Tag Archives: books

The Thin Man

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Nick and Nora Charles are two of the more iconic characters in mystery creation.  What is fascinating about this reality is that they were only featured in this, the last of Dashiell Hammett’s novels.  The Thin Man, published in 1934 – introduces Nick and Nora.  The book made such an impact on popular culture that it spawned a TV series and movie.  Reading it, I am not sure if the book is precisely a literary classic – but it is certainly a superior page turner.  The book certainly is better than the potboiler bilge that Dan Brown and John Grisham pump out in this age, but it also stands as very much a popular culture artifact.  Unlike a lot of “classic reads” (which often connote schoolwork), this is a pretty fun breezy read – that doubles as both a worthwhile mystery as well as something of a sideways comedy.

The novel, set in New York, involves Nick Charles, a former detective who married into Nora’s family for love – and money.  He is now in the upper class twit tier of society – although he always hints of his former life.  Into their lives wanders Dorothy Wynant, the daughter of an eccentric scientist Nick had done some detective work for – apparently the scientist’s assistant has turned up dead.  The scientist, Clyde Wynant, in fact never appears in the book – he communicates via telegram and through his attorney Herbert MacAulay, but he exists as a spectre – and given the weirdo depiction of him, the obvious subject.  Nick does not want to get involved, but suddenly is pulled in by forces from his past – and soon enough he finds himself tagging along with the cops in a couple of cases, being a private dick sort of management consultant.

They mystery is sufficiently interesting, but while the plotting is undistinguished (any student of the law of the conservation of characters can probably figure out where this is head), where Hammett does great is in atmosphere and imagery.  In the depiction of sad sack basket case Dorothy, her not so sad sack but crazy mother, her dark, lurking brother – the Wynants would make for its own sort of sitcom, as long as David Lynch were developing it.  We get a great sense of smoke, color and place here – and it feels like we know these people.  Indeed the witty repartee between Nick and Nora and the comedy of the upper class twits is the highlight.  She is a very funny drunk (everyone drinks all the time – I am not sure how they managed to stay awake long enough to solve crimes) and is a useful foil for Nick.  Ultimately, it is hard to call The Thin Man great literature, but it is superior popcorn – and what’s wrong with that?

Out of Water

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FULL DISCLOSURE: I sort of know one of the authors

Well, if you were looking for sex Out of Water is not the book for you. The distinct lack of eroticism and steamy shower scenes fatally infect that pursuit. On the other hand, if the intent is to read an informative and surprisingly tractable articulation of the pending water crisis in this ever populating world, Colin Chartres and Samyuktha Varma’s survey of the (rather literally) barren landscape is a good choice.

Water scarcity is a crucial problem facing our planet. I mean, even if you are the most fanatic climate change skeptic, the sheer math is daunting. By 2050 we will be 9 billion people living with largely the same planet elementally. 50 percent more toilets to flush!  But alas, with the increased urbanization of the population, the amount of potable water makes the math more complicated – and if you want to add effects of climate change in – the math is very very tricky.  The problem with the water scarcity problem as a marketing slogan is that frankly, in the bourgeois United States (hell, even the impoverished United States) potable water is not a huge problem.  We whine about urban water supplies, but comparing that to what villagers in rural India face is utterly ridiculous.  The effects of the potential lack of water is clear, but the symptoms are often second order – fortunately we are not at armageddon yet.

What Varma and Chartres (perhaps referred to as Chartma in this document because I am too lazy to write out both names) do effectively in this book is to concisely outline the conditions in a few representative case studies – both in what is happening to the water supply, and measures that exist to solve it.  In some ways the book is predictable (we have a problem), but the insights provided on the issue are clearly well researched.  In particular, Chartma’s identification of a flawed worldwide water management paradigm is enlightening.  That is, while most resources are regarded economically – water is regarded in a more schizophrenic manner.  Water is an economic good, especially for matters such as irrigation, but it is obviously a social good – a utility if you will.  Governments have not been very good at unifying management approaches to accomodate both uses of the same resource.  As a result, the interdependence of agriculture with individual consumption is often given short shrift.

Chartma goes on to specifically go over cases in the Murray-Darling Basin, South Asia and North America.  The book surveys both the management philosophies and regulatory environments in place, as well as the specific circumstances.  Australia seems to have been “scared straight” the most by their issues, and thus have the most pro-active view of the situation.  That said, the facts and the outlines of the cases are probably the weakest part of the book.  This is not because it is poorly researched, but because it is so exhaustively researched.  The pictures, and exhibits become a little overwhelming – and endnotes fill me with anger and scorn.  Of course I have no doubt I am not the target audience here.

That minor quibble aside, Varma and Chartres have put together a concise, valuable explanation of the pending water scarcity crisis.  For a fairly academic pursuit, the writing is taut and actually pretty accesible prosewise – the jargon is kept to a minimum.  This is a really important issue, and Out of Water does it full justice. But alas, there is no sex.

The Master and Margarita

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Before I dive into this fully (and there is a lot to dive into), I will note that this is the first book I read on the Sony Reader.  I was worried that my eyes might get tired or something like reading a computer screen, but the E-Ink technology really is pretty good.  I use the Pocket E-Reader which means I don’t get wi-fi or a touch screen.  On the other hand, the reader is very compact, and the managing of the books is easy.  If I dive more into the Gutenberg project, this will be invaluable.  Anyway, now for the review.

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Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, the #1 on Keith Law’s 100 Greatest Novels list, is a savage satire of life in Stalin’s Soviet Union.  Of course, like any good novel, it does not stop with the tone of satire, but instead also touches notes of sadness and hope in its parallel stories.  In particular, Bulgakov spins a tale of Moscow under the enforced atheism (consider the deep irony of that turn of phrase) of the Communist regime – and speculates about what would happen if Satan visited.

Indeed, Satan DOES visit – and descends upon Berlioz, the head of the state sponsored literary guild, and Ivan, a poet who is writing atheistic poetry for the State.  The Devil talks to Berlioz about being witness to the execution of Jesus, and tells the story of Pontius Pilate, the governor of Rome who oversees said execution.  And (I am not giving anything away here), the Devil summarily predicts how Berlioz will die.  Berlioz pooh poohs what he sees, and indeed … well, no points for figuring out what happens.

In a lot of ways, a one sentence description of The Master and Margarita could be “the Devil starts some shit in Moscow”, and the first half of the novel is dedicated to Satan’s causing mischief – exposing people’s dirty laundry, sending others to death, culminating with a lovely scene where he gives clothes to all the women in town and rather inconveniently takes them all away.  Bulgakov has fun with this savaging, and as a reader, it is actually quite breezy.

However, at the second book, we start discovering a sadder tale.  We learn of the Master, a guy who was divined Pontius Pilate’s story and is engulfed by the effort to write the book.  In this story, Bulgakov is less satirical, and we see a man who is holding up free thought (in this manifestation, non-atheism).  As the master is engulfed he eventually leaves his wife, the Margarita of the story, and she has spent her time waiting for him to return, or living in suspended animation as he is all that matters to her.

What works throughout the novel is Bulgakov’s imagery – that of Satan, Margarita.  The novel is clearly contemporary to its time.  Particularly audacious is Bulgakov’s portrayals of Jesus and Satan.  In fact, Satan could be argued to be the real protagonist in the story.  The Master and Margarita’s fate is essentially adjudicated by Satan and his crew, and indeed they are not presented as simply evil personified.  While nobody would confuse Bulgakov’s Devil with Martin Luther King, he is much more nuanced than an instrument of evil.  Really he seems more a messenger of the divine message than anything – someone to smite those so aggressively denying the existence of God … and perhaps by extension less the existence of any other mode of thinking than a state sponsored one.

Is this the greatest novel of all time?  What is tough when you get to these sorts of lists is personal criteria, and so much of the context and knowledge of reservoir literature of the time is important.  Bulgakov references the Bible and Dostoyevsky and classic Russial Literature, all allusions that are less resonant to yours truly than to others.  While this limits its “super greatness” to me, even not being 100% familiar with everything out there, it is still a very good read.  Bulgakov’s passion and sense of justice drive the story along, and the wit and irony are there, even if a reader (like me) does not know ALL of the nooks and crannies.  It is very readable for a “classic” (even with the textured weaving of the Jesus, Moscow and Master threads), and definitely a worthwhile book to get around to – if nothing else as a useful artifact of what Communism was like from the inside.

The Breaks of the Game

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My favorite baseball book ever was Peter Gammons’ Beyond the Sixth Game, which starts with a team that was the finest young team in baseball, the 1975 Boston Red Sox.  One of the things that time has forgotten a little bit is that when these Sox lost to the Cincinnati Reds, the perception was that this would not be the last big result for this bunch.  Fred Lynn had won the Rookie of the Year and the MVP (and unlike Ichiro, was actually a first time major leaguer).  Carlton Fisk would go on to the Hall of Fame as would Jim Rice – Dwight Evans would be a Gold Glove winner.  The future was so rosy – but then free agency became codified in the sport at the same time.  Gammons explores how the sport fundamentally changed – how market prices started to take over as players had evolved from the reserve-clause indentured servants of yore  to free agents actively pursuing to be paid according to their marginal revenue.  Gammons looks at the league from the inside and out, how it changed locker rooms, how it changed management’s view of players and how different teams coped with the gameboard suddenly changing.

What Gammons captured in Beyond the Sixth Game, David Halberstam captures with remarkable reportage in his The Breaks of the Game. The team is the 1980 Portland Trailblazers.  The team of course, won the title in 1977 – with some perfect chemistry it seemed, Bill Walton at the height of his powers, and Maurice Lucas providing some key help, and a starting lineup of guys age 26 and under.  Like the 1975 Red Sox, the future seemed limitless.  Like the MLB of that time, money was changing thing, and the ABA/NBA merger caused uncertainty.  Halberstam, as he does in all of his books, narrates the season almost as a novel.  There is reporting, but it all flows very naturally.  Every player gets some background, the coach Jack Ramsay is profiled in segments.  But what Halberstam does is bring the individuals to the narrative.

For instance, consider Kermit Washington, the Blazers Power Forward.  Halberstam unobtrusively describes how he became part of compensation (part of the settlement of the merger was that teams who lost free agents were entitled compensation as determined by the commissioner).  But he also discusses a man with a self confidence problem, who learned how to believe himself – who seeked out coaching – who had a home in San Diego he was settling in when he suddenly got traded to Portland.  Bobby Gross, Lenny Wilkens, Bill Walton, Moses Malone (imagine if the Blazers kept him!) all get some dedicated pages in the same vein.  Halberstam’s writing is full of these nuggets.  However, he also talks about television, how the NBA over expanded, how it mismanaged their television dealings – and how CBS had to deal with trying to sell a black game to a white corporate audience.  The book’s narrative is clean – there are not individual chapters dedicated to these individual threads, Halberstam works in and out – while following the Blazers around, trying to handle contract disputes, individual agendas and trying to hang on to the last vestiges of the 1977 glory.

Halberstam was a great reporter and writer, and for basketball books The Breaks of the Game reads so naturally and covers so much.  It is a great read.

The Book of Basketball

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For anybody familiar with his 5,000 word columns on espn, that Bill Simmons’ The Book of Basketball clocked it at damn near 700 pages is not any sort of surprise.  In its hardcover form, lugging it on my commute represented legitimate weight lifting.  It also made me look smarter, like a PhD candidate or something.  Of course, I probably needed to take the cover flap off to obscure what I was reading.  But I digress.  The book is Bill Simmons’ take on the history of the NBA.  He has opined in his columns that basketball is his favorite sport and the Celtics, his first love.  Sometimes I wondered if his columns were just homerism, and on the football and baseball angles, they certainly were.  However, his knowledge and passion for basketball is real – the sheer amount of research that went into this book is incredible.

As for the quality of the book itself?  Well, the above paragraph probably describes the book quite nicely – it is packed to the gills with information, rantings and his passion – it is also very very long.  For instance, his section on the 96 best players of all time ends up taking nearly half the book’s length.  The book is full of lists – the best teams of all time, his all-this, all-that, Simmons’ recapping of the entirety of the history of the NBA and how eras fundamentally differ.  The individual sections are a mixture of new information, but they also contain a decent amount of material from his columns that seem reworked.  Of course, I have a disorder that compelled to read all of these columns, so I know them – but that’s me not having a life.  But I try to be objective.  Simmons’ voice, to the unfamiliar, is as pop culture-littered as Chuck Klosterman, without necessarily the verbal flair.  Klosterman is an outsider to life’s rich pageant – Simmons is in the fray.  Whether that makes a great writer, I am not sure, but it makes a sure voice with authority and perspective – an essential for the good essayist.  Indeed, some of the chapters are brilliant.  In particular, his painstakingly detailed breakdown of Russell vs Chamberlain was an eye opener and provided a more educated assessment than any I have encountered.

Also interesting his his introduction of “The Secret”, the inspiration for his book.  Simmons advances that there is a specific trait to winning in a team setting, that is tangible and true.  He tries to define it – frames it as a “force” of sorts.  The sort of trait that forces athletes to simply not be able to properly articulate to media types or fans.  Indeed anybody on a good team understands it, that ubuntu sort of magic.  But then he pooh poohs statistical analysis in defending his secret analysis, although indeed the work done in that end is getting at the same questions he is – but using data instead of anecdotal evidence.  Fortunately, he acknowledges some of this in footnotes – copious and a comic device here.  Ultimately the book is not precisely a page turner – but it plays well as a kind of super-almanac.  The sections are all engaging and interesting – though it does not beg to be read in order as I did.  But it is a good book to have in the collection, no doubt.

 

Under the Banner of Heaven

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It is tempting to tackle a review of Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven as an examination of Fundamentalist Mormonism, it’s almost necessary outgrowth from the Latter Day Saints movement of Joseph Smith at large, and how a church with a violent history created the circumstances for a violent man.  However, that review merely leaves the book as a piece of sensationalistic screed, and that sells Krakauer short.  Instead, Under the Banner of Heaven is a measured account of the story of a religion that is, in a sense, one of the United States’ real triumphs.  Now, measured does not mean sentimental, nor flattering at times – but the research is there, and it is clear Krakauer struggled with the topic.  Moreover, the book really illustrates how fundamentalism itself, in any form, can lead to horrifying results … that it occured in the LDS merely makes it like any other religion.

The book starts with the initial fact of the murder.  The case of course is well known, and Krakauer does not use that for suspense.  However, the murder allows Krakauer to delve into the insights of Dan Lafferty, serving life in prison as one of the killers (perhaps THE killer depending on whose version of events is most accurate).  The simplest insight comes first:

He [Lafferty] still insists that he is innocent of any crime, but, paradoxically, does not deny that he killed Brenda and Erica.  When asked to explain how both these apparently contradictory statements can be true, he says, “I was doing God’s will, which is not a crime.” (page xx)

And his faith is real.  His voice in the book is that of calm.  In fact, from Krakaeur’s depiction, Dan Lafferty is probably the best expert testimony on what happened during the murder itself and the Lafferty mindset in general.  The detachment he speaks with is frightening – the absolute conviction that he did the right thing, the lack of fear or acknowledgment that the murder was in any way “tragic”.  He was merely a true believer doing his duty.

But how did Lafferty get here?  Krakaeur uses this detachment as a springboard to delve into the spread of fundamentalist Mormon onclaves in Colorado City, Arizona and Bountiful, British Columbia, and the fundamental (sorry) schism in the church’s history over plural marriage.  All of this exposition is absolutely necessary.  As one expects, these societies seem extremely patriarchal, and the notion of choice for potential wives is essentially absent.  However, there is not a ton (although there is some) insight from women who support the practices – which would have been enlightening.  However, for readers who are familiar with cults and other varieties of fundamentalism, these communities have plenty of the familiar symptoms.

If this were all Krakauer did though, it would explain the murder, but not explain the underlying belief.  How did the fundamentalists get here, and why the defiance over a simple tenet, albeit one that defines a notion of family?  For that, Krakaeur goes into the history of the Church of Latter Day Saints and Joseph Smith.  The history of the church, as Krakaeur notes is unique in that it took place “a mere 173 years ago, in a literate society, in the age of the printing press” (336).  It is an American story, and Joseph Smith’s ability to get the Church going in the face of a lot of opposition, is a remarkable accomplishment.  The LDS’ movement from upstate New York to Missouri to Illinois and finally to Utah is an Exodus for our time – disregarding the details of the sources of perception of persecution – and like other persecuted peoples, Krakaeur implies that the resulting defiance is sort of a manifestation.  The fundamentalists seem to be continuing the struggles of Smith and Young, at least in their own minds.

The book finishes with a look at Ron’s re-trial, where the defense tried to use his beliefs as grounds for insanity – however the case argued by the district attorney and the eventual ruling place the notion of belief in a focus of unusual clarity.  The conclusions are well known, but in a sense the jury and Krakaeur reached the same place.

When You Are Engulfed in Flames

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So, how does one go about reviewing David Sedaris’ When You Are Engulfed in Flames?  I’ll admit I have been a fan ever since catching him reading some of his material on an appearance with David Letterman many years back.  Indeed, between that, his “Santaland Diaries” bit on NPR, as well as other contributions, you sort of know what you are getting.  What can be said about Sedaris’ latest is that it delivers on all of the dimensions that you do expect.  The characters of David, Hugh, his family, Normandy (which is featured quite a bit) and the Rooster (who is sadly underutilized).  In particular his reminiscence of furniture and an old boarding house in Chapel Hill he used to live in, was particularly guffaw-inducing.  And as usual, he still manages to deftly combine with with some poignancy, such as his recollection of the old lady who he befriended (probably too strong a word) in his apartment.  The book ends with a seventy-page or so larger story about his quest to quit smoking, which is a longer form than I usually expect from him – but a good story to end with all the same.   Really, Sedaris’ books are critic proof, and the only question to ask was – is this funny, and was it worth reading?  Wait, I guess that is two questions.  Anyway, I certainly enjoyed it.

A Thousand Splendid Suns

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I remember my mother effusively praising The Kite Runner when it came out a couple of years ago. Picking up the book, I was spellbound by a thriller in a new location, with prose that was poetic but highly readable. It was a superior page turner, but I could not give it the effusive praise that reviewers from around the web like Keith Law or Caribou’s Mom had.  The plot twists got a bit too unwieldy, and Hosseini had a habit of foreshadowing at the end of every chapter that had the subtlety of a brick through a window.  However, the book was very well done, and certainly showed potential for greatness.  I wanted to see what Hosseini would do next.

Put simply, A Thousand Splendid Suns is a masterpiece.  It is better in every way than The Kite Runner, while not losing Hosseini’s masterful storytelling ability.  The plot is more assured and less melodramatic, its villains more plausible, and it’s heros journey more heart-tugging, and given the tribulations of Amir and Hassan in the earlier novel, that is saying something.   The story begins with the marriage of Maryam, born illegitimately to a Herat businessman and his maid.  Ostracized due to this status, she is eventually married off to the much senior Rasheed.  The marriage, as one can imagine, was based on subjugation — women’s rights were not precisely celebrated.  As the story continues, we are introduced to Laila, a girl in Kabul whose life is shattered by the rise of the Taliban, and she and Maryam end up in each others orbit.  The book is about their friendship and time together, and that is all the plot that I will describe.

What is left to praise is how much information and commentary Hosseini weaves about Afghanistan, the Soviet era, and the Taliban.  Really with his two novels, Hosseini is taking not-especially-innovative stories – this story is really a genre story in many ways – but using them as frames to erect a very specific story about a very specific society – and paradoxically creating a universal story as a result.  One of the questons I always hear when discussing this part of the world is “what must it be like for women?”, and this book provides at least some interesting thoughts.  Hosseini does not portray the situation – at least under Soviet rule – as entirely bad, and tradition is valued.  It is not as cut and dried as an outsider might see it.  Even Rasheed – who is one of the great villains I have ever encountered in a novel – is not impossibly evil, but he acts in a way that fits into what men were taught to expect at the time.  One learns through him much of how men could be steered in a society set up so patariarchically.

At the end of the day, the story contains a lot of simple themes that any reader can relate to.  It is a classic, old fashioned narrative, but wrapped in a new package and told by an author with an amazingly gripping voice.