WHAT I'M READING NOW -- APRIL, 2012

What I'm Reading Now -- April 2012

I forget how I got to Alex Dryden's "Red to Black" (Harper 2009) but I downloaded it from Amazon, that squid, and just finished reading it on various electronic devices.

This is what I suppose you'd call a novel of intrigue and it spans about 10 years in the lives of Finn, a British former MI6 spy, and Anna, a colonel in the FSB. The action moves from Moscow to Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland, France and then on to the shores of the Black Sea in Moldova.

"Follow the Money," the saying goes, and this is Finn's quest, his compulsion. The hidden trillions of oil money, drug money, mount up in secret Swiss accounts, too much money coming in even for them. Putin and the mafia and the oligarchs control it all and what it might ultimately be used for is what this book is about. Who knows if such a gigantic conspiracy is real, but it sounds as if it is. Dryden is a pseudonym for a journalist who watched the Wall come down in 1989 and has, as a blurb says, "charted the false dawn of democracy," in Russia.

Who can believe anything? The characters have plenty of trouble with this and the reader is not exempt. It all sounds so real and so frighteningly unrelentingly cruel. You want it to be made up, but you suspect it is true.

Just so you know, this lead by Joe Nocera appeared in his April 16 NYT Editorial page column:


Who knew that what corrupt Russian officials care about, more than just about anything, is getting their assets — and themselves — out of their own country? They own homes in St. Tropez, fly to Miami for vacation and set up bank accounts in Switzerland. They understand the importance of stashing their money someplace where the rule of law matters, which is most certainly not Russia. Besides, getting out of Russia is one of the pleasures of being a corrupt Russian official. 

Two more novels featuring Anna follow this first, and they are even better because they carry forward the conspiracies of Putin and his circle and their machinations over Ukraine -- "Ukraine is not even a state," (Putin to George Bush, 2008) : "Moscow Sting" (2010), and "The Blind Spy," (2010).


                                         * * *

"An American Spy," by Olen Steinhauer (Macmillan, 2012) unlike Steinhauer's other intrigue novels, is not set in middle Europe or in the Balkans. This one begins in China and I found it less appealing than the previous stories. "Spy" got excellent reviews (NYT) but don't ask me why.

Milo Weaver, a character from two previous novels who reappears here, can't seem to figure out what's going on, either, and ultimately the reader doesn't care. Although the Dryden book is complex, it is never confusing -- unlike this. Sorry, Olen, but I didn't much like your latest.

SKULL  by Jim Harrison from "Songs of Unreason" (Copper Canyon Press) sent to me by Laura Furman who calls it "a rugged poem."


You can't write the clear biography
of the aches and pains inside your skull.
Will I outlive my passport expiration?
Will the knots of the past beat me to death
like limber clubs, the Gordian knots
that never will be untied big as bowling balls?
Maybe not. Each time I row the river
for six hours or so the innards of my skull
slightly change shape. Left alone knots
can unravel in the turbulence of water.
It isn't for me to understand why loved ones
died. My skull can't withstand
the Tao of the mighty river carrying me along
as if I were still and the mountains capped by clouds were rushing past.
After we submerge do we rise again in another form?
Meanwhile I speculate on the seven pills
I must take each day to stay alive.
I ask each one, "Are we doing your job?"
The only answer I've found is the moving
water whose music is without a single lyric.

WHAT I'M READING NOW

WHAT I'M READING NOW

Cold, dark winter days are perfect for staying indoors and reading, not that I need much excuse to do that. Just when I think there is nothing good left , along comes the kind of book I don't want to finish. In a recent spate of good reading, lucky me, I can mention the following:

"Acts of Honor"  by Richard H. Dickinson. 2008. www.booksurge.com
If I tell you this book opens in Abu Ghraib you probably won't read it,
but you should because it raises not only the Geneva Convention aspect of torture but also poses conflicts of politics, patriotism, and honor. Much of the book is set at West Point and Dickinson (Class of '73 and a Vietnam veteran) knows what he is talking about. While you are at it, get Dickinson's "The Silent Men," about a US Marine sniper in Vietnam. "Silent Men" (2002) should be a classic but despite wonderful writing and a real hero, nothing much ever came of it. It could be that people are simply not interested in reading anything about Vietnam. Both of these novels are available via Amazon, that octopus. I read "Acts of Honor" as a Kindle book and like many other electronic renditions, it is full of scanning errors, so annoying to the reader.

"The Art of Fielding" by Chad Harbach (Little Brown, 2011), is a
wonderful read, full of baseball stuff and a great cast of characters -- each one better than the next. The main characters: a naive
baseball genius who goes to a safety school on a full scholarship; his mentor, an upperclassman from a lower class background, a natural-born coach and all-round decent person; the college president, a handsome Harvard historian who has come home to the mid-west college to do the bare minimum and act as a distinguished figurehead; the President's seriously screwed up daughter who flees a bad California marriage and comes home to Dad; the brilliant, gay, roommate of the baseball player, the voice of reason and predictor of trouble. Plus minor characters all drawn splendidly. I love this book and didn't want it to end. It has a kind of "Unbroken" decency about it and the voices of Great Americans. Speaking of...

"Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand (Random House, 2010) is the true story of glory, suffering, triumph, redemption.. Louis Zamperini was an American Olympic runner in the late 1930s, a teenage wonder bound to set all records, when WWII began and he enlisted. Louis (still living at a great old age) was shot down, survived more than 100 days at sea in a raft, was captured by the Japanese and sent to one concentration camp after the other until he wound up in Japan, endlessly tortured by a sadistic guard. Somehow Louis survives and goes on to become a coach, a motivational speaker, and the hero of this terrific book. Hillenbrand interviewed Louis many times over a period of about 10 years. As you know, she is a meticulous writer and this book is a tribute not only to Zamperini but to her.

Broken Irish by Edward J. Delaney (Turtle Point Press, 2011) another spectacular novel that deserves a wide readership and won't get it. It is
another example of a most worthy effort slipping through the cracks, sinking like a rock, going up in smoke. I don't know why, but this happens all the time. Write a stupid dracula chick novel and you'll make millions. Set in Southy, the part of Boston that didn't go to Harvard, it features Jimmy Gilbride, a 32-year old tech writer and drunk "in decent shape, if that means thin -- someone hardly prone to eating. He's especially slack where the skin gathers around the joints. He is sustained by the nutrients of many beverages, by the gum he chews incessantly to mask his breath and by some beer nuts thrown in for a suggestion of something solid." It is a story of accident and ruin and it does not have a happy ending.

The Litigators by John Grisham (Random, 2011) provided a day-long spree of reading for fun. The sly humor and great characters plus a really smart and entertaining plot make what might be thought of as junk one of the most delicious novels around. David Zink, Harvard boy and senior associate at one of those legal sweatshops that churn out mega billings, goes haywire one day, walks out, and after 12 hours in a local bar, winds up on the couch in the office of a pair of seedy ambulance chasers. They clean up his mess and he eventually cleans up theirs. As a lawyer who has never seen a courtroom, David stumbles into a trial as the lead lawyer in a huge litigation against a major drug company during which he faces a battery of $700-an-hour lawyers from his old firm. Not to spoil it for anybody, but this one does have a (very) happy ending.

THEIR DRINKING LIVES

This piece by Elinore Standard appeared in the Bedford, NY, "Record Review," as one in a series, "My Reading Life."

Mentioned below: "The Big Sleep," by Raymond Chandler, "Fleshmarket Alley," by Ian Rankin; "The Magdalen Martyrs," by Ken Bruen.




                                THEIR DRINKING LIVES

        “I was neat, clean, shaved and sober and I didn’t care who knew it.”
                From “The Big Sleep” by Raymond Chandler



    I like crime novels that feature people who drink. I enjoy before and after: stories of dependency and recovery. Don’t ask me why exactly, I’ll only say that I find drinkers sympathetic, and add that I went to an Ivy League university in the 1950’s where I learned to be quite the good little drinker myself. Alas, as age has advanced, I seem to have lost my chops for it. Two white wines on a lot of ice and I’m smashed.

    Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh police Inspector Rebus, is addicted to alcohol and tobacco. In “Fleshmarket Alley” (Little Brown, 2005) Rebus meets up with someone whom he suspects is a mugger in a dark doorway: “Rebus had a carrier bag in his right hand. There was a bottle of 20-quid malt inside and he was loathe to take a swing unless absolutely necessary.” Any drinker can easily understand this.

     A veteran cop, Rebus is honest and experienced. He’s good at his job but has been sidelined by young, humorless, ambitious and abstemious professionals. Rankin’s excellent writing, smart plots, and colorful descriptions of the changing neighborhoods in Edinburgh make all of the Rebus books well worth reading. Sometimes the cigarette fug and hangovers that hurt to read about intrude on enjoyment. I want Rebus to clean up his flat and order a salad for once. I worry about his liver and I’m certain he’ll develop diabetes. His total lack of any kind of exercise makes him an ideal candidate for a heart attack or a stroke. A reader ought not to have to worry so about a character in a novel, for heaven’s sake.

     That’s real drinkers for you, even in books: everybody worries about them, but they don’t worry about anything other than how early in the day they can, in conscience, have the first drink. The main character in many books by Ken Bruen, an author I’ve mentioned before in this space, may go too far. Although he solves the nastiest crimes, ex-Garda officer, Jack Taylor of Galway, is an alcoholic. He drinks to oblivion, gets into awful fights, and doesn’t remember what happened afterward. He alienates the few friends has left, he often lives in personal squalor, he has long given up on forming any kind of relationship with a woman, and his doctor has told him DT’s are not far in his future. His life seems to have no scope: it is lived from his room to the pub, from the pub to the neighborhood, back to the room with booze in a bag. Of course, he doesn’t own a car because he is always too drunk to drive.

    He tries. He goes on the wagon. He sets little goals, one day at a time. Then something will happen to tick him off, and he’ll cave in and buy a bottle and drink it down. So it goes… Why do I bother with this kind of character in a novel? I am not sure I would have the patience in real life, so maybe I should switch to something a little lighter? Here is why: Jack Taylor reads and he listens to music all the time. His reading is so sophisticated and so advanced, I make lists of books he mentions and then go and read them myself. He is always way ahead of me. Is this redeeming, or what?

    Jack Taylor’s real life is narrow and tormented, so he leads another life in books. In a recent  novel, “The Magdalen Martyrs” (St.Martin’s, 2005), someone he has crossed enters his room and completely destroys everything in it, including all of his books, so carefully collected (and preserved!) over years. His local bookseller, comprehending the loss and taking pity, gathers the starters of a new library and delivers the books.

     “Among the poets were Rilke, Coleridge, Lowell, Yeats. The crime had the foundation of Thompson, Cain, Chandler, Derek Raymond. I didn’t pay much attention to the philosophers,” says Jack, “simply stacked them against the wall. My frame of mind could hardly register titles, let alone content. Biography had a fine mix: Fitzgerald, Graham Greene, Robert Graves, Branson.” Branson was thrown in for devilishness by the book guy. You know I will try to get Derek Raymond, a writer I’ve never heard of before. I’ve already looked him up in the local library system catalogue and find there are two holdings, elsewhere in the county.

     It seems Rebus is also a reader, although Ian Rankin doesn’t give us much idea of what he reads. Mainly, Rebus listens to music from the 1960’s and ‘70’s in his car as he goes from crime to crime and I keep handy a map of Edinburgh so I can shadow him on his way.

     John Rebus and Jack Taylor are not alone. James Sallis, an American, has given us sophisticated, smart novels featuring Lew Griffin, a New Orleans ex-cop recently on the wagon but whose memory of serious drinking emerges hauntingly. Ian Rankin himself has commented on the work of Sallis, saying: “Then there's James Sallis - he's right up there, one of the best of the best.  His series of novels about private eye Lew Griffin is thoughtful, challenging and beautifully written. Sallis, also a poet, is capable of smart phrasing and moments of elegiac energy.”

     Rebus and Taylor and Griffin join a long list of characters from the hardboiled gumshoe genre beginning with Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe (1939) and continuing with dissolute heroes by Mickey Spillane, James Cain, Dashiell Hammett, Ross MacDonald, Colin Dexter and Robert Wilson. Their characters are brave, often reckless, men who can’t get their lives together and who have fruitless relationships. If they are not divorced, they are widowed (always convenient) or looking for somebody who will put up with their lushedness and their dangerous comings and goings. For such drags, they are amazingly picky.

                                        * * *



Elinore Standard is the co-editor of "Bookworms: Great Writers and Readers Celebrate Reading," (Carroll & Graf, 1997).
ehstandard@gmail.com

NOTHING LIKE JANE WHEN YOU ARE IN A TIGHT SPOT

This piece by Elinore Standard appeared in the Bedford, NY "Record
Review" as one in the "My Reading Life" series. (2004)


Mentioned below: "The Two Bishops," by Agnes Sligh Turnbull; "The Jane Austen Book Club," by Karen Joy Fowler; "A Choice of Kipling's Prose," ed. Craig Raine; "Our Kind," by Kate Walbert; "The Lesson of Balzac," by Henry James; "Sense and Sensibility," "Pride and Prejudice," "Mansfield Park,"Emma," "Persuasion," and "Northanger Abbey," by Jane Austen; "A Room of One's Own," by Virginia Woolf



 NOTHING LIKE JANE WHEN YOU ARE IN A TIGHT SPOT

    I don’t know how many times I’ve read Jane Austen’s novels, nor do I remember when I read the first one. I go to them when I am tired of reading thrillers in which people get sliced and shot and blown up. I go to Jane Austen when I can’t stand another saga of family dysfunction and abuse. I turn to Jane Austen when the nightly news says the world around me is collapsing beneath the weight of fear, violence, lying and rage. I read Jane Austen to recover.

    My favorite stories, fiction and non, are about how women manage and how people change their lives. I enjoy humor when it is sly and dialogue when it is stimulating.  I mind being preached to. I appreciate a loyal and self-reliant character. I like happy endings.

    Lately I’ve tried other so-called “comfort” novels, while attempting to avoid the bodice-ripper Regency romances and the mystery “cozies”that are so often included in this genre.  Right after the ugliness of the recent presidential election, I even went so far as to try Agnes Sligh Turnbull, an American writer of bestsellers in the 1950s through the 70s. Like Jane Austen, she often writes about clergy and pastoral politics and the genteel life. Turnbull’s settings, often in upper class, pre-World War II urban America evoke what has been called a “kinder, gentler, age.”

     However, this kinder period as portrayed by Turnbull -- in addition to being completely humorless -- discriminated against all minorities, was Stone Age in its treatment of women, and it assumed an ethno-centric, white male-dominated, ruling class society. People were polite, though, and they all wore hats.

    After reading this appalling opening line from Turnbull’s “The Two Bishops” (Houghton, 1980), I fled back to Jane Austen:

        “The warm effulgence of the late June day fell upon
        the Bishop’s garden here and there.”

     Karen Joy Fowler has written the delightful “The Jane Austen Book Club” (Putnam’s, 2004), in which she says, “Each of us has a private Jane Austen.” Fowler’s novel is more about the book club characters and why they read what they read than it is about Austen, but at the back of the book there is a generous bibliography and a chronological listing of what others through the years have had to say about the great Jane Austen. Fowler quotes Rudyard Kipling as saying, “Nothing like Jane when you’re in a tight spot.” (from “A Choice of Kipling’s Prose” ed: Craig Raine.) (Faber, 1987).

    A chapter in a much darker recent novel, “Our Kind” by Kate Walbert,
(Scribner, 2004) has a reading group struggling to discuss Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” about which one character says, “I frankly, was confused, I couldn’t make heads or tails.” In comparing Woolf to Jane Austen, she adds, “Austen knew how to tell a story, and her books mean something. How many years later? You can read them again and again. In fact, I think we should read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ next…”

    In “The Lesson of Balzac” (1905) Henry James said, “The key to Jane Austen’s fortune with posterity has been in part the extraordinary grace of her facility…” Such ease and simplicity may be the secret to the amazing survival and popularity of her work throughout two centuries. In her short lifetime she produced six novels which, given the fact she was a female (and an “Old Maid” as D.H.Lawrence called her) and getting published was hard enough without that.  I wonder if there had been more Austen books written, would they seem as precious in the way they gently remind us today of the enduring foibles and follies of human nature.

    Just to remind you, the six Austen novels, in order of publication, are “Sense and Sensibility” (1811), “Pride and Prejudice” (1813), “Mansfield Park” (1814), “Emma” (1815), “Persuasion” (1817 Posth.) and “Northanger Abbey” (1817 Posth.). Although the books were not published in exactly the order they were written, they all deal with common themes such as the control of passion, miscommunication, the humbling of the vain and self-satisfied, and virtue rewarded. In addition, they all seem to be to be about money and the want of it.

    “Northanger Abbey” of the six, is quite strange and it is the only one I have not persistently re-read. Perhaps this is because it seems like a juvenile exercise, which it pretty much is. Austen wrote it perhaps ten years earlier than any of the others but it wasn’t published until after her death. Unlike the other five novels, I find little comfort in “Northanger Abbey." The three brother-sister pairs of characters seem farcical at times and, as I do with some other novels old and new, I find myself becoming impatient.

    Mark Twain didn’t exactly love Jane Austen’s work. He said, “Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’, I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.” Among other non-appreciators are Joseph Conrad, “What is it all about?”; Rebecca West, “...you will see women haggard with desire or triumphant with love…”;  H. G. Wells, “A certain ineluctable faded charm. Like some of the loveliest butterflies – with no guts at all.” And so on… Of course, there have always been detractors but the appreciators far outnumber them.

    In “A Room of One’s Own,” Virginia Woolf said of Jane Austen: “Here was a woman about the year 1800 writing without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching…”

    For me, as a reader in the 21st Century, these brave qualities are what make Jane Austen so reassuring, over and over again.

                                       * * *




Elinore Standard is the co-editor, with Laura Furman, of
"Bookworms: Great Writers and Readers Celebrate Reading." (Carroll & Graf, 1997).   ehstandard@gmail.com
   

SOUR GRAPES DEPARTMENT

This piece by Elinore Standard appeared in 2004 as one in the "My Reading Life" series in the Bedford, NY, "Record Review."



Mentioned below: "P.S. I Love You," by Cecelia Ahern; "The Devil Wears Prada," by Plum Sykes; "The Nanny Diaries," by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus; "Maneater," by Gigi Levangie Grazer; "Winning," by Jack Welch; "To Have and To Hold," by Jane Green; DaVinci Code," by Dan Brown.

                       SOUR GRAPES DEPARTMENT




     Don’t let anybody tell you writers aren’t seethingly competitive and envious of their colleagues’ success. Behind that thin wince of congratulation are clenched teeth. It’s tough enough to be gracious about a contemporary’s critical success, but it is a whole lot easier to be graceful about that than it is to hear about some kid’s huge advance.

     The 22-year-old daughter of Bertie Ahern, the Irish Prime Minister, just got a one million dollar advance from a US publisher for her novel, “P.S., I Love You”, plus $100,000 for a US film deal. The novel, written in longhand in three months, got rotten reviews in Ireland. Oh well.

     So what if “The Devil Wears Prada” gets a lousy review in the New York “Times” Book Review? “Devil” is now high on the NYT best seller list with (as of May, 2004, and climbing) 323,000 copies in paperback and 478,000 in hardcover, and Plum Sykes, the author, is crying all the way to the bank.

     The young co-authors of “The Nanny Diaries," (St. Martin’s, 2003) recently got a $3 million advance from Random House for follow-up books that are yet to be produced. It didn’t hurt that “Nanny” sold two million copies since publication, but still…

     Gigi Levangie Grazer’s “Maneater," (Simon&Schuster, 2003) had a movie option for more than $1 million six months before the book was ever even published.

     Jack Welch, the former GE executive, just sold world rights for $4 million to Harper Collins for a business how-to book called “Winning."

     Aside from being unbecomingly envious, how do these enormous stakes affect me as a reader? I ought not to be affected, directly. I can either read the book or ignore it. But when a publisher, usually one unit of a conglomerate, forks out huge advances, it means it somehow has to make the money back. This means promotion and media (which the conglomerate also owns) hype. More and more, it means the bottom line is going to decide what gets published and what doesn’t. This makes it a whole lot harder for what we think of as literature to edge into print.
Even if an insultingly tiny advance is secured for a literary work, the publisher usually won’t spend a cent on publicity or on such frills as author tours, and the book, even if it is critically well-received, lives a short little life and then sinks like a rock.

     Look at this! A full-page, back-of-the-Arts section ad in a recent New York “Times”. This ad, in bright pink, announces an  ‘irresistible” new novel, “To Have and To Hold” (Broadway, 2004), by Jane Green. It reminds us that Green has sold more than a million copies of her previous novels.  Interested? Here is the blurb: “Five years ago Alice gave her hand in marriage to a man who can’t keep his hands to himself. And by now, the man of her dreams has turned into a full-on cheating nightmare. But true happiness is about to find her in ways she never dreamed of.”

     The jacket illustration shows a man embracing a svelte woman with one of his arms extended behind her and the hand at the end of that arm squarely on the butt of another svelte woman standing nearby. Four other paperbacks by Green are shown in the ad and here is a really amazing thing: on no cover illustration is there a head. Each one shows legs –- long legs, very long female legs – and one shows a nude male torso, but nobody has a head or a face. Why is this? Could it be that faces might make the bodies less fantastic? 

     I don’t even want to know what this ad cost or who paid for it: Broadway Books, Green’s publisher, or maybe Book-of-the-Month-Club, or possibly The Doubleday Book Club, or perhaps Random House who issued an Audio CD version of “To Have and To Hold”. In any case, we know it cost plenty.  Grrrrrrrrrr.

     You’ve probably read Dan Brown’s “DaVinci Code” (Doubleday, 2002), just about everybody has. Aside from the inaccurate theology and history and stupid ending, the writing is terrible. I confess to finishing the book but then I threw it at the wall. I don’t even want to think about the amount of money this book has made. Spinoffs have become a regular industry.

     Sour grapes? You bet! A heaping dishful of big, fat, juicy sour grapes!



Elinore Standard is the co-editor, along with Laura Furman of “Bookworms: Great Writers and Readers Celebrate Reading” (Carroll&Graf,1997)  ehstandarad@gmail.com

AUGUST BLACK POINT