This afternoon, my uncle's Minnesota West women's basketball team lost a heartbreaking 68-66 game against perennial power Anoka-Ramsey, which is the No. 1 team in the nation in the NJCAA's Division III rankings. Minnesota West came into the game ranked ninth. At one point the Lady Jays led by 20, before the Golden Rams - who have been beating teams by 20, 30, 40, 60 points during the year - put on a furious rally and survived a last-second 3-point attempt.
During the game, my cousin kept me up to date on the game with text messages. So I followed from afar as she reported on the happenings, which she only knew about because someone was texting the scores to her from the gym. Up five early. Up 12 late in the first half. Only ahead by five now, but a key player fouled out. Up four, then tied. Then the next text didn't arrive for a few minutes. I could have almost predicted the result: Anoka-Ramsey wins. The last time my cousin texted me results of the Lady Jays' games was 11 months ago at the state tournament. That night, just like today, Minnesota West lost a close one, that time in the semifinals. The lesson? A superstitious person might think it's bad luck having my cousin text me updates.
Minnesota West will face Anoka-Ramsey later in the regular season. And, if both teams take care of business, they could again square off in the state tournament and again in the region. From there? Minnesota teams have won 11 of the last 19 national championships. If the Lady Jays and Anoka do meet in the state tournament, they'll fight to see who's the best team in Minnesota. And one of them could then very well be the best in the nation.
***
I wandered down to our local library today and came back with four books. One is "The Complete Poetical Works of Keats." The library doesn't stamp the books anymore when they're checked out, so perhaps the book has left the premises in the past 30 years. But in the front, where the kindly, bespectacled librarians used to stamp it, is one lonely entry: Nov 9 1981. Wonder who took it? And did they return it on time or pay a fine? The book possesses that Old Book Smell, which is neck-in-neck with New Car Smell for best scents. How old is this book? It came out in 1899. This one isn't a newer version; the only listed copyright is the 1899 one and the Editor's Note was also written that year, 78 years after Keats' death. Keats only lived 25 years, but his works have lived on forever. And, in Inwood, so too do his collected works, even if very few people know it.
**
Bemused, bordering on morbid, curiosity sparked my interest in another book. "Apocalypse Next: The End of Civilization as we know it?" Well, at least it included a question mark. William R. Goetz wrote the book and it first came out in 1981. Thankfully this has nothing to do with the Mayan 2012 End of the World nonsense that will become unbearable next year, although, hopefully, people will stop believing in it once the calendar hits January 1, 2013. Goetz deals with the Bible, a favorite source of inspiration, guidance, spirituality and mass death.
Fanatical believers in the apocalypse fascinate me, provided they don't go out of their way to bring about an event they can't wait to arrive. A guy named Harold Camping has been in the news lately because he believes the world is ending on May 21 of this year. In other words, if you've been putting off that trip around the world or buying that big-screen television, go ahead and charge it all to the credit card. No one's going to be around in five months to harass you on the phone for payment. Camping's actually traveling with an "End Times Caravan," spreading the good word about the bad times ahead. He's done this before, previously predicting that the world would end in 1994. When it comes to predictions and guarantees, Camping's record is only slightly better than Patrick Ewing's. Yet many believe him. And when the sun rises on May 22 - well, likely rises - he'll readjust his readings of the Bible and come up with another new date. And when that time comes, he'll find plenty of people willing to hop on another caravan, perhaps one called End Times Caravan: This Time It's For Real.
Goetz relies on the Bible too. In the version I have, the 10th printing of the book, Goetz doesn't offer any exact dates, only readings of Scripture. Goetz writes about a rising Babylon, red, white and black horses and all the other standards of Revelations and the Rapture. He does give some predictions:
An invasion of Israel by "the Russian confederacy." Then the leader of the revived Roman Empire - toga! toga! toga! - "collaborates with the global false church in the initial stages of the Antichrist's rule." Things get worse from there.
Stories about Camping and other Rapture revelers often report that scholars say end times prophecies thrive during times of war and economic struggle. In other words, they thrive at all times. The world today, with high-profile wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and low-profile ones in other places, coupled with the economic debacle of the past few years, convinces people that our times are the worst ever, so of course Jesus - or whoever - will come down and put an end to things. But there have always been wars and economic trouble, the severity of which depended on where you lived. The 1400s were a time of peace? The 1700s? The 1910s? The '40s? Wars and economic troubles aren't any excuse to believe in the Rapture. If you want to believe it, offer more proof than the type of headlines that could have been written at any point in human history.
The world might end in 10 years or in a million. Or maybe not for a few billion when the sun finally burns out. And if it does end when humans are still around, the only good thing is the zealots will only have a few seconds when they can say, "Told you so."
Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Sunday, January 9, 2011
The Science of Sports - in 1962
Louise is still half a world away so doesn't know this yet, but during my trip to Minnesota I again raided my parents' basement and dug through some of my old boxes of books that are still taking up space. I brought seven or eight, maybe nine or ten, back with me, as I slowly reacquaint myself with the volumes I'll again be in possession of whenever my folks finally make good on their threat to downsize to a smaller home.
The books I brought back? Couple of David Halberstam classics - The Best and the Brightest, and The Powers that Be - along with a few Stephen King books.
But another one that made the cut came out long before I started collecting books. My dad or, more likely, one of my uncles must have bought it and it stayed out on the farm for decades, before I took a couple of boxes of my grandpa's collection. It's called Here's Why: Science in Sports. A man named George Barr wrote it and it was published in 1962. Barr, according to the inside of the book, served as a "consultant in elementary science Board of Education, New York City."
The book cost 45 cents.
And what did it promise you for a quarter and two dimes? The answers to these questions:
Ever wonder why most fast-ball pitchers are tall?
A football lineman crouches?
Basketball shoes are like "4-wheel brakes?"
The book deals primarily with the big sports: Baseball, football and basketball, along with a section on "the athlete's body." Other sports, including the broad jump, are lumped together in a single chapter, relegated to the back of the book, though they too receive the complete scientific treatment.
Barr provides the words but the book's illustrations are just as valuable for young athletes and budding scientists, and those were provided by Mildred Waltrip. The baseball section begins with pitching.
"The pitcher is one of the most important players on the baseball team. Upon him usually depends the success or loss of a game. Because of the sensitive nature of his work, all his teammates pamper him. They try in every way to save his strength and his nervous system."
And just think, Barr wrote those words four decades before starting pitchers were pampered to such a degree that they're now universally applauded anytime they go past six innings. I'm guessing solid fielding and eight runs per game would save a pitcher's nerves. Barr does note that "on average, 100 to 150 pitches are made by one pitcher during a game." A hundred and fifty. Yes, the game's changed.
Wanna know the diameter of a pitching mound? Barr offers up an experiment anyone can do at home, provided they own a No. 2 pencil and lack friends:
"Hold a pencil or a stick vertically at arm's length. Sight past this object toward the pitcher when he is in the center of the mound. Compare the height of the pitcher and the diameter of the mound by making reference marks on the pencil. Suppose you find that the mound diameter is about three times the height of the pitcher. Assuming that the pitcher is about 6 feet tall, the diameter of the mound would be 18 feet. Try this next time you see a professional game on TV or at a stadium. You will find that not all ball parks have similar pitchers' mounds."
Only three more months and you can try it yourself.
When Barr wrote his book, baseball obviously ruled America. The NFL was still years away from becoming the most popular sport in the country and basketball, for the most part, was still being played completely on the ground and wasn't even close in popularity.
Like a modern scientist, Barr confronts player safety in football. Again, an experiment, this time when explaining how helmets absorb punishment:
"Strike your skull with the eraser part of a pencil. Use enough force to make it annoying. Now place a stiff piece of cardboard, or a thin hard-covered book against your head. Strike the book with the pencil held in the same way as before. Use the same part of the head and, of course, the same force. You will find that your head does not feel the annoying shock in one spot. You will also find that the pressure is decreased."
Barr must have been one of the leading pencil scientists in the country. No matter the sport, give the man a pencil - and an eraser - and he could break it down like John Madden with a telestrator. I'm picturing my dad reading this book when he was 15 years old, standing in his bedroom, hitting himself in the head with a pencil, then again, only this time with a stray piece of cardboard acting as protection. Hey, during bad winters they were occasionally stuck out on the farm for days at a time. No cable, few provisions, no Internet, you did science experiments during your free time to keep from going mad.
A football, Barr wrote, can be called "a prolate spheroid," which sounds more like a dinosaur than a ball. It also sounds like a phrase a husky former lineman who recently finished a crossword puzzle would use in the announcers' booth today, something like, "I tell ya, Joe. When the prolate spheroid hit Owens in the abs, it took the wind out of him and he landed on his gluteus maximus."
On to hoops. "Basketball is one of the fastest foot games on earth. Only players who are in topnotch condition can play the strenuous game."
Barr obviously didn't anticipate my Wednesday night basketball league.
"Many players use two hands for set shots. In recent years, more and more of these shots are being made with only one hand. Some coaches feel that with one hand there are fewer muscles used which can upset one's aim." My friend Mike, a master of the two-handed set shot, or at least a practitioner, should have played thirty years before he did.
It's possible that Barr was a guy on the short side. Or he lost a lot of girlfriends to taller guys who also blocked his two-handed set shots. When talking about the competitive nature of the sport, he wrote, "Many people say that to make the game competitive, there should be an attempt made to match teams of approximate heights." Did many people say that, or just Mr. Barr after being victimized by a giant going over his back for offensive boards? "The elimination of the frequent center jumped helped matters somewhat. But in the main, little has been done about the problem of unmatched teams."
And little's been done since.
The book is actually extraordinarily informative, even if many of the passages today sound as awkward as lessons from old books on etiquette. Barr explained how a basketball bounces and a baseball curves. He dissected spirals and punts. Any young athlete - with a somewhat nerdy side that's interested in science - would enjoy the book today, nearly 50 years after it was published.
Just make sure the kid's got access to plenty of pencils.
The books I brought back? Couple of David Halberstam classics - The Best and the Brightest, and The Powers that Be - along with a few Stephen King books.
But another one that made the cut came out long before I started collecting books. My dad or, more likely, one of my uncles must have bought it and it stayed out on the farm for decades, before I took a couple of boxes of my grandpa's collection. It's called Here's Why: Science in Sports. A man named George Barr wrote it and it was published in 1962. Barr, according to the inside of the book, served as a "consultant in elementary science Board of Education, New York City."
The book cost 45 cents.
And what did it promise you for a quarter and two dimes? The answers to these questions:
Ever wonder why most fast-ball pitchers are tall?
A football lineman crouches?
Basketball shoes are like "4-wheel brakes?"
The book deals primarily with the big sports: Baseball, football and basketball, along with a section on "the athlete's body." Other sports, including the broad jump, are lumped together in a single chapter, relegated to the back of the book, though they too receive the complete scientific treatment.
Barr provides the words but the book's illustrations are just as valuable for young athletes and budding scientists, and those were provided by Mildred Waltrip. The baseball section begins with pitching.
"The pitcher is one of the most important players on the baseball team. Upon him usually depends the success or loss of a game. Because of the sensitive nature of his work, all his teammates pamper him. They try in every way to save his strength and his nervous system."
And just think, Barr wrote those words four decades before starting pitchers were pampered to such a degree that they're now universally applauded anytime they go past six innings. I'm guessing solid fielding and eight runs per game would save a pitcher's nerves. Barr does note that "on average, 100 to 150 pitches are made by one pitcher during a game." A hundred and fifty. Yes, the game's changed.
Wanna know the diameter of a pitching mound? Barr offers up an experiment anyone can do at home, provided they own a No. 2 pencil and lack friends:
"Hold a pencil or a stick vertically at arm's length. Sight past this object toward the pitcher when he is in the center of the mound. Compare the height of the pitcher and the diameter of the mound by making reference marks on the pencil. Suppose you find that the mound diameter is about three times the height of the pitcher. Assuming that the pitcher is about 6 feet tall, the diameter of the mound would be 18 feet. Try this next time you see a professional game on TV or at a stadium. You will find that not all ball parks have similar pitchers' mounds."
Only three more months and you can try it yourself.
When Barr wrote his book, baseball obviously ruled America. The NFL was still years away from becoming the most popular sport in the country and basketball, for the most part, was still being played completely on the ground and wasn't even close in popularity.
Like a modern scientist, Barr confronts player safety in football. Again, an experiment, this time when explaining how helmets absorb punishment:
"Strike your skull with the eraser part of a pencil. Use enough force to make it annoying. Now place a stiff piece of cardboard, or a thin hard-covered book against your head. Strike the book with the pencil held in the same way as before. Use the same part of the head and, of course, the same force. You will find that your head does not feel the annoying shock in one spot. You will also find that the pressure is decreased."
Barr must have been one of the leading pencil scientists in the country. No matter the sport, give the man a pencil - and an eraser - and he could break it down like John Madden with a telestrator. I'm picturing my dad reading this book when he was 15 years old, standing in his bedroom, hitting himself in the head with a pencil, then again, only this time with a stray piece of cardboard acting as protection. Hey, during bad winters they were occasionally stuck out on the farm for days at a time. No cable, few provisions, no Internet, you did science experiments during your free time to keep from going mad.
A football, Barr wrote, can be called "a prolate spheroid," which sounds more like a dinosaur than a ball. It also sounds like a phrase a husky former lineman who recently finished a crossword puzzle would use in the announcers' booth today, something like, "I tell ya, Joe. When the prolate spheroid hit Owens in the abs, it took the wind out of him and he landed on his gluteus maximus."
On to hoops. "Basketball is one of the fastest foot games on earth. Only players who are in topnotch condition can play the strenuous game."
Barr obviously didn't anticipate my Wednesday night basketball league.
"Many players use two hands for set shots. In recent years, more and more of these shots are being made with only one hand. Some coaches feel that with one hand there are fewer muscles used which can upset one's aim." My friend Mike, a master of the two-handed set shot, or at least a practitioner, should have played thirty years before he did.
It's possible that Barr was a guy on the short side. Or he lost a lot of girlfriends to taller guys who also blocked his two-handed set shots. When talking about the competitive nature of the sport, he wrote, "Many people say that to make the game competitive, there should be an attempt made to match teams of approximate heights." Did many people say that, or just Mr. Barr after being victimized by a giant going over his back for offensive boards? "The elimination of the frequent center jumped helped matters somewhat. But in the main, little has been done about the problem of unmatched teams."
And little's been done since.
The book is actually extraordinarily informative, even if many of the passages today sound as awkward as lessons from old books on etiquette. Barr explained how a basketball bounces and a baseball curves. He dissected spirals and punts. Any young athlete - with a somewhat nerdy side that's interested in science - would enjoy the book today, nearly 50 years after it was published.
Just make sure the kid's got access to plenty of pencils.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Browsing the bookstore
Fought the crowds today and wandered through our favorite Barnes & Noble in the city, the one on the Upper West Side that's shutting down in just a few weeks, to be replaced by a clothing store. Because there's a distinct lack of quality clothing stores in New York City.
Some observations.
* One book in particular caught my eye in the new releases section. Fury: A Memoir, by Koren Zailckas. The book, from the author of Smashed, has earned rave reviews. But apparently no one is concerned that the book ruins any chance I'd ever have of using my name in a future memoir. Salman Rushdie used Fury for the name of a novel and Faulkner had it as part of one of his most famous works. Those classic works are different, those are fiction. This is a memoir. I think the word Fury should have been saved for someone with that name who was penning their autobiography, or, at the least, it should have been reserved for someone writing a biography of a person named Fury. Now what can I name my memoir that could possibly sound as cool as Fury? Zailckas: A Memoir by Shawn Fury doesn't quite have the same ring.
* It's not a new book but is one I hadn't seen before. Washed Up: The Curious Journeys of Flotsam and Jetsam. Another entry in the seemingly never-ending list of books that are a detailed history of something you'd never think needed a detailed history. Like books on salt, cod, toilets and menstrual cycles, this one looks fairly fascinating, as author Skye Moody attempts to figure out where everything that washes up on shores comes from. We're only a few years away from the story of Floss, and how it changed the world.
* The Best American writing books are always popular gifts. Each year I buy the sports one and usually pick up the crime, science and essay titles as well, along with the non-required reading entry. They're great anthologies and for writers, something to strive for. The sports one this year was, as usual, superb. Buy the book for all the stories, but I'll give a link to one of the best. It's Mike Sager's profile of Todd Marinovich, which ran in Esquire in April 2009. For the longest time Marinovich was the poster boy for everything that could go wrong for a kid under the direction of a sports-crazed parent. I can remember watching a special on Marinovich when he was maybe a junior in high school. Even then the stories of his father, Marv, were legendary. Todd was raised from birth to be a quarterback and, in many ways, his dad's plan worked. Todd played at USC and in the NFL. Of course, it ultimately didn't work out, unless Marv's plan also involved turning his son into an often-jailed addict who squandered his physical talents because of the emotional problems caused, in large part, by his upbringing. Sager's story catches up with both Marinovich men. The only problem is, instead of seeing it as a warning about what not to do, many parents might read the story and regard it as a how-to guide. "Sure, the kid did some heroin, but he got a Division I scholarship!"
* Speaking of dads who might not have done the best job of preparing their prodigies for life in the real world, I saw this book: His Father's Son. Earl and Tiger Woods. It's by Tom Callahan, who knew the late Earl Woods very well. He details Tiger's upbringing and also writes about Earl's, um, issues with women. The issue being he liked them a lot, especially ones who weren't his wife. This, as you may have read, also became an issue in Tiger's life.
* Today Michael Lewis is probably best known for his books Moneyball and The Blind Side. But before he became one of the top nonfiction writers in the country, he worked for Salomon Brothers. He had a brief career there but it led to his first book, Liar's Poker, which I finally bought today. Lewis made a lot of money with Salomon and he's made a lot of money as a writer, thanks to his best-selling books and magazine work. How valued were Lewis's contributions? When the short-lived Portfolio magazine started, a rumor circulated that Lewis made $12 a word for his 4,000-word-plus features. This in a business where a dollar a word is considered to be a pretty good deal. Many people dismissed the rumor and Lewis eventually left for Vanity Fair, where's probably pulling in less than $12 a word but quite a bit more than a buck a word.
Still, I'm sure he'll be grateful for the $2 I added to his next royalty statement.
Some observations.
* One book in particular caught my eye in the new releases section. Fury: A Memoir, by Koren Zailckas. The book, from the author of Smashed, has earned rave reviews. But apparently no one is concerned that the book ruins any chance I'd ever have of using my name in a future memoir. Salman Rushdie used Fury for the name of a novel and Faulkner had it as part of one of his most famous works. Those classic works are different, those are fiction. This is a memoir. I think the word Fury should have been saved for someone with that name who was penning their autobiography, or, at the least, it should have been reserved for someone writing a biography of a person named Fury. Now what can I name my memoir that could possibly sound as cool as Fury? Zailckas: A Memoir by Shawn Fury doesn't quite have the same ring.
* It's not a new book but is one I hadn't seen before. Washed Up: The Curious Journeys of Flotsam and Jetsam. Another entry in the seemingly never-ending list of books that are a detailed history of something you'd never think needed a detailed history. Like books on salt, cod, toilets and menstrual cycles, this one looks fairly fascinating, as author Skye Moody attempts to figure out where everything that washes up on shores comes from. We're only a few years away from the story of Floss, and how it changed the world.
* The Best American writing books are always popular gifts. Each year I buy the sports one and usually pick up the crime, science and essay titles as well, along with the non-required reading entry. They're great anthologies and for writers, something to strive for. The sports one this year was, as usual, superb. Buy the book for all the stories, but I'll give a link to one of the best. It's Mike Sager's profile of Todd Marinovich, which ran in Esquire in April 2009. For the longest time Marinovich was the poster boy for everything that could go wrong for a kid under the direction of a sports-crazed parent. I can remember watching a special on Marinovich when he was maybe a junior in high school. Even then the stories of his father, Marv, were legendary. Todd was raised from birth to be a quarterback and, in many ways, his dad's plan worked. Todd played at USC and in the NFL. Of course, it ultimately didn't work out, unless Marv's plan also involved turning his son into an often-jailed addict who squandered his physical talents because of the emotional problems caused, in large part, by his upbringing. Sager's story catches up with both Marinovich men. The only problem is, instead of seeing it as a warning about what not to do, many parents might read the story and regard it as a how-to guide. "Sure, the kid did some heroin, but he got a Division I scholarship!"
* Speaking of dads who might not have done the best job of preparing their prodigies for life in the real world, I saw this book: His Father's Son. Earl and Tiger Woods. It's by Tom Callahan, who knew the late Earl Woods very well. He details Tiger's upbringing and also writes about Earl's, um, issues with women. The issue being he liked them a lot, especially ones who weren't his wife. This, as you may have read, also became an issue in Tiger's life.
* Today Michael Lewis is probably best known for his books Moneyball and The Blind Side. But before he became one of the top nonfiction writers in the country, he worked for Salomon Brothers. He had a brief career there but it led to his first book, Liar's Poker, which I finally bought today. Lewis made a lot of money with Salomon and he's made a lot of money as a writer, thanks to his best-selling books and magazine work. How valued were Lewis's contributions? When the short-lived Portfolio magazine started, a rumor circulated that Lewis made $12 a word for his 4,000-word-plus features. This in a business where a dollar a word is considered to be a pretty good deal. Many people dismissed the rumor and Lewis eventually left for Vanity Fair, where's probably pulling in less than $12 a word but quite a bit more than a buck a word.
Still, I'm sure he'll be grateful for the $2 I added to his next royalty statement.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Catcher in the Rye banned? Check. Merriam-Webster? Check?
Banned Books Week took place a few weeks ago. It started in 1982 and is a "national celebration of the freedom to read." When I think of the phrase "banned book" the first image that comes to mind is the mom ranting and raving at a PTA meeting in a small Iowa town during Field of Dreams.
"And I say smut and filth like this has no place in our schools."
"The so-called novels of Terence Man endorse promiscuity, godlessness, the mongrelization of the races and disrespect to high-ranking officers of the United States Army."
That scene fits the stereotype many people have of passionate book banners. Middle-aged moms in small Midwestern towns who attack any book that discusses sex or drugs. And there are plenty of real-life middle-aged moms in Midwestern towns who do just that, year after year, complaining about The Catcher in the Rye, Harry Potter, and Judy Blume books.
But as this map shows, people want to restrict books on the East Coast and West, in the Midwest and the South. It's not a regional thing and it's not a small town thing. In a time when people lament how difficult it is to get a child to read anything that's longer than a text message, it seems a bit odd that there are still thousands of people who make it their mission to restrict the types of books available to kids in their school libraries.
Shouldn't a parent have the right to decide what their child reads? Shouldn't they be able to restrict what their innocent, wide-eyed, never-says-a-swear-word-and-doesn't-know-what-witches-are child reads? Sure. But it becomes a First Amendment issue when those same people try to decide what other people's children are allowed to read. When these people petition school boards to remove certain books, that's when they cross the line. Or, as the American Library Association notes in a newsletter, people "must not call on governmental or public agencies to prevent others from reading or seeing that material." Often times, challenges fail, but even those have a long-term effect, as a school board or library may hesitate in the future before buying a book, out of fear someone will one day accuse them of promoting cocaine use, treason and, worst of all, masturbation.
What kind of material are we talking about? A list of some of the most-challenged titles from 2009:
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
To Kill a Mockingbird
Twilight
Catcher in the Rye
And Tango Makes Three
Yes, 60 years after publication, Catcher in the Rye still draws attacks. "Sexually explicit, religious viewpoint, not suitable for age group." And those three things are supposed to frighten people away from it?
The ALA releases a newsletter and bibliography detailing the stories behind many challenges. For example, in West Bend, Wisconsin - which had several controversies from fragile, overly concerned citizens - a group challenged Baby Be-Bop. The reason? Four men "belonging to the Christian Civil Liberties Union sought $30,000 apiece for emotional distress they suffered from the West Bend, Wis. Community Memorial Library for displaying a copy of the book. The claim states, 'specific words used in the book are derogatory and slanderous to all males' and 'the words can permeate violence and put one's life in possible jeopardy, adults and children alike.'"
The challenge failed, by a 9-0 vote. No word on whether the men recovered from the slanderous terms.
Book challenges cross political and racial lines. They can come from any group, from any state. And when they restrict any viewpoint, they damage their community. Again: If someone wants to keep little Johnny from reading about atheists who don't believe in the power of Christ's blood or vampires who crave blood a bit too much, that's their choice. I'd almost always disagree, but the parent has the right. What they can't do is crawl through a library's shelves searching for titles that personally offend them, just so the book can be removed or put in a brown paper bag.
How crazy can people get? In Menifee, California, a parent complained about Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. Why? A child "came across the term oral sex. Officials said the district is forming a committee to consider a permanent classroom ban of the dictionary." The kid surely just stumbled upon the phrase, while looking up the definition of oracle or orality. An idea? Instead of sprinting to the school district, talk to the kid. Or, do what parents have been doing for hundreds of years and don't talk to the kid. But take responsibility. Don't blame the dictionary for doing what dictionaries do. And don't blame the school board and library for doing what libraries do.
People have challenged books for decades and will never stop. Fortunately, there are people who will never stop fighting for books.
"And I say smut and filth like this has no place in our schools."
"The so-called novels of Terence Man endorse promiscuity, godlessness, the mongrelization of the races and disrespect to high-ranking officers of the United States Army."
That scene fits the stereotype many people have of passionate book banners. Middle-aged moms in small Midwestern towns who attack any book that discusses sex or drugs. And there are plenty of real-life middle-aged moms in Midwestern towns who do just that, year after year, complaining about The Catcher in the Rye, Harry Potter, and Judy Blume books.
But as this map shows, people want to restrict books on the East Coast and West, in the Midwest and the South. It's not a regional thing and it's not a small town thing. In a time when people lament how difficult it is to get a child to read anything that's longer than a text message, it seems a bit odd that there are still thousands of people who make it their mission to restrict the types of books available to kids in their school libraries.
Shouldn't a parent have the right to decide what their child reads? Shouldn't they be able to restrict what their innocent, wide-eyed, never-says-a-swear-word-and-doesn't-know-what-witches-are child reads? Sure. But it becomes a First Amendment issue when those same people try to decide what other people's children are allowed to read. When these people petition school boards to remove certain books, that's when they cross the line. Or, as the American Library Association notes in a newsletter, people "must not call on governmental or public agencies to prevent others from reading or seeing that material." Often times, challenges fail, but even those have a long-term effect, as a school board or library may hesitate in the future before buying a book, out of fear someone will one day accuse them of promoting cocaine use, treason and, worst of all, masturbation.
What kind of material are we talking about? A list of some of the most-challenged titles from 2009:
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
To Kill a Mockingbird
Twilight
Catcher in the Rye
And Tango Makes Three
Yes, 60 years after publication, Catcher in the Rye still draws attacks. "Sexually explicit, religious viewpoint, not suitable for age group." And those three things are supposed to frighten people away from it?
The ALA releases a newsletter and bibliography detailing the stories behind many challenges. For example, in West Bend, Wisconsin - which had several controversies from fragile, overly concerned citizens - a group challenged Baby Be-Bop. The reason? Four men "belonging to the Christian Civil Liberties Union sought $30,000 apiece for emotional distress they suffered from the West Bend, Wis. Community Memorial Library for displaying a copy of the book. The claim states, 'specific words used in the book are derogatory and slanderous to all males' and 'the words can permeate violence and put one's life in possible jeopardy, adults and children alike.'"
The challenge failed, by a 9-0 vote. No word on whether the men recovered from the slanderous terms.
Book challenges cross political and racial lines. They can come from any group, from any state. And when they restrict any viewpoint, they damage their community. Again: If someone wants to keep little Johnny from reading about atheists who don't believe in the power of Christ's blood or vampires who crave blood a bit too much, that's their choice. I'd almost always disagree, but the parent has the right. What they can't do is crawl through a library's shelves searching for titles that personally offend them, just so the book can be removed or put in a brown paper bag.
How crazy can people get? In Menifee, California, a parent complained about Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. Why? A child "came across the term oral sex. Officials said the district is forming a committee to consider a permanent classroom ban of the dictionary." The kid surely just stumbled upon the phrase, while looking up the definition of oracle or orality. An idea? Instead of sprinting to the school district, talk to the kid. Or, do what parents have been doing for hundreds of years and don't talk to the kid. But take responsibility. Don't blame the dictionary for doing what dictionaries do. And don't blame the school board and library for doing what libraries do.
People have challenged books for decades and will never stop. Fortunately, there are people who will never stop fighting for books.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Coughing with Michael Chabon
The New Yorker Festival opened Friday, the annual three-day bonanza where famous authors, writers, directors, actors and editors sit on stages in front of large audiences and discuss their craft in theaters across the city. I'd never gone before. Usually I'd see an ad in the New Yorker touting the event, but I'd see it a week or two after tickets went on sale, which is what happens when the magazines pile up on a table in the living room. Finally this year I saw the ad in time. Two minutes after tickets went on sale, I bought a pair of them.
Sunday I'm attending a conversation between New Yorker editor David Remnick and writer Ian Frazier. Two of the best in nonfiction.
But on Friday I saw one of my writing idols, Michael Chabon. The author of Wonder Boys, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, numerous other novels and a couple of nonfiction collections appeared onstage with fellow author Zadie Smith, another writer who can not be introduced at an event without the moderator throwing the word "acclaimed" before her name.
Smith read a nonfiction piece, a story about her father, a World War II veteran who didn't want to be known as a hero or brave, even though he was both.
Chabon followed. Instead of reciting passages from one of his famous books, he read a work in progress, a treat for those in the audience, many of whom have surely consumed all of his published words. The piece focused on a home birth. To describe it beyond that would be impossible, except to say all of Chabon's skills - from the descriptions to the humor to the incomparable word play - were on display.
About three-quarters of a way through Chabon's reading, I suddenly, inexplicably, horrifyingly, embarrassingly, choked. I wasn't drinking or eating. I didn't have any gum in my mouth. But somehow I found myself blurting out a cough, followed quickly by another and the feeling in my chest and throat let me know this would be a long coughing spell, which quickly devolved into a coughing fit. I left my seat almost immediately and retreated to the rear of the theater. It felt like a piece of popcorn had lodged in my throat, but the last time I ate popcorn was at a movie three weeks ago. If it was popcorn, I had more problems than a cough.
I coughed several more times in the back of the theater before finally going out the door to compose myself. Thankfully, another attendee took attention away from my mysterious medical issue. As I walked to the rear of the theater, I watched three people drag a young man who had fainted. They pulled him out into the waiting area, sat him in a chair and stayed with him until he recovered. Could have been the heat. Or maybe it was Chabon's graphic description of a bloody vagina that made the poor guy woozy. As brilliant as Chabon's writing is, a bloody vagina is still a bloody vagina. And, actually, because of Chabon's skills, the mental images are even clearer. I'm sure the guy blamed the heat.
My coughing stopped and I returned to my sixth-row seat for the question and answer session. One woman asked how the writers feel about fiction compared to nonfiction. Smith finds nonfiction easier to write, Chabon's the opposite. Another woman said she'd come all the way from Berkeley to see Chabon. It quickly became obvious - from her body language, longing in her voice and reluctance to leave the microphone, even after Chabon answered her question - that I didn't have to worry about being accused of being the attendee who would most likely stalk Chabon. If the moderator hadn't pointed to another person who had a question, the lady might still be standing there.
Like many in the audience, she was impressed by Chabon's ability to write about childbirth and wondered if there'd be an equivalent event that men go through. "Whaling," he said.
I walked to one of the two microphones and asked my question. I've spoken with other writers about Chabon's famous use of similes and metaphors. No one uses them like Chabon. They pop off the page, one after another, sometimes three or four in a paragraph. On a journalism board, during a discussion of similes, a few writers debated whether you should use a simile if it takes more than a few minutes to think of it. In other words, if you have to slave over it for too long, it's probably not any good. I asked Chabon what's it like for him. He conjures up phrases that no one else would think of, but after you've read them, it becomes impossible to imagine the person or event being described in any other way. He writes sentences I've memorized by heart, lines that should be required reading in all English classes and recited even before schoolchildren say the Pledge of Allegiance each morning. In his review for The Yiddish Policemen's Union in New York Magazine, Sam Anderson listed some of Chabon's best lines:
The detective's ex-wife "accepts a compliment as if it's a can of soda that she suspects him of having shaken." In a crowded apartment, two babies are "stashed away on the balcony like disused skis." Rain is "tossed in vandalistic handfuls at the windshield."
Similes! I was talking to Michael Chabon about similes. This is like asking Magic Johnson about the art of the half-court bounce pass. It's like asking Warren Buffett about investments. It's like...well, some other simile.
His answer? They're easy for him. When writing fiction, he might occasionally struggle with plotting the story or other big-picture situations. But those unique phrases that liven up every page of his books are practically effortless. I don't know for sure whether he believes a simile is worthless if you have to spend more than a minute thinking of it, but that's only because he's probably never done it himself.
The event lasted a little over an hour. On my walk back to the subway, I strolled in front of the poor guy who passed out at the event, as he asked his female companion what exactly happened. Nothing much. He fainted and had to be hauled out of a theater in front of a few hundred people while ushers and security looked at him with a mixture of pity and anxiety.
And he missed hearing the best writer of his generation read his work and discuss his craft.
Sunday I'm attending a conversation between New Yorker editor David Remnick and writer Ian Frazier. Two of the best in nonfiction.
But on Friday I saw one of my writing idols, Michael Chabon. The author of Wonder Boys, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, numerous other novels and a couple of nonfiction collections appeared onstage with fellow author Zadie Smith, another writer who can not be introduced at an event without the moderator throwing the word "acclaimed" before her name.
Smith read a nonfiction piece, a story about her father, a World War II veteran who didn't want to be known as a hero or brave, even though he was both.
Chabon followed. Instead of reciting passages from one of his famous books, he read a work in progress, a treat for those in the audience, many of whom have surely consumed all of his published words. The piece focused on a home birth. To describe it beyond that would be impossible, except to say all of Chabon's skills - from the descriptions to the humor to the incomparable word play - were on display.
About three-quarters of a way through Chabon's reading, I suddenly, inexplicably, horrifyingly, embarrassingly, choked. I wasn't drinking or eating. I didn't have any gum in my mouth. But somehow I found myself blurting out a cough, followed quickly by another and the feeling in my chest and throat let me know this would be a long coughing spell, which quickly devolved into a coughing fit. I left my seat almost immediately and retreated to the rear of the theater. It felt like a piece of popcorn had lodged in my throat, but the last time I ate popcorn was at a movie three weeks ago. If it was popcorn, I had more problems than a cough.
I coughed several more times in the back of the theater before finally going out the door to compose myself. Thankfully, another attendee took attention away from my mysterious medical issue. As I walked to the rear of the theater, I watched three people drag a young man who had fainted. They pulled him out into the waiting area, sat him in a chair and stayed with him until he recovered. Could have been the heat. Or maybe it was Chabon's graphic description of a bloody vagina that made the poor guy woozy. As brilliant as Chabon's writing is, a bloody vagina is still a bloody vagina. And, actually, because of Chabon's skills, the mental images are even clearer. I'm sure the guy blamed the heat.
My coughing stopped and I returned to my sixth-row seat for the question and answer session. One woman asked how the writers feel about fiction compared to nonfiction. Smith finds nonfiction easier to write, Chabon's the opposite. Another woman said she'd come all the way from Berkeley to see Chabon. It quickly became obvious - from her body language, longing in her voice and reluctance to leave the microphone, even after Chabon answered her question - that I didn't have to worry about being accused of being the attendee who would most likely stalk Chabon. If the moderator hadn't pointed to another person who had a question, the lady might still be standing there.
Like many in the audience, she was impressed by Chabon's ability to write about childbirth and wondered if there'd be an equivalent event that men go through. "Whaling," he said.
I walked to one of the two microphones and asked my question. I've spoken with other writers about Chabon's famous use of similes and metaphors. No one uses them like Chabon. They pop off the page, one after another, sometimes three or four in a paragraph. On a journalism board, during a discussion of similes, a few writers debated whether you should use a simile if it takes more than a few minutes to think of it. In other words, if you have to slave over it for too long, it's probably not any good. I asked Chabon what's it like for him. He conjures up phrases that no one else would think of, but after you've read them, it becomes impossible to imagine the person or event being described in any other way. He writes sentences I've memorized by heart, lines that should be required reading in all English classes and recited even before schoolchildren say the Pledge of Allegiance each morning. In his review for The Yiddish Policemen's Union in New York Magazine, Sam Anderson listed some of Chabon's best lines:
The detective's ex-wife "accepts a compliment as if it's a can of soda that she suspects him of having shaken." In a crowded apartment, two babies are "stashed away on the balcony like disused skis." Rain is "tossed in vandalistic handfuls at the windshield."
Similes! I was talking to Michael Chabon about similes. This is like asking Magic Johnson about the art of the half-court bounce pass. It's like asking Warren Buffett about investments. It's like...well, some other simile.
His answer? They're easy for him. When writing fiction, he might occasionally struggle with plotting the story or other big-picture situations. But those unique phrases that liven up every page of his books are practically effortless. I don't know for sure whether he believes a simile is worthless if you have to spend more than a minute thinking of it, but that's only because he's probably never done it himself.
The event lasted a little over an hour. On my walk back to the subway, I strolled in front of the poor guy who passed out at the event, as he asked his female companion what exactly happened. Nothing much. He fainted and had to be hauled out of a theater in front of a few hundred people while ushers and security looked at him with a mixture of pity and anxiety.
And he missed hearing the best writer of his generation read his work and discuss his craft.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Death of a bookstore
The first time I went to the Barnes & Noble at 66th Street and Broadway in New York City, a mentally disturbed middle-aged man in blue jeans and a Yankees hat screamed at me in the store's cafe area. He accused me of being a gay Irishman. He said I was in for an ass-kicking. It was April of 2004 and I'd only been in the city a week or two, so the confrontation served as my introduction to that Barnes & Noble and life in New York. He sat at a nearby table, ignoring his book while yelling at me. I briefly made eye contact and immediately regretted it. Finally I picked up my bag and left the cafe. The other customers probably considered me a coward, even as they cowered away from the lunatic who now sought a new target.
In the six years since that incident, that Barnes & Noble became our most frequently visited store in the city. Over the years I've bought dozens of books from there and spent hundreds of hours wandering around the massive store. It had three stories of books, a basement full of DVDs and CDs, and a fourth floor cafe that was also home to hundreds of magazine titles and, on at least one day, a deranged reader who loved the Yanks. It will all be gone in four months.
Last month, Barnes & Noble announced it would close the store this coming January. The thing that kills million of New Yorkers - high rent - fatally wounded the store. The current lease was ending and the increased rent "made it economically impossible for us to extend the lease," said a spokeswoman. A Century 21 clothing store will take its place. Barnes & Noble itself is in trouble, as Amazon, e-books and a changing publishing world conspire to damage the behemoth chain that has, of course, also been the downfall of smaller bookstores.
Some people feel little sympathy for the company's plight, citing those closures of small, independent bookstores who may have been victims of Barnes & Noble's once-overwhelming success. Feel bad for Barnes & Noble? Might as well feel pity for the fall of the Soviet Union.
But I will mourn this store's closing, for what it means to the company's future and, more importantly, what it means for publishing.
The store at 66th Street holds special memories for me. One day in September 2005, I sprinted up the escalator to the third floor, then walked to the sports books. There in the football section, near some John Feinstein books, sat my just-released book, Keeping the Faith. There were three copies. It was, obviously, one of the coolest moments of my life. Nineteen months after sitting in the cafe while a disturbed man threatened me and I wondered what in the hell life was going to be like in New York, I bought a copy of my own book from that store.
However, nostalgia has little to do with my regrets about the store's demise. There are still numerous Barnes & Noble stores in the city - there's actually another branch just up the street, at 82nd and Broadway. The closing frightens because it's just one more sign - a four-story sign - that the book industry is going through tough times. Like newspapers, magazines, movies, and television, the book world is struggling to adapt to the difficult economy and the changing media world.
Walk into any Barnes & Noble today and you'll be greeted by a display for the Nook, the company's entry into e-book readers. The sales folks are helpful, knowledgeable and enthusiastic. They talk about its virtues, reliability and convenience. And I have absolutely no desire to ever own one.
No matter what happens to bookstores, people will keep reading and they'll keep reading books, only they might be reading them on screens instead of on paper. Whatever keeps the industry alive, I support, though the money authors earn on e-books is nothing compared to what they now make on the real thing. Maybe that can change.
But I still want book books. I want to browse and buy, hold them, drop them, write in them and page through them. In the end it's always about the words, but for me it's also about the packaging. I read a screen all day at work and sit in front of one while writing or surfing online. Books provide me the one chance to unplug while unwinding.
And in today's world Barnes & Noble provides some of the best chances to do all of those things. Some people speculate that if the large chains eventually completely flounder, independent stores will regain their prominence. It's a romantic idea, though one that might not do much to help the publishing industry. I love independent bookstores and many still, thankfully, thrive in the city. But aside from The Strand - my true favorite store in the city, which, unfortunately, is something of a trek for us - the 66th Street Barnes & Noble has long been our book-buying paradise.
It has three levels of books. Like every Barnes & Noble store, this one possesses a unique smell, which I can't trace but was probably created in a lab devoted to soothing aromas. Company scientists mixed some old books and new coffee beans and created a perfume that each store pumps through the vents. First floor holds the new releases, which I'll always browse. Oh, Bob Woodward's got another new one. Guy's prolific. There's that new biography on Roosevelt. Michael Chabon's book of essays is finally out? Great. Glenn Beck writes novels?
The fiction's on the second floor, the classics mixing with romances and thrillers, poets mingling with hacks and essayists. I'll search for a good paperback or a classic I somehow avoided in school. The third floor's my favorite, the nonfiction. Sports, biography, history, film, TV, music, true crime, writing books, humor, everything. It's nearly impossible for me to spend time in that section without heading down the escalator clutching a book that will set us back between $11 and $25.
If Louise is with me, I'll inevitably end up in the cafe, where she will have worked on securing us a table. Unlike the stores in Minnesota, where there's always ample free space, the tables at this cafe seem to have a waiting list that's longer than the one for Green Bay Packer season tickets. The cafe workers frequently make announcements over the loudspeaker, declaring that cafe seating is for cafe customers only, and that if you do not have an overpriced coffee in your hand or a chocolate chip cookie stuffed into your face, you will either be buying one or ejected from the area. Your choice.
We'll sit there for an hour or so, reading through the books we've brought up, taking notes, sipping orange juice, avoiding the bookstore bouncers. By the time we leave, we'll have spent two or three hours on the premises. As we wind our way down and again pass through the nonfiction and fiction sections, we might stop to browse some more, entranced by the sight of all those books and the smell of all that coffee and paper. That's how we've spent dozens of nights during our six years together in New York City.
The store closes in January and we'll take our little family tradition to another store, in another part of the city. Our bookstore nights will survive, just as long as bookstores themselves stay alive.
However, nostalgia has little to do with my regrets about the store's demise. There are still numerous Barnes & Noble stores in the city - there's actually another branch just up the street, at 82nd and Broadway. The closing frightens because it's just one more sign - a four-story sign - that the book industry is going through tough times. Like newspapers, magazines, movies, and television, the book world is struggling to adapt to the difficult economy and the changing media world.
Walk into any Barnes & Noble today and you'll be greeted by a display for the Nook, the company's entry into e-book readers. The sales folks are helpful, knowledgeable and enthusiastic. They talk about its virtues, reliability and convenience. And I have absolutely no desire to ever own one.
No matter what happens to bookstores, people will keep reading and they'll keep reading books, only they might be reading them on screens instead of on paper. Whatever keeps the industry alive, I support, though the money authors earn on e-books is nothing compared to what they now make on the real thing. Maybe that can change.
But I still want book books. I want to browse and buy, hold them, drop them, write in them and page through them. In the end it's always about the words, but for me it's also about the packaging. I read a screen all day at work and sit in front of one while writing or surfing online. Books provide me the one chance to unplug while unwinding.
And in today's world Barnes & Noble provides some of the best chances to do all of those things. Some people speculate that if the large chains eventually completely flounder, independent stores will regain their prominence. It's a romantic idea, though one that might not do much to help the publishing industry. I love independent bookstores and many still, thankfully, thrive in the city. But aside from The Strand - my true favorite store in the city, which, unfortunately, is something of a trek for us - the 66th Street Barnes & Noble has long been our book-buying paradise.
It has three levels of books. Like every Barnes & Noble store, this one possesses a unique smell, which I can't trace but was probably created in a lab devoted to soothing aromas. Company scientists mixed some old books and new coffee beans and created a perfume that each store pumps through the vents. First floor holds the new releases, which I'll always browse. Oh, Bob Woodward's got another new one. Guy's prolific. There's that new biography on Roosevelt. Michael Chabon's book of essays is finally out? Great. Glenn Beck writes novels?
The fiction's on the second floor, the classics mixing with romances and thrillers, poets mingling with hacks and essayists. I'll search for a good paperback or a classic I somehow avoided in school. The third floor's my favorite, the nonfiction. Sports, biography, history, film, TV, music, true crime, writing books, humor, everything. It's nearly impossible for me to spend time in that section without heading down the escalator clutching a book that will set us back between $11 and $25.
If Louise is with me, I'll inevitably end up in the cafe, where she will have worked on securing us a table. Unlike the stores in Minnesota, where there's always ample free space, the tables at this cafe seem to have a waiting list that's longer than the one for Green Bay Packer season tickets. The cafe workers frequently make announcements over the loudspeaker, declaring that cafe seating is for cafe customers only, and that if you do not have an overpriced coffee in your hand or a chocolate chip cookie stuffed into your face, you will either be buying one or ejected from the area. Your choice.
We'll sit there for an hour or so, reading through the books we've brought up, taking notes, sipping orange juice, avoiding the bookstore bouncers. By the time we leave, we'll have spent two or three hours on the premises. As we wind our way down and again pass through the nonfiction and fiction sections, we might stop to browse some more, entranced by the sight of all those books and the smell of all that coffee and paper. That's how we've spent dozens of nights during our six years together in New York City.
The store closes in January and we'll take our little family tradition to another store, in another part of the city. Our bookstore nights will survive, just as long as bookstores themselves stay alive.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Books from the basement, Volume I
Visiting the family in Minnesota. Have already hit the Dairy Queen. Whined about Dick Bremer. Complained about the humidity. And tonight I engaged in my twice-a-year trip to my parents' basement, where you can find birth certificates, obituaries, congratulations on graduations and sympathies for deaths. There are tax forms, toys, golf clubs and magazines. And books.
Boxes of my parents' books. And boxes of my own books. I still have about eight or nine boxes crammed with hardcovers and paperbacks taking up space in the back area known simply as the junk room. Junk is such a harsh word, though. And misleading, especially when it comes to the books. Someday we'll have to take these back and find space for them and Louise might curse that day, but for now they still sit where they've been for half a decade, safe and secure in their cardboard homes. On every trip back to the Midwest, I like to dig through them for lost treasures and old memories. Sometimes I'll take one home. Usually I read it and return it.
Tonight I pawed through some old sports ones. I found several copies of the old The Complete Handbook of Pro Basketball, which came out every year, profiled each team and player, provided predictions and presented feature stories from NBA writers around the country. I think I bought one every from 1985 through at least 1991. Before each NBA season, I'd scour the Mankato B. Dalton bookstore for the latest issue. As far as I know they're no longer published. Zander Hollander edited the books. The biographies of each player were always my favorite section. These bios praised the greats and buried the worthless. The tone was sarcastic and snarky, long before the latter word became the default setting for way too many writers.
The one I'm looking at now is the 1989 edition. Magic Johnson and Isiah Thomas grace the cover. They're kissing. It's a picture from the previous year's finals, when the two guards and then good friends shocked many with their Morganna-like greetings before each contest. The handbook features stories on Mark Jackson, who was an outstanding point guard long before he started rattling off increasingly annoying phrases involving words like "momma," "there," "goes," "that," and "man." There's a story on great love matches in athletic history, a tongue-in-cheek analysis of the Magic-Isiah coupling. There's a fun collection called the All-Flea Market team, Jan Hubbard's picks for various teams, such as the All-Big-Mac team, which was filled with large fellas like John Bagley, Pearl Washington and Antoine Carr.
The experts picked the Lakers to defeat the Celtics in the Finals, but the Pistons and Magic Johnson's balky hamstring dashed those predictions.
The biographies of each player were the highlight of every handbook. Behold:
Bill Wennington: A great cheerleader. Has excellent technique waving his towel from the bench. Now you know why we don't go to Canada to look for more basketball players.
Uwe Blab: They say he's a long-term project. At the rate he's progressing, he'll be ready to contribute in the league right about the time he qualifies for Social Security. A matching bookend of uselessness for the last two years with Bill Wennington on the bench.
Joe Barry Carroll: A prolific promulgator of polysyllabic palaver. In other words, he likes to use big words. Fancies himself as a real intellectual. It would be nicer if he just worked harder at playing basketball.
Allen Leavell: Like a bad cold, he keeps coming back. As long as he is a starter or a significant performer, then you know his club cannot contend for a championship.
But the profiles gave credit when required. For Michael Jordan, coming off a season where he averaged 35 a game but a few years before everyone started calling him the best ever, the editors wrote, "Words don't do him justice. No one on this team should ever grumble a syllable about him." (Yes, sometimes teammates grumbled about Saint Michael). In Magic's section, it reads, "There is Magic and there is Larry Bird and nobody else is in their class." (that nobody, at the time, included Jordan.)
Still, it's always more fun reading ridicule:
Benoit Benjamin: Sometimes you get the feeling that you'd be better off with the Statue of Liberty playing center.
Jon Sundvold: He looks so cute and lovable, you want to hang him from your rear-view mirror. He'd probably do about as much good there as he would making any NBA club a real contender.
Artis Gilmore: Should hang it up before someone gets killed.
The books really disliked bad centers - Artis, Benoit, Wennington, Blab, Joe Barry - and they had a lot to choose from. Like...
Granville Waiters: This guy never got off the bench in the playoffs. Bulls were eliminated. A connection? Be serious. He's slow, can't jump and is not aggressive. Was a free agent and the Bulls came to him last summer. "They said they needed me," he said. They never said for what.
Greg Dreiling: Stiffer than Julius Caesar. Should be a law passed prohibiting people from wasting seven feet of height.
Stuart Gray: See Greg Dreiling and wasted height. (Gray and Dreiling both played for Indiana at the time. Not that the Pacers had a thing for drafting tall, white guys, but their first-round draft pick that year? Rik Smits. At least Smits could play.)
Danny Vranes: Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Santa dresses as an NBA businessman and hands out $520,000 contracts to guys like this who average 2.1 points a game.
There was a player named Bob Thornton. He played for Philadelphia when this book came out. He wasn't good. The bio: "Now starting for your Minnesota Timberwolves..."
The Timberwolves were still a year away from joining the league. And, in 1991, Bob Thornton played 12 games for the Wolves. I think the book also predicted the career of Ndudi Ebi.
How can I ever throw a book like this away? I can pick up this 1989 version - or any of the basketball ones, or any of the baseball and football editions - and entertain myself for 90 minutes, reading about bad white centers and below-average middle infielders who should have stayed on a bus in Double-A ball.
No, I'll never toss them, though Louise might do just that some day. It'd be a crime to discard these books, as the world would lose the immortal entry:
Keith Lee: Mr. Disappointment. He didn't play a minute all year with leg injury that resulted in surgery. Probably his best season as a pro.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
The writing life
An old refrain among newspaper reporters is that everyone has a story. It means a gas station attendant could have a tale in his life that's every bit as fascinating as the life of a U.S. senator. It's just a matter of reporting and finding the details - both big and small - that make a great story. This isn't always necessarily true. Giggling 13-year-old gymnasts who serve as ventriloquist dummies for hyperactive stage moms do not always have a good story. But most people do.
In the past few months, I've also learned that everyone has a novel. And there's a decent chance it's a novel about a vampire or a werewolf or life in Regency England or a demon that emerged from the sun's rays. It very well might be about a cop - probably divorced, likely an alcoholic, certainly grizzled. It could be about a cop who's a vampire. Or a cop who's a vampire in Regency England.
Everyone has a novel, and I've learned this because Louise is a literary agent. She focuses on romance, young adult, middle grade, pop culture, and steampunk. But she's always on the lookout for anything good, regardless of genre.
The agency she works at - like all agencies - receives a constant barrage of submissions, from published authors to those who only have a dream and a keyboard. The agents wade through the unsolicited emails, which usually include the synopsis and a few chapters. Manuscripts come from all over, from all walks of life. They arrive from penthouses and prisons. They arrive from 20-year-old boys and 70-year-old women, all of them just hoping for that one break that leads to a contract and a cover. Agents spend a lot of time fulfilling dreams, but they spend just as much time breaking hearts.
If the agents like something, they ask for the full manuscript. That's with fiction. Nonfiction, I think, is a little easier, at least from the writer's perspective. There, like I did with my book, you need the idea and perhaps a few sample chapters, not the whole book. On the other hand, it could be tougher for an agent to sell just an idea to a big publishing house. How do they know a writer can pull off what they propose? With fiction, an agent can send an editor a knockout book - about a vampire, or a menacing cop, or a grizzled werewolf - and the publisher knows what they're getting, they know right away if it's something they want, if the author can deliver.
Two things strike me when reading some of the submissions: the sheer number of them, and the incredibly diverse backgrounds of the writers. Retired doctors ask if they can send in a 99,000-word pirate adventure story they've been working on for years. Yeah, yeah, they've saved lives, but what they've wanted to do for 30 years is write.
Housewives send in their 110,000-word science fiction epic, a novel they wrote while raising five kids and one husband. They have ambition, certainly - the dream of being published is a powerful one and partly explains why I wanted to be a newspaper writer from about the time I was 11 years old. But most of the people have to understand the odds are against them ever seeing their work in the local bookstore, no matter how many times you read something and think, I could do that.
Housewives send in their 110,000-word science fiction epic, a novel they wrote while raising five kids and one husband. They have ambition, certainly - the dream of being published is a powerful one and partly explains why I wanted to be a newspaper writer from about the time I was 11 years old. But most of the people have to understand the odds are against them ever seeing their work in the local bookstore, no matter how many times you read something and think, I could do that.
So the avalanche of submissions isn't simply about the dream of being published. They write their romance novels or middle grade fiction because they have a story to tell and they want to write it. They want to create new worlds and characters, they want to dive deep into their own imagination and discover what emerges. Everyone has a story. And everyone seemingly has a story to tell.
Is telling stories a human instinct? Long before there were books, people told stories out loud, passing them down from generation to generation, tales that imparted life lessons but also ones that entertained. I don't know how many of the people find time in their incredibly busy lives to carve out these stories, many of which are outstanding and simply need someone in the business to push it to a publisher. In their pitches, you can sense how much they care about the work, how they've slaved over creating fictional they sent on amazing adventures. When reading an especially good line or paragraph, you can envision them at their kitchen table, late at night, after a long day of work at the office, long after the kids have been put to the bed, writing the sentence and thinking to themselves: That's a good line. And you see them hoping that someone else will read it and think the same thing.
Not that all the pitches or manuscripts are good. Many are bad. Some are inexplicable - I have nothing against midgets, sex, angels or midgets who died while having sex and became angels, but I don't know if I, or anyone else, would want to read an entire book focused on that storyline. Sometimes it seems the people with the worst chance of being published have the most confidence, bordering on arrogance. I'm envious of that self-belief. The self-confidence of the delusional is often a powerful thing.
But even with the people whose pitches to an agency or publisher probably never have a chance, I still admire the courage it takes to send your work out to strangers, to professionals who will judge it. I know the nerves that can hit with every query and every published article. I know what it's like to wait for reviews. But I don't know the satisfaction that comes from working on novel for five years and hearing, "We want it." And I don't know the crushing disappointment that comes from working on a novel for five years and hearing, "Thanks, but no thanks."
The people who pitch agents believe in their heroines and their villains. They believe in their complicated plots and simple sentences. And I do admire all of them.
People say the book industry is in trouble. Many believe books are doomed for extinction, perhaps around the same time the last newspaper rolls off the printing press, only to be discarded by a bored 22-year-old. Yet nearly every time I'm in a bookstore, it's crowded. I'm now convinced that all of those people crowding the aisles have a file on their computers back home, an unfinished romance or the first of a proposed eight-part science fiction series. They love writing, and love reading. Maybe the statements in that sentence will be enough to save the industry.
No matter what the future holds, people will still want to tell their stories, whatever the format. Writers of all ages and abilities work hard and they dream big. They think their books are outstanding, and some of them are even right.
They all have a story, all right. And it's 90,000 words long.
Not that all the pitches or manuscripts are good. Many are bad. Some are inexplicable - I have nothing against midgets, sex, angels or midgets who died while having sex and became angels, but I don't know if I, or anyone else, would want to read an entire book focused on that storyline. Sometimes it seems the people with the worst chance of being published have the most confidence, bordering on arrogance. I'm envious of that self-belief. The self-confidence of the delusional is often a powerful thing.
But even with the people whose pitches to an agency or publisher probably never have a chance, I still admire the courage it takes to send your work out to strangers, to professionals who will judge it. I know the nerves that can hit with every query and every published article. I know what it's like to wait for reviews. But I don't know the satisfaction that comes from working on novel for five years and hearing, "We want it." And I don't know the crushing disappointment that comes from working on a novel for five years and hearing, "Thanks, but no thanks."
The people who pitch agents believe in their heroines and their villains. They believe in their complicated plots and simple sentences. And I do admire all of them.
People say the book industry is in trouble. Many believe books are doomed for extinction, perhaps around the same time the last newspaper rolls off the printing press, only to be discarded by a bored 22-year-old. Yet nearly every time I'm in a bookstore, it's crowded. I'm now convinced that all of those people crowding the aisles have a file on their computers back home, an unfinished romance or the first of a proposed eight-part science fiction series. They love writing, and love reading. Maybe the statements in that sentence will be enough to save the industry.
No matter what the future holds, people will still want to tell their stories, whatever the format. Writers of all ages and abilities work hard and they dream big. They think their books are outstanding, and some of them are even right.
They all have a story, all right. And it's 90,000 words long.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
The history of the toothpick. And gum. And pens
It's time for another look at that genre of books that focus on one animal or mineral or limb and detail - in 350 pages - the larger influence it's had on the world and our culture. There have been famous ones on salt, rats, fat, milk, oysters and pigeons. Among other creatures and inanimate objects.
I wrote about these microhistories previously. But each trip to the bookstore or tour around Amazon brings new titles to the field. Many of them must make writers think, "I wish I'd thought of that." Some of them make people think, "Why'd anyone write about that?" I still want to write one of these someday, but I might be running out of time, as it appears there might not be anything left to analyze.
That's the only conclusion I can draw when seeing the book Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation by Elissa Stein and Susan Kim. Critics love the book. Booklist gave it a starred review. Can't say I've read it.
On a somewhat related note - at least according to Amazon's computers - is Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank. That book came out this year. Three years ago, the similar - but not as creatively titled - book Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born was released. It's hard to see a topic that would be more important than birth - conception, I suppose - and there are actually seemingly countless titles that cover the same ground. Books like Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care, by Jennifer Block.
I wrote about these microhistories previously. But each trip to the bookstore or tour around Amazon brings new titles to the field. Many of them must make writers think, "I wish I'd thought of that." Some of them make people think, "Why'd anyone write about that?" I still want to write one of these someday, but I might be running out of time, as it appears there might not be anything left to analyze.
That's the only conclusion I can draw when seeing the book Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation by Elissa Stein and Susan Kim. Critics love the book. Booklist gave it a starred review. Can't say I've read it.
On a somewhat related note - at least according to Amazon's computers - is Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank. That book came out this year. Three years ago, the similar - but not as creatively titled - book Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born was released. It's hard to see a topic that would be more important than birth - conception, I suppose - and there are actually seemingly countless titles that cover the same ground. Books like Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care, by Jennifer Block.
Those books can be valuable, especially for those who failed to heed the lessons in Condom: One small item, one giant impact or The Humble Little Condom: A history.
For masochists - and sadists - there's The Excruciating History of Dentistry: Toothsome Tales & Oral Oddities from Babylon to Braces. Or give your favorite dentist Chewing Gum: The Fortunes of Taste.
Ever think about the history of the comb? Ever wonder about the developments of plastics in the 19th century that gave us the comb technology we enjoy today? No? Someone did:
One of the longest titles you'll see - and one of the more daring claims - is An Entirely Synthetic Fish: How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America and Overran the World by Anders Halverson. Have rainbow trout really overrun the world? That makes it sound like they're on the verge of world control, of overtaking humans as the dominant species. That's gotta be at least a generation away.
For the Minnesotan in your life, a good present might be Mosquito: A natural history of our most persistent and deadly foe.
Here's part of the description of a microhistory. Try to figure out the subject.
"The BLANK tells the story of the BLANK's painful development, it's cacophonous launching, the public hysteria accompanying its debut, and its outrageous and scandalous promotion."
Sounds fascinating, right? Maybe a history of Playboy. Or an examination of the creation of the atom bomb. Actually, it's The Incredible Ball Point Pen. I'm a pen guy. So I'd read that book over The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance. There's a book on everything. Henry Petroski wrote the pencil book. And he wrote The Toothpick: Technology and Culture. People might mock the titles and question the need for a thorough examination of a piece of wood that removes old pieces of chicken from teeth, but like most of the books listed here, it received outstanding reviews. The LA Times wrote, "Petroski writes...with the observant eye of an engineer and the imaginative heart of a novelist."
With all of these, it's not so much the subject that draws people in, but the writing. A good writer - who's also a thorough researcher - can bring anything to life.
I'll keep searching for a subject, one that's gone unexamined. Something like, The Eyes Have it: A short history of the retina, the world's most important - and misunderstood - tissue. Or The Big Flop: The rise and fall of the floppy disk.
Someone wrote a history of the toothpick. Anything's possible.
For the Minnesotan in your life, a good present might be Mosquito: A natural history of our most persistent and deadly foe.
Here's part of the description of a microhistory. Try to figure out the subject.
"The BLANK tells the story of the BLANK's painful development, it's cacophonous launching, the public hysteria accompanying its debut, and its outrageous and scandalous promotion."
Sounds fascinating, right? Maybe a history of Playboy. Or an examination of the creation of the atom bomb. Actually, it's The Incredible Ball Point Pen. I'm a pen guy. So I'd read that book over The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance. There's a book on everything. Henry Petroski wrote the pencil book. And he wrote The Toothpick: Technology and Culture. People might mock the titles and question the need for a thorough examination of a piece of wood that removes old pieces of chicken from teeth, but like most of the books listed here, it received outstanding reviews. The LA Times wrote, "Petroski writes...with the observant eye of an engineer and the imaginative heart of a novelist."
With all of these, it's not so much the subject that draws people in, but the writing. A good writer - who's also a thorough researcher - can bring anything to life.
I'll keep searching for a subject, one that's gone unexamined. Something like, The Eyes Have it: A short history of the retina, the world's most important - and misunderstood - tissue. Or The Big Flop: The rise and fall of the floppy disk.
Someone wrote a history of the toothpick. Anything's possible.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
When will Willie Oleson write his autobiography?
I stumbled across this tome in the bookstore today. Confessions of a Prairie Bitch, by Alison Arngrim. Great title, good cover and as a Little House on the Prairie acolyte, I was tempted to buy it, though I did hold off.Arngrim portrayed one of the all-time TV villains on Little House, the detestable Nellie Oleson, the blond...uh, bitch (her word) who constantly tormented little Laura Ingalls and children with stuttering problems.
According to the book's description, Arngrim writes about Michael Landon's "unsaintly habit of not wearing underwear; how she and Melissa Gilbert (who played her TV nemesis, Laura Ingalls) became best friends and accidentally got drunk on rum cakes at 7-Eleven; and the only time she and Katherine MacGregor (who played Nellie's mom) appeared in public in costume, provoking a posse of elementary schoolgirls to attack them."
Sounds like a great book. Rum cakes! It seems odd that it took Arngrim this long to have a book come out - I think the world has been clamoring for years to know more about the lady behind Nellie. But her effort is just the most recent in an explosion of Little House books to hit stores. Three decades after the good, God-fearing townsfolk of Walnut Grove blew up their entire town to keep it out of the hands of evil land barons, the stars continue to reveal stories about themselves and the prairie.
Melissa Gilbert had Prairie Tales: A Memoir. Gilbert, Half-Pint, wrote about her affairs and struggles and the book is filled with sex talk, the type of thing that stunned many reviewers on Amazon who were apparently only looking for insight on what it was like taking a trip to Sleepy Eye or Mankato; every woman in my cubicle area who read the book finished it in about two days and couldn't wait to talk about all the dirty details.
Half-Pint's blind sister, Mary, had her own memoir. Melissa Anderson wrote The Way I See It: A Look Back at My Life on Little House. Mary was the good sister and this book is apparently much less interesting than Laura's/Melissa's. She did get nominated for an Emmy for her portrayal of Mary - who can ever forget, "I can see, I can see," when, in reality, she couldn't - but this line, in the book's description, doesn't exactly inspire people to drop 25 bucks:
"And she relates stories of her guest appearances on iconic programs such as The Love Boat and The Brady Bunch." Yeah, but did she lust after Andrew Garvey?
Little House characters pop up often in all forms of media, occasionally in unexpected places. A few nights ago while watching TV at about 2 in the morning, a commercial for Premier Bathrooms came on and a familiar, friendly face extolled their virtues.
It's Ma Ingalls, Karen Grassle. It looks like a great product, surely a lifesaver for many people. But I do wonder how Caroline Ingalls ended up as the primary spokeswoman. According to IMDB, she hasn't appeared in a movie or TV show since 1994. How did Premier Bathrooms find her? Any why? According to a grammatically confounding sentence on Grassle's Wikipedia page, she "agreed to sign up as the promotional face for Premier Bathrooms, a supplier of bathing products for the elderly and infirm due to her association with the character of Caroline Ingalls' extolling care and family values."
So, apparently, the plan is that people still associate Caroline Ingalls with love and understanding and that makes her the perfect person to pitch a bathroom, even though indoor toilets didn't even exist when Caroline was alive. This is 30 years since Little House's prime. Still, that's the power of Little House on the Prairie.
There's probably not much of a market for a memoir by Karen Grassle; she had a fairly thankless role on the show and didn't even have a plot twist that can be used as a pun for a catchy title, like blind Mary. But there are other Little House memoirs I'd like to see. They can be written by the actor, of course, but I would want dirt on the characters. I'd want show secrets and insight.
Dean Butler can pen the fake story of Almanzo Wilder and reveal if it'd be possible for a male character to date an underage girl 10 years his junior on TV today. Matthew Laborteaux needs to write a book explaining that his character, the enigmatic, troubled, athletic, mischievous Albert, did not actually die from his morphine addiction and that viewers never did actually see him succumb to leukemia. Maybe he did make it to medical school.
Charlotte Stewart needs to write a 300-page explanation for why she sent the kids home from the one-room schoolhouse in one of those classic Minnesota blizzards. What lessons did she learn from that tragedy? It can be called Teaching Miss Beadle. Harriet Oleson, otherwise known as Katherine MacGregor, seems like the perfect candidate for a parenting book. Something about the best way to raise a serial killer. On the book's cover, she can be holding Nels Oleson's testicles in a bag from the Mercantile.
Little House on the Prairie went off the air in the early 1980s. Star Michael Landon has been dead for 19 years. Yet the show lives on, in DVDs, reruns and the memories of fans and tourists who travel through southwestern Minnesota searching for the mountain Laura ran away to in one memorable, if utterly implausible, episode. But the show also lives on in literature. Or at least in the bizarre world of celebrity tell-alls.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
The saddest book of the year
In March 1996, writer David Lipsky spent five days with author David Foster Wallace, for a piece in Rolling Stone. He stayed overnight in Wallace's house, rode in the car with him, played chess against him and traveled to book readings. In September 2008, Wallace committed suicide in his California home. He was 46. A year and a half later, Lipsky wrote a book called Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself. The book is basically a transcription of the days Lipsky spent with Wallace fourteen years ago. Reading their discussions sheds light on the type of demons that drove Wallace to take his life. They talk about depression and suicide and the future of reading and a thousand other topics, all recorded by Lipsky's ever-present tape recorder. But the book also highlights the mundane: Lipsky and Wallace play with the author's dogs. They eat gigantic meals at Denny's.
All of it gives an insight into who Wallace was at that moment. At the start of his afterword, Lipsky writes, "Suicide is such a powerful end, it reaches back and scrambles the beginning. It has an event gravity: Eventually, every memory and impression gets tugged in its direction." Later, he adds, "That's the other thing this book would like to be: a record of what David was like, when he was thirty-four and all his cards had turned over good, every one of his ships had sailed back into harbor."
He succeeds.
All of it gives an insight into who Wallace was at that moment. At the start of his afterword, Lipsky writes, "Suicide is such a powerful end, it reaches back and scrambles the beginning. It has an event gravity: Eventually, every memory and impression gets tugged in its direction." Later, he adds, "That's the other thing this book would like to be: a record of what David was like, when he was thirty-four and all his cards had turned over good, every one of his ships had sailed back into harbor."
He succeeds.
By the end, I wished I had been in the backseat of the car, just listening to the two writers banter and debate. The book ends with Lipsky leaving Illinois while Wallace heads to a church dance. It's a heartbreaking book because you know how the story ultimately ends, even if that ending came 12 years later.
Wallace's most famous work is Infinite Jest, the thousand-page novel published in 1996 that made him a writing superstar. I never completed the book; it's a tough read, though several of my friends who have finished it loved it. So I'll give it another shot. Lipsky followed Wallace around as he went on tour for Infinite Jest and dealt with the newfound fame (one of the more amusing episodes centers around a nice - but passive-aggressive - reading escort who accompanies Wallace to his event in Minneapolis).
Wallace might have been best known for his fiction, but his nonfiction works are also classics. His essays and features on John McCain, Roger Federer, cruise ships, state fairs, and David Lynch remain the definitive pieces on those subjects. His nonfiction is more accessible to readers, so anyone intimidated by the size and scope of Infinite Jest might want to start with his essays.
The story Lipsky researched for Rolling Stone back in 1996 never ran; he got called away for another story. But the tapes of his days with Wallace remained, just waiting to be published. And reading those conversations now, fourteen years later and nearly two years after Wallace died, brings the writer to life. And that makes it even harder to accept how he died.
Some links:
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Reading beats watching TV and listening to music. At least in one home
The new Rolling Stone lists "40 Reasons to Get Excited About Music." The last reason? "Because you really like music." It's a poll of Rolling Stone readers, highlighting their tastes in music. One of the questions was: Imagine you had to give up all of the following forms of entertainment for a week, except one. Which would you keep?
64.7 percent said listening to music
17.1 percent said watching TV
13.8 percent said reading
3.2 percent said playing video games
1.2 percent said going to the movies
I'm a 13.8 percenter. I'd even forfeit TV before reading, which is surprising considering our leather couch has a mold of my 6-3 frame. On Saturday I walked down to our small local library, which is usually populated by loud teens, quiet, lonely old men reading the paper and a 34-year-old guy from the neighborhood who generalizes too much. The library doesn't possess the greatest selection. Yet I still always walk out with at least three books, leading to a race against the three-week checkout period. Can I finish all of them in time? The mystery thrillers, sure, but what about that 600-page biography on Sinatra? Might have to skip the early years of Frank's life. It's not like we can't afford the dollar - or more - fine that comes with late returns. It's about pride.
Trips to the bookstore end the same way, except the offerings aren't free. Borders and Barnes & Noble have struggled in recent years, but we're doing our best to keep both in business, five paperbacks and two hardcovers at a time. We visit The Strand regularly, and a used bookstore on Broadway on the Upper West Side offers treasures every time we're there. Add it all up and it sometimes seems like we're drowning in books. Every few months we donate a box or two, yet our inventory keeps increasing. Fortunately, my parents still have a basement, which is home to eight or nine boxes of my books that never made the long trip east. When they leave that house and the books leave their longtime home and join us, there could be a reckoning. It's just not going to be feasible to have that many books sharing space with our furniture and entertainment center and tables and bed. In other words, the furniture's gotta go. The books stay.
In my defense, I'll use the four words therapists hear more than any others: I blame my mother. She's always been an avid reader. She instilled a love for books in me at an early age. My sister suffers the same affliction. She reads two or three novels in a week, shocking and sometimes horrifying her children. Growing up, we lived a block from the Janesville library, which had a similar collection to our NYC branch, but more carpeting. At elementary school, every few months we ordered from a bookmobile. I usually bought second-rate sports books, but it was still thrilling when they finally arrived.
GREATEST RUNNING BACKS IN NFL HISTORY
BASEBALL'S GREATEST PITCHERS
In sixth grade, I even became a Ribbit Reader. As part of the group, each Friday I visited the first-graders and read them a book. It was fun, despite the humiliating title that came with the assignment. Even then, I tried getting the youth to turn off the TV and open a book (I'd let them discover on their own that reading while watching TV is possible, and enjoyable). The only time I regretted being an avid reader was during church, when our class would handle the festivities for a Sunday and I was inevitably drafted to be the reader. All that pressure to enunciate Colossians correctly.
But when it comes to reading books and magazines, I have to read it off of a page, not a screen. E-readers might help save publishers, but I don't yet have any desire to own one. I love the feel and look of a book. And the only thing better than that new book smell is the old book smell.
Louise went to a conference this weekend. She'll return today, likely hauling dozens of free books she picked up during the event. We'll overload our already crowded bookshelves. We'll live in an irony-free apartment, as Louise wonders why I have so many books. We'll find room. I think there's some space in a living room corner. And we can always start stacking even higher. On one bookshelf, there's still a good, oh, three feet of space before we hit the ceiling.
Yeah, I'll give up music and going to the movies for a week, but not reading. I'll even give up TV. Unless the Lakers are playing. Watching them is still more fun than reading about them.
64.7 percent said listening to music
17.1 percent said watching TV
13.8 percent said reading
3.2 percent said playing video games
1.2 percent said going to the movies
I'm a 13.8 percenter. I'd even forfeit TV before reading, which is surprising considering our leather couch has a mold of my 6-3 frame. On Saturday I walked down to our small local library, which is usually populated by loud teens, quiet, lonely old men reading the paper and a 34-year-old guy from the neighborhood who generalizes too much. The library doesn't possess the greatest selection. Yet I still always walk out with at least three books, leading to a race against the three-week checkout period. Can I finish all of them in time? The mystery thrillers, sure, but what about that 600-page biography on Sinatra? Might have to skip the early years of Frank's life. It's not like we can't afford the dollar - or more - fine that comes with late returns. It's about pride.
Trips to the bookstore end the same way, except the offerings aren't free. Borders and Barnes & Noble have struggled in recent years, but we're doing our best to keep both in business, five paperbacks and two hardcovers at a time. We visit The Strand regularly, and a used bookstore on Broadway on the Upper West Side offers treasures every time we're there. Add it all up and it sometimes seems like we're drowning in books. Every few months we donate a box or two, yet our inventory keeps increasing. Fortunately, my parents still have a basement, which is home to eight or nine boxes of my books that never made the long trip east. When they leave that house and the books leave their longtime home and join us, there could be a reckoning. It's just not going to be feasible to have that many books sharing space with our furniture and entertainment center and tables and bed. In other words, the furniture's gotta go. The books stay.
In my defense, I'll use the four words therapists hear more than any others: I blame my mother. She's always been an avid reader. She instilled a love for books in me at an early age. My sister suffers the same affliction. She reads two or three novels in a week, shocking and sometimes horrifying her children. Growing up, we lived a block from the Janesville library, which had a similar collection to our NYC branch, but more carpeting. At elementary school, every few months we ordered from a bookmobile. I usually bought second-rate sports books, but it was still thrilling when they finally arrived.
GREATEST RUNNING BACKS IN NFL HISTORY
BASEBALL'S GREATEST PITCHERS
In sixth grade, I even became a Ribbit Reader. As part of the group, each Friday I visited the first-graders and read them a book. It was fun, despite the humiliating title that came with the assignment. Even then, I tried getting the youth to turn off the TV and open a book (I'd let them discover on their own that reading while watching TV is possible, and enjoyable). The only time I regretted being an avid reader was during church, when our class would handle the festivities for a Sunday and I was inevitably drafted to be the reader. All that pressure to enunciate Colossians correctly.
But when it comes to reading books and magazines, I have to read it off of a page, not a screen. E-readers might help save publishers, but I don't yet have any desire to own one. I love the feel and look of a book. And the only thing better than that new book smell is the old book smell.
Louise went to a conference this weekend. She'll return today, likely hauling dozens of free books she picked up during the event. We'll overload our already crowded bookshelves. We'll live in an irony-free apartment, as Louise wonders why I have so many books. We'll find room. I think there's some space in a living room corner. And we can always start stacking even higher. On one bookshelf, there's still a good, oh, three feet of space before we hit the ceiling.
Yeah, I'll give up music and going to the movies for a week, but not reading. I'll even give up TV. Unless the Lakers are playing. Watching them is still more fun than reading about them.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Stephen King on film: floating children and killer clowns
Today the oddly spelled SyFy channel played a couple of miniseries based on classic Stephen King books. First up was The Tommyknockers, followed by The Stand. The TV series are entertaining marathons, but the books were classics, two of my favorites by King. Pretty much all of King's work - especially his earlier books - were turned from manuscripts into screenplays and adapted to the big screen or small. Some people are surprised at a few of the movies that actually emerged from King's mind. Running Man, for instance, was a King story, though he wrote it as Richard Bachman and probably didn't imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger mumbling in the title role. The best movie to be made from a King story is Shawshank Redemption, which is actually based on King's novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. Stories like that - and The Green Mile - show King's range. But he remains best-known for his horror tales, and those are the ones that have made his work so attractive to Hollywood.
Two TV adaptations were probably the most frightening: Salem's Lot and It.
I've previously written about how Salem's Lot and The Shining scarred me as a kid, wounds that are probably still pummeling my subconscious. Here, again, the most infamous clip from the original Salem's Lot miniseries. Damn you, Danny Glick.
Raging and sensitive vampires are all the rage now, but they no longer interest me. Thankfully, they also no longer terrify me. Salem's Lot gets the majority of the blame, as does a thin, hardcover book in the Janesville Public Library I read countless times while growing up, which was a dumbed-down version of Bram Stoker's original. The Lost Boys also freaked me out. At carnivals I often found myself looking toward the sky, searching for a marauding gang of high-flying, hungry, ill-tempered and poorly behaved teenage vampires in desperate need for parental authority. Another frightening one: The Night Stalker, a 1972 TV movie that I caught late one weekend night.
It starred Darren McGavin, who's probably best remembered as being the dad who loves the leg lamp in A Christmas Story.
But look at that scene above, watch how part of the confrontation takes place on long steps. When we moved into our new house, the bedrooms were at the top of the steps. I'd hear creeks and picture a vampire creeping up the carpeted steps. That's what I imagined while sitting in my bedroom at night, or when we'd visit my grandpa on the farm in the old house that might have been haunted, at least according to family relatives who should no better but apparently enjoy terrorizing young people. My bedroom was the closest to the steps, meaning the demon of the night would take me before moving on to my sister and my snoring parents.
When a light came on and I could analyze the situation logically, I was able to tell myself, why would a vampire be coming up the steps, when it could simply fly through the window, or scratch the window and use his mastery of the dark powers to lure me outside? That thought process helped alleviate all my childish childhood fears, until the night my sister's boyfriend fired rocks at my window with the power of a Nolan Ryan fastball, not realizing he was attacking my room instead of alerting Lisa that it was safe to sneak out of the house for the night. So there I was, trying to sleep, as a loud thud kept hitting the window. Pitch-black outside, even darker inside. And all I hear is an overwhelming rattle at the window. I saw the undead floating outside, at least in my mind. Instead it was a teenage boy trying to corrupt Lisa.
At a certain point I came up with what I thought was the perfect plan to avoid the vampires that would one day rule the country with an iron, and frozen, fist. I vowed to become rich enough to buy a Concorde. Then, I'd use the jet to constantly fly to countries where it happened to be daylight. So if I was in Minnesota and the vampires came out at 9 p.m. on a warm summer night, I'd hop onto the Concorde, fly to California and be safe, since it'd only be 6 at night there with plenty of sunlight. If I happened to be caught in New York at 2 a.m. and the vampires were closing in, I'd call up my pilot Dominic, a former Blue Angels pilot - in the fantasy I didn't have my pilot's license, though that would have simplified the process. Dominic jetted us to London, where it'd be 8 a.m. and we'd have twelve hours of freedom and safety. I really couldn't find a single flaw with the plan, since I didn't have much respect for the flying ability of vampires.
All of that paranoia started with Salem's Lot. Blame Danny Glick's floating corpse and my own immaturity. Stephen King's imagination did that to me. Eventually I outgrew the fear, or maybe my own imagination simply dulled, to the point where I no longer visualized a world where people rose from the grave to haunt small-town children. Still, the original Salem's Lot - and not the Rob Lowe remake from 2004 - remains one of the best movie versions of King's work.
Some other notables:
It: The book is a thousand-page masterpiece, while the 1990 movie was a two-parter remembered primarily for the terrifying performance by Tim Curry as the killer clown Pennywise. It's a solid adaptation, only slightly harmed by some odd casting choices. Richard Thomas, aka John-Boy on The Waltons, played Bill Denbrough while John Ritter portrayed Ben Hanscom. Call them victims of typecasting, but neither guy could escape the past while playing the adult leaders of the Losers Club. But the movie did have Pennywise. I imagine 7-year-old kids who watched It were terrified into their teens, the same way Salem's Lot damaged me. Actually, the scary clown probably frightened just as many adults.
* Pet Sematary. Again, not as good as the book - standard disclaimer when discussing 98 percent of all movies converted from books - but still enjoyable, primarily because of another creepy, evil, cute child. Dad puts the little bastard down at the end, but dear ol' Mom makes a final visit.
* Misery. Outstanding book, superb movie, highlighted by Kathy Bates' stalker and James Caan as the writer trapped in her rural home. The most memorable scene is certainly the hobbling, which is ruined every time the movie is played on network TV or TNT or TBS, as they invariably cut away before Paul Sheldon's feet bend in a way usually seen on a football field while an announcer tells the audience to look away.
Oddly, that's not the scene I remember best. I saw the movie in the theater with a group of friends in 1990. Early in the movie, Caan drives down a mountain through a snowstorm. His car's headlights appear on the big screen. At that moment, a member of our group, Martin, who acted as our chauffeur because he got his license before anyone else and had a Suburban that could fit the whole gang, bolted up out of his seat and proclaimed, "I left my lights on!" It was a very strange association but ultimately saved his vehicle's battery, as he scrambled out of his seat and the theater to turn off his truck's headlights.
* Creepshow. One of the more underrated movies, it contained five short stories. One of the most memorable starred Ted Danson and Leslie Nielsen, before Danson became a star on Cheers and Nielsen earned fame in the Naked Gun movies. In the movie, Danson's sleeping with Nielsen's wife, so Nielsen had Ted and the gal drowned on the beach and sadistically tapes it so he can enjoy it later in the comfort of his own home. The movie's an early plug for the effectiveness of VCR's. Ted and the gal return - as if they were buried in Pet Sematary and not the beach - and give Nielsen the same treatment.
The most disgusting story in Creepshow involves a man who's more terrified of cockroaches than I was of vampires. Eventually they get the best of him, crawling out of his mouth, ears and every other place. This scene was easier to watch before I moved to New York City, the cockroach center of the world. Blech.
* Cujo. Not one of King's most memorable books and the movie's also fairly forgettable. An evil St. Bernard sick with rabies is still sort of lovable, even when slobbering on a dead body. King himself has said he barely remembers writing the book as he was drinking heavily at the time. To me, the book's memorable because after reading it, my mom swore off Stephen King books. She stopped reading him for nearly a decade. This was actually an official announcement; shortly after, I started reading him. The reason she quit? The little boy dies at the end of the book. Little kids aren't supposed to die, of course, unless they're evil and have popped out of a Pet Sematary. The kid lives in the movie. My mom was aware that it was a fiction book, but she gave up on the horror master for several years, though she eventually returned. But I think she still held a grudge.
Today most of King's books or stories become TV series, instead of big-screen films. I don't think he's any less popular with Hollywood, it's just that his more recent books aren't as easily adaptable. But in 10 or 15 years, TNT or FX or USA will remake Salem's Lot or It and another generation of children will be scarred. And I'll look into the feasibility of bringing the Concorde out of retirement.
Two TV adaptations were probably the most frightening: Salem's Lot and It.
I've previously written about how Salem's Lot and The Shining scarred me as a kid, wounds that are probably still pummeling my subconscious. Here, again, the most infamous clip from the original Salem's Lot miniseries. Damn you, Danny Glick.
Raging and sensitive vampires are all the rage now, but they no longer interest me. Thankfully, they also no longer terrify me. Salem's Lot gets the majority of the blame, as does a thin, hardcover book in the Janesville Public Library I read countless times while growing up, which was a dumbed-down version of Bram Stoker's original. The Lost Boys also freaked me out. At carnivals I often found myself looking toward the sky, searching for a marauding gang of high-flying, hungry, ill-tempered and poorly behaved teenage vampires in desperate need for parental authority. Another frightening one: The Night Stalker, a 1972 TV movie that I caught late one weekend night.
It starred Darren McGavin, who's probably best remembered as being the dad who loves the leg lamp in A Christmas Story.
But look at that scene above, watch how part of the confrontation takes place on long steps. When we moved into our new house, the bedrooms were at the top of the steps. I'd hear creeks and picture a vampire creeping up the carpeted steps. That's what I imagined while sitting in my bedroom at night, or when we'd visit my grandpa on the farm in the old house that might have been haunted, at least according to family relatives who should no better but apparently enjoy terrorizing young people. My bedroom was the closest to the steps, meaning the demon of the night would take me before moving on to my sister and my snoring parents.
When a light came on and I could analyze the situation logically, I was able to tell myself, why would a vampire be coming up the steps, when it could simply fly through the window, or scratch the window and use his mastery of the dark powers to lure me outside? That thought process helped alleviate all my childish childhood fears, until the night my sister's boyfriend fired rocks at my window with the power of a Nolan Ryan fastball, not realizing he was attacking my room instead of alerting Lisa that it was safe to sneak out of the house for the night. So there I was, trying to sleep, as a loud thud kept hitting the window. Pitch-black outside, even darker inside. And all I hear is an overwhelming rattle at the window. I saw the undead floating outside, at least in my mind. Instead it was a teenage boy trying to corrupt Lisa.
At a certain point I came up with what I thought was the perfect plan to avoid the vampires that would one day rule the country with an iron, and frozen, fist. I vowed to become rich enough to buy a Concorde. Then, I'd use the jet to constantly fly to countries where it happened to be daylight. So if I was in Minnesota and the vampires came out at 9 p.m. on a warm summer night, I'd hop onto the Concorde, fly to California and be safe, since it'd only be 6 at night there with plenty of sunlight. If I happened to be caught in New York at 2 a.m. and the vampires were closing in, I'd call up my pilot Dominic, a former Blue Angels pilot - in the fantasy I didn't have my pilot's license, though that would have simplified the process. Dominic jetted us to London, where it'd be 8 a.m. and we'd have twelve hours of freedom and safety. I really couldn't find a single flaw with the plan, since I didn't have much respect for the flying ability of vampires.
All of that paranoia started with Salem's Lot. Blame Danny Glick's floating corpse and my own immaturity. Stephen King's imagination did that to me. Eventually I outgrew the fear, or maybe my own imagination simply dulled, to the point where I no longer visualized a world where people rose from the grave to haunt small-town children. Still, the original Salem's Lot - and not the Rob Lowe remake from 2004 - remains one of the best movie versions of King's work.
Some other notables:
It: The book is a thousand-page masterpiece, while the 1990 movie was a two-parter remembered primarily for the terrifying performance by Tim Curry as the killer clown Pennywise. It's a solid adaptation, only slightly harmed by some odd casting choices. Richard Thomas, aka John-Boy on The Waltons, played Bill Denbrough while John Ritter portrayed Ben Hanscom. Call them victims of typecasting, but neither guy could escape the past while playing the adult leaders of the Losers Club. But the movie did have Pennywise. I imagine 7-year-old kids who watched It were terrified into their teens, the same way Salem's Lot damaged me. Actually, the scary clown probably frightened just as many adults.
* Pet Sematary. Again, not as good as the book - standard disclaimer when discussing 98 percent of all movies converted from books - but still enjoyable, primarily because of another creepy, evil, cute child. Dad puts the little bastard down at the end, but dear ol' Mom makes a final visit.
* Misery. Outstanding book, superb movie, highlighted by Kathy Bates' stalker and James Caan as the writer trapped in her rural home. The most memorable scene is certainly the hobbling, which is ruined every time the movie is played on network TV or TNT or TBS, as they invariably cut away before Paul Sheldon's feet bend in a way usually seen on a football field while an announcer tells the audience to look away.
Oddly, that's not the scene I remember best. I saw the movie in the theater with a group of friends in 1990. Early in the movie, Caan drives down a mountain through a snowstorm. His car's headlights appear on the big screen. At that moment, a member of our group, Martin, who acted as our chauffeur because he got his license before anyone else and had a Suburban that could fit the whole gang, bolted up out of his seat and proclaimed, "I left my lights on!" It was a very strange association but ultimately saved his vehicle's battery, as he scrambled out of his seat and the theater to turn off his truck's headlights.
* Creepshow. One of the more underrated movies, it contained five short stories. One of the most memorable starred Ted Danson and Leslie Nielsen, before Danson became a star on Cheers and Nielsen earned fame in the Naked Gun movies. In the movie, Danson's sleeping with Nielsen's wife, so Nielsen had Ted and the gal drowned on the beach and sadistically tapes it so he can enjoy it later in the comfort of his own home. The movie's an early plug for the effectiveness of VCR's. Ted and the gal return - as if they were buried in Pet Sematary and not the beach - and give Nielsen the same treatment.
The most disgusting story in Creepshow involves a man who's more terrified of cockroaches than I was of vampires. Eventually they get the best of him, crawling out of his mouth, ears and every other place. This scene was easier to watch before I moved to New York City, the cockroach center of the world. Blech.
* Cujo. Not one of King's most memorable books and the movie's also fairly forgettable. An evil St. Bernard sick with rabies is still sort of lovable, even when slobbering on a dead body. King himself has said he barely remembers writing the book as he was drinking heavily at the time. To me, the book's memorable because after reading it, my mom swore off Stephen King books. She stopped reading him for nearly a decade. This was actually an official announcement; shortly after, I started reading him. The reason she quit? The little boy dies at the end of the book. Little kids aren't supposed to die, of course, unless they're evil and have popped out of a Pet Sematary. The kid lives in the movie. My mom was aware that it was a fiction book, but she gave up on the horror master for several years, though she eventually returned. But I think she still held a grudge.
Today most of King's books or stories become TV series, instead of big-screen films. I don't think he's any less popular with Hollywood, it's just that his more recent books aren't as easily adaptable. But in 10 or 15 years, TNT or FX or USA will remake Salem's Lot or It and another generation of children will be scarred. And I'll look into the feasibility of bringing the Concorde out of retirement.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Respecting books
When Louise first visited my old apartment in Fargo, she was dismayed to see the number of books I haphazardly tossed into corners or stacked on the floor. Not even the mountain of clothes piled in the closet disgusted her that much. The month-old milk carton loitering in the fridge didn't affect her, but those books did.
Dozens of books littered the two-bedroom apartment, paperbacks sharing space with hardcovers sporting tattered cover pages. The inside pages had line after line polluted by underlined passages. She wondered why I wasn't treating the books with the respect they deserved, which confused me because I thought I'd done just that by buying them and reading every word.
"The written word's a precious thing," she said. "Books have to be handled with care." She sounded like she was talking about a 6-week-old child or a 2-month-old puppy.
I agreed with her first sentence and couldn't find much fault with the second one, though our ideas about proper care for a book differed. Burning them? No. But if a book is worn and appears well-read, with dog-eared pages, that to me indicated it was a great book, one that I enjoyed more than once. And these weren't rare used books I mishandled. It could be a standard John Grisham thriller about a plucky lawyer bucking the odds or a Stephen Ambrose book about World War II. Anything with binding, numbered pages and a cover.
She yelped when she'd see me toss a book on a couch or throw it to the floor from the bed. Eventually she revealed the reason for her obsessive behavior. Books were extremely expensive growing up in Cape Town. Rarely could she afford to buy one. When she did purchase a book, she treated it like the rare piece of art it was to her. It took her several years in America to realize that we can buy a mystery thriller for seven bucks, and a nonfiction tome for 15 or 20 dollars. Still, even today, she maintains this reverence for the actual physical product. It must be loved and cared for, a treasure that should never be taken for granted. Use a bookmark, don't just spread it out when marking the spot at the end of the day.
I thought she was crazy then for this vigilance. That opinion hadn't changed much over the years. It might be changing a bit, now that I've taken a tour of some South African bookstores.
The exchange rate right now is about 7:1. So a book that costs $20 would be about 140 rand. In America we can buy one of James Patterson's 156 paperbacks for maybe 9 bucks. Or a Greg Iles one for $7.99. But in Cape Town, those books were going for R175, sometimes R190. For a paperback mystery or a romance novel. Would anyone pay the equivalent of $25 for a book with a half-naked Fabio on the cover, aside from Fabio himself?
Nonfiction was an even more depressing story. Vincent Bugliosi's book Four Days in November, which dissects Kennedy assassination conspiracies, would cost about $20 in the States. In Cape Town, at Exclusive Books? R420. I've read Bugliosi's book. Enjoyed it. Fully endorse his arguments about the death of JFK. But I wouldn't pay the equivalent of $60 for it, even if it revealed the Cubans conspired with the CIA and the mob to knock Kennedy off, all under the evil direction of Lyndon Johnson.
The bargain book bin offered no help. Each book carrying a discounted marker seemed like the type of book you'd give as a present to a hated cousin or a blind grandmother. An intimate biography of Robbie Williams, which has nearly as many pictures as words? For R70?
Wandering through the bookstore gave me all the evidence I needed to know why Louise rarely bought a book as a kid and helped me understand her maniacal need to care and protect them. If I spent $25 for something adorned with Fabio's laughable locks and masculine looks, I would never even crack open the book. I'd stuff it in an airtight container, protecting it from elements and human hands.
And these prices are in a country where the average income is dwarfed by what the average worker in America earns. So the people make less and are expected to pay much more for the same products. In Cape Town, the median annual income is about 25,000 rand, or less than $7,000 a year. How much money do people have to spend on books?
All of this is why we pack as many books as possible for trips to South Africa. Most of them are paperbacks we read back in America. We give them to Louise's mom and stepfather, who are avid readers. They devour each offering. It seems ludicrous for them to have to spend money on books we can purchase for half the price. We're a human bookmobile, bringing Stephen King and Jonathan Kellerman to the South African masses, or at least Louise's family.
I've always thought of books as treasures. But it wasn't until I visited a South African bookstore that I realized just how valuable they can be. So respect that trashy Harlequin novel or poorly sourced sports biography. Or mail it to someone in South Africa who will really appreciate it.
Dozens of books littered the two-bedroom apartment, paperbacks sharing space with hardcovers sporting tattered cover pages. The inside pages had line after line polluted by underlined passages. She wondered why I wasn't treating the books with the respect they deserved, which confused me because I thought I'd done just that by buying them and reading every word.
"The written word's a precious thing," she said. "Books have to be handled with care." She sounded like she was talking about a 6-week-old child or a 2-month-old puppy.
I agreed with her first sentence and couldn't find much fault with the second one, though our ideas about proper care for a book differed. Burning them? No. But if a book is worn and appears well-read, with dog-eared pages, that to me indicated it was a great book, one that I enjoyed more than once. And these weren't rare used books I mishandled. It could be a standard John Grisham thriller about a plucky lawyer bucking the odds or a Stephen Ambrose book about World War II. Anything with binding, numbered pages and a cover.
She yelped when she'd see me toss a book on a couch or throw it to the floor from the bed. Eventually she revealed the reason for her obsessive behavior. Books were extremely expensive growing up in Cape Town. Rarely could she afford to buy one. When she did purchase a book, she treated it like the rare piece of art it was to her. It took her several years in America to realize that we can buy a mystery thriller for seven bucks, and a nonfiction tome for 15 or 20 dollars. Still, even today, she maintains this reverence for the actual physical product. It must be loved and cared for, a treasure that should never be taken for granted. Use a bookmark, don't just spread it out when marking the spot at the end of the day.
I thought she was crazy then for this vigilance. That opinion hadn't changed much over the years. It might be changing a bit, now that I've taken a tour of some South African bookstores.
The exchange rate right now is about 7:1. So a book that costs $20 would be about 140 rand. In America we can buy one of James Patterson's 156 paperbacks for maybe 9 bucks. Or a Greg Iles one for $7.99. But in Cape Town, those books were going for R175, sometimes R190. For a paperback mystery or a romance novel. Would anyone pay the equivalent of $25 for a book with a half-naked Fabio on the cover, aside from Fabio himself?
Nonfiction was an even more depressing story. Vincent Bugliosi's book Four Days in November, which dissects Kennedy assassination conspiracies, would cost about $20 in the States. In Cape Town, at Exclusive Books? R420. I've read Bugliosi's book. Enjoyed it. Fully endorse his arguments about the death of JFK. But I wouldn't pay the equivalent of $60 for it, even if it revealed the Cubans conspired with the CIA and the mob to knock Kennedy off, all under the evil direction of Lyndon Johnson.
The bargain book bin offered no help. Each book carrying a discounted marker seemed like the type of book you'd give as a present to a hated cousin or a blind grandmother. An intimate biography of Robbie Williams, which has nearly as many pictures as words? For R70?
Wandering through the bookstore gave me all the evidence I needed to know why Louise rarely bought a book as a kid and helped me understand her maniacal need to care and protect them. If I spent $25 for something adorned with Fabio's laughable locks and masculine looks, I would never even crack open the book. I'd stuff it in an airtight container, protecting it from elements and human hands.
And these prices are in a country where the average income is dwarfed by what the average worker in America earns. So the people make less and are expected to pay much more for the same products. In Cape Town, the median annual income is about 25,000 rand, or less than $7,000 a year. How much money do people have to spend on books?
All of this is why we pack as many books as possible for trips to South Africa. Most of them are paperbacks we read back in America. We give them to Louise's mom and stepfather, who are avid readers. They devour each offering. It seems ludicrous for them to have to spend money on books we can purchase for half the price. We're a human bookmobile, bringing Stephen King and Jonathan Kellerman to the South African masses, or at least Louise's family.
I've always thought of books as treasures. But it wasn't until I visited a South African bookstore that I realized just how valuable they can be. So respect that trashy Harlequin novel or poorly sourced sports biography. Or mail it to someone in South Africa who will really appreciate it.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Bringing the heroics of Alex Cross and Alex Delaware to life
This is a new book that readers of mysteries and detective stories should check out. It's called The Lineup: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of their Greatest Detectives. Otto Penzler edited the book.
Penzler gathered many of the most famous names in crime writing - from Lee Child to Michael Connelly - and had the authors discuss the fictional heroes in their books. They produce a series of biographies about fictional people, with analysis provided by the real authors who brought them to life.
So, for instance, Michael Connelly reveals the background of Harry Bosch. Jonathan Kellerman talks about the religious beliefs of his crime-solving psychologist, Alex Delaware. And so forth. One of the featured writers is David Morrell, who created Rambo. Yes, the tortured Vietnam vet was a literary creation long before he became the subject of Ronald Reagan's fantasies. The only disappointment to me was that John Sandford's Lucas Davenport wasn't featured.
I liked the book, even though pop psychology studies and background sketches of fictional characters usually don't appeal much to me. The credit goes to the spotlighted authors for providing fascinating details about their characters.
What has always intrigued me is wondering what the real-life reaction would be to some of the more famous fictional characters, especially those in mysteries or crime thrillers. As a former newspaper reporter, I always wondered how some of these people would be covered, if they had to deal with ink-stained wretches on a daily basis.
Take Alex Delaware, who stars in two dozen books by Jonathan Kellerman. A psychologist by trade, Delaware spends his spare time tracking down depraved killers while helping his detective friend, Milo Sturgis. In the series, Delaware's been involved in a bizarre island experiment gone wrong, had various attempts made on his life, been the victim of an arson fire that destroyed his beloved home, and helped put away or kill countless psychos. Exciting life.
With those kinds of credentials, Delaware would almost certainly be among the five most-famous Americans in the country. We'd see him chatting with a maniacal Nancy Grace on a nightly basis, when he wasn't thoughtfully entertaining Larry King with his thoughts on Elizabeth Smart. Psychology groupies would stalk him, throwing their panties at him while confessing their innermost secrets.
Time magazine once put Bill Bratton on its cover. Bill Bratton. All he did was help lower the crime rate in New York City in the 1990s. Bratton pulled it off with innovative crime-fighting ideas that warranted a magazine feature, but he wasn't exactly a superman. So what kind of coverage would Delaware receive, a guy who has single-handedly killed serial killers and solved countless cold cases? Like I said, he'd be one of the most famous Americans. If he got really lucky, his dating exploits might make the pages of People magazine.
How about another Alex, James Patterson's superhero Alex Cross. In the increasingly ludicrous plots, Cross has: stopped the kidnapping efforts of madman Gary Soneji, stymied a pair of killer friends who operated on each coast, dealt with a British serial killer (the worst kind), battled a cult of vampires; been betrayed by former friend Kyle Craig, an FBI agent gone very, very bad who cryptically calls himself The Mastermind; fought several people going by the name The Wolf; traveled to Africa to solve murders on that continent; and dealt with Ku Klux Klan killings. And while all this is happening, someone killed his wife, another lover turned out to be an evil kidnapper who was executed by lethal injection, a girlfriend was kidnapped, and the aforementioned Mastermind brutally murdered a female partner.
Yet he keeps plugging away, as seemingly optimistic as ever. Remarkably Cross keeps finding success with the ladies, though any woman capable of Googling him would stay 20 miles away at all times, fearing a bizarre and painful death at the hands of a Cross rival.
It's not just books, of course. Angela Lansbury's Jessica Fletcher solved murder mysteries for a decade on Murder, She Wrote, despite living much of the time in a tiny Maine town that should be immune from the brutality of the real world. It's probably a nice town, but who in the hell would want to live there when a resident is murdered on a weekly basis? And how does a kindly old woman keep stumbling into these situations?
How about Perry Mason? Forget the portly lawyer's remarkable record of success. Take a look at the LA district attorney's failings. Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden's careers as prosecutors basically ended the moment the O.J. jury returned with the not-guilty verdicts. Yet every week, the hapless, bumbling, confused Hamilton Burger found himself on the wrong end of a murder case. Not only did Burger lose, but Mason proved that the prosecutor arrested the wrong person. Blame the police, I suppose, but how did voters not oust Burger after, I don't know, the 324th case he lost? How did he not get disbarred?
And, more importantly, what would Nancy Grace and her special guest Alex Delaware say about Burger?
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