Fragments and Puzzle Pieces- from Sanditon to The Sluts

April 25 to April 30, 1976

Notes to a Science Fiction Writer, Ben Bova
It would take me years to figure out that I am not going to write science fiction.

Epoch, Robert Silverberg and Roger Elwood (Ed.)
My note: didn’t finish. A short story collection, so I guess that means I didn’t read them all.

How to Hide Almost Anything, Daniel Krotz
My note: didn’t finish. When I looked this up, it came back to me--it literally was about hiding things--I think 1976 was a more openly paranoid time. My problem was and is that I naturally forget where I so cleverly hide things, or even if I’m not trying to conceal things...

Sanditon, Jane Austen and Another Lady
I didn’t have any comment, but my memory of this final Austen fragment “completed” by a modern author, is that the non-Jane Austen parts were ho-hum. I haven’t been drawn to re-read it, though I’ve re-read most of Austen (some several times) since.


April 25 to April 30, 2006

The Sluts, Dennis Cooper

I had not heard of Dennis Cooper until I read about his misfortune in being one who was “befriended” and used by the perpetrator of the JT Leroy scandal. Cooper's work, but it was so praised that I went to check out him out at http://denniscooper.net/. After reading a sample online of the riveting first chapter—or segment, the book doesn’t have formal chapters--I had to read The Sluts.

Not everyone will want to read this book, no matter how well written. There are some books I won’t read (Bret Easton Ellis, who has a blurb on the back of The Sluts, is an example of an author who has never tempted me—though Lunar Park looks interesting). Also, other people may be put off by the highly explicit sex and extreme violence. The sex part was so far away from anything that pushes my buttons that it didn’t “get under my skin” so to speak. When the violence went over the top, I skipped some parts (notably the castration scene).

Good news/bad news. Good news: Cooper is a master storyteller and I read the book pretty much in one day. Bad news: That’s about all I did that day. But that is why I read books anyway, to go to different places. And this was a very different place!

Cooper achieves a very interesting distancing effect with both the sex and violence by presenting the story through many people’s online postings to a website. So the intense scenes are filtered through each emailer's fantasy or fetish requirements. The effect is fragmentary in a similar sense to Lawrence Sanders’ The Anderson Tapes (which was told entirely in transcripts from surveillance audio tapes), but the material so over the top that the fragments become jigsaw pieces, as the reader tries to sort of pure fantasy from real events.

The reader is drawn into a mystery where the objective truth is always elusively a few pages further on.

Cooper perfectly portrays the way an online community can develop around hot button issues—in this case, an attractive, intriguingly flawed and possibly dangerous young hustler, whom some pursue and some wish to murder.

As I read, I couldn't help wondering if this is the sort of gay lifestyle that many homophobes believe to be the norm. It’s not. But if it were, do you think my gay friends would tell me?

Um, I think I might be able to manage to guess though--“Would you like some more of this amazing torte? David really outdid himself in the kitchen this time. Oh, ignore the screaming, it’s our slave boy, down in the basement—could you go put some tape on his mouth, dear, we do have guests.”

All the characters in The Sluts are gay men who hire young hustlers and review them on a website set up to consider sex as a product to be rated and recommended. We've got online descriptions of extreme fetishes, courting and spreading HIV as a lifestyle, damaging and even killing sex partners as a fantasy to be shared, acted upon and, in some cases hidden from the authorities. The dehumanizing aspect of this is clear. In a variation on the “not involving humans” viewpoint—it’s only expendable hustlers who die. But Cooper ties up most of the loose ends and brings it back to a human grounding in the last several pages.

I also want to quote The New York Times review on the cover and Cooper’s website: “In another country or another era, Dennis Cooper’s books would be circulated in secret... This is high risk literature.”

I lived in the era described, in the United States in the 1950s and ‘60s, and I value the freedom we have now to be able to read an author like Cooper. It would be tragic if we lost that freedom.

JT Leroy and the Dybbuk factor

April 18, 1976 to April 24, 1976

Curtain, Agatha Christie
This last of her books was the first Christie that I remember reading.

Cop Killer, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

Jack Benny: An intimate biography, Irving Fein
Author, Fein, was Benny’s manager and I remember this as being an affectionate book.


April 18 to April 24, 2006

Sarah, J. T. Leroy

As a literary hoax this was interesting. The motivation is crystal clear to any writer. I call it the Dybbuk factor after a Playhouse 90 production of S. Ansky's The Dybbuk that made a lasting impression on me when I was 12. The bride, at her wedding is possessed by the spirit of her dead fiance--who will not let her go, and speaks through her mouth. This production had her mouth move and the dead man's voice come out. I realize that this effect has been used many times probably before, and certainly since in horror films (notably The Exorcist) but in 1960 it sure knocked my socks off.

My point is that when someone's mouth moved, and an unexpected voice comes out, we are intrigued, riveted or captivated.

As a middle-aged woman novelist Laura Albert was a non-event—a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10. Middle-aged women write novels all the time—and they’re hard to sell. The fact that Albert works or used to work in the phone sex industry and currently plays in a band would not make her novel of any particular interest—even if it happened to be about the phone sex industry and playing in a band. You’ve still got the older woman writing about young boy prostitutes—it’s not a plus, and I wonder if some in the publishing industry would even suggest keeping the author’s identity under wraps so as not to discourage buyers. In this case, the author figured that way before presenting the novel.

Now take the very same novel and present it as “thinly veiled autobiography” written by an underage, homeless, transgendered former boy prostitute. Now that’s a 12 on a scale of 1 to 10--the kind of sexy that sells. Albert went further than that in that she used her phone and email skills to court the kind of literary personalities who could and would make crucial introductions for the "self" she presented as a pathologically shy young man, apparently trying to raise himself out of the gutter through writing.

Crucial to any kind of a con is finding where the person being conned is vulnerable. In this case Albert tapped a humanitarian desire to help a traumatized young person in trouble, a curious itch to hear about child prostitution from the viewpoint of a survivor, and every writer’s belief in the redemptive power of writing.

I didn’t hear about this book till the hoax was exposed. This weekend I read it, and found it mild rather than wild. A PG17-rated Terry Southern or a Southern-fried Nathaniel West. I didn't find it funny enough to laugh--for some reason I also thought of Rita Mae Brown, who's a hundred times better writer, and who does make me laugh. Dunno why I thought of her--maybe the Southern flavor. Only the dialog, or the narrator's report of it, is explicit and burlap bag coarse. The sex scenes mostly occur off-stage. The background for the story may have some legitimacy—I have no idea. It seems surreal—the high flown gourmet food at the greasy spoon truck stop restaurant for example. I loved how New York Magazine writer, Stephen Beachy, in an article from October 2005 unraveling the hoax said, “I came away from reading Sarah knowing nothing about truck-stop prostitution in West Virginia or about West Virginia…” http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/people/features/14718/

I have mixed feelings about one outcome of the hoax. Some young people are inspired enough by J. T. Leroy, that they refuse to believe "he" is not real. The web page is still there, and the books are still selling.

A mixed bag from the past, and a small taste of fantasy in the present

I'm still besieged by deadlines, so it’s been a week with only a little book reading, unlike the same week 30 years earlier.

April 10 to April 17, 1976 I read:

The Best of Judith Merrill
Somehow rather depressing. (That was my note, can't recall why I thought so.)

Son-Rise, Barry Neil Kaufman
A father’s account of a couple determined to find a way to nurture their autistic son. Evidently, there’s 1993 follow up to the 1976 book called Son-Rise: The Miracle Continues, with the Kaufmans’ son, Raun, at that point a college student, as co-author. How cool is that?

Japanese in Action: An Unorthodox Approach to the Spoken Language and the People Who Speak It, Jack Seward
I enjoyed this more for insights into Japanese culture, as I’m not a student of the language.

Hefner, Frank Brady
I vaguely remember this biography. It’s long out of print now.


April 10 to April 17, 2006, I read:

Moon Called, Patricia Briggs
The first in a new series featuring Mercedes Thompson a coyote shapeshifter and auto mechanic raised by werewolves. This author has a couple of other series I will have to check out. This one was interesting, one of those fantasy books about werewolf/vampire/fae folk meeting modern life. Convoluted other worldly politics. It held my interest.
She has a website at http://www.patriciabriggs.com/index.shtml

Reinventing the wheel and grabbing diamonds

This is one of those, “yours, in haste,” kind of days, as too many deadlines in the non-blog world are threatening. I intend to review two of the books I read last week at length, and I’m putting in links to their websites.

March 30 to April 9, 1976 I read:

Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Judith Rossner
I read three of her books and liked them. I didn’t realize she had passed away, but she sounds like she was a great person
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1548416,00.html
Also, I just discovered a site that I’ll probably end up using again, alas, RIP, Ms. Rossner.
http://www.deadoraliveinfo.com

Clarion 11 (SF Anthology)

The Immense Journey : An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature, Loren Eiseley
I didn’t note it, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t finish this book (too immense, I guess). I remember because it’s one of those books that I’ve been “meaning to” go back and finish for about 30 years....hmm, still got a copy somewhere I think.

Pictorial Astronomy

Hammett, Joe Gores

The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin

Return to Earth, Return to Earth, Col. Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin, with Wayne Warga
He now has a pretty cool web site, best selling children’s book etc.,
http://www.buzzaldrin.com/


March 30 to April 9, 2006 I read:

Just a few words about Taking Up Space, and Living Large—both of which I intend to review soon on my website. I read an online reaction to hearing an interview by Michael Berman. Found the link it was at
http://www.bigfatblog.com/archives/001810.php#comments

The comment was along the lines of Berman seeming to have the impression he invented size acceptance. Ya know, we all do.

Those of us who have come to accept and deal with our bodies as they are must each of us reinvent the wheel. It’s so painfully rare to stand up and accept oneself, in the teeth of prevailing gale force winds urging NOT accepting one’s body, that every time one person does it, it’s like a small miracle. The other metaphor along these lines that occurred to me to relate to what you might call “Health and Self-Esteem at Any Size” comes from my early days as a young Buddhist. Encountering and fostering spiritual growth in others was described as grasping a handful of diamonds. When each life is a diamond you try not to lose hold of even one.

Staying Dead, Laura Anne Gilman

http://www.sff.net/people/lauraanne.gilman/


Taking Up Space: How Eating Well and Exercising Regularly Changed My Life, Pattie Thomas, Carl Wilkerson, (intro by Paul Campos)

http://fattypatties.blogspot.com/


Living Large, Michael S. Berman and Laurence Shames

http://www.mikelivinglarge.com/

Anita Blake, from looking into the abyss...to, um, dating it

March 21 to March 29, 1976 I read:

A Family Affair, Rex Stout
Science Fiction in the Cinema, John Baxter
A Comprehensible World: On Modern Science and its Origins, Jeremy Bernstein
My note: A real name dropper—no memory of this book.


Definitely a more frivolous reading week.

March 21 to March 29, 2006, I read:

Micah, Laurell K. Hamilton

Interesting. Very short, it’s like a micro-Anita Blake book. It's padded out to near book length with a teaser chapter in the back for Danse Macabre, the next full-length Anita Blake book.

One rare element of the early Anita Blake books was the detachment with which she could present highly gory vampire attacks and zombie slaughter scenes. The result was that this squeamish reader didn't get, as they say "squicked out." I miss the police procedural aspects, and the camaraderie Anita had established with the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team officers, Sgt. Dolph Storr and company. They don't show up in the books much at all anymore.

I still like the Anita Blake character enough to keep reading about her—even though she seems like she’s becoming increasingly high maintenance. From the first book, Anita had a chip on her shoulder, which made her almost literally a loose cannon, considering all the weaponry she carried around. Now she has mellowed--perhaps due to having sex four or five times a day... Not intentionally... It was a sort of a vampire attack, "curse of terminal horniness" thing, see? And it's kind of turned into a lifestyle choice. Never mind. The long and short of it is, she has to take off the shoulder holster much more often these days.

Perhaps due to the strain of scheduling all this lust, Anita in the more recent books seems to often get bent out of shape about oddly trivial things. For example, a great deal of the tension in Micah, an admittedly very short piece of prose, revolves around Anita throwing an unprovoked hissy fit because lover du jour has the temerity to book them into a four-star hotel. It used to take a full-scale zombie attack to get her that upset. This book does have a zombie attack…well, I don’t want to put in a spoiler, but clearly her domestic situation is affecting her work. High maintenance. Or maybe after a dozen books full of gory monster attacks, she's dealing with a major case of post traumatic stress syndrome.


Every Which Way but Dead, Kim Harrison

Coincidentally, this is--oh, my gosh, I guess you’d call it a “paranormal romance.” Yikes! The author is definitely being marketed to the same audience as Hamilton, and there are some interesting similarities. Rachel Morgan is a witch, who runs a sort of paranormal detective agency with a vampire and pixie as partners and roommates. She lives in an alternate future where a genetic mutation has killed off enough humans to shift the balance so that magical creatures no longer have to hide, but can exist openly with humans in an uneasy truce. Lots of high stakes action: the opening scene has Rachel conjuring a demon who saved her life and to whom she now owes a debt. The demon plans to take her soul and drag her into the “ever-after” as his apprentice. There are some fast-moving action scenes in the book, but the general pace of it is more gentle and measured than Laurell K. Hamilton books—which, at their best, grab you by the throat and don’t let go.

I like Kim Harrison's prose. I read the first two books in the series: Dead Witch Walking and The Good, the Bad and the Undead, and I will probably read whatever she writes.

Comments, wild rides & Shakespeare on eyes like Princess Di's

First a couple of comments on Comments. I had the honor of hearing from an author, Wendy McClure, whose work I admire quite a lot, although most of our dialog was due to my dismay over some of material in her book, I'm Not the New Me. By the way, I don’t believe I ever apologized for confusing Wendy McClure and Wendy Shanker (author of A Fat Girl’s Guide to Life)—if you’re out there, Wendy Shanker, I apologize to you as well. The entry and comments are at:

http://orangenotebookoflynnemurray.blogspot.com/2005/10/our-obsessions-ourselves.html

I promised to revisit the book, which I had lent to a friend. I got it back and looked at it again, and also looked at what I said about it in October.

I think Wendy McClure and I are fated to have different approaches to this subject, and that’s probably a matter of temperament.

She felt I was saying she approved of weight surgery or perhaps the newer operations—which she makes clear in an email to me she does not. I never got the feeling from the book that she approved--or disapproved--of weight loss surgery. She left it to her mother to say, in the section I quoted, that she wished she hadn’t done it but felt it was necessary at the time.

I want to make it clear that I’m not saying anyone should in any way disrespect this woman's choices about her own body in regard to having two weight loss surgeries. It is her body and she made a choice based on the information available to her. My concern was that discussing the “new operations” at the point when Wendy was asking her mother how she felt about having had the surgery, could give a reader the idea that the new operations are improved to prevent such suffering and/or regaining. Part of that “new operations are better” game is to allow surgeons to keep changing the procedures slightly so that they can ignore the previous high rate of complications with the “old operations.” No matter what surgical method is used, the result is an artificial, poorly functioning stomach. That in fact is the goal!

Wendy pointed out, also in a supplementary email, that I was probably naive to think that the Weight Watchers company needed or particularly noted her book. I don’t know how much books register with giant corporations. The written word is out on the fringes of our culture these days. But the view of WW expressed in I'm Not the New Me was that it was a community of interesting people—some of them young, witty and funny. No reason for WW to argue with that, and as far as defending the bizarre recipe cards from 1974 that Wendy makes fun of…she goes to some length in the narrative to express admiration for their current system, so that probably wouldn’t bother them either.

In re-reading I see that the strongest passages in I'm Not the New Me, are those eloquently describing the self-loathing that drove her to the Weight Watchers and web journal odyssey. Those feelings are familiar to anyone who has lived in a “too fat” body. The question I ask other writers when I conclude the obligatory self-loathing section of any Fat Story is, “How did you get out of the cave and what happened then?”

Some writers of fat stories are, of course, still in the cave. But if not, it seems to me a kindness if the writer could leave some kind of trail to help readers also trying to get out. If the writer tells me that the way out of this cave of self-hatred involves repairing a bad self-image through weight loss…. Sigh. I’ve been on that carnival ride and if you try to feel better about yourself by changing your exterior, you’ll find yourself back at the beginning again, buying another ticket. Repeatedly.

We each have to write the books we need to write—and to read whatever resonates with us. I leave for another occasion the question of whether a book is better or worse for strong opinions blatantly expressed. I’ve ventured too far into Diatribes-R-Us country already today.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled book report.


March 11 to March 20, 1976, I read:

Alive : The Story of the Andes Survivors, Piers Paul Read

Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes mountains. Of the forty five people on the plane at the time of the crash, sixteen came down from the mountain, grim crash story, cannibalism, survival.


The Eden Express : A Memoir of Insanity , mark Vonnegut

The story of Kurt Vonnegut’s son’s 1960s schizophrenic breakdown reminded me of a book I encountered a year or so later--Operators and things: The inner life of a schizophrenic, Barbara O’Brien. She wrote her story in the 1950s. I was surprised that so many amazon.com commenters had the same experience of reading it, finding it haunting, and seeking it out again over the years.

Home Companion, S. J. Perelman

The Most of P.G. Wodehouse
Only the Jeeves stories & Quick Service

– My note on the three below was that they could not be read straight through, at least not by me.
The Glass Teat, Harlan Ellison
The Other Glass Teat, Harlan Ellison
Ellison Wonderland, Harlan Ellison -

Sportsworld, an American Dreamland, Robert Lipsyte


March 11 to March 20, 2006

Sex, Lies and Vampires
The first chapter had more hooks than a bait shop. I was a bit irked that at least one of the very first ones was never showed up again in the book and wound up as a totally unexplained loose end. To wit, what ever happened to the imp infestation that the heroine's new employer was going on about as the book opened, and what was the point of having her confuse a medieval antiquities expert with an imp exterminator. And furthermore, what happened to the imps? If you're going to use a hook, I think you should follow up in the body of the book. It was a good hook and it got me into the book, but then it frustrated me when it wasn't ever resolved. A fast moving romance with a lot of supernatural action and the requisite smart-mouthed modern human heroine.

The Life and Times of William Shakespeare, Peter Levi

This is not exactly in the celebrity bio mode. Except for Shakespeare fiends like myself. However, I found it fascinating and soothing. Levi has interesting insights, such as that the Earl of Southampton, who was most likely the handsome youth for whom the sonnets were composed, was a remote ancestor of Princess Diana—“Southampton’s looks and a certain trick of the eyes are recognizable in the Princess of Wales.” (Okay, so there's your celebrity bio tie in right there.)

From the depths of Doctorow to the shallows of chick lit

March 5 to March 10, 1976 I read:

Ragtime, E. L. Doctorow

This is a lovely book. I now realize that the format was experimental (and that this did not always work for Doctorow) But at the time I read it, I drank it in without seeing anything that interrupted the story. The author's rambling fit well with the soundtrack--the renaissance that ragtime music and Scott Joplin in particular went through in the mid-1970s.

Three for Tomorrow: Three Original Novellas of Science Fiction (Hardcover)
by Robert Silverberg, Roger Zelazny, James Blish

You Can Get There from Here, Shirley MacLaine

While I was looking up this book (still available used and evidently frightening some readers to this day), I found that there’s a “noir cartoon” book—aka “graphic novel,” I’m unclear on the distinction entitled You Can’t Get There from Here by Norwegian cartoonist Jason. This one “chronicles one of the oldest love triangles in the world: Mad scientist creates monster, mad scientist creates woman for monster, mad scientist...falls in love with the woman he created for the monster!” Ha, and they thought Shirley MacLaine was scary! Seriously it sounds kind of sweet, in an angsty kind of way.

Word Play : What Happens When People Talk, Peter Farb
Working, Studs Terkel

My note indicates that I found Word Play and Working invigorating, but didn’t finish either. Too fragmentary in structure, I suspect. I ended up dipping into each of them repeatedly over the years since.


March 5 to March 10, 2006 I read:

Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris

This book made me laugh, which is something I value highly. Sedaris’ adventures with unusual French phrase books, such as the English-to-French for Medical Practitioners reminded me of a book that found its way to my bookshelves, the 1972 edition of A Practical Spanish Grammar for Border Patrol Guards (issued by the US Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service). What it lacks in political correctness, it makes up in phrases that are hard to find elsewhere such as: Give me the knife. Where did you bury the body? And: Provided that you tell us the truth we will let you go tomorrow.


Asking for Trouble: A Novel, Elizabeth Young

I had an odd experience with this book. I was sure I had read it before—but I think it was three other books I’d read wherein the heroine hires an escort to save face at an important wedding, and ends up finding love. This book eventually became a movie—The Wedding Date. In referring to that movie, the movie Pretty Woman was often evoked. I think that is totally inappropriate. The heroine of Pretty Woman, the Julie Roberts character, was portrayed as an ordinary streetwalker given the Pygmalion treatment to turn her into an acceptable date for an upscale executive.

Contrarily in the female-hires-male scenario, it is repeatedly stressed that the male lead is NOT a prostitute—just briefly dabbling in the escort biz as a favor for a friend.

I’m not going to delve into that treasure trove of gender expectations.

Asking for Trouble is classic chick lit—which is closer to farce than romance. While I read this I noted the author’s strenuous efforts to keep the heroine and her hero from disclosing the secrets that kept them apart. The similarity to farce is that both require juggling of ongoing deceptions. A surprising amount of skill is required to keep up the illusion of believability. Asking for Trouble is a first novel, and did not always pull off that trick, but I enjoyed it enough to finish it.

Once upon the edge...

February 28 to March 4, 1976

I didn’t finish much that week!

Picked-Up Pieces, John Updike
My note was: "just a few"
Gorge Eliot, the Emergent Self, Ruby V Redinger
My note was: "appallingly incoherently written, skimmed in self-defense." I did, and do, like George Eliot, but evidently not Redinger.

On Being Funny, Woody Allen and Comedy, Eric Lax
Approaching Oblivion, Harlan Ellison
All the Livelong Day, Barbara Garson

My note on Lax, Ellison and Garson—"never quite finished these, rather depressing." When I looked up Barbara Garson, I see that she wrote MacBird. As a Shakespeare fan and a protester against the Vietnam war, I still remember reading MacBird, including where I sat in the sunlight on the campus at UC Riverside in 1967. The parody of MacBeth was published by Grassy Knoll Press! Garson's MacBird cast Lyndon Johnson as MacBeth. But I don’t remember whether that registered with me when I read (at least some of) All the Livelong Day in 1976.


February 28 to March 4, 2006, I read:

Liquor, Poppy Z. Brite

In her interesting blog, Brite reveals an picture impressive tattoo of St. Joseph that she promised she would get if she could negotiate a change in the focus of her career. That transition (and tattoo) were accomplished. But encountering her earlier work and her more recent work at the same time, my impression is that Brite is a good enough writer that if something interests her, she can take the reader along for the ride.

Liquor is very different from Lost Souls and Drawing Blood. The earlier, horror tales took a homoerotic view of the teenaged heroes, with openly predatory villains, and lots of gore, decay and death-wish-on-the-highway scenes. Liquor is homoerotic soap opera with complicated villains and restaurant kitchen porn. The only decay in Liquor is aged cheese, wine, and maybe the steaks. The blitzkrieg partying of the horror books has narrowed down to a passionately committed gay couple in their 20s, who are both cooks, and trying to make it in the New Orleans restaurant world. They have an opportunity to open a restaurant using their dream idea. But they end up uncertain whether they have essentially sold their souls in order to get the money to open fulfill their dream.

Outsiders : 22 All-New Stories From the Edge, Nancy Holder, Nancy Kilpatrick (ed)

I was interested to see if the Poppy Z. Brite story in this book was a transition between her earlier work and her work in Liquor, but in fact the story was a snippet from the earlier lives of the heroes of the Liquor series—who qualified as Outsiders because of their sexual orientation, I guess.

Most of the rest of the short stories (with a few exceptions) were—as advertised, on the edge. Lordy, I haven’t been near the edge in decades and I ain’t interested in going, thank you very much. Most of these stories were too far over to the “splatter punk” type of atmosphere to be my kind of thing so it would be an exercise in futility to try to judge them.

Atmospheric ghosts, dark forces, and wild turkeys

February 19 to 26, 1976, I read:

Solemn High Murder, Barbara Ninde Byfield

The Early Pohl, Frederik Pohl


February 19 to 26, 2006, I read:

Four and Twenty Blackbirds, Cherie Priest
A very well-written, atmospheric, literally haunting book. One problem I had was that the heroine had a major case of don’t-do-up-in-the-attic-itis. For example, with a homicidal maniac stalking her, she heads straight for the cemetery after dark. I realize that that’s where the plot needs her to be, but for me, it got a little predictable. Where’s the most dangerous, isolated possible place? I think I’ll go there—alone—at night!

It held my interest but never really scared me much—which is fine. I should say that I don’t exactly read ghost stories to be frightened, as I know some people do. Well, maybe to be frightened just a little tiny bit…

The author has an interesting web site at--
http://cherie.twilightuniverse.com/


Final Intuition, Claire Daniels

More on the whimsical fun than frightening front is the fourth and final book in Claire Daniels' Cally Lazar series. In the interests of disclosure I should say that Claire Daniels is also my dear friend, Jaqueline Girdner, who wrote the Kate Jasper mystery series. I was interested to catch up on the latest adventures of her amateur sleuth, a New Age bio-energy balancing healer. Cally's boyfriend, Roy, is either crazy or really does see dangerous dark forces swirling around her. Aside from the final truth about these dark forces, there are always fun witty things in Jaki/Claire's books. I know of no other author who would bring on wild turkeys wandering through the yard oblivious of both murder and Thanksgiving. The Turkey Sisters are shadowed, although never approached, by a lone male turkey. Very Dashiell Hammett in a cozy mystery kind of way—I mean if Hammett used large, wild turkeys for actors and actresses (which might be kind of fun actually--never mind, Jaki/Claire's work has that effect on me).

More about Claire/Jaki and other unexpected treasures at--
http://www.maadwomen.com/clairedaniels/

An imperfect escape is better than no escape at all

February 10 to 18, 1976 I read,

The Catnappers, P.G. Wodehouse
It's hard to remember that 30 years ago I was catless and the word "cat" was pretty much neutral. No recollection of this Wodehouse. I keep meaning to read more. Whenever I see odd sentences quoted from him, they glitter with a wit that beckons.

The Black Tower, P.D. James
This was one of my favorite P.D. James mysteries, and I later read it again at least twice.

Chief! Al Seedman (my notes say “as told to Hellman” NYPD Chief)
I found this description on abe.com (the comprehensive online used books source)
"The distillation of perhaps the country's largest private crime archives -- the personal journals Albert Seedman kept throughout his career as Chief of Detectives of NYPD."


February 10 to 18, 2006, in between other work and getting my tax materials together, I escaped a few times to read:

The Loves of a D-Girl: A Novel of Sex, Lies, and Script Development, Chris Dyer
A “movie business in New York chick lit” novel told in entirely in the present tense—I guess to give the idea of a screenplay—“she stops reading. She puts down the book,” etc. Used judiciously this can heighten tension. Used for the entire book this can become irritating, and did.

Urban Shaman, C.E. Murphy
Comparisons to Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake vampire executioner series are unavoidable, even though the bad supernatural critters faced by the heroine, Joanne Walker, are on the Celtic side, more like those in Hamilton’s Meredith Gentry faery series. There are some interesting elements here. Walker is half Irish, half Cherokee and an awakening shaman--also a reluctant cop and a gifted auto mechanic. Reluctant cop? Hmmm. I don’t even read too many police procedurals, but I had trouble swallowing the way that the entire Seattle Police Department bends over backwards to keep Walker on the job so as to get free car repair! But the story and the heroine held my interest, and I’d read other books by this author.

Assorted flavors of numb & lies like ice cream

February 7 to 10, 1976 I read:

The House on Garibaldi Street, Isser Harel
The story of the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann in Argentina by the Mossad, Israel's secret intelligence service. Harel was the leader of the team that brought Eichmann to Israel for trial. Fascinating book—updated and still in print.

The Santaroga Barrier, Frank Herbert
In some ways I like some of Herbert's lesser know books better than Dune, and definitely better than the sequels to Dune.

You Can Get There from Here, Shirley MacLaine
I like Shirley MacLaine (I was going so say "so shoot me" but I never use that expression anymore...the times we live in.)

Best SF '74

Clive: Inside the Record Business, Clive Davis James Willwerth
I obviously hadn't heard of Clive Davis because my note reads "some record tycoon."

The Intruders, Pat Montandon
This scary book was hard to track down, seeming to have vanished into book limbo. I remember this story of a haunted Lombard Street apartment. Even in the 1960s and '70s you didn't just leave a prime San Francisco apartment like that because of a little psychic disturbance. Finally I found a web page about it!
http://www.sfgate.com/offbeat/pat.html


February 7 to 10, 2006:

Two books I read this week have unexpected elements in common. Lost Souls and A Million Little Pieces both seem to be first novels with lots-o-drugs, cynical, suicidal youth and shaky redemption at the end. No vampires or homoerotic scenes in Frey though…

As a kind of weird segue, I have been imagining that some of the 1988 teenage drugged-out runaways in Lost Souls might end up 16 years later in the rehab unit where James Frey sets his story—and yes I know the controversy is about how much of Frey is true, and I will get to that.


Lost Souls, Poppy Z. Brite
This is the second Brite book I've read (a few months back I read her second book, Drawing Blood). Lost Souls came out in 1988 and I could see how it made an impact, there wasn't anything out there that I've ever heard of then that resembled it.

Like so many first novels, it is a Sensitive Story of Disillusioned Youth. Only it also has vampires, romanticized homoeroticism with teenage boys as the focus of lust, sex & drugs & rock & roll, graphic gore and bodily fluids, murder, rape, cannibalism and incest. Oddly enough, these amenities—though not my usual choice of story elements—did not bother me. I think it's because the characters were engaging, vulnerable and so very numb.


A Million Little Pieces, James Frey
Speaking of numb. The main character starts out the book starts out semi-comatose.

What do I think about James Frey's work?

It ain't William Burroughs, or even Augusten Burroughs. The no-quotes dialog and paragraphs-jammed-together style does convey the flattened emotions of the main character (or of his recollections, if we're thinking of this as Frey himself). But it's a very tedious form to maintain for hundreds of pages and for me that made it more difficult to keep reading.

In Frey's case, his lies, like the web spun by a con artist, fitted neatly into a very popular view about drugs and rehabilitation. The myths are—anyone can fall prey to drugs—even those who "have everything" and anyone can claw his way back to normalcy. There's some truth in these myths. The lies are in the packaging and the amplification of the fall.

James Frey was irresistible to Oprah and company literally because he was not the scary bad boy he played on television and in his book. I'm sure there was never a sense that he might fall off the wagon and be found passed out among empty liquor bottles in an alley behind the TV studio. There are many genuine survivors in recovery from drugs and lives of crime, some of them probably have written books. But their stories don't go down like ice cream. Their damaged faces and bodies show real, permanent scars.

Frey presents an irresistible Ivy League educated, fresh-faced package, the (much enhanced, and in some cases perhaps "borrowed") stories of a down and dirty addiction, tough guy encounters with cops and criminals, and eventual recovery.

The myth went down like ice cream. And now people are reading the label on the package.

I read this book after the story came out about how Frey stretched the truth for this "memoir" so there's no way I could say whether I would have guessed the fraud if I'd read it earlier. A friend who worked in a mental institution said the author photo confirmed for her that this guy could not have suffered the kind of battering he describes in the book and avoided permanent, visible facial scarring (also that the dental work without novocaine incident was unlikely in the extreme).

The phrase "a bullshit artist" came to mind, but after reading most of the book (I skipped some because that no punctuation thing can get really tedious) I'd say he's on the border between B.S. and crap by Hanne Blank's definition--link to her essay below.

Crap is what makes you throw the book across the room in disgust, while bullshit is the occupational hazard of the professional liar (a.k.a. fiction writer).
http://www.reflectionsedge.com/archives/dec2005/vatcc_hb.html

Charming echoes, books that require hip boots and gloves, books by mail

I was definitely having more fun 30 years ago this week!

January 30, 1976 to February 6, 1976, I read:

Hollywood, Garson Kanin
Online I found a comment about a scene in this book Kanin witnessed where a young Lawrence Olivier chatted with Greta Garbo at a party and then reenacted the conversation on the drive home for a suspicious Vivien Leigh. That really was memorable and charming, and it stuck in my memory also.

A Purple Place for Dying, John D. MacDonald
The Mystery Writer's Art, Nevin, Ed
The Worlds of Frank Herbert (surprisingly good anthology)
The Deep Blue Goodbye, John D. MacDonald


January 30 to February 6, 2006

Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World, Greg Critser

I had meant to look this book up when I researched books with the three letter F-word in the title for my web page essay
http://www.maadwomen.com/lynnemurray/essays/fword.html

The book turned out to be quite insulting to fat people. Malarial mosquitoes probe more deeply and with less of an agenda than this so-called objective reporter uses in this book. I ranted on a bit on that at the end of this post, but feel free to skip if you're not in the mood.

First, on a positive note. Because it was borrowed, I didn't pay money to be insulted by Fat Land! I borrowed this book from a service called http://www.booksfree.com/ (this is a spontaneous, unpaid endorsement!) Booksfree.com does for paperback book lovers what Netflix does for DVD lovers—a real find for those of us who can't easily get to a library.

Optional Rant mode activated—

I was hoping that Fat Land would provide some useful information about some of the ingredients in highly processed foods such as trans fats and high fructose corn syrup—which seem to be to be health-damaging additives. [As it happens that information is much more objectively covered in Fat Politics, The Real Story Behind America's Obesity Epidemic, by J. Eric Oliver—a book I am reading with care so as to review on my web page.]

Alas, Critser begins by discussing his recent "successful" diet! I have two things to say about that:

First, I am saddened by our current cultural climate where anything expressed by a thinner person is somehow more valid and valuable than anything expressed by that same person 40 pounds heavier. This is prejudice. Pure and simple.

Second, I am angered by the contempt that infects Critser's every paragraph. His is not an unusual attitude but I experience rage afresh each time I see a "formerly fat person" who feels entitled to beat up on fat people "for our own good."

One Amazon.com reviewer pointed out that this author seemed to think he could shame people into losing weight. Sadly a whole raft of others chimed in about how the "refreshing slap in the face" this book delivered will help them lose weight. As this is a future, and uncertain event, these testimonials only point up the sad state of self-abasement that flourishes around issues of body size.

Nothing the book has to offer would alleviate the stress, or compensate me for the time wasted in reading it. However, I toyed with the thought of going through it to compare some of Critser's more superficial conclusions with those drawn by Paul Campos in The Obesity Epidemic or the aforementioned J. Eric Oliver's Fat Politics. But that would mean spending more time with the book, and even stopping early on, it took some effort to clear off the sticky coating of hatred from anything it might have touched while the book was still in my hands.

And yeah, I guess this rant was part of that process, and I say anyone who has read this far, as I say to the accommodating white page in front of me--thanks for listening.

Books dimly remembered and thankless tasks that are more fun than fun.

My younger self did a lot more reading in this stretch of the year than I have this year, although I seem to have been a little fuzzy about exactly what! I had a library-filtered view of books then, and assumed that everything ever printed was always available. I would have been scandalized at how easily books slip out of print and away.

It's also just as well that I didn't know how long this process would be, until I was well and thoroughly involved in the perverse pleasure of prose--which is not what you expect when you start, but worth the journey. As Noel Coward put it, "Work is more fun than fun." Although in all honesty, it doesn't start out that way!

January 24 to January 29, 1976 I read:

Three on the Tower
I have no idea what this book was or who wrote it.

A Professional Storywriter's Handbook, Edwin A. Peeples
My note reads that the author of this book was, in my opinion an MCP ("male chauvinist pig"), which didn't really give us a whole lot more information.

Every Crime in the Book: An Anthology of Mystery Stories (anthology, Mystery Writers of America) Ed. R.L. Fish
Shoot, I know more than amazon.com about this one! They didn't have the editor or the MWA connection.

One Fearful Yellow Eye, John D. MacDonald

Breakdown (Crackdown, Breakthrough? Something like that, Dick Francis' latest)
What can I say? He does have some interchangeable titles, and I usually write them down carefully so I can read them all rather than reading the same one over by accident! Research shows this was probably Francis' Knockdown, March 1, 1975!

You're never too old to die, Arthur D Goldstein
Another book that I don't remember, though it sounds like a mystery.

January 24 to 29, 2006 no books read.

This past week or so I've been submerged in editing a manuscript, which is its own kind of obsession. Marge Piercy put it well in her poem,

For the young who want to

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.
***
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.For the young who want to, by Marge Piercy from THE MOON IS ALWAYS FEMALE
Alfred A. Knopf, New York

The devil you know, the Daniel Webster you may have forgotten

Sometimes things you read remind you of other things that you liked a whole lot better. Other times, they are excellent in and of themselves.

From January 18 to 22, 1976 I read:

The Nun In the Closet, D. Gilman
(My note was: childish, by a writer of children's stories.)

Amazon One, Mary F. Beal
(I didn't get far on this one. My note was that it was amusing but not enough to read and I didn't like the style.)

Ghost Writer, Diana Carter

The Devil and Webster Daniels, Terrence Lore Smith
I remember that this was a take off on the title of theh classic Steven Vincent Benet story The Devil and Daniel Webster, which is still worth a re-read or three. Looking up the Smith book, I found it was a Doubleday Mystery publication from the 70s, that's about what I remember about it as well!

The original Devil and Daniel Webster, however, lingers in my memory as one of the most brilliant stories I've read. The 1941 movie with Walter Huston as "Mr. Scratch" was also excellent! Looking the title up reminded me that Benet's hero was modeled after the real Daniel Webster, a politician and orator in the early 1800s. Those were the days when a U.S. Senator could be so legendary that he naturally fit the bill as a hero of fiction. The fictional Daniel Webster certainly did a service above and beyond elective office for his constituent, Jabez Stone, in getting him out of a deal with the Devil.

In my opinion, this is one of the few Faustian stories where the character fighting the devil is as interesting as the devil himself—and wins! The pleasure is in how he wins, and all the various arguments Daniel Webster and the Devil throw back and forth. E.g., Webster argues that Americans can't be conscripted to serve a foreign prince. The Devil argues that he qualifies for citizenship on the grounds that he was around when the Indians were cheated out of their land and the first ships carrying slaves landed in America. Webster is forced to admit the Devil's got grounds for claiming citizenship. But Webster has a few other arguments up his sleeve to prove that his fellow New Hampshire citizen does not deserve to be damned for his unwise bargain.


January 18 to 21, 2006

Red Leaves, Thomas H. Cook
An incredibly well-written, gripping book. I stand in awe (except that I was sitting because I literally could not put it down). The darkness and eloquence remind me of Dennis Lehane's Mystic River. Cook's work is more stripped down and elemental than Lehane, and also focuses more tightly on psychological layers. Cook's narrator reluctantly digs into the secrets in his family as he tries to protect his son, who is the primary suspect in the kidnapping of a child. The brilliantly crafted puzzle counter-balances the dark, tragic aspects of the story. It's very rare that a book holds my attention so insistently--all the way down to a cathartic redemption and a twist ending that I did not see coming.

I don't know if I could ever write anything that dark, but I would aspire to write so well.

From The Stacks

There's a Japanese tradition (which I picked up by some kind of Buddhist osmosis) of cleaning things up for New Year's, start fresh etc. I missed getting this done by the Western New Year--maybe the Lunar New Year...or somewhere before the spring equinox... As a book fiend, that means cleaning off my bookshelves, returning borrowed books and generally getting ready for the next crop of things to read.

January 12 to 17, 1976, I read:

The Scarlet Ruse, John D. MacDonald

The Hungry Ghosts, J. C. Oates
I have no memory of this book and didn't realize till I looked it up that "J.C." was Joyce Carol Oates. Now I have to go find it and look at it again!

January 12 to 17, 2006

This was a contrary week for me, cleaning out shelves of books I've put off reading.

Charlotte's Web, E. B. White
I never even heard of this when I was growing up, and it appears to be too late for me to read it with the requisite innocence! The first illustration shows a farmer with an axe, heading out to the barn to kill the hero, a newborn pig, the runt of the litter and therefore expendable. The second illustration shows the farmer's son, brother of little girl who intervens to save the pig and raise it. The brother carries both a rifle and a knife for reasons never really explained in the text. What is this a Quentin Tarentino film? I think I read a true crime article about this family.

Okay, okay. I realize that this is a much-loved story, and once again I'm being iconoclastic without hardly trying. But this small book made me very anxious. Not the spiders, Charlotte the spider is a nurturing sort of arachnid. I guess actual children would take the happy ending at face value. But I was uncertain about the Wilbur the pig's continued survival, seeing as how it was based on the farmer's whim, which could be easily changed.

Somebody Else's Music, Jane Haddam
I enjoyed reading Haddam's lighter novels, written as Oriana Papazoglou in the '80s, (Sweet, Savage Death, etc.), featuring romance writer and reluctant sleuth Patience Campbell McKenna.

I ran into trouble with this book, the first I've encountered (I believe there are 18) in the Gregor Demarkian series. Without going into detail, I had to stop halfway through the book because of the repeated and persistent body hatred aimed at fat characters—e.g., assuming that they were fat because of stupidity or insanity and inciting the reader to share the author's disgust at their bodies. Life is too short for me to spend my time in such a toxic environment.

This may sound like a backhanded compliment, but if Haddam were not such a skilled storyteller, I would not have lasted halfway through this 472 page book. I had to stop, because one way I protect my own emotional balance is to avoid spending much time with body-negative writings.

Heading back to the shelves...

If I were to have a country home with the requisite cute name on a sign outside (hard to imagine, but bear with me) it would be called The Stacks.

Romantic comedy outside the box

January 8 to 11, 1975

Good Samaritans and Other Stories, John O'Hara
A Shroud for A Nightingale, P.D. James
Ellery Queen, A Mystery Anthology (Opus 281)


January 8 to 11, 2006

Conversations with the Fat Girl, Liza Palmer

This is an interesting variant on a new subgenre that I guess we could call "big beautiful chick lit" or to translate that into English—romantic comedies with plus-sized heroines. I totally applaud this development and judging from the online comments, many women have been looking for these books and seek them out and recommend them to others
http://chicklitbooks.com/site/index.php/2005/10/25/p69

The fact is that the "heroine = slim" is the overwhelming equation in romantic (and romantic comic) fiction—oh, hell, fiction of any kind! It reminds me of a sequence in one of my favorite comic novels—which I'm delighted to see back in print--The Boyfriend School by Sarah Bird. http://www.randomhouse.com/BB/read/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780345460097
The heroine, a reporter for an alternative newspaper who is tryng to write a romance, decides to make her heroine a big, strapping gal, "who never met an enchilada she didn't like." When an editor gets hold of the manuscript she changes it--now the heroine feels she is too skinny because "she forgets to eat." Same thing, right? Um, no.

Conversations with the Fat Girl is interesting, as I point out in my "state of the F-word" essay on my web page http://www.maadwomen.com/lynnemurray/essays/fword.html
the word "fat" in the title often is an attention-getter and frequently indicates that the theme will NOT concern fat. Paradoxically, the word "fat" is so negatively loaded, that books with big beautiful heroines often avoid the three-letter F-word to keep from alienating readers.

Conversations with the Fat Girl is an exception in that the title uses the F-word and the heroine and her best friend are both struggling with self-esteem and body issues. Conversations looks at the friendship of two fat girls who supported each other emotionally in youth and adolescence. What happens when one of them gets gastric bypass surgery, moves away and tries to live as if she never was tainted by having been fat?

I could quibble with many things in this book, but the main one that saddens me is a simple error that could have been corrected if anyone had looked at a map. The author sets a pivotal scene with the characters walking on the Golden Gate Bridge and has her characters drive to San Francisco from the University of California at Berkeley all the time to do this. You really can't get directly from Berkeley to the Golden Gate Bridge. From Berkeley to San Francisco you take the Bay Bridge. You also can't walk across the Bay Bridge—gotta drive, or maybe take a bus or BART. Not that you can't get to the GGB from Berkeley, but you've got to drive across some other bridge first (either the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, approaching the GGB from Marin, or crossing the Bay Bridge and approaching the GGB from San Francisco.)

This is not really a little-known fact, and it's easily checked via map, mapquest.com anything like that. Readers who know this geographic fact will say, "What?!!" and be stopped dead in their tracks and thrown out of the story for a moment--it's like putting the Hollywood sign in the Swiss Alps.

When my first novel came out in 1988, a triple-Virgo copy editor looked at every word. She even got out a map and questioned several of my characters' routes from point A to point B. My favorite was when she asked why my characters didn't take the direct route--walking straight through Sutro Park and crossing the Great Highway to get from Sutro Heights to the Cliff House. Um, a little matter of a 5-story drop off the cliff where Sutro Park overlooks the Great Highway. But shoot, she looked at the map. For Liza Palmer's book nobody did.

From Watergate loose ends to Discworld fun

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Dark books to read indoors in a warm room, with a new year in view

December 26 to 31, 1975

Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (Paperback) Vincent Bugliosi, Curt Gentry
I didn't have the co-author, Gentry, listed when I first read the book. I found it riveting, but unlike some readers nothing about it frightened me. Separating the "hippie ideas" from the violence was pretty easy. Manson was (and is) a con man who dressed his mind control in the context of love, peace and presented himself as a kind of god or devil in a way that pushed a lot of people's buttons. The idea that a mind-controlling Manson could reach out through his sad followers and destroy people. Tragic, but not particularly new.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle, George V. Higgins
The hard-boiledest.


December 26 to 31, 2005

This Stephen King book was suggested by Landyn Parker in his blog
http://madscreenwriter.blogspot.com/
Now I'll have to see if the suggestion for unclogging drains works (the sisal for cat scratch posts I already knew).

On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King

I've read a lot of Stephen King books. He's good enough, and close enough to the bone with his writing, that I regret having read some of his books because they stuck with me in a nightmare way that I don't need.

I got upset when one of our cats died from a dog attack during the time I was I was reading Pet Sematary. My husband, Charlie, asked what the book was about, and I told him.

If you're not a King reader I'll just explain that the book is about standing on the edge of death when the one you love is on the other side—would you, could you bring them back? If you did, what would be the price? And would you do it anyway?

My husband said, "Just promise me you won't read any books called Husband Cemetery."

Charlie lived another seven years and my reading Stephen King had no known correlation with his lifespan. But I am now cautious before I read a scary book, I check to see whether they mesh badly with my own anxieties because I know the fear can stay with me even after a satisfactorily cathartic ending.

But I digress—this seems to be the night for it, sorry! On the subject of writers, storytellers and what makes such critters tick, Stephen King is always spot on.

On Writing is partly autobiography, including the devastating 1999 accident when King was hit by a van while walking down the road.

In even greater part, this is a practical manual for writers. King has such useful insights that I think, in future, when people ask about plotting, I'll direct them to this book. I love his insight of story as a fossil to be excavated. I also took the point from his description of his muse--wings, cigar, basement apartment with bowling trophies—gotta love that. He suggested that one's own muse (bowling trophies optional) will find it a lot easier to throw some magic on a writer who makes and keeps appointments with regularity.

Wishing you and yours a Happy New Year all!

Ghosts of passions past & an entirely different sort of magic

This time of year 30 years ago I was enjoying an orgy of John D. MacDonald's Travis Magee books. I made a list in my orange notebook so I could read them all--even bought one when it first came out in hardcover—which was a tremendous (and expensive) declaration of love on my part.

That passion ran its course. Now it's like remembering someone you dated in your teens. The details have only faded a little but, as Joni Mitchell puts it, "I can't go back there anymore." I loved MacDonald then and studied him closely, despairing of ever being able to tell a tale so smoothly. But I can't read him now. I picked up Cape Fear a few years back and I wanted to smack the hero for the smug arrogance with which he treated his wife, and the adoring way she sucked up to him.… (Which probably echoes some of my teenage romances as well—eek! Not to mention ick!)

Heck, it's Christmas, I won't start. I've moved on and so has John D. MacDonald, who passed away. I'm still pretty fond of Leonard Nimoy and George Plimpton's Paris Review, but those were less intense passions. It's always interesting (if a little scary) to me what books seem dated and which ones don't.


December 15 to December 25, 1975

Intimate Behavior, Desmond Morris
I Am Not Spock, Leonard Nimoy
I just looked this up to see if it was still available, and found that Nimoy has now written a retrospective entitle I Am Spock. I'll have to check that one out.

The Dreadful Lemon Sky, John D. MacDonald
The Long Lavender Look, John D. MacDonald
A Deadly Shade of Gold, John D. MacDonald

Writers At Work, (Paris Review 2nd Series), George Plimpton (Ed.)
I loved how they had a page of annotated typescript from each author before the interview. Ah, the glamour of it all.

A Tan and Sandy Silence, John D. MacDonald


December 14 to 25, 2005

After a pre-Christmas visit from my fast-moving younger brother, and with the constant tranquil presence of the cats for an anchor, I celebrated the holidays with books on monsters.

Monsters, An Investigator's Guide to Magical Beings, John Michael Greer

This book was a happy surprise. It's amazingly clear on subjects that I could never quite grasp before. They're pretty ephemeral subjects, but Greer has some plausible theories that take into account history, current reportage, and how the scientific worldview shut out things that can't be measured and put under microscopes.

[A]n experience can be extremely common, and can affect many human lives, even though it has no place in our modern culture's view of reality, is ignored by education and the media, and does not even have a name. Monsters, p. 22

One reader on Amazon points out that the cover (black with creepy yellow monster eyes) seems too sensationalistic. But I think if it draws in a wider readership, it will have done what a book cover is supposed to do.

A Field Guide to Demons, Fairies, Fallen Angels, and Other Subversive Spirits, Carol K. Mack and Dinah Mack

This cover made the Monsters cover look positively conservative, by the way. A black woodcut style critter with lots of teeth, horns, staring eyes on a solid red background.

This book is more of a "dip into" reference rather than a "read straight through book." Partly because it is organized by geography, unlike the Monsters book above which groups these phenomena by behavior and the author's theory of structure.

Each entry explains the critter and the area where the stories of it arose, describes the Lore around it, and provides Disarming and Dispelling Techniques. There's more of a tongue-in-cheek attitude here—unlike the Monsters book where Greer gives serious instructions for would-be monster-hunters, including stakeout and bird-watching style warnings about what gear to bring and admonitions not to trespass and to exercise caution and ordinary common sense.

The Field Guide's takes the comparative mythology approach, but the capsule stories and illustrations are interesting. The quotes are great. Ralph Waldo Emerson--who knew?

…I think the numberless forms in which this superstition has reappeared in every time and in every people indicates the inextinguishableness of wonder in man; betrays his conviction that behind all your explanations is a vast and potent living Nature, inexhaustible and sublime, which you cannot explain. Essay on Demonology," 1875 Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lost books, lost highwys

December 5 to 14, 1975

Admissions, Barbera
I have a vague recollection that this might have been a "doctor memoir" book, but it must be beyond out of print or I wrote the title wrong…

Anti-Social Register, William Hamilton
Possibly cartoons?

Lucy: The Bittersweet Life of Lucille Ball, Joe Morella
(I also have E.Z. Epstein as co-author, though amazon.com doesn't show that—the book has been out of print for awhile.) Good book though.

Ancient, My Enemy, Gordon R. Dickson
My note was "philosophical and anthropocentric"

You and I, Leonard Nimoy
Will I think of you, Leonard Nimoy
6XH, Robert Heinlein
Orbit 17, Damon Knight (ed)

December 5 to 14, 2005

White Teeth, Zadie Smith
A friend pointed out how impressed she was that Zadie Smith could have such a complex vision of life in her early 20s. I agree, and found White Teeth compelling, even though I often tend not to persevere with books that jump forward 5 or 20 years. I think it's because I get attached to the characters and resent having to start all over again with their offspring, whom I may or may not like! But Smith makes it work.

Murder At Morses Pond (Paperback)
by Linda Rosencrance
A true crime book, readable but a bit of a slog as the crime is described over and over. This is a "we're sure the husband did it, but will he get away with it?" type story, and it could have done with more revelations along the way. One commenter online mentioned that this was a court TV case. Maybe there were no more revelations.

Lost America: The Abandoned Roadside West, Troy Paiva (foreword Stan Ridgway)
I started with Paiva's web site at www.lostamerica.com where you can see his photographs taken at night of abandoned places. Drive-in movies, the decaying resort around the Salton Sea, ghosts of former military bases—photographed to bring out an eerie beauty. I immediately wanted the book as a gift for my road warrior, younger brother. Fortunately I could get a signed copy from the author. The stories Paiva writes of his adventures taking the pictures are as colorful and wild as the photos themselves

Route 66: The Highway and Its People,Susan Croce Kelly (Text), Quinta Scott (Photographer)
The Piava book sent me back to re-read this photo essay and history. I had originally bought it because I used some Route 66 locations in Large Target. But the book was a keeper. It's fascinating how that Chicago to Los Angeles highway was developed in the 1920s and '30s--the road the Joad family took out of the Dust Bowl in The Grapes of Wrath. It boomed and played a major part in our national history through the '70s until it was finally officially replaced by five interstates by 1985. My father and brother drove on it from Los Angeles to Chicago in the 1970s and even then it took some doing to find it in places.