The Elegant Variation

"DICTATION" REVIEW

My review of Cynthia Ozick's superb Dictation: A Quartet - which I somehow managed to write without talking about myself - can now be found at the Barnes and Noble Review.  Here's the opening:

"History," wrote Henry James in a 1910 letter to his amanuensis Theodora Bosanquet, "is strangely written." This casual aside could easily serve as the epigraph of Cynthia Ozick's superb new collection, Dictation, which concerns itself with lost worlds evoked by languages -- languages that separate and obscure as readily as they bind. It can be risky to look for connective tissue between stories written years apart and published in magazines ranging from The Conradian to The New Yorker. But themes of deception, posterity, and, above all, the glory of language -- at once malleable and intractable -- knit together this quartet, recasting the whole as the harmonious product of Ozick's formidable talent.

You can read the whole thing here.  (Public thanks to Michael Gorra who alerted me to The Conradian connection.)

ESCHEW YOU

It's interesting to note that Paper Cuts' seven deadly words of book reviewing are exclusively words of praise.  (Though, presumably, "shite" - and "slight" - would be similar no-nos.)  Which raises the question: Are words of praise inherently less interesting than words of criticism?  Or are they merely overused, as Ruth Franklin observed (we were going to say "intriguingly" but stopped ourselves) back when she reviewed David Mitchell's Black Swan Green:

The writer seeking fresh language with which to express her enthusiasm soon discovers that this particular vocabulary has been colonized by p.r. flacks whipping up empty, fluffy blurbs. The result is that all praise now feels like exaggerated praise. Sixty years ago, Orwell famously complained of the book reviewer's clich�s, the "stale old phrases" that get trotted out in the desperation of deadlines: "a book that no one should miss," "something memorable on every page." Nothing has changed, not even the syntax. In this blurbing age, we are still deluged by dizzy claims: that a novelist we know to be decidedly mediocre is "like a latter-day Dostoyevsky," or that a pop historian's latest hack job should be "required reading in living rooms from coast to coast," or that "every single note is perfection" in a piece of chick lit so bad that I could manage only a few chapters.

For the record, we frequently eschew, both in writing and in conversation.

COMING SUNDAY: HIS ILLEGAL SELF

Michael Merschel of the Dallas Morning News is kind enough to provide a sneak peek of my review of Peter Carey's His Illegal Self, which he'll be running this Sunday.  Since I'm off to NYC to speak on a panel at the O'Reilly Tools of Change conference, I won't be able to link to it when it comes up, so follow Michael's links if you are curious ...

BOOKFORUM RICHES

The latest issue of the always excellent Bookforum has been posted in its entirety online and demands your immediate attention.  Highlights include:

* Peter Brooks and Colm Toibin on Henry James.

* John Banville on American pulp fiction.   (Thanks to our many Banville alerters, especially Dave Lull.)

* Wendy Lesser on Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.

* Siddhartha Deb on J.M. Coeztee's brilliant Diary of a Bad Year

* Amy Rosenberg on Night Train to Lisbon.

* Nicole Rudick on Benjamin Percy's Refresh, Refresh

* Andrew Hultkrans on Steve Erickson's Zeroville.

* An interview with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Go spend some time with one of the two best book reviews in the country.

IN THE HOT ZONE

My review of In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars appears today in Steve Wasserman's book section at Truthdig.com.  Here's the opening:

The book publishing industry’s hunger to capitalize on the audiences of popular Web sites and bloggers has recently led it to make some risible creative choices which suggest a questionable grasp of the strength of either medium.  We may accept the short and choppy online, and perhaps we even seek it out: easily digestible nuggets to enjoy during the course of a busy day.  But when we settle down with a book, most of us seek a different experience.  The Web does certain things uniquely well, coupling immediacy with multimedia and a profound sense of interconnectedness, courtesy of the humble hyperlink.  Books, on the other hand, draw their strength from depth, reflection, gestation.  Writers—and publishers—forget this at their peril.  And so, the lamentable and increasingly common Web-to-book transition is seldom a smooth one. 

You can read the entire review here.

REVIEWING AUSLANDER

Although I thought Shalom Auslander's Nextbook column on Los Angeles was a compendium of every tedious, banal cliche ever hurled at this city, I'm really not - despite some perceptions - one to hold a grudge.  I thought his memoir, Foreskin's Lament, was just terrific, and I say so in my review in today's Philadelphia Inquirer.

Auslander succeeds because, although superficially extreme in its concerns - God is a thug and Judaism can be ridiculous - Foreskin's Lament manages to occupy a station left open in the current Religion Debates. At one end we find the True Believers and at the other we find Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins denouncing religion as the root of all evil, the solace of dupes. For all his asperity, Auslander reports to us from the middle, as one who can't deny religion's contradictions and lunacies yet has been unable to entirely do away with belief and its necessity. In this, he is probably more representative of most Americans than either of the extremes, and it is in those moments that Foreskin's Lament is most heartfelt and effective.

As Auslander recently said in an interview at Bookslut.com, "It's easy to just slam the door on it, but there are people I know who find solace in it. And, certainly, the idea that there's a God should be right." Perhaps beneath all the name-calling fury and scabrous wit, Foreskin's Lament is intended as a parable on the strange durability of faith. That would be so Auslander.

Auslander will be in town for a reading at Vroman's on Monday evening at 7 p.m.  I hear he's a fun, lively reader, and might just trek out across four area codes to hear him.  If you're in the area, do stop by and pick up this remarkably funny book.

PARADISE LEVERAGED

I generally cannot abide talk radio (or "talkback radio" as it's called in Australia - something I learned reading the new Coetzee) but every now and then I fall into the rabbit hole of one of KCRW's programs.  Quite by chance, I caught Will Self last night on Which Way LA?, where he was discussing his latest collaboration with Ralph Steadman, Psychogeography: Disentangling the Modern Conundrum of Psyche and Place.  (If you want to know something about the idea beyond psychogeography, read this.)  I strongly recommend you listen to the podcast - the story of Self's walk from LAX to the Watts Towers (he's in town for a reading) was one of those great inspiring conversations that makes you reconsider your home through the eyes of an outsider.

At any rate, the reason I mention all this is because one of the other guests was D.J. Waldie, Los Angeles writer of considerable renown.  And I remembered a review of his essay collection Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles I'd written back in 2004 for the Los Angeles Review.  Waldie is a remarkable guy, so it seemed worth going back into the archives and reprinting my review for you.  Here it is:

PARADISE LEVERAGED

Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles
D.J. Waldie
Angel City Press
206 pp
$16.95

That many of us would consider the title “Bard of Suburbia” to be a dubious distinction is precisely the sort of thinking that drives D.J. Waldie (a man who can lay fair claim to that title) crazy. In the 28 essays that comprise his new collection Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles, Waldie, a public official with the City of Lakewood who doesn’t drive a car and has lived in the same 957 square-foot house his parents bought there in 1946, stands poised against grandiose, overblown dreams, a patron saint of modest expectations.

This bracing if uneven volume has been assembled from pieces that originally ran in the Los Angeles Times, the L.A. Weekly, Salon and others, and they are linked at their core by Waldie’s steadfast belief in the restorative power of community. That Los Angeles seems perversely designed to undermine that sense of community is what gives Waldie his fire.

Waldie’s vision of Los Angeles is that of Paradise Leveraged, a series of spent dreams and promises paved over to install newer dreams and newer promises, an endless cycle of reinvention. It’s a city that’s unique in “its ability to manufacture snake oil and simultaneously buy it.” Many of the familiar L.A. narratives are here from the infamous water grabs to the police corruption scandals. His essay “All in the Family,” which looks at the Chandler family’s role in forging Los Angeles, is an elegant miracle of compression. And “The City and the River” is one of the best explanations of the history and value of this misunderstood waterway that you are likely to find.

But although he’s not afraid to tackle the large scale, one suspects Waldie is a miniaturist at heart. He’s at his poetic, moving best when working at close quarters, describing the joys and vagaries of a life away from L.A.’s centers of power.

Lakewood’s modesty keep me here. When I stand at the head of my block and look north, I see a pattern of sidewalk, driveway and lawn, set between parallel low walls of house fronts that aspires to be no more than harmless. We are living in times of great harm now, and I wish that I had acquired all the graces my neighborhood gives.

Waldie brings light to these small, quiet moments again and again. The wonderful essay “Fallout” describes a childhood spent in the shadow of defense factories, a childhood mixed with equal measures of Rod Serling and prefabricated fallout shelters. In “On the Bus,” he perfectly captures the disregard with which motorists and bus passengers treat one another. The motorist will never see “the civil gesture of the tall, young black man toward the old white man whose leg he must brush aside to pass down the aisle of the packed bus …” Bus passengers are equally oblivious to cocooned motorists as they await the arrival of their buses, straining under the weight of plastic shopping bags – “that red line across a numbed hand is the pedestrian stigmata.” Waldie is insistent that L.A. be considered in its entirety, that the vital lives of the suburbs not be lost against the glare of Hollywood klieg lights.

The complaints about the collection are minor. Because these essays were run in separate publications there is a certain amount of repetition of ideas and even turns of phrase, and a keener editorial eye might have eliminated some duplication. And some of the shortest essays – as little as a page and a half – are unsatisfying. (“The Golden Dream Goes Dark” itself goes dark as abruptly as a plug yanked from a socket, and “L.A. Literature” is little more than a tantalizing blurb of what might have been.) And when will publishers learn to identify each essay with its publication name and date? Finally, the collection is ill-served by Patt Morrison’s self-indulgent, tedious foreword.

But the cumulative force of Waldie’s passion and arguments is undeniable. Which leads me to a confession. I am Waldie’s worst nightmare, the sort of resident he dismisses as a “tourist.” Living a narrow life essentially bounded by the 10, 110, 101 and the ocean, I’d never even really studied an L.A. map (without seeking a specific destination) before reading these essays. Now, standing before a wall-sized Thomas Guide, I located Lakewood, nestled on the flats between the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers, just as Waldie describes. I took in the names of places I’d never ventured into: Cypress. La Mirada. Norwalk. Artesia.

And so on a recent overcast Saturday morning, I got into my car and drove to see Waldie’s city for myself, which is a more cheerful place than his essays suggest. As I drove through the uniform grid of well-tended streets, I was struck by how much is hidden behind freeway retaining walls. Mayfair Park advertised an upcoming Patriot Day concert. Families with children enjoyed a friendly public pool. I saw garage sales, kids on scooters, and open houses. I saw a community living its life quietly in shadows of the freeways, not looking “for more, only for enough.” And although I inevitably made my way back to the familiarity of the Westside, it may be - to paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes - that a Thomas Guide once stretched by an idea will never regain its former shape.

GUEST REVIEW - THE FROTHY FRESHENER

Guinness: The 250 Year Quest for the Perfect Pint
Bill Yenne
John Wiley & Sons
219 pp
$24.95

GUEST REVIEW BY JIM RULAND

Is Guinness the best beer on the planet? Those who consume the two billion pints poured each year around the world would certainly agree that it is. To find the answer, noted beer expert Bill Yenne went to the Guinness Brewery at St. James Gate in the heart of the Hibernian metropolis where Guinness Extra Stout has been brewed since 1759.

What is stout anyway? Generally speaking, beer can be grouped according to the type of yeast used to ferment the ingredients that make up the beer. Lagers are fermented from the bottom whereas ales and porters are fermented from the top. Guinness is a form of porter and it gets its characteristic dark color from the roasted barley that goes into the mix.

Of course, Guinness wouldn’t be Guinness without its creamy crown of foam, but this didn’t start until relatively recently: 1959 to be exact, when Guinness introduced a sophisticated blend of nitrogen and carbon gases to the pour – a process known as nitrogenization – to create the cascade that results in Guinness’ unique and distinctive appearance. Part of the appeal of drinking a pint of Guinness is all the tradition that comes with it; but Yenne’s history reveals that the Guinness family was a forward-thinking clan who encouraged innovation. From building an eighth-mile railway on the property to securing a lease for nine thousand years, time and time again the brewers at St. James Gate demonstrated they were problem solvers who did things their own way.

While some of the early chapters dealing with the personalities behind the gate make for dry reading, Yenne uncovers some fascinating details. For instance who knew that for a brief time Guinness operated a brewery in Long Island, New York? Or that Guinness maintained a fleet of ships and that one of them was torpedoed by a U-boat during the Great War? Or that the Guinness Book of Records, which was created as a promotional giveaway, was at one time the biggest selling copyrighted book in the history of publishing? Or that in the early twentieth century Guinness employed men to travel around the world and report on how their product was being presented and received. Talk about a dream job!

In fact, the exploits of one such world traveler changed the face of Guinness forever. For most of its rich history, Guinness did not bottle its own beer. The bottling business was every bit as competitive as the beer-making enterprise. Each bottler had its own distinctive emblem, which they would affix to each bottle of beer they distributed. So in Egypt or Jamaica or San Francisco, a beer drinker would know and ask for Guinness, not by name, but by the emblem on the bottle.

Guinness reversed its long-standing refusal to advertise its products with a series of unforgettable campaigns that introduced the phrases, “Guinness is Good for You” and “Guinness for Strength” as well as a menagerie of characters, including the famous toucan. Working for the agency that handled the Guinness account was mystery writer Dorothy Sayers, who is credited with the line “It pays to advertise.” Even Dublin writer James Joyce wanted to get in on the act who, according to Yenne, by volunteering the following tag line: “the free, the flow, the frothy freshener.”

Despite the plethora of trivia collected in Yenne’s history, the book is limited in scope. The materials for Yenne’s book were largely based on an extended trip to the archives at St. James Gate and a series of conversations with the current master brewer. For example, we’re told that there are three Guinness breweries in Africa and another in Malaysia, but aren’t given a glimpse of what they’re like. The third biggest market for Guinness after Ireland and Great Britain is not America but Nigeria, but Yenne makes no effort to describe this phenomenon. It’s simply another curious fact lost in a trove of them.

However, if you’re a lover of Arthur Guinness’ luxurious liquidation who wrongly believes that its made with water from the River Liffey – a myth that is nearly as old as Guinness itself – then Yenne’s history ought to be required reading. At the very least, the fruits of Yenne’s research are guaranteed to make you the best-informed lad or lassie at the pub.

It hardly matters if Guinness is the best. In a market where beer is perceived as being cold, gold and highly carbonated, Guinness is the black sheep of the malted beverage industry. Perhaps a better question is: what would a world without Guinness be like?

Pintless.

GUEST REVIEW: THE FAITH HEALER OF OLIVE AVENUE

The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue
By Manuel Muñoz
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
239 pp
$12.95. paperback

REVIEWED BY DANIEL A. OLIVAS

With the publication of his second collection, The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue, Manuel Muñoz establishes himself as one of the best short story writers plying his craft today.

These ten connected stories grow out of the seemingly unrelenting heat of the Central Valley in California where people struggle to find meaning “among the houses either crumbling down at the foundation or boasting a fresh coat of paint.”

In “The Comeuppance of Lupe Rivera,” a young gay man named Sergio tells us about his glamorous neighbor, Lupe, who has an unending string of handsome suitors cruising by her home or taking her out on dates. While Sergio admires Lupe, other neighbors are not as impressed by this independent woman:

“There was a lot to be jealous of, if you wanted to be. When you’re smart like Lupe, you can have a job like a union arbiter for the city employees, with your own office and a car to drive around in, even if it is a government one, a beige Dodge Aries.”

Eventually, violence invades Lupe’s romantic world. Sergio, rather than blaming her, tries to make sense out of life’s disasters: “…we all make mistakes, … bad luck can ruin everything, even for someone beautiful like Lupe.” But in the end, this story is not really about Lupe but concerns Sergio and his own struggles with identity and social acceptance. Muñoz subtly weaves Sergio’s own personal story with that of Lupe demonstrating the manner by which a self-aware young man develops as a person.

In the chilling and heartbreaking story, “When You Come Into Your Kingdom,” Muñoz introduces us to Santiago, the groundskeeper for a school. Through flashbacks, we slowly learn of Santiago’s family life and his excruciating efforts to accept his overweight son, Alejandro. At one point, Santiago buys Alejandro a baseball glove so they can play catch the way fathers and sons should:

“Alejandro smiled as he tried it on, his row of white teeth, straight as soldiers, tiny and overwhelmed by the flesh of his cheeks.”

The great tragedy that Muñoz eventually reveals serves as a disturbing cautionary tale for parents who allow their expectations for their children to devolve into something vicious and selfish rather than nurturing and accepting.

Muñoz writes with great authority when it comes to the complexities and ambiguities of loss. Connie in “Lindo y Querido” is a single mother whose son, Isidro, had been in a horrific motorcycle accident. Carlos, the other boy who rode with her son, died at the scene. Connie tries to get on with life as Isidro lies in bed, incapacitated, dying. She suffers overwhelming guilt when the mother of the dead boy, with two remaining sons in tow, knocks on Connie’s door for a short visit:

“After they went away, Connie realized that she had given the impression that her son was home to get better, and she wanted to go after them, to tell the mother that they would soon have equal losses, to say something like our sons or both of them or our boys, but it was too late and she did not know where they lived.”

Connie’s eventual understanding of her son’s relationship with Carlos serves as a springboard for Muñoz’s considerable talents as a writer.

These stories are provocative, soulful and revelatory. In them, Muñoz offers powerful but restrained portrayals of life’s tragedies with the kind of maturity one does not expect from a writer in his mid-thirties. Luckily for us, Muñoz should be creating fiction for decades to come.

Daniel A. Olivas is the author of four books including Devil Talk: Stories (Bilingual Press), and is the editor of the forthcoming Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature (Bilingual Press, November 2007). He shares blogging duties on La Bloga, which is dedicated to all aspects of Chicano literature. His Web site is http://www.danielolivas.com. This review first appeared in the El Paso Times. 

REVIEW: I LOVE YOU, BETH COOPER

My review of Larry Doyle's I Love You, Beth Cooper appears in this Sunday's New York Times Book Review.  Here's the opening.

As long as there are nerds among us, they will seek their revenge. The pimply-faced debate captain lusting after the head cheerleader is an archetype nearly as durable as the hero’s journey or the star-crossed lovers. In his debut novel, “I Love You, Beth Cooper,” Larry Doyle, a television writer whose credits include (promisingly) “The Simpsons” and (less so) “Beavis and Butt-Head,” gives a 21st-century gloss to this familiar tale.

You can read the rest here, where it's paired with a great bit of artwork by Ward Sutton.