Category / 75 Books

by Edward Champion

75 Books, Books #5-7

Last week was a busy week, but if there was any advantage to MUNI’s stunning inefficiencies of late (thank you, Nathaniel Ford!), it’s the extra 45 minutes per day of reading time.

Book #5 was Gilbert Sorrentino’s Little Casino. When I initially started reading this, it seemed to me that this was not so much a “novel,” but more of a collection of throwaway pieces. The book is constructed in short chapters, each chapter split up into two sections. The first is a memory fragment of some unknown human, some random incident of a fey and often funny nature, the second is a sort of intellectual response to it that often clarifies details through a voice that may or may not be the “author’s.” Of course, this being the world of Sorrentino, each fragment involves either a grisly death, sex or a fixation on cigarettes. Even when a chapter isn’t successful (and there are plenty that aren’t, some of them read like as if they’ve been pulled out of an MFA student’s journal, but this approach may in fact be the point), the book can be enjoyed as a collection of vignettes or possibly an effort to track various characters (some of them specific names, some of them merely “hes” and “shes”) who may or may not match up.

Strangely, I found myself preferring Sorrentino’s stylistic exercises to many of the calls and responses. There is, for example, a “lengthy” deposition transcript that points out the hypocrisies of political correctness and frivolous litigation which is quite hilarious, but it could have been thrown into just about any Sorrentino novel. And while I always enjoy Sorrentino getting goofy with self-imposed prose limitations (one chapter, for example, has every sentence begin with “Had X not Y”), I wondered how much of the book was genuinely “experimental” and how much was filler. I didn’t so much mind the lack of unity, but, unlike Mulligan Stew, I really felt that much of this work was written to pad it out to 200 pages and didn’t always find myself relishing the work. So this book is probably for Sorrentino completists only. For everyone else interested in dipping their toes into Sorrentino, still one of today’s most underrated novelists, I highly recommend Mulligan Stew and Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things.

For more on Sorrentino, check out this lengthy Gerald Howard profile.

Book #6 was Jonathan Ames‘ I Love You More Than You Can Know, a nonfiction collection that Ames had suggested to me was a collection of throwaway pieces — essentiallly, the remaining nonfiction that he hadn’t yet assembled in book form. I should have known that he was being typically self-effacing. This is not his answer to The Salmon of Doubt — in large part, because this isn’t a posthumous collection. Because many of these essays are as funny as anything Ames has ever written, particularly the leftover New York Press pieces. What’s particularly interesting is that Ames saved a good deal of essays involving his penis for this book. This time around, however, Ames seems even more introspective (if it can be believed) and a tad gloomier than his two previous books of nonfiction. Or perhaps I was a tad cheerier. Whatever the case, his more recent pieces from the past three years read as if they’ve been written under duress. But if you haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading Ames’ essays, it’s definitely worth it for the laughs.

Incidentally, the Young, Roving Correspondent will be talking with Ames again when he strolls through San Francisco. I’m honored to announce that Jonathan Ames will be the first guest to appear twice on the Bat Segundo Show. And while I’m unlikely to reveal any future Segundo-related books after the podcasts have been posted, in Ames’ case, I wanted to make a special exception, as I must honor the tacit agreement of constant Ames promotion.

[1/23/06 UPDATE: And as fate would have it, Jonathan Ames has a new essay about cleaning his fridge up over at The Morning News.]

Book #7 was Tim O’Brien‘s Lake in the Woods, which was my first O’Brien novel and it certainly won’t be my last. The book tells the story of John Wade, a veteran of My Lai and one-time teenage magician who morphs into a politician. One day, shortly after catastrophically losing a U.S. Senate race just after a personal scandal that isn’t entirely spelled out, his wife disappears. The reasons for her disappearance and the circumstances of Wade’s life are unclear, but are gradually revealed to the reader. What makes the book work so well is that way O’Brien plays with context and keeps many fascinating details from the reader. O’Brien is daring enough not to answer all of the questions and is deft at balancing style (chapters containing excerpts from “interviews” and books on war and politics provide context, as do other chapters offering hypotheses on what may have happened) with a reader’s expectations. Unfortunately, once O’Brien’s revealed his hand, the book starts to flag near the end. But as a study of concealment, both personal and historical, O’Brien’s book is gripping, written in an effectively austere manner.

It’s also interesting that shortly after writing this novel, O’Brien published a painfully personal essay about surviving My Lai and what his life was like years later. He revealed thoughts of suicide, sleeping pills and memories of a girlfriend who left him. He also reveals that the name of his real-life girlfriend is Kate (also the name of John Wade’s wife).

by Edward Champion

75 Books, Book #4

You may be shocked to hear this, but I didn’t do a lot of reading over the three-day weekend.  Book #4 was David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green.  I’ll withhold my opinion until I get a chance to take this up with Megan.  Needless to say, my reaction is extremely complicated and requires a good deal of thought.  I read this book very slowly for a reason.  I’ll only say that I think this novel was definitely the right step forward for Mitchell.  But it’s an ambitious attempt that’s definitely going to split readers.  I think we’re going to see the same heated and divisive reactions that we saw with Ian McEwan’s Saturday.  More to follow.

by Edward Champion

75 Books, Books #2-3

I apologize for setting all of my ducks in a row. But if I hope to get 75 books under my belt, then this essentially means 6-7 books/month. As regular readers know, I’m a big fan of thickass and “difficult” books. But I’m also a fan of living. And if I hope to have any semblance of a life, then that means getting the hard tally out of the way as early as possible. Either that or giving up this blog and holing up in motel rooms with whores.

On the thickass book front, I’ve just started Elliott Perlman’s Seven Types of Amiguity (not to be confused with Empson’s) in an effort to see what all the fuss was about in Australia. But since we’re talking seven perspectives and a plot wound tigher than Alberto Gonzalez’s ass, I’m thinking this might take a good chunk of January. I’m also still reading David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green and Megan and I have something special lined up for that. More details to come.

Here are the books I knocked off over the weekend:

Book #2 was Linda Greenlaw‘s The Lobster Chronicles. The book had been sitting for a while in my TBR pile. I had picked this book up because I am especially galvanized by self-sufficient women who know more about such esoteric topics as catching lobsters and living off the land than I do. After reading the David Foster Wallace collection, Consider the Lobster, part of me (that shameful carnivorous facet, I suppose) wanted to hear the other side of the story. And it was as good a time as any to pick up the Greenlaw book.

The verdict: Greenlaw is a good, if highly digressive storyteller, the kind of dependable person who will tell you a no-bullshit tale in a bar. I particularly enjoyed her depictions of the crazed inhabitants of the very small island she lived on and Greenlaw’s efforts (with her somewhat clueless dad in tow) to figure out lobster traps, attempting to turn a long-term offshore fishing career into a lobster-catching career, with the question of whether she should snag a man not unignored. As an urban dweller, it never hurts to be reminded that there are people out there who are busting their asses to catch the delicious seafood that we take for granted. Greenlaw doesn’t romanticize the industry in explicit terms, but she does give you a sense of what it’s like to be there. There were a few dry spots in which my urban-centric mind attempted to wrap itself around the nautical jargon. But I eventually caught the gist and, once I had, the book was over.

The consensus here is that I’m likely to check out Greenlaw’s other books, as well as anything else out there which might get me a sense of the sea. (I should note also that a few friends seem to think that I was a fisherman in a previous life. I have no idea why seafaring tales appeal to me so much, other than the fact that I am naturally drawn to the salty air, hard-working folks who don’t bullshit you, and what seems to me the miracle of staying alive, financially speaking, doing what you love in an industry in which you could easily go broke tomorrow.)

Book #3 was Phil Campbell‘s Zioncheck for President. Now before I offer my thoughts, allow me to declare any conflicts of interests right off the bat. I should point out that Mr. Campbell himself approached me at last year’s LBC Slipper Room party and asked me to read his book. Now I’m not about to say no to anyone with that kind of initiative (particularly because he was nice). But I’m not necessarily going to instantly love something that is written by someone who I know, even vaguely.

So it was something of a pleasant surprise that I enjoyed Campbell’s memoir. The book chronicles the failed campaign of one Grant Cogswell, running for City Council in Seattle just after the WTO riots. Campbell himself is involved as Cogswell’s campaign manager (along with attempting to manage an apartment building, which quickly falls by the wayside while the Cogswell campaign hits full gear as a crazed tenant named Doug takes over). Further, Campbell contrasts Cogswell’s campaign with one Marion Anthony Zioncheck, a 1930s idealist who served in Congress and eventually went insane. The Zioncheck-Cogswell comparisons didn’t hold all that much water for me, but Campbell’s sincere voice certainly did. How many political memoirs have you read where it’s all about some insider’s unquestioning endorsement, even after the fact? Well, in this case, Campbell’s just trying to get through the day. And it’s this approach that not only allows us an interesting glimpse of what Seattle’s local politics are about, but the unflinching problematics of championing an idealist.

by Edward Champion

75 Book Challenge

I’ll see your 50 books and raise you twenty-five. Seventy-five books, folks. I’ll be reading 75. Who’s with me?

[UPDATE: Tayari Jones has some very good guidelines about what to read, although I would add the following ideals: a mystery book, a science fiction book, a “chick lit” book, a book written for popular audiences (We don’t have to be literary snobs all the time, do we? Besides it helps to know what everyday people are reading from time to time.), a book that is at least 800 pages, a book that is less than 100 pages, a children’s book, a substantial percentage of books written by women and minorities, a memoir written by or about a truly whacked out individual, a lengthy nonfiction book about a subject I know absolutely nothing about, a microhistory, et al.]