Book 'Em, Dano

The latest roundup of what I have been reading lately.

Breakfast of Champions
Kurt Vonnegut
Apr. 2007
Fiction

A reread of Vonnegut's seventh novel (1973), the first Vonnegut book I had read (I borrowed it from Steven Hodges sometime during my sophomore year in college in 1986). It's not a "typical" Vonnegut novel, in that it was, as he says, written as a birthday present to himself on his 50th birthday.

Slapstick
Kurt Vonnegut
Apr. 2007
Fiction

A reread of Vonnegut's eighth (1976) novel, and one of the few I'm not really wild about.

Falling Man
Don DeLillo
May. 2007
Fiction

Falling Man is the new novel from a favorite author of mine (although I have only read a fraction of his books). I still am having a tough time determining what to make of it. DeLillo is a New Yorker, and Falling Man is a novel that is based on 9/11--Keith Neudecker was in the WTC when the planes hit, and the book opens with him fleeing the devastation. The event reconciles him with Linnia, his estranged wife and their young son Justin. Meanwhile, Keith returns a briefcase he found on a stairwell as he was fleeing to its owner, another survivor, and they have an affair. There is also Linnia's mother's European lover Martin, who had been a terrorist of sorts in the 1960s, and sections of the novel follow one of the hijackers as he trains with Mohammed Atta. There is also the titular "Falling Man," a performance artist who appears in random locations around NYC reenacting the poses of people who jumped from the towers. Themes related to terrorism have suffused DeLillo's work since the 1970s, so 9/11 seems ripe territory for him. While there is much to recommend in the book, it lacks the brilliance of his best work, like Underworld or White Noise, which were exceptional (and often sardonic) glimpses of 20th (and 21st) century disconnected America. DeLillo has a gift for language, and much of the novel becomes psychological exploration of 9/11 and its aftermath. Keith's poker buddy died in the towers, so he becomes obsessed with professional poker. Linnia beats up her Middle Eastern neighbor. Most chilling, though, is young Justin, who has a secret game with his friends where they scan the skies with binoculars waiting for a man named "Bill Lawton" (that is, a childhood garbling of "Bin Laden"). The book has much emotional depth and resonance, but it was hard to really get into Keith and Linnia as characters, since they're just kind of unpleasant. It's a very short novel, and needs....something else, something I can't put my finger on. Falling Man is good, but I would have expected something better from DeLillo, especially on this topic.

After Dark
Haruki Murakami
May. 2007
Fiction

My absolute favorite contemporary author is bestselling (in Japan) author Haruki Murakami. I first read his magnum opus The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle when it came out in 1997, and I have been a fan of his ever since. His novels are like dreams, in that they take surface reality and combine elements of what is called in literary circles "Magic Realism": cats talk, sage figures appear dressed as Colonel Sanders or Johnny Walker, and reality becomes distorted. It’s like the literary equivalent of a Dali painting; the point isn’t to explain and understand every aspect of it, but to just take it in and let the experience wash over you--and change you. It's a very visceral way to read, and one that doesn't always lend itself to being written about (ironically). Anyway, his last novel, Kafka on the Shore was a return to brilliance after a couple of (IMO) moderate misfires, and After Dark is not as good, but is still good Murakami. A very short book (more novella; I finished it in basically two sittings) takes place in the six hours after midnight in Tokyo. A young girl, Mari Asai, is eating in a Denny's when she is visited by a series of strangers--a young jazz musician and a housekeeper at a "love hotel"--the latter of whom enlists her help in translating for a young Chinese prostitute who has been beaten up and robbed by a businessman, who fled the scene. Meanwhile, Mari's sister Eri sleeps and is pulled into a strange netherworld visible through her unplugged television set (told you this was magic realism). "Time moves in its own way in the middle of the night," says a bartender at one point. "You can't fight it," which could be the best way to sum up the book. It distorts reality, rends time and space, and is kind of a head trip in parts, but there is some wonderful dialogue between Mari and some of the other characters. My only complaint is that it was too short and, even though you expect things to be unexplained in Murakami, it seemed a bit too unexplained this time. Still, I enjoyed After Dark very much.

The Undercover Economist
Tim Harford
May. 2007
Non-Fiction

And now for something completely different. A very good introduction to basic economic thought by a Financial Times columnist. It isn't really an economics textbook per se, but rather uses the basic principles of economics to look at everyday questions, such as "Why can Starbucks get away with charging so much for coffee?" "why are poor nations poor?" and "Why has China been such a success story?" This has been billed as the companion book to Freakonomics, but I disagree; Freakonomics was basically a way of using bizarre convolutions of economic thought to examine arcane and fairly irrelevant issues while The Undercover Economist is more a way of "thinking like an economist" in everyday matters. Very enjoyable, as well.

I’ll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon
Crystal Zevon
May. 2007
Non-Fiction

Warren Zevon was one of my favorite singer/songwriters and this book, published by his ex-wife and longtime friend (published at his insistence, not as a hatchet job by a vindictive ex-spouse) is an "oral history" of Zevon's life. That is, not written in a narrative form, but rather is a collection of interviews with friends (writers like Carl Hiaasen, Dave Barry, and Stephen King), family, fellow musicians (Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, etc.), ex-lovers, etc., that tells Zevon's story. Would that everyone had a bit nicer things to say about him. Almost the entire book reads like it was a hatchet job; detail after detail of Zevon's battles with alcohol, womanizing, his own temperament, etc., wear very thin, and one only occasionally gets a glimpse of the "good" Zevon, or ultimately what made him a great songwriter and a world-class entertainer. Ultimately, it's a very depressing book. I think I'd much rather listen to his records. In fact, I think I will...

How to Lie With Statistics
Darrell Huff
May. 2007
Non-Fiction

First published in 1954, I read this classic "pop mathematics" book way back when while I was working for You Know Who, but it deserves a reread. Huff was not a mathematician; he was a magazine editor (Family Circle) who wrote many books in his lifetime, this being the only math-themed one. It is a wonderful introduction to statistical thought and the ways that statistics can be used to mislead. Even though the examples from the 1950s are a bit dated, the principles sure aren't. This is required reading...for anyone, really.

Wickett's Remedy
Myla Goldberg
May. 2007
Fiction

Hoo boy. I really wanted to really like this book. I thought Bee Season, Goldberg's first novel, was delightful, even if it went off in some bizarre directions. This one shows her mastery of language and a willingness to take chances. Essentially, Wickett's Remedy is about Lydia, an Irish woman from South Boston who, following the death of her husband and brother, becomes a volunteer nurse during the Spanish influenza epidemic of the 1910s during the First World War. What is cool about this book is that the marginal notes provide a sort of Greek chorus by characters who have died, "correcting" or commenting on action in the main text. It's a unique idea and it works very well (and is often quite funny). However, there is also a subplot (or maybe even a main plot, it's hard to tell) about the titular remedy itself. That is, "Wickett's Remedy" was a "health elixir" that Lydia's husband had invented and, after his death, his business partner stole the recipe and turned it into the nation's bestselling soda. Indeed, each chapter ends with excerpts from "modern" (that is, 1990s-era) “QD Soda” promotional literature, factory tour guides, a newsletter, and so forth. How this ties in with the Spanish influenza story...um...not so well. It seems there were two books here and at the end of the day (or at the end of the book), the two stories are not integrated in a very satisfying manner--or, indeed, at all. Even the main story ends a bit abruptly, as if someone said "Pencils down" and Goldberg was forced to stop writing and it was published wherever she happened to stop. (I was amused to note in the Acknowledgements that her editor is someone I worked with--and hated--at St. Martin's Press and I'm happy--in a vindictive sort of way--to see that he has become a crappy editor.)