothers* died in 1947 amid the squalor of their hoarding, but in his fiction Doctorow extends their lives into the 1980's, and that's not just for the sake of imagining what their lives would have been like. The brothers are relics of the 19th Century, a more genteel time the author romanticizes in the first chapters. The Great War changes everything, not just for Langley but also for America, and Langley's descent into madness and hoarding parallels the country's loss of its morals and guiding principals and its increasing preoccupation with buying and keeping stuff. Langley represents materialism run amok, and Homer, in his blindness and increasing deafness, represents the American public's willing participation in its own decline.
I don't think I'm reading too much into this, Doctorow is an accomplished novelist more than up to the task. I do think this metaphor and symbolism is what he intended, I just didn't care for it. It seems to me almost a cranky old man's rant, 'things were better back then.' Except things weren't better, they were just different.
I would absolutely recommend this book to a friend, especially someone of a more-literary bent. I'll also probably go read some of his earlier work, outside of my Book-a-Week effort.
* yes, they were real people
Next week:
Slam by Nick Hornby
He's the 'maestro of the male confessional,' evidently. I'll read it anyway.
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