A Book A Week - Week 21: Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

This week's book:
    Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls   by David Sedaris

Grade: A, of course

I'm a David Sedaris fan.  I'm also a fan of his sister, Amy, which really has nothing to do with this book, I just thought it merited a mention.  They're a funny family, what can I say?

No news here, Mr. Sedaris has another winner with 'Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls.'  As with his previous books, he presents a series of unconnected or barely-connected essays, all of them hilariously funny, and most of them extended anecdotes about his life.  He's a keen observer of humanity, the kind of guy who would watch a line of ants instead of a parade, because, let's face it, the ants really are more interesting.

If you've heard the author on NPR, or seen him on TV, I have to say that his essays actually read better when you don't have his voice relating them.  All apologies to Mr. Sedaris, but he's not an actor, and he doesn't really do justice to his own writing when he reads it aloud.  The gems come fast and furious, every page.  Some of my favorites:

On his high-school 'sweetheart' (Mr. Sedaris is gay)
     '... so why not have a two-hundred-fifty pound girlfriend from the wrong side of town?'

On a revealing encounter in a London taxidermy shop:
    '... with no effort whatsoever [the taxidermist] looked into my soul and recognized me for the person I really am: the type who'd actually love a Pygmy and could get over the fact that he'd been murdered for sport...'

On being a victim of crime:
   'There are plenty of things I take for granted, but not being burgled was never one of them.'

I laughed out loud the entire time I was reading this book, and I don't really do that, at least not often.  But the best humor comes from pain, and I get the feeling that the author is in constant pain.  Not physical - though he did have dental implants - I mean he's in existential pain, a deep kind of sadness and despair that he can only release through these essays.  Balling up all the darkness inside him and pasting it on the page, as it were.  I get the feeling that I wouldn't want to be inside his head.
   For that matter, I wouldn't want to be part of his family, they're often the subject of his reminiscences and the fodder for his wit.  After all, there's no better way to get back at an emotionally abusive father than to expose him for who he is to millions of strangers.

If you know who David Sedaris is - and if you like his work - then I don't need to tell you to get this book, you probably already have.  If you're on the fence, maybe you've heard of him but not heard him or read him, then by all means do so, and this book is as good a place to start as any.  If you don't like David Sedaris then... well... what can I say?  You're dead inside, the man's brilliant.

Next week:
   Fifty Shades of Grey  by E.L. James
   I said I would read it, so I'm following through, getting it done.  Not looking forward to it, though...

A Modest Proposal

I've been thinking about corporate malfeasance lately.  It's not like misbehaving corporations are a new thing, the Baby Boomers didn't invent corporate weasels.  They did, however, raise corporate weasel-ism to a high art.  And with the incredibly regressive and punitive laissez-faire Federal policies of the past thirty years things are as bad as I've been alive to see them.

Time was, back in the bad old days of the 50's, 60's and 70's, corporations and the men who ran them seemed to understand that we really were all in this together.  You can choose your friends but you can't choose your family, and America is one huge extended family.  Sure, in the 50's the government ran the corporations as much as the CEOs did - talk about picking winners and losers - but there wasn't the zero-sum mentality that pervades modern American business.

The problem today, as I see it, is that corporations and the weasels who run them hide behind anonymity.  Sure, you'd probably recognize Mark Zuckerberg, maybe Marissa Mayer, but they're names in the news right now.  Who's the CEO of Goldman Sachs?  Of Fannie Mae?  Of Monsanto? Of Archer Daniels Midland?  Of Valero?  What about the most ubiquitous company in the country, a place you can't outrun no matter how hard you try - for God's sake, who runs Wal-Mart?  Do you know?  His name is Michael T. Duke.  Could you pick him out of a police lineup if he punched you square in the face?  Of course you can't, he's anonymous on purpose, he doesn't want you to know who he is.  But he makes decisions every day that directly affect what you can buy with your meager wages, and how much of it you can afford.
   See?  This is a problem.  The people making the most important decisions for us these days are not our elected officials.  Not even close.  The people who run corporations, from the CEO on down, sit behind their desks comfortable in their anonymity, assured that no matter how bad their decisions are, they'll never really be held accountable, and they'll always get paid more next year.  That's the problem, and it needs to stop.

So here's my modest proposal:  we need to change the laws regarding forming corporations and make the C-level executives and every Board member individually and personally liable for any malfeasance, crime, fraud, or abuse committed by the corporations. 

It's that simple.  And that difficult.  No more hiding behind a piece of paper on file in a cabinet in an office in Delaware.  So if, say, BP 'accidentally' spills another hundred million gallons of oil somewhere, their CEO will be personally fiscally and criminally liable.  So will all the board members.  So will everyone who approved the project and carries a title.
   The immediate affect of this would be very frightening for every CEO.  We'd see a rash of resignations, for sure.  Weasels hate more than anything being held accountable.  But then we'd get men and women in those jobs who actually earn their salaries instead of stealing them.  We'd have more measured progress, sure, but we'd have far more responsible progress.  And we'd have companies who know for a fact that they're in it together with us.

Do you want the privilege of doing business in the United States?  Do you want to earn the insane paycheck?  Do you want to sit in the big leather chair?  Do you want the private jets and drivers and country club memberships?  Then you'll need to prove you're committed to more than just a money grab. You need to put your ass on the line.

A Book A Week - Week 20: Glock

This week's book:
    Glock - the Rise of America's Gun   by Paul M. Barrett

Grade:  B+

   'Cause I put away the shotgun, bought me a Glock
   Took a little trip to the funky weed spot...
   -- 'Hand on the Glock'   Cypress Hill

It used to be the Colt, the revolver that won the American West, but in this millennium the Glock has captured the mind and spirit of America.  And the Glock's Austrian.  You know, from that Austria, the country that brought us Gustav Mahler, Johann Strauss, Otto Preminger,  Erwin Schroedinger.  Hedy Lamarr (look her up, seriously impressive).  Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Um... and... uh... Hitler.  Funny how things work out, isn't it?

This book is an examination of how one socially-awkward Austrian engineer founded and developed a handgun company that would eventually come to eclipse the most venerable American gun companies.  It's the story of masterful engineering, flawless marketing, smart people with seemingly no conscience, and a very, very large amount of luck.

The author is currently employed as a journalist with Bloomberg Businessweek, and prior to that worked at the Wall Street Journal.  So he knows how to dig, how to tell the complete story.  What he does not seem to know how to do is make his prose pop.  Make no mistake, it's a great read, but, it's no Detroit, and I have to measure this by what I've read before.
   Anybody out there read Vanity Fair?  I love that magazine, and it's certainly well-written, its articles well-researched.  But, man, those articles can be loooooong.  Same thing here.  I have no quarrel at all with the prose, or with the years of painstaking research that went into making this book a reality.  But it does read like an extended article, when it should read like a book.

The author spends a lot of time on how Gustav Glock came to establish his gun company, and how he researched and created the gun that bears his name. He also spends a lot of time on the initial years in the United States, when Glock made some very lucky and very strategic hires that would put his company on the map and grab the American mind-share* it has now.  There are great studies of the company principals, volatile personalities that were both the cause of and the victims of the Glock company's success in the United States.
   The author spends a lot of time on the early years.  A lot.  It was only in the last forty pages or so of the book that he reveals why a book published in 2012 spends such an inordinate amount of time in the 80's and 90's:  he lost access to Glock the company and Glock the man.

This is the reason for the B+ grade.  The subtitle is 'the rise of America's gun' not because that's a stylistic or editorial choice, but rather because the author doesn't have any resources inside the company after the mid-90's.  He admits as much, saying he'd been persona non grata for years, and was surprised by a call from one of Glock's sons after the book came out.  The author still ties up the story, bringing us into the present day, but with a bare fraction of the detail he was able to put into the first years.  I appreciate the effort and the closure, but I still felt cheated.

The Glock story is epic - the man's now a billionaire, largely from selling pistols to Americans - both in its (sort of) rags-to-riches story, but also in the object lesson of a man who was not at all careful about who he surrounded himself with, or did business with, or how he handled the fortune that seems to be slowly destroying his family.

I'd recommend this book to anyone, but especially to any gun nuts you know.  It's not the rah-rah Fox-News-friendly story they'd want, but it has a message they need to hear.  It's also, as I mentioned, a lesson that incredible success does not bring with it the intellectual tools or the emotional maturity to handle that success.  I think that's something a lot of people need to hear. 

* yes, I used the phrase 'mind-share.'  It's late.  I'm tired.

Next week:
   Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls   by David Sedaris
   Can't go wrong with David Sedaris, can you?

A Book A Week - Week 19: The Golem and The Jinni

This week's book:
    The Golem and The Jinni   by Helene Wecker

Grade:  A+

Wow.

I didn't know what to expect, this is the author's first novel.  First novels are usually a dicey thing, they can be an epic failure - like Twilight - or just not worth the effort - like Ready Player One.  The Golem and The Jinni is good.  Damned good.  Ms. Wecker is one author I'll follow in the future, so she'd better keep up the quality.

This is historical fiction, because it's set in the 1890's in immigrant-filled New York City, but it's also branded 'magical realism' because the main characters are - surprise - a golem and jinni.  I would argue, however, that it's not 'magical realism' but a legitimate fantasy novel.  Or historical fantasy.  I think those labels would probably hurt sales, though, so I'll go with whatever the publishers decide to call it.

The author very skillfully brings us into the world of immigrants in Manhattan just before the turn of the 20th Century.  I got the feeling that she'd researched until her eyes glazed over, because the setting feels real, as if she were describing something she saw firsthand.  When writers research a different time there's a tendency to put in too much detail, to kind of show off what they learned, but Ms. Wecker does not fall into that trap.  The lower East Side of Manhattan came alive for me.

The characters of the Golem and Jinni, though fantastic and incredible, also came alive.  They're real people instead of allegories or representations of emotional states.  Or, I should say, instead of just allegories, because they are that.  The Golem, being made of clay, is more forthright and dependable and of service to others, while the Jinni, being made of fire, is more volatile and unreliable and self-centered.  Woman and man.  Yeah, there's more than a bit of symbolism here.

I won't go into the story too much, the plot is too good to ruin, but the Golem and Jinni do eventually meet, even though they're part of two entirely different immigrant communities, and they find themselves draw together by circumstances and the tenuous link of history. Well, and neither of them needs to sleep so they have Manhattan in the middle of the night all to themselves.
    I thought at first that I might have been tricked into reading a romance, and to be sure there is romance in the story, but it's really the story of the need to be true to your own nature, even when that comes with consequences.

Ms. Wecker's writing is excellent.  Seamless  She's gone through many, many drafts, I can tell.  Even though the book is long, she keeps the narrative moving, and doesn't toss in anything that doesn't add to the story or that she doesn't resolve at the end.  No dangling plot threads here.
   If I had one quarrel, it would be that the book felt a little too long.  Maybe fifty pages or so.  Not that there were fifty pages I could find to cut immediately, but, you know, 500 words here or there adds up.

If you like fantasy books, but without elves and unicorns and what have you, get this book.  If you like historical fiction, get this book.  If you like good stories that don't end up in a formulaic fashion, get this book.  If you like great writing and a great story, get this book. 

Next week:
   Glock - the Rise of America's Gun   by Paul M. Barrett
   Back to non-fiction next week. And guns.

A Book A Week - Week 18: Ready Player One

This week's book:
    Ready Player One   by  Ernest Cline

Grade:   C

I'm a day late with this week's book, not because I'm lazy, but because I needed time to digest it.  Which is maybe a sign of my ambivalence.
  See... the problem is that I'm supposed to like this novel.  It's aimed squarely at me.  And I don't mean 'me' in a metaphorical sense, or in a member-of-a-demographic sense, no, I'm the guy in the crosshairs.  I'll explain below, but for now you need to know that I should have every reason to rave about Ready Player One.  But I can't.

Truth to tell, the book actually pissed me off.  And that's why I had to wait.  I had to cool down, to try to give it a reasoned, cautious review rather than the one I had boiling in me yesterday.

Here's the deal:  the book is set thirty years in the future, when the planet is ruined and awful corporations rule the slagheap that's left.  Humanity has largely retreated into an online space called OASIS, where you can go to school, make real money, live, work, play, and even have cyber-sex if you want.  It's one great-big video game.
    The creator of that video game - think Bill Gates and Steve Jobs rolled into one - has died, and left his fortune to the person who can find the Egg hidden in the game.  As a child of the 80's, the creator has populated the game with his encyclopedic knowledge of the minutiae of 80's pop culture.  The people who are trying to find the Egg, and the multi-billion dollar fortune behind it, immerse themselves in 80's movies, music, and especially video games.  Even the smallest detail of Silver Spoons could be a clue, and it's certainly better living in a re-hashed 80's simulation than in the real world.

The author backs up dump truck after dump truck of 80's trivia, all in the guise of the hero working his way through the quest of earning the three keys to win the Egg.  You name it, Mr. Cline's got it, every movie, every music video, every console game, every coin-op game, every poster, every computer.  Every page of the book, practically, full to overflowing with 80's nostalgia.  Since I was a child of the 80's I got every single reference, the first time through, no explanation necessary even though the author provided one.

After the first ten pages I was bored with it.  I was there, after all, and the 80's kind of sucked.  After the first few chapters I wanted it all to stop.  I was a nerd, I played through Tomb of Horrors more than once, and reading about it in a novel was like strolling through a bad museum exhibit.  Halfway through I started getting mad.  How dare he co-opt my childhood?  This was my history he was playing with.  Mine.  Not yours.  By the last few chapters I was just eager for it all to end.

We get it, Mr. Cline, you loved the 80's.  But that doesn't give you permission to do... this.  Hands off my past, jackass.  Now I understand when old hippies say 'yeah... but you weren't there, man... you had to be there...'  God help me.

 Second, and not nearly as subjective, the novel is about a kid's adventures inside a video game.  So when you're reading, you're not really reading his exploits, you're reading about him reading about his exploits.  It's like watching someone else solve a crossword puzzle, and who gives a shit about that?
   There's more here than the author uses, he barely touches on the alienation and despair rampant in his future dystopia.  The point should be the hollowness of the escape into the game, rather than the excitement of the main character living a calendar year - no lie - in one thirty-foot-square room as he chases the Egg and the creator's fortune.  So many more layers he could have built that just aren't there.

Third, my 'don't diss the genre' note:  I found, I think, one passing mention of William Gibson and Neuromancer.  One.  In a novel which is essentially an 80's nerd squeal, the author rushes past the entire reason he can get away with a book like this, and gives no credit to the man and the novel who created the cyberspace he abuses.

If you had a friend who built his own Altair, if you played Zork, and Asteroids, and Tempest, if you watched anime before anyone else knew the Japanese made cartoons, if you know how to use a 300 baud modem on a rotary phone, if you made appointment TV on Saturday morning well into your late 20's, if you know what I mean when say 'the Blue Box,' if you know who Gary Gygax was, if you at all enjoyed living any part of the 80's even the tiniest bit, then please, please, please, don't read this book.  It's just gonna piss you off.
    If you weren't alive then, go crazy.  The 80's stuff will seem like friendly nostalgia, but the narrative is still pretty mediocre.


Next week:
   The Golem and The Jinni   by Helene Wecker
   Hot off the presses, brand new fiction.  Historical and 'magical realism?'  How's that work?