Breaking News! Frustrated men live vicariously through James Bond. Saturday, Sep 22 2007

I adore old James Bond movies, I think for simple reasons like the set design and pretty clothes and cars and how it is sort of relaxing because you know he will always do exactly the right thing for the context and he will never embarrass either one of you. And there are no heartwarming moments, which is also kind of relaxing.

The British have much more complicated reasons for loving James Bond, reasons having to do with the End of Empire and social anxiety. This is not surprising, but Mr. Winder’s synopsis here is very thorough, often funny, and the author’s devotion to James Bonds’ social, artistic, and political importance is rather touching.

I have read a couple of the Bond books, but according to Winder not the good ones. He adores “From Russia with Love,” which I have never read. He despises “The Spy Who Loved Me,” a “shameful disaster which [Fleming] himself later disowned,” which I sort of enjoyed. (I must admit, however, that Winder’s criticisms of it — small-time gangster villains are unworthy of Bond, weird that it’s written from the point of view of the Bond girl, sex scenes convey this creepy sense of Fleming making sweet love to his cooler alter ego — are all true.) He likes “Dr. No” and “Goldfinger,” and has this theory that the books were actually Important because they helped England keep her chin up through the loss of her colonial imperialism and other indignities.

Anyway, reading this book was entertaining and made me want to watch some more James Bond movies, even the ones which are apparently beneath notice. And isn’t the cover awesome? I love early James Bond-era Connery.

Leave a Response »

 

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.

3 Responses »

 

Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent Saturday, Feb 10 2007

So few guests acquit themselves well on the Colbert Report, but I was laughing with not at Norah Vincent when I saw her interviewed on the show. (This was totally inappropriate because I was at the gym on the treadmill and it was five in the morning and the other people at the gym thought I was crazy. It was fun going to the gym back when I had both of my legs, but I digress.)

The conceit of this book is just like Black Like Me or that James Bond book where James Bond self-tans himself into a Japanese guy, except that in this case a woman goes under cover as a man for a year. The chapters are divided up by a set of male experiences she designs for herself: joining a bowling league, going to strip clubs, dating (men and women it says on the back but I only remember her dating women), living in a monastary, going on a men’s movement retreat — you know, the usual stuff that every man does all the time.

My favorite part of the book was the beginning where she talks about the logistical and practical aspects of passing as a man — gluing one’s beard on and so forth. She learned that women lean forward when speaking and men lean back; women tend to talk so fast that they run out of breath and men use fewer words. It was interesting how her innate feminine mannerisms would always betray her as effeminate or gay-seeming as a man even though she said she was always considered kind of a butch woman. It made me think about how I phrase everything like a question and apologize for everything and maybe I should be more macho.

The parts of the book I didn’t like were the sociological expositions at the end of every chapter. I felt like responding to these platitudes with the one they always beat you over the head with in journalism school: show, don’t tell. I feel certain, however, that it was some cheeseball editor or marketing person who was to blame for this aspect of the book, not Norah Vincent.

In sum, the book was good, sometimes tawdry, fun. It made me appreciate the power of a good suit and not talking too much or apologizing for everything. I don’t think it taught me any good lessons to apply to the serialist, though, except that I shouldn’t have a male narrator because the male mind is such a big brawny mystery to me.

Leave a Response »