Downsyn: “Anyway, I am sure you are much cooler than I am so you will love this book so don’t pay any attention to this review and go out and buy the book and be fascinated by stories of warehouses and starting magazines and excrement coming out of backed up toilets and meeting Bill Clinton and wanting to kill people because they don’t treat you and your brother like the horrible tragic victims of the worst thing that has ever happened to anyone because God knows that no one has ever lost their parents before and that no one has suffered as much tragedy as you and your family so writing a memoir and whining for 400 pages makes perfect sense and this reviewer is just a big jerk who doesn’t get it.”
I would like to reiterate to my readers that I am by no means cool or hip, nor plan to be in the immediate future.
Exhibit A: Yesterday, I drummed on my steering wheel while blasting Metallica’s “Master of Puppets.” If a balding man drumming along to a twenty-one year old thrash track mostly forgotten by people under the age of thirty isn’t the antithesis of cool, I don’t know what is. But there’s no guilt at all, and certainly nothing to prove, in banging on a makeshift and wholly unsuitable stand-in for Lars Ulrich’s drum kit.
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
yes, but have you read the book Tom was reviewing? I haven’t, as I was repulsed by the publicity (similar for Dave Pelzer and others of the ilk). If you’ve read the book he reviews, do you think he’s fair? It made me laugh out loud when I read it the other day.
If you’re not cool, then I am definitely not cool.
Yeah, the problem with being cool or a hipster is how much work it takes to figure out how you measure up to the reigning hipster standard. Is there a website for that, that gives you points for soul patches, ironic haircuts/glasses/shoes/clothes? That would make it so much easier…
However, Metallica may be so *not* cool that it ends up being tres cool. You can’t win for losing.
I get the impression from glancing around the site that you would not particularly disagree with my review.