From grey to red and back again

Book: Fifty Shades of Grey

Author: E.L. James

Published: 2011 (Fifty Shades, Ltd—I believe we have our first self-published contender)

Pages: 514

Surely there is a less clunky way to string together good sex scenes.

I think it involves a protagonist who has an actual life and personality, a Dominant who spends more time getting her into his Red Room of Pain (the one brilliant turn of phrase from our resident, you know, English major) than dwelling on the limits contract (sexy!), supporting characters who are there for more than just asking the protagonist about her new mysterious boyfriend, and way less manufactured drama.

Surely there was another reporter on the school paper who would be eager to go interview the famous guy so the editor wouldn’t have to send her inept English major roommate and holy hell, how does the English major and the school paper editor SHARE A LAPTOP? The sheer amount of typing, not to mention the research, dear fuck—

Okay. Sorry. Getting sidetracked. In my defense, the book does too, by having the girl agonize everything to death, no matter what the guy did or said. He was almost as bad, and seriously nobody does anything in here for any real reason, but it all gets to wear it’s going. Eventually. And then in the end SPOILER she walks out, also for no more reason than she’s had the whole time she’s tried this stuff and liked it.

The sex is good. Less…themed than I thought it was going to be, but whatever. It’s hot. I wish they didn’t talk, though. She actually does say “Argh” during sex as an indicator that she's enjoying herself. On separate occasions. Maybe they could adapt this novel (trilogy!) as a mime show.

Scandal!

Book: Smile Pretty and Say Jesus: The Last Great Days of PTL

Author: Hunter James

Published: 1993 (University of Georgia Press)

Pages: 210

On the surface, this is a tale of greed and denial and hypocrisy channeled through one of the biggest evangelical Christian empires this side of the Rocky Mountains. Jim and Tammy Fay Bakker start their ministry with coins rattling in their collection cigar box, got on TV through a masterful puppet show that evolved into a gi-fucking-normous media/theme park thing that made them enough money to burn through with Cadillacs and makeup and Kmart shopping sprees until their financial mismanagement and Jim's sexual eccentricities were exposed. Then Jerry Faulwell took over, trip over some of the exact same problems of his own (although on a smaller scale), and the whole shebang ended on a half-finished luxury hotel taken over by Native Americans who now owned the land on which it was getting built. 

I'm pretty sure everybody knows the surface bit of the story, or can at least trace its familiar tropes. That makes it no less enjoyable to read about. Not with a malicious anti-religious smugness, but with a wonder at exactly how much people can trust their leaders and how much these leaders can built on shaky grounds before everything just goes SMASH.

But take a closer look into this, and you'll get the equally interesting and far more worrying glimpse of a newspaper man driven insane by his job.

Late nights, early mornings, no distinguishes between the two, camping out for hours to grab two seconds of a subject's time, chasing phone calls, editors spitting profanity like sparks from blowtorches--these are all pretty standard for an old-school paper journalist. James, who eventually reveals that he's over fifty during his coverage of this scandal, should be used to it if maybe getting tired of all the abuse. Instead, he drops in these stream-of-consciousness lines, even a whole chapter, that drop psychological hints about how much he hates all of this. He misses deadlines, drinks and takes downers, doesn't seem to know how to get out of all of his misery. He doesn't enjoy any of the chase.


And based on his continual failure to get close enough to any of the major people in this to fill out 500-word articles, I really wonder how he managed that for full book.

Somehow he manages to forge a great connection between his personal downfall and the one he's supposed to be covering. It does make me wonder about his career after this, though. Was it his last stand as well as the Bakkers' and Faulwell's? He never says. I hope he retired into one of those "old guy" desk jobs he was talking about by the end. 

Which is sort of a horrible thing to wish on a reporter. But dude was worn OUT. 

Dancing about architecture

Book: A Visit From the Goon Squad

Author: Jennifer Egan

Published: 2010 (Knopf)

Pages: 273

I’ve been staring down this book and its good reviews since it came out, resisting the urge to read it because writing about music is like dancing about architecture. Which is to say, there’s always a gap of interpretation that I’m willing to throw myself across because I love both art forms so much, and I usually end up banging my head a good one against waves of description that, fawning as they may be, don’t actually tell me anything. In my experience as a high school newspaper A&E editor, college radio station CD reviewer, Rolling Stone subscriber for far longer than it deserved, and High Fidelity fan, the better the review the more abstract the descriptions and therefore the more removed from living, breathing, sweating music stand the words.

But that’s not the case here. Actually, this collection of stories and incidents and characters on the New York music scene focuses so much on the people and the human bits of music that it’s really easy to slip into the punk clubs and the record label board rooms and undergraduate couches and start listening without noticing until everybody else turns their attention, too. The music underlines the humanity, the good and bad choices, the way time keeps pulling at everyone and their dreams.

It takes a bit of decoding to figure out everybody’s full individual chronological story arcs, but that’s not super important unless you get bored after you finish reading and want a slideshow project like the one the record label head’s former assistant’s kid makes to chart how her family is unraveling. (That was my favorite bit.)  It’s quieter than I expected, literally and metaphorically. Its last little bit of future predicting edges toward gimmick territory without ever touching down.

I don’t regret waiting to read it, or checking it out of the library instead of buying it, but I’m glad it waited for me to discover its charms. 

Troubled life as told through good food

Book: Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef

Author: Gabrielle Hamilton

Published: 2011 (Random House)

Pages: 291

All throughout reading this book, I daydreamed about what to cook for future meals of my own. None of them remotely resembled the meals Hamilton was describing, which, and hang with me for a second, I count as good food writing because she caught me up in the actual act of creating and making food rather than imitating her, room-temperature-egg for room-temperature-egg.

She started out in a family where her dad held annual lamb roasting parties and her mom always had something on the stove and Hamilton herself fell into waitressing, catering, and finally running her own kitchen as a way of scratching independence out of a hostile mess of early drug addiction and neglect.

And it works fairly well--by chaining her to 18-hour days in an industry she never really wanted to stay in, true, and giving her a green-card husband she married for the hell of it and spends a ridiculous amount of time and energy on considering how they don’t actually love each other. It’s this that casts a weird mist of doom onto the whole back half of her narrative; the part that is usually reserved for unconditional redemption made me worry about the life choices she seems to know were kind of shitty even as she lives with them. It’s refreshing to read a memoir that doesn’t advertise hard work as a guaranteed ticket to happiness, that cooking embraces her as she embraces it but it still takes work on both sides just like any loving relationship.

But… I keep going back to her husband, and why they tried to act like a real family even when they had no reason or incentive or pressure to do so. It’s disturbing in a quiet way that she never explains and presents as a fairly normal if troubled fact of her life. Possibly she stayed for a bigger sense of community in their annual trips to his family in Italy, something she had never been a part of before and might not have a chance to be a part of any other way? Maybe? I don’t know.

Her use of food as a way of expressing her fighting chance in life makes me care. Her writing is excellent.

One more chance (because I checked out so many)

Book: The Flamenco Academy

Author: Sarah Bird

Publication: 2006 (Knopf)

Pages: 381

The history and tradition of flamenco is fascinating. The flimsy tale of romantic obsession Bird uses as an excuse to write about flamenco is not.

Her characters are interesting: a shy young girl who discovers flamenco as a way to a tortured guitarist’s heart, her best friend who needs attention in the same way of oxygen, the guitarist himself as he wrestles with mysteries of his identity that could make or break him in the flamenco world. They’re human enough to recognize and empathize with, and they provide crucial insights into a rarified subculture as outsiders who gain access throughout the tale.

Or that’s what they do in my head, when I really want to like this opera-on-page. In reality, there are no actual examples of them doing this, as in you have to take the narrative voice’s word for practically every character development. It baffles me why Bird thought it was a good idea to pull back the camera and use so much exposition. SO MUCH EXPOSITION, y’all. I want her to go full-out Gypsy fairy tale for this thing or add some fucking DIALOUGE between the shy girl and the minimal amount of people she’d have to interact with to become as good at flamenco as she is.

But Bird’s writing fluctuates. At least three people tell dramatic tales of their origins and secrets that take up chapters at a time. I wish she would’ve just expanded those until they touched each other and made a narrative that mimics flamenco’s mysterious, overly emotional depth framed by traditional structure.

Everything was harped on so fucking much, too, like she thought the reader would forget every few pages. And so many metaphors to describe the dance and the music. SO MUCH.

Sigh. I checked out Bird’s The Boyfriend School and The Mommy Club in this same batch because I love The Yokota Officer’s Club so much, but I can’t do it. They’re due back this week and I’ll take the gamble that I won’t regret reading her take on getting boyfriends back or surrogate motherhood.    

Feminism 101

Book: Reading Women: How the Greatest Books of Feminism Changed My Life


Author: Stephanie Staal


Published: 2011 (PublicAffairs)


Pages: 264


I finished this book about revisited feminism right before I unwrapped a new dress and pulled it on over tights to go over to my boyfriend's house. 

I spent the whole clothes time wondering who, exactly, was I wearing this for? Me? My boyfriend? Because I wanted him to think I looked cute? Because I wanted to look cute for myself? But what if looking cute for myself is subliminal code for looking cute in a way that he and society think look cute, so there's not actually any of me in this decision at all? ...How the hell am I ever supposed to know what's me and what's for him and what's Western societal pressure on the female bits of me?


Reading about feminism always makes me wonder that without giving me any answers. 


This book charts the experiences of a lady who revisits her Fem Text class at Bernard when her professional and family lives are doing that thing where they don't work together. Classic feminist dilemma that--say it with me now--she never thought would happen to her. 


And I loved reading about it. She writes in the perfect deft balance of understated confessional personal narrative and academic research. Her readings make her think about her real life and where she's at now in her real life makes her understand the readings in depths she couldn't get close to when she was a 20-year-old undergraduate immersed in an all-girl's college. And y'all, she's incredibly insightful about the vague, impractical, and hypocritical points of feminism while still being firmly in favor of the movement because, come on. Women are people too. 


She doesn't come to any more solid a conclusion than I ever do, though. She's glad she took the class during a whole new generation of thought, and she's glad it's made her appreciate how hard her life balance is and that it really might be worth it in the end, but she's not changing anything radical in her life because she read Vindication for the Rights of Woman again. I was sort of hoping there'd be an Awesome Gentlelady Who Doesn't Give a Fuck About Gender Roles No Seriously magic formula somewhere in there, but alas. 


Welp. I don't want to end on "alas" because I really liked this book, so I will tell you that after a good boyfriend visit I decided that I do dress for myself first but angle for outside appreciation. At least when I'm going out in public. 

Katydids

Book: The Book of Human Insects

Author/artist: Osamu Tezuka

Published: 2011 (Vertical; this edition), 1970-1971 (Play Comic; original serial run)

Pages: 364

Trying to get a handle on what’s so good about a revolutionary is difficult when said revolutionary ushered in the movement that became the norm over the next forty years. Style taken for granted and even expected now blew people’s hair off when it first came out. But how does a style stay fresh through its process of mainstreaming?

Wait, I’m supposed to have an answer for that. Um. Sex and violence and blackmailing that all revolves around a pretty young girl who manipulates her way through most of the artistic talent spectrum while recharging at her childhood home next to a wax figure of her dead mother will always cause compulsive page-turning. Especially if there’s an insect metamorphosis structural metaphor that’s obvious but never explicated mentioned (I love you a little for that, Mr. Tezuka). Especially especially if the characters are all drawn so uniquely and the sound effects are either onomonopias or stage directions, depending on what makes the story clearer.

Yes! That is why Tezuka still reads completely unique. Uh huh.

I mean it could be that I’m still a noob in the comic world. But y’all, the point is I liked the story and I connected with the emotions and I kept turning the pages (taking a break when they discussed the Japanese steel industry and flinching twice when the young girl gets slapped by a man—once because she stole a life’s work’s honor from one and once because she wanted to get rid of another’s child, which—I understand the first instance a lot better even if my kneejerk reaction is “Gah let’s not hit women”) until I hit the lonely, lonely end.

And ultimately, that’s the best measure I have as your Constant Reader.  

Library stash

In honor of my new day job, which involves writing for that letter-counting enforcer Twitter, I’ve decided to write one-sentence reviews of each of the library books that are due in two days.

Tyrants by Marshall N. Klimasewiski: Muddled stories that don’t really have anything to do with tyrants unless you count a sick mother (which I totally don’t, because, good fuck the lady couldn’t help it that she needed care) and Stalin (which I sort of do because he’s Stalin but even he’s softened in this one from the point of view of a maid who loves him).

Alternatives to Sex by Stephen McCauley: A middle-aged gay real estate man has a midlife crisis while trying to break his random hookup habit and reconciling his secret love of his flight attendant best friend, and it’s boring because all emotional points are repeated endlessly in breezy mental dialogues riddled with rhetorical questions that never get answered.

The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie MacDonald: A thick juicy novel about child abuse, murder, a falsely convicted young man, and how family secrets fester and mingle on a Canadian air force base during the Cuban missile crisis and space race age that ends on the first truly emotionally shocking twist I’ve read in I don’t know how long.

House of Meetings by Martin Amis: Interesting premise about a love triangle in the post-WWII Soviet work camps gets RUINED (RUINED I SHOUT-TYPE) through a rambling memoir style that confuses the whole plotline until I had no idea what the narrator was trying to say and stopped reading.


The only one I really got lost in was Ann-Marie MacDonald's. So go read that one and ignore the rest. You'll be fine.

The movie might be better.

Book: Election

Author: Tom Perrotta

Published: Damn. I don’t know.

Pages: 200

Well, that was sort of shitty.

I’ve wanted to read Election for awhile, ever since I heard about the movie version and how good it’s supposed to be. Of course my first instinct was to think “I bet the book’s better” and then avoid both until I saw the book in a secondhand store and sat down to read the whole thing during the four hours I thought I had work which is actually tomorrow but I was already out and what the hell, home didn’t expect me back until 5 p.m.

This story’s concept is interesting and has a lot of natural dramatic potential. A well-liked high school teacher throws away two ballots to let his favorite student candidate win the election for school president. The story unfolds from all the major character’s perspectives, in clumps that were nicely organized by person but too short to allow any real characterization growth. (The janitor who finds the thrown-away ballots is more effective in his two or three paragraphs than the other characters who’ve had the whole book to stretch out.)

But Perrotta once again disappointed me with his lack of depth and subtle details that would’ve made everything way more dynamic. His Little Children is like this, too, another tension-filled conceit fumbled through flat characters and an environment just a little too generic to care about. And in both books, the characters are largely defined through badly timed sex with the wrong people.

That last would be a good thing, except it’s both non-explicit and has nothing to do with advancing the main plot. I require at least one kind of cheap thrills from marginal writing.

Sigh. Maybe the movie’s better. (Books, you make me sad when you make me say that.)