Absinthe, election stealing, and newspaper barons Sunday, Nov 18 2007

I am still totally obsessed with the razzle dazzle,** as discussed in my last post, but am trying to move beyond cocktails to discuss other literary aspects of “1876.”

I adore the Empire series so far, as I am sure I have mentioned before. This is the third in the series. First, there was “Burr,” which is awesome. The chief’s review of this book is forthcoming.

Second, “Lincoln,” which is good in a different way but is much drier and less dishy than “Burr.” Also, I got bored with all the military strategy, but I understand that Gore Vidal, not to mention every other member of the less fair sex, likes that sort of thing.

“1876″ is fun because it takes place in an era I don’t know much about. Also, it reintroduces Charlie Schuyler, the (fictional) narrator of Burr, only now he is kind of a debauched old man. There is a ton of political scheming, and we meet the Sanfords (also fictional), who will turn out to be important in “Washington D.C.” K., if you are getting bored of “Lincoln,” I recommend just skipping ahead to this book. And then we can have an early-American cocktail party — I mean, book club meeting –to discuss.

**I hear that absinthe is accessible over the Internet, even if its legality and historical accuracy are questionable. If anyone wants to explore early American cocktail history with me, we can do further research on the subject.

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One City, One Book: Your mom’s book club edition Sunday, Oct 14 2007

This whole book club phenomenon is interesting. On the one hand, I feel like Oprah’s Book Club has greatly improved the quality of books you can find at the airport or a bad book store and has gotten me out of many a tight spot, like receptionist jobs where I would finish my book by lunchtime and be faced with an entire afternoon of playing solitaire.

Also, I love the lists of questions they have started putting at the end of these books, such as: “Elisabeth called all her descendents to her bedside when she knew she was dying. What were the long-term repercussions of this act for her family?” This brings back fond memories for me of the Great Books program in my elementary school, whose point I never really understood but was a great way to get out of class and spend the afternoon windbagging about some silly Ray Bradbury story.

On the other hand, I think maybe it leads to books that are better understood as  conversation starters for your afternoon scrapbooking session than as, I don’t know, books. Take Cane River. Written by “a former vice president of Sun Microsystems to immerse herself in family history” via a UC Berkeley Extension writing class (rad!), this book traces the author’s family origins from slavery in Creole Louisiana to relative prosperity in 1930s Louisiana.

You can tell it is meticulously researched, and she found great records, from a written family history to tons of court records to a series of newspaper articles about the murder of someone in the family. I would be much more interested in reading about that process from a first-person perspective than in the awkward narrative she constructs from it. I think that this might, however, have been a marketing decision, based on the many, many book clubs (including Oprah and One City One Book) that probably prefer the novel format.

Personally, I think that slapping a treacly narrative on top of Tadeny’s meticulous research robs this story of its inherently good qualities. And as one alumnus of the UC Berkeley Extension to another, I have a tiny word of advice for you: Sentences like “The day was cold and foggy, like his spirits” should be avoided, if possible. For more information, I recommend the the Extension’s copy editing certification series of classes.

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Stationer’s Review Reviews Stationer Correspondence Sunday, Aug 26 2007

…Or: My Love Affair w/ Nancy Mitford, Part II (III? IV? Hell, who’s counting?)

Another thing to love about Miss Mitford: apparently she was an actual stationer during World War II. This book is a collection of correspondence between her and Heywood Hill, super handsome owner of the bookstore/stationary purveyor where she used to work. It includes detailed correspondence regarding her evolving stationary needs (gold edged, usually, and at some point she replaced her address with an engraved mole — a good signature for someone who made her living writing catty, thinly-veiled novels about all her friends).

Many years, ago I determined that I didn’t want to be a writer, based on the following vision of my life: sitting around in my PJs alone all day, impoverished, reading gofugyourself.com all day and otherwise procrastinating because that is what I would do. But I love the idea of being a lady writer as depicted by Miss M. in this book: waking up in gorgeous apartment in Paris or as a guest in someone’s lavish European estate, answering witty written correspondence, then working on research or writing a hilarious, sure-to-be financially successful novel or biography, with occasional breaks for writing magazine articles or being interviewed for yet another profile of my family’s writing dynasty or my own glamorous social life. Also occasional breaks to take in a Lanvin fashion show, escorted by a young beatnik friend. When can I start?

I enjoyed the correspondence but now am OM’d (over-Mitforded). I went to the library yesterday and checked out a bunch of books, with nary a Mitford in sight: some Daniel Handler, some Bridget Jones (I know, I know), a book that appears to be critical theory about James Bond (“more fun than it has any right to be,” says the New Statesman), and whatever the One City, One Book is for San Francisco for July and August because I have always wanted to participate in that.

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The Enchanting Mitford Girls and their weird biographers Monday, Jul 30 2007

I think I mentioned my Mitford binge from earlier this year. I bought this book that contained both Nancy Mitford’s Love in a Cold Climate and the Pursuit of Love — so good! I read them a million times.

She is a little like Evelyn Waugh, with whom she was apparently good friends, also a little like a very rich aristocratic Dorothy Parker. Then I read Jessica Mitford’s book of letters (surely as long as Bleak House but finished in one greedy gulp) that came out earlier this year, which was also excellent and fascinating, and a source of funny anecdotes about the Bay Area in the 1950s onward.

I was at the library earlier and saw this book, “The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family” by Mary S. Lovell, whose cover looks almost exactly like Love in a Cold Climate so I had to read it. The book is fastidiously researched, but deeply weird. She will have five sentences in a row that are carefully sourced like, “She dated so-and-so for five years. She always made him roast beef for dinner on Thursdays,” each one carefully footnoted to a letter or interview, but always followed by something totally from left field like “but it’s unlikely that they ever had sex” or “I don’t think she knew Hitler was a Nazi” (two of the girls ended up as these sort of Hitler acolytes) with no attribution whatsoever. Very weird.

Also, the authoress seems to have fallen under the sway of the fascist sister Diana, so there are long sections about how beautiful Diana is to this day, how fascism is not so bad, and in the creepiest bit of all, something about how Oswald Mosley (which, by the way, seems like a great name for a Jackie Collins character) was not particularly racist or anti-Semitic; he just had an agenda of in favor of European unification and against “non-European immigration” into Europe.

In sum, a very creepy little book, but the pictures are good. Also, I recommend Nancy and Jessica’s books and correspondence.

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Three Books Sunday, Jun 10 2007

The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany

This is one of those books with a big cast of characters of all social classes whose lives intersect in exciting ways, in this case all in one apartment building. It was very interesting and educational for me because it takes place in Cairo during the first Gulf War and I didn’t know anything about that. I think it would be even better if you did know something about Egypt, which must be true because the Egyptians liked it too–it was the best selling novel there for years, the biggest budgeted Egyptian movie ever, etc. Lots of money and sex because that’s what makes the world go round.

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

This is one of those true, miserable childhood books. My mom and some other lady from her book group read it in one sitting. I was able to pull myself away but it is a page-turner. Little Jeannette’s parents are nonconformist bohemians and they have some major issues. The dad is a terrible alcoholic, and the mom starts off just a little kooky but you can see that dealing with the dad just makes her so tired that she can’t deal with the rest of the family, which leads her to doing shit like eating a king-size Hershey bar by herself when the kids are seriously starving. The kids rise to the occasion and find ways to survive. One touching thing is that after the family moves to the father’s Appalachian childhood hometown, Jeannette ends up under the wing of her father’s old English teacher, after whom Jeannette is actually named.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

RC pointed out that everyone loves a book with a mentally handicapped protagonist and/or narrator. But in case you don’t, don’t write off this book right away. The narrator is a teenaged autistic kid who is very good at math and very aware of how he is different from other people but the main thing is he decides to write a mystery novel inspired by actual events on his street. The “special” effects (like the chapters are numbered only in prime numbers, and there are lots of funny diagrams) actually make it more like those Jonathan Safran Foer books in which the narrator also has some highly quirky style that is not necessarily the author’s.

Shout out to the suburban ladies–all these books were previous Mom’s book club selections, and they all rock! Way to pick ‘em! If all books were this good, I would read more books and less crap magazines. In case you are wondering, I would rank these #1–Yacoubian, #2–Dog, #3–Castle. Bonne lecture!

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Hunter S. Thompson: Fear & Loathing On the Campaign Trail ‘72 Sunday, May 6 2007

This is one of Aura’s old books and has been sitting on my shelf ever since I inherited it. It’s a collection of Thompson’s dispatches to Rolling Stone magazine during the presidential campaign of 1972: strangely riveting. If, like me, you were not even born in 1972, I recommend keeping a copy of All the President’s Men nearby because that book has a whole index of the cast of 70s political characters, with photos, in the front.

My beloved magazine writing professor in college was Hunter S. Thompson’s editor at RS back in the day, and he was pretty vitriolic on the subject of HST. I kind of empathized with him while reading this book. HST’s prose is so good when it’s good, but sometimes devolves into total incoherence when he is close to a deadline (this happens to me too) and there are places where it is his handwritten notes or transcriptions of his tapes because he just did not finish on time. One chapter, and you really feel the editor’s pain here, is just a transcribed interview between HST and some poor editor, because HST must not have handed anything in.

Highlights: a limo ride with Nixon because Nixon would only let a journalist who knew about football ride with him and HST was the only one who did; HST interrogating McGovern at a urinal; HST letting some random drunk guy steal his press pass and the guy comes to a Muskie press conference and drunkenly claws at Muskie’s feet, demanding that Muskie fetch him more gin, everyone thinks it’s HST because of the press pass, everyone attributes Muskie’s implosion to the failure to control this press conference, and a footnote points out that this event was later widely attributed to Nixon’s sinister CRP sabatoges of rival presidential campaigns.

Why do I have so many books about politics of the 1970s? I have no idea. I am looking for some fiction to read but I keep missing library hours. I tried to read the chief’s Proust and it is too boring even for me. Ideas? Because I really don’t want to start in on the computer books. Or the philosophy books.

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McTeague by Frank Norris Sunday, Mar 25 2007

This “minor classic” (according to introduction) takes place on Polk Street in San Francisco at the turn of the century.  It is part of that funny scandalously-realistic-depiction-of-the-common-man-according-to-some-rich-kid genre, so it includes lots of interesting detail about daily life in San Francisco at that time.  For example, did you know that tamales have been an integral part of the San Francisco bar scene for at least a century?  At that time, there was a tamale man instead of a tamale lady and he sold tamales in street kiosks near the bars, instead of on that rad bicycle cart that the tamale lady pulls around to all of the bars.  But it seems to have filled that same late-night dinner/bar food niche.  Mmm, tamales.

The story describes the downfall of a dumb dentist and his avaricious wife, apparently inspired by a real crime in San Francisco.  I have to say, and maybe I am an avaricious wife, but for the first two thirds of the book I thought she was completely reasonable in refusing to dip into her savings so her husband could fritter it all away on beer and a bigger apartment like he wanted to.  Now later, when she started rolling in gold coins so she could feel the cold money on her naked skin, I conceded that this seemed a little weird.  (But what an excellent, Dynasty-esque image!  Nice break from all the ‘realism.’)  I do not want to spoil the ending for anyone, but all of this avarice winds up leading to crime.

The introduction, written by Kevin Starr, is pretty interesting.  It clarifies that Frank Norris was a rich, artsy kid (died young) who wanted to write a starkly realistic novel about working class people on Polk Street.  He lived two blocks away on a much posher street, which he grandly calls “the avenue” throughout the novel.  This sheds some light on the somewhat condescending fascination he seems to have for regular cable car drivers and saddle makers and bartenders on Polk Street.  I believe the book also exhibits some of that condescension that trustafarians always have for people who “care too much about money,” because it is so non-bohemian to worry about that sort of thing, especially when you will get a fat check from your parents at the end of the month.

In short, this book is good trashy fun.  Much better than that Jackie Collins.  I recommend reading it, then going back and reading the introduction, which is much more informative after reading the book.   The part of the introduction describing his time as a “banjo-playing fraternity man” at Berkeley is priceless.  One time he and his frat brothers rented a giant horse and carriage from Wells Fargo from which to watch the Big Game.  Notwithstanding the fact that I have never seen an actual football game, I am now desperate to recreate this experience with the chief’s great aunt and uncle, a mixed Cal and Stanford couple who have big screaming arguments about the big game every year.

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Jesse James: The Last Rebel of the Civil War Saturday, Mar 17 2007

The New York Times calls this a “fascinating revisionist biography,” but I am not familiar enough with the traditional biography of Jesse James to know what the new angle is — perhaps, all of the brutal killing when he was a pro-slavery militant during the Civil War.  I reviewed the first half of this a few weeks ago, and those comments stand.

As I got further in Jesse James’ life, it was interesting to read about his public relations efforts; for example, he used to issue press releases and leave them on the trains that he robbed.  Also, I liked reading about how monetary policy was affected by politics before, during, and after the Civil War … it reminded me that there is this other pop history book about the history of money that I have been meaning to read for a while.

This book has some very interesting bits, but like many histories it suffers from big gaps in time where there is not any direct evidence of what was going on with Jesse James’ life.  (Now, as I  mentioned earlier, I prefer gaps to long, clearly made-up sequences about a historical figure’s inner life, but that is just me.)  Stiles tried to fill in the gaps with analysis of the historical and social context of outlaws in the Sourth before, during, and after the Civil War.  Those parts were really boring, in part because he mainly seemed to be having an argument with other history writers instead of presenting us with a compelling story or theory.  And there is no reason for that stuff to be boring.  It has OUTLAWS, the old west, the war, money, trains, probably hobos for gods sake — basically a lot of things that make for good reading and there is no excuse for making me feel like I was in a boring high school class during those parts of the book.

I think I am going to see if the library has that money history book, though.

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