Sarah Vowell’s The Partly Cloudy Patriot

Given recent electoral outcomes, reading essays about American political history probably doesn’t sound particularly appealing, but I found going into This American Life regular Sarah Vowell’s back catalog to be very refreshing. She writes with a casual persona, a conversational tone that communicates her obsessiveness and fascination with both self-awareness and contagious enthusiasm.

The Partly Cloudy Patriot is a celebration of nerdishness, written at a time before that kind of thing had been so widely co-opted to pander and to sell sitcoms and t-shirts. There’s a sense of guilty revelry at play -the delight Vowell clearly feels in immersing herself in the historical remnants of upsetting episodes in history are contextualized but never dismissed. The essays are informative, but couched in a sense of personal experience that keeps them from getting overly dry. I’m a big fan of this particular strategy in nonfiction, especially in travel writing.

I’ve got some conflicting thoughts on the place of essay collections in 2016, in the world of aggregated longform essays and creative nonfiction. One one hand, I feel like my time is better spent casting a wide net, reading a diverse selection of authors writing on a diverse selection of topics. But, for the same reason I like short story collections, I like getting inside and inhabiting one specific writer’s brain over the course of a few small pieces. I’m not sure how much of that is coming from my own writerly inclinations to observe other writers’ voices in depth and how much it has to do with simply valuing an accurate and close reading of somebody else’s lived experience, but there you go.

Blood Meridian

I read Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian about a month ago, and then went back and listened to the audiobook -the Richard Poe/Recorded Books 2007 version. This was definitely a very good idea, and something I intend to repeat in the future. Blood Meridian is easily the best novel I’ve read this year, and it’s the sort of book that is going to require you to give it a slow and studious read. There’s lots of archaic vocabulary that will need looking up, and a fair bit of untranslated and colloquial Spanish that will need translating (my very limited Spanish got me through about 40% of the non-English dialog in this book, so if you’re a casual speaker or have a bit of a background in the language you’ll probably be fine). This is all on top of McCarthy’s typical absence of conventional punctuation and the distinctive voice that some people have a hard time with. On that subject, Blood Meridian is very violent and very gruesome, so if you are inclined to having a hard time with that kind of thing this is really not a book you’ll want to read.

Blood Meridian is sometimes classified as historical fiction, and while there’s certainly a fair bit of real history going on, that history is more a means to an end than anything in and of itself -this period of violent history is just a very bloody sandbox for McCarthy to play in. It’s far bigger than the historical context in which it is set, and deals with some very fundamental questions in a much more intricate and profound scope than I can communicate well in one of these three-paragraph reading logs. Suffice it to say, the violence and the monologues that define this book are interdependent and intractable, and most important, gorgeously depicted. McCarthy’s prose is always the main selling point, but here it isn’t just the whole show, but defining and working in service of the central ideology of the thing. Blood Meridian isn’t a Novel of Ideas, but its powerful immorality falls neatly in line with Garner’s oft-misunderstood ideas on moral fiction. An aside -this book has been criticized for its depiction of Native Americans and, yeah, certain passages read out of context do look pretty bad, but when read within their context and against the same sorts of passages describing the alleged protagonists, a careful reader will find that McCarthy is very much not taking sides with those advocates of Anglo-Saxon/Western European cultural superiority.

Following my close reading of the novel with an extended listening-to of the excellently produced audiobook was a great way to experience this thing. The feeling of listening and knowing when a spectacular piece of prose is coming your way is great, and having already done my research allowed me to easily follow and immerse myself in both the narrative and the sentence-by-sentence writing, a luxury that also offered me a greater sense of the ideological complexity the book offers its more attentive and obsessive readers. I plan to come back to this book. I’ve found its mythological essence sneaking into some of my own work of late, and that’s a good feeling.

Flashman at the Charge, The Flashman Papers, and my spotted history with historical fiction

I had never heard of George MacDonald Fraser’s “Flashman” books before picking a few up on a recommendation. I’ve got an innate suspicion of historical fiction borne out of an unmitigated G.A. Henty binge I went on when I was about twelve, (eerily similar to the events that led to my current perspective on Ritz crackers) but I figured that the light-hearted nature of these books would be less likely to set off my Ponderous Edwardian Bullshit Meter than the aforementioned G.A. Henty. It also helps that these books (published mostly in the 70s) are both comically irreverent and obsessively researched. My knowledge of certain specific historical events has been absurdly sharpened by these quick/guilty pleasure reads. But, holy shit, the covers are so, so bad…

So where do books like “The Flashman Papers” fit in with my goal of obsessive and broad reading? Well, they’re damn good palette cleansers. After getting through Infinite Jest or something emotionally draining, (even in a good way, like Kundera)there’s an undeniable satisfaction in something that’s both engaging and undemanding. The writing isn’t bad enough to distract, and the plots -while always far-fetched- are interesting enough. But far more interesting is the window they provide into a particular moment in history. Fraser is seriously obsessive in his research, and he has a remarkable talent for distilling all that research down to a simple narrative (a narrative that’s often genuinely funny).

I don’t have any problems with reading genre, with reading pulp. Some of the most interesting art happens at the points where high and low culture bisect -this high/low dynamic would be impossible if artists had no familiarity or appreciation of “low” culture, pop or otherwise. Obviously, it’s possible to go overboard in either direction, but I’m suspicious of people who broadly condemn any particular subset (don’t be the guy who likes “all kinds of music, except country music”).

Recommendation: Try it. See if this particular incarnation of non-high-culture does anything for you.

 

Flashman at the Charge
by George Macdonald Fraser

Anton Chekhov’s Short Stories and the Limitations of Norton Critical Editions

 

Ah, that special weight and tactile feedback of a Norton Critical Edition. It takes me back -although not to any readings of Chekhov in particular. This book was my first introduction to any of his writing, with the exception of a short passage in Francine Prose’s wonderful book “Reading like a Writer”. I think Cal State dropped the ball on that one, right? Regardless, my goal to read 100 books in 2015 has put a lot of the missed classics and neglected canon back in my sights.

I don’t think anyone would be particularly surprised by my assessment here. Chekhov is widely understood to be one of the greatest exemplars of short story writing in the history of the medium, and I’m completely on board with that. If anything, I’m surprised at how much at home his prose would be in a recent edition of The New Yorker or The Missouri Review. While Chekhov’s subjects seem alien in our post-Bolshevik world, his literary expressions of them remain full of relevant perception.

My only complaint? Well, I’m afraid I have to throw my beloved Norton Edition under the bus here. The mix of translations and lack of continuity (stories are organized by their date of publication) make for a rather poor read-it-all-the-way-through experience. I’m sure it’s more than adequate for a selective academic study, but if you really want to sit down and read Chekhov, skip the Norton. Francine Prose recommends the Constance Garnett translations, and I have no reason to disagree.
Recommendation: Read Chekhov, but pass on the Norton. I’ve included a link to a superior copy below.

Stories
by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

 

Denis Johnson’s “Train Dreams” and keeping/catching up

 

This novella got a lot of acclaim and critical attention when it came out, but I was just starting my undergrad work at that point and wasn’t really doing much to keep up with contemporary literature. Part of my motivation for reading 100 books this year is to get caught up on the heavy hitter of the last 10-20 years, and although I was already a familiar fan of Johnson’s work, I had been eagerly anticipating this particular reading. While it was sometimes unexpected, it met and exceeded my high expectations.

It’s a short read, but it’s the kind of engaging and quick-reading book that pins you to the couch for an afternoon (although I had the pleasure of reading it in its entirety in the beautiful Oregon forest of Silver Falls State Park, which, by the way, I would heartily recommend if it is even remotely convenient). The prose is everything I’ve come to expect from Denis Johnson,  and the plot drives the reader forward with relentless intent. I do believe that a different set of skills are called on to write a powerful novella.

It’s also the kind of book that will require a second read to fully appreciate. While I can offer my unreserved recommendation of the thing, I feel like I would be doing it a disservice by offering any more specific analysis until I have availed myself of a quality and much more deliberately paced re-read.

Recommendation: Read it. I give it all the stars available to me.

Train Dreams: A Novella
by Denis Johnson

Reading Log: ‘Alan Turing: The Enigma’, and Books that Could be Really Good

Image via Wikimedia

Biographies aren’t a regular part of my reading rotation, but I’ve read a few. Andrew Hodges first published his exhaustive biography of “British, gay, atheist, mathematician” Alan Turing over thirty years ago, but with the recent release of the film ‘The Imitation Game’ (which was loosely based on the book and which I have not seen) there has been a lot of buzz about the work. More importantly, a very good audiobook was recorded.

I have some serious qualms with this project. It’s a very good story and it brings up some vital points, illuminating some dark corners of our recent history that are far too easy to forget. Turing was a complicated man whose eccentricities lent themselves to caricature, and many of his ideas (worked to from first principles rather than existing paradigms) are badly misunderstood by most people outside of their direct effect. Hodges has done an awe-inspiring amount of research and created as near as a complete picture -of the man, his work, and his life- as humanly possible. The author -a mathematician himself- brings a higher-framework perspective to his explanation of Alan’s work. Hodges is a both a student and a very good teacher of the discoveries in pure math and in physics that took place in the first half of the 20th century, as well as their effect on the wider world (I was pleasantly surprised to find comprehensive and insightful commentary into Wittgenstein in the second act). I don’t think anyone but a mathematician could have written this book.

The problems all lie in presentation. This book is 768 pages long; the audiobook clocks in at over thirty hours. There is no sense of pacing or movement, and there are entire sections that seem like they might be better summarized in a handful of sentences. Literary elements (like his use of ‘Through the Looking Glass’ as an extended metaphor for the political situation throughout Turing’s life) are employed to no effect -it’s as if Hodges had read books that employed these kind of figurative techniques, but missed the fact that they must communicate deeper meaning. The references are dense and obfuscatious, without any redeeming revelation. The prose is steady, but unremarkable.

Recommendation: I really don’t know. I can’t recommend the book unreservedly. If you have a long commute the audiobook might be worth your time.  I can’t even tell you to try the first 100 pages, because the entire first section of the book is awful. But damn, it has it’s redeeming qualities…




The Imitation Game: Alan Turing, the Enigma
by Andrew Hodges

Reading Log: ‘California Ghost Town Trails’ and the Pleasure of Secret Knowledge

Old mining structure at the mouth of Suprise Canyon en route to Panamint City.

This was a charming little book. It’s badly outdated -don’t use it as a literal guide- but it’s a wonderful history told in a voice that’s interesting not because of formal training in writing but because it’s drawing from a unique set of experiences and an atypical way of looking at the world. I had read the chapter on Ballarat and Panamint City before taking a day trip there with my dad and my brother, but I decided this little volume was too interesting to use just like an outdated guide book.

Passion always bleeds through. The writing here is wistful and conspiratorial -the winking economy characteristic of the sharing of secret knowledge. As much as I love the dissemination of information via modern infrastructure, there’s an undeniable romance to old books full of secret knowledge (even though people have gone and posted that secret knowledge on the internet).

Recommendation: Give it a read if you’re interested in the subject, or if you’re a hopeless romantic about old books like I am.




California Ghost Town Trails
by Russ Leadabrand