Author: Jenny Lawson

2012, Putnam

Filed Under: Nonfiction, Memoir, Humor

Find it on Goodreads

Jenny Lawson is an insane person. It’s a wonder her husband hasn’t drowned himself. Of course, when you’re talking about a memoir by someone who has zero historical impact on the world, insane is good, because insane is entertaining.

Here’s the plot of Lawson’s book: she grew up, went to college, got married, had a kid. She and her husband both work from home in Texas. And occasionally she’ll do weird things like buy a giant metal rooster welded together from oil drums. She’s got a thing for taxidermy (note the dead rat Hamlet on the cover). There aren’t any lessons to be learned from her, or deep insight to be gleaned. Luckily, she is very funny. Lines that seem to come out of left field are plentiful, like this:

I just bought a fifty-year-old Cuban alligator dressed as a pirate.

Lawson’s humor is right up my alley, it’s acerbic and sarcastic. Moreover, lines like that alligator bit in fact play smoothly into the subject at hand. Many of the episodes described in this book are awkward situations she bumbles or word-vomits her way into due to severe social anxiety. She does an excellent job of laying out her weird logic as she retells it, making each vignette compelling and entertaining.

On more than one occasion my panicked rumblings were so horrific that everyone was rendered speechless, and the silence got more and more palpable, and in desperation I just blurted out my credit card number and ran to the bathroom. I did this both because I hoped yelling random numbers would make baffled spectators suspect that I must be one of those eccentric mathematical geniuses who is just too brilliant for them to understand, and also because I felt a bit guilty for making them have to listen to the whole “I may or may not swallow needles” story, and if they wanted to charge their wasted time to my credit card then they now had that option.

I found this book pretty hilarious from start to finish, even if the earlier chapters outshine the balance of the book. The story of Stanley the Magic Squirrel in the third chapter, which recounts a time as a young girl when her taxidermist father woke up Lawson and her sister with a talking squirrel in a cracker box, is never exceeded. (The squirrel turned out to be a piece of roadkill her dad rigged into a grotesque puppet.)

As the memoir goes on, topic matter gets a bit more serious–miscarriages for one–but the strength of Lawson’s storytelling keeps the mood in check. If you like the sort of nonfiction that David Sedaris is known for, or enjoy things like The Moth, you’ll find this book fits in nicely with your preferences. Similarly if you’ve ever felt yourself feeling like an outsider in what ought to be fairly commonplace situations, Lawson’s perspective will certainly make you smile.

Similar Reads: Open-Eyed Sneeze (Martin), Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (Sedaris), Running with Scissors (Burroughs)

Author: Alison Bechdel

2012, Houghton Mifflin

Filed under: Memoir, Graphic Novel, Literary

Find it at Goodreads

This impressive graphic memoir is a great book, but not in any way I think I’ve read before. The bulk of the novel consists of Bechdel’s therapy-related endeavors. She remembers episodes from her childhood in terms of various infant-development theories, she recounts her own therapy sessions as an adult, she interprets her dreams, she recounts conversations with her mother, and she quotes frequently from academic papers about psychoanalysis. In fact, the act of creating the book itself might have been therapeutic for Bechdel, because, as she says, “for both my mother and me, it’s by writing… by stepping back a bit from the real thing to look at it, that we are most present.”

Are You My Mother? is not funny, and the events it recounts are never earth-shattering—especially not compared to the central events of her first book, Fun Home, about her father’s closeted bisexuality and his suicide soon after Bechdel herself came out to her parents.

Instead of relying on these more traditional elements of story, Bechdel indulges her considerable talent for eliciting Nabokov-like patterns from the randomness of the world. She weaves a web of interconnected narrative tidbits—plucked from the entirety of her own life, as well as the lives of her parents, the memoirs and novels of Virginia Woolf, the work and life of Donald Winnicott, and many others—that echo and expand the smallest narrative hiccup until it ripples across the entirety of her existence.

Here’s a small example. One passage finds Bechdel discussing her mother’s affinity for Norah Vincent, a right-wing lesbian stunt-pundit who had begun to draw cartoons and had once beaten Bechdel for a prize. Bechdel finds herself paralyzed by jealousy, and expounds on this jealousy. On its own, that’s a small, somewhat overblown moment.

But later she recounts her mother’s pregnancy with her, how it might not have been planned—she notes that the pill was approved by Congress six months after her conception. Reading her father’s letters to his mother, she finds him a doting, generous man, with big plans to travel with his young wife as soon as he got out of the Army. This is nothing like the man she remembers, seen most frequently in this volume delivering cruel one-liners or in the marks he’s left on the house from throwing things during his rages.

Bechdel remembers a conversation she had with her mother, and surmises that her father might have asked her mother to get an abortion—children would’ve ruined their plans for travel. This moment, she hypothesizes might have crystallized her mother’s pro-life philosophy… the philosophy that, all those years later, led her to gravitate toward a pro-life lesbian thinker that her daughter hated and envied. It’s this kind of whorl, performed over and over through the book, that makes it special.

Bechdel also repeatedly uses themes beyond therapy. She plumbs the lives of Virginia Woolf and Donald Winnicott, noting various ways in which they were linked—geographically and by publishing house, for starters—though they never knew each other. Bechdel also returns to touchstones as varied as the theater, the transitional object, her habit of retouching her cheeks in pictures to make them appear pinker and healthier, and the practice of evacuating children from wartime London to houses or hostels in the countryside where they would be safe from bombs.

She peppers the narrative with informational tidbits about each of her hobbyhorses (the Narnia series began in a countryside child-evacuation house, Winnie the Pooh was the archetypal transitional object, etc). But the book really becomes something special when Bechdel braids all these themes together in certain twisting passages.

One of them begins during a flashback, when Bechdel (then 26 or so) goes to pick up her longtime girlfriend, Eloise, who’s a mechanic. Bechdel has just begun therapy, having that day returned from her first session with her new favorite therapist, a woman named Jocelyn who has essentially relieved her depression in one visit. Bechdel subsequently went out and bought the book The Drama of the Gifted Child, by Alice Miller, which will not only change her thinking but will also lead to her decades-long interest in psychoanalysis, and it introduces her to the work of Donald Winnicott, one of the load-bearing columns of this book.

This is what the next two pages looks like (click any image for a full-size version):

Beyond the discovery of Winnicott, these pages begin Bechdel’s search for her own “true self,” another major theme. Winnie the Pooh is a transitional object, and reading that book will lead to Narnia, from which Bechdel jumps into a discussion about the practice of evacuating children from wartime London to children’s hostels in the countryside. As it turns out, Winnicott worked as a therapist at such children’s hostels—a later anecdote gets into that.

Additionally, Eloise and Bechdel call each other “Beezum,” after Bechdel’s childhood teddy bear—another transitional object. And Bechdel’s refusal of sex and ignoring Eloise in the first page (even as she’s reading about the true self’s “state of noncommunication”) foreshadows their messy split.

These kinds of nested connections can continue in patterns for pages at a time, and the result is captivating.

Even so, this book is far from flawless. Bechdel has a tendency to over-intellectualize a lot of what happens, and she can be wincingly self-indulgent and dramatic at times, like this two-page spread about the guilt she feels when her mother calls her old number one night and can’t get ahold of her:

In fact, Bechdel might be the least likeable memoirist whose memoir I’ve really liked.

As for her drawing style, she says of it, “The kind of drawing I do has to be meticulously planned, every line has to convey some information.” I can see that, but the subject matter in this book does not often lend itself to such meticulous planning. There are hundreds of panels of her talking on the phone or to a therapist, panels that could be virtual Xeroxes of each other. Only a rare few are really beautiful or eye-catchingly creative.

In a sense then, this book is riveting, unique work. In another sense, it’s the dry whining of an overprivileged suburbanite with few real problems. I found it to be the former, but I couldn’t argue hard against the latter.

In the end, Bechdel’s whirling, braided tangle of patterns and connections won me over. A narrative continuum like this, so precise and intricate, so creative and yet so logical, is a wonder to behold. And perhaps that wonder is caused more by beholding Bechdel’s indirect effort—the years of her journal-keeping, the hours of transcribing her conversations with her mother—than by real enjoyment of the story at hand.

Still, even if it’s not for everyone, it’s a remarkable book.

Similar reads: Asterios Polyp, by David Mazzucchelli; Blankets, by Craig Thompson; Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel; Big Questions, by Anders Nilsen

Author: Dirk Hayhurst

2012, C Hardcover

Filed Under: Memoir, Nonfiction

Find it on Goodreads.

Dirk Hayhurst’s previous outing, The Bullpen Gospels, was a success largely due to its ability to relate a deeper life story through the framework of a minor league baseball season. The book was not without its flaws; namely, it didn’t have much of a narrative arc. Still its effortless humor and sentimentality made for a charming memoir that was one of my favorites of last year.

Out of My League, a direct followup, addresses the shortcomings of its predecessor, but falls a little short of recapturing what worked so well before. It’s a very good book, just one that suffers from trying a little too hard.

Hayhurst picks up right were he left off, in the offseason following a AA championship. There’s little glory–or money–for your average minor leaguers so he’s sleeping on an air mattress in his crotchety grandmother’s house and making ends meet pitching to highschoolers in batting cages and selling TVs at Circuit City. There’s an upside though, he meets a girl, a perfect match for him (Hayhurst is a virgin in his late twenties, and religious, though he never discusses his faith, much less proselytizes). Within a few months they’re engaged and planning a wedding.

Bonnie’s entry into his life furthers Dirk’s doubts about whether he wants to continue his pursuit of a shot at the big leagues. Though she comes from decent means and has a job she loves (teaching music to the handicapped), he wants to provide for her, something that’s not so easy on a minor leaguer’s salary. Suddenly his personal dreams and ambitions feel like a distraction. Where before he saw a tremendous challenge and a source of hope, now he sees a long-shot from which he has something to lose, and he quavers at the possibility of failure. But, Bonnie doesn’t want him to give up his dream for her, she says it’s part of what makes him him. And with her support an patience he climbs out of his shell and keeps at it, finding success in AAA and eventually getting the call-up he’s chased his whole life.

Dirk struggles mightily for the San Diego Padres, however. He becomes wracked with anxiety, and eventually prepares himself to give it all up. And here’s where I found myself disappointed. Where before he found hope and life lessons in a tough but rewarding situation, now he’s searching for them so hard–through a defeatist’s lens–that it detracts from the story. He’s an affable narrator throughout, but the depression and constant reminders (mostly expressed somewhat sappily via Bonnie) that he’s decided there’s more to life than baseball start to get stale pretty quick. You want to feel for the guy, but you also want to slap him and tell him to stop being a pussy.

Thankfully he’s doesn’t linger on self-pity long enough to ruin the book. Instead, he gives you a reason to look at his situation from another angle. That reason comes in the form of an antagonist. Dallas Preston is a made-up character, supposedly an amalgamation of a handful of actual young players. Hayhurst very deftly makes him into an excellent foil for himself. Dallas is a prospect, so unlike most of his teammates he got a big chunk of change as part of his rookie contract. He is brash, a womanizer, a crappy, young father, self-indulgent and selfish, and he’s also not all that great a pitcher. Dallas and Dirk are similar in a lot of ways, but look upon the world from very different perspectives.

Dallas, as the other side of Dirk’s coin, is the most interesting aspect of the book. It would be easy to see him as just another means of propping up Hayhurst’s there’s more to life than baseball schtick, but that would be a mistake. Neither man is really able to look far enough outside himself to see the larger context, though they both think they know it all. Thus, Dallas brings with him a balance to the story that lends itself to a nice little narrative arc that was so lacking before. Through his story, the book does eventually express a satisfying depth of emotion, but only after the reader can get past Hayhurst’s heavy hand and see the relationship with Dallas as a comparison rather than the point of contrast intended.

There’s still plenty of locker room buffoonery and inside baseball stuff to keep baseball fans happy, and the story and narrative candor are enjoyable. If you liked The Bullpen Gospels, there’s not much chance you won’t enjoy this as well. It’s a fun ride, just a bit bumpier this time around.

Similar Reads: The Bullpen Gospels (Hayhurst), Open-Eyed Sneeze (Martin)

Author: Jerry West

2011, Little, Brown and Co.

Filed Under: Memoir, Nonfiction

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As a player, Jerry West won an Olympic gold medal and an NBA championship.He scored more points than any Laker not named Kobe Bryant ever has, and is in the Basketball Hall of Fame. As an executive, he put together the “Showtime” Lakers of the 80s, traded for Shaq and Kobe in the 90s, and turned the lowly Memphis Grizzlies into a playoff team in the 00s. He has been immortalized as a bronze statue in both Morgantown, WV (where he played in college) and Los Angeles. His silhouette became the NBA logo.

Despite this long, illustrious, and successful career, West is so emotionally crippled by loss that his autobiography, West by West, reads as if Glass Joe wrote it.

Truthfully, that’s a good thing. I can’t think of a sports autobiography more candid, more soul searching, or better written.

Autobiographies by former athletes usually contain some type of big (or maybe not so big) reveal. Jose Canseco admitted to using steroids, Pete Rose to betting on baseball, Andre Agassi to smoking meth, and Wilt Chamberlain to sleeping with 20,000 women. As such, West by West follows suit. Jerry West suffers from severe depression.

However most athlete revelations come across as hollow confessions. These confessions may be emotionally charged, but often they’re dealt with swiftly and tucked neatly between pages and pages of chest-thumping braggadocio. And this is where West’s book differs from other athlete authors: he doesn’t try to hide his admission among his career stats. Instead, West allows his depression to consume his book, much as it has consumed him since his childhood.

Take, for instance this conversation West recalls having with the widow of his friend and legendary Lakers announcer Chick Hearn:

“Chick never stopped talking about the time you hit that sixty-three-foot shot against the Knicks I the 1970 Finals.”

“Yeah, nobody does,” I said, “and that’s the problem. What they don’t talk about is that the shot only tied the score and that we lost in overtime, and we lost the series. There was no three-point line back then.”

Enough time has passed from the 1970 finals that most aficionados remember West’s buzzer beater for what it was—a no-doubt, 63-foot dagger that everyone knew would drop. Some even recognize it as the single best shot in the game’s history. Yet West hates talking about it; one gets the impression that he is ashamed it is part of his past. Should you corner him on the street and ask him about, not only will he remind you that the Lakers lost the game and the series, but he will probably remind you that he lost 8 of the 9 NBA championships in which he played, including 6 to the Boston Celtics in the 60s.

I was impressed by the amount West was willing to delve into the emotional root of his trouble instead of simply narrating his turbulent past. As such, West by West has a much deeper, much more philosophical core, which in turn results in a much more rewarding experience for the reader. I can’t think of another sports memoir like it.

That’s not to say that West doesn’t gloss over some of his faults. He mentions his marital infidelity and the deterioration of his first marriage almost matter-of-factly. His temper—which routinely pushes him to threaten to resign—is swept under the rug of, “that’s just the way I am.” And in a less candid memoir, those omissions would be alarming, but here, they are a non-issue.

In another deft choice, West allowed his co-writer, Jonathan Coleman, to separately interview key figures in West’s life. And while I assume West had final say in which parts of these interview to incorporate, the interviews help to cement the image West portrays of himself.

Some believe that the NBA chose Jerry West’s silhouette to be the symbol of the league because they wanted future basketball players to play the way West did. While I’m not sure about them emulating his playing style, I do know that if they decide to write a memoir, they would be wise to follow West’s example.

Similar Reads: A Sense of Where You Are by John McPhee is the greatest book about a man who happens to be a basketball player ever written. For a good, typical sports memoir try Ronnie Lott’s Total Impact or Mickey Mantel’s The Mick.

[A review copy was provided.]

Author: John Paul Stevens

2011, Little, Brown and Co.

Filed Under: Nonfiction, Memoir.

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In case you hadn’t heard, it’s Supreme Court Season again, which means our nation’s top judges are now hearing cases that will affect your life. Holding top billing, we have The State of Florida (and 26 other co-signing states) v. the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which will test the constitutionality of last year’s controversial healthcare overhaul. But this is only one case of many, and, as Atlantic legal correspondent Garrett Epps points out, the majority of the cases the court will hear this session “have huge practical impact but are devoid of drama.”

You might say the same thing about Five Chiefs. Without an ounce of sensationalism or any inflammatory rhetoric, it offers an insider’s perspective on the deliberative processes of our nation’s foremost deliberating body. Stevens presents a historical survey of the Court under each of its seventeen Chief Justices, focusing on the five who sat during the years he was personally associated with the Court, from his clerkship in 1947 until his resignation in 2010.

It’s an eye-opening look at how the Court actually works, from the influence of the Chief’s management style to the long-standing traditions meant to foster cordiality between people who are paid to argue with each other. Five Chiefs won’t keep you up at night, but it will make you think about how we decide some of the most important questions facing the country today… so maybe it will keep a you up at night.

What impresses me most about Five Chiefs–especially in today’s political climate–is its tone. Whether discussing the Court’s Christmas party or his 90-page dissent in Citizens United (which held that limitations on corporate campaign contributions violated First Amendment protections), Stevens is evenhanded and reasonable, even affable. He has nothing but respect for his colleagues and the institutions and traditions of the Court.

He does, of course, have his own opinions about the Court’s work, and he makes no effort to hide them. He spares a few paragraphs to rehash his thinking on Citizens United and some other notable cases, like Jones v. Clinton or Bush v. Gore, and he makes room to discuss his objections to the originalist interpretation of the Constitution flourishing in the Robert’s Court:

Though we do, and should, rely heavily on the wisdom of individual judges in making countless decisions interpreting and applying rules of law, judges are merely amateur historians. Their interpretations of past events, like their interpretations of legislative history, are often debatable and sometimes simply wrong. Historical analysis is usually relevant and interesting, but it is only one of many guides to sound adjudication.

On the whole, though, Five Chiefs has no obvious agenda. The book isn’t trying to sell readers on Stevens’s judicial philosophy or convince anyone to go back and retry cases where he dissented. His judicial philosophy and his dissents are all included, but they’re secondary to the main task of relating the history of the Court, its leaders, its decisions, and its impact on our republic.

When discussing specific decisions, Stevens doesn’t shy away from a little legal speak. It can take time to parse some of his sentences if you don’t have any training in contract law:

There, the Court held that it was proper to review such cases unless the state court made it clear that there was no federal issue to be decided by including in its opinion an unambiguous statement that its decision rested on an adequate and independent state rule.

But if you can read sentences like that without running off screaming into the night searching for a comma, then there’s nothing here that should turn you off from Stevens’s memoir. For anyone interested in history, politics, government, or the Constitution, I’d recommend putting in what little extra effort some of the subject matter requires. Five Chiefs is well worth it.

Similar reads: for a look at Stevens in someone else’s words, check out John Paul Stevens: An Independent Life by Bill Barnhart.

[A review copy was provided.]

2011

Filed Under: Memoir, Nonfiction, Short-run

Get a copy from Harvard Book Store

A self-published memoir by a twenty-something detailing that horrible, floaty time between college graduation and embarking on some sort of path into adulthood? You can’t get much lower on the list of books I’d expect to like. Despite that, when Jess Martin released her book through the Harvard Bookstore (where we run the paperback versions of our own literary ventures), I supported a local artist* and read it all the same. I’m really glad that I did. It is, by any measure, a very good read.

The plot, much like the point in her life Martin relates, appears pretty directionless at first. She writes about finishing college and returning home to her parents, where she intended to collect herself before stepping out into the real world. But she finds herself stymied and winds up napping on the couch and emailing the occasional resume.

As the book goes on, Open-Eyed Sneeze reveals a lot of gears turning: it’s at once wacky family drama, a coming of age from a second childhood, and a microcosmic metaphor, all speaking to a generation of talented young adults for whom college degrees are inflated and the job market is deflated.

It’s also funny. This is risky business, as there’s nothing more annoying than a book that continually tosses up taters for jokes and expects the reader to laugh as they continually fall flat. Luckily, Martin’s wit, while sometimes dry and acerbic, has a gentleness and graciousness that softens the edges. It works well:

It’s no longer enough to have a job, now it should be the job of my dreams.Which is what, exactly? I have no idea. I’m never working in my dreams. In my dreams I’m made of Fluff and can eat my own face. I’ll just take a regular job, thanks.

Humor alone can rarely carry a book, of course. Here it works as a reinforcement to a strong narratorial voice, one that somehow manages to be authorial in its timidity:

The difficulty in saying what I want lies in the fear of never having it, or fear of having it but not liking it. I bet that’s true for a lot of people…We’re a society obsessed with success and the first to ridicule those who find it. Thus, we try not to shout out what we really want so as to avoid anyone hearing it and holding us to it.

So she muses, and she plays, and she naps. She spends time with her grandmother who continually force-feeds her, and with her parents who think she still has a shot at being an astronaut. She’s back at home, afraid of being thought a failure. But for once she’s not doing what she’s supposed to do, and thus a sense of individuality seems to blossom. (Though given the idiosyncrasies she relates, I very much doubt uniqueness was ever a problem for Martin.)

Most importantly for a young memoirist, she’s quite insightful–see her tongue-in-cheek comparison of “Modern Artist vs. Realist”–and has an uncanny knack for drawing connections between her occasionally tangential musings and the bigger thought arc at work.

Trying to expound upon the arrested development, or failure to launch, or any other cliched term for the oft-delayed transition from child to adult, without coming across as whiny or, worse, arrogant, is no easy task. Always offered trophies and promised the world, many of us left college still sporting training wheels and expected to place in a bike race. But of course there is no on-switch for being an adult. For Jess Martin, like many others, all she could do was wander and wonder. As many have discovered, that’s an important step in the process. I’m glad Jess had the bright idea to document it.

Similar Reads: The Voting Booth After Dark (Garcia)

*[Disclaimer: I know Jess Martin. Our acquaintance is not of the variety where it would have an influence on my opinion of this book.]

Author: Grant Morrison

2011, Spiegel & Grau

Filed under: Memoir, Nonfiction, Graphic Novel

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In Supergods, a nonfiction exploration of superheroes as a fictive phenomenon, comic book writer and artist Grant Morrison argues that Superman is humanity’s greatest accomplishment. From anyone else that might be considered a cynical statement; of all the scientific and artistic achievements, across centuries, nothing scores higher than a gaudily costumed, flying strongman born in a medium that’s not even 100 years old?

But Morrison is absolutely sincere—he contends that superhero comics are not just entertainment for children and fodder for blockbuster movie adaptations, but windows into a separate reality populated by gods that fight intensely pitched battles for good, of which Superman is the best and brightest.

Morrison’s is a delightfully optimistic premise, doubly refreshing when considered next to the daily articles and blog posts about the imminent death of the comic book industry. Those writers worry (rightfully so) about relevance, demographics, and market share, while Morrison knows that the stakes are actually much higher. How appropriate that a book about the history and potential of superheroes aims to save the world.

Writing about Alain Resnais’s notorious experimental film Muriel, critic Gary Giddins states that “a reputation for difficulty is almost impossible to undo.” That’s true of individual texts, like Muriel or Finnegans Wake or Metal Machine Music, but also of entire careers. And perhaps no other comic creator’s career is as obscured by received wisdom about difficulty or inscrutability as Grant Morrison’s.

Part of the “British invasion” of writers in the early 80s that also included Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman, and Alan Moore, Morrison’s interest in surrealism, cut-up narrative techniques, fringe science, and the occult marked him early as a creator whose comics couldn’t necessarily be digested in a single reading. As a result, Morrison is labeled a “challenging” writer, and his work often gets dismissed as “weird for weirdness’s sake,” or deliberate provocations meant to confuse and irritate readers.

What his critics so often overlook is Morrison’s solid storytelling instincts—his characters are never ambiguous, and his plots follow an internal logic that rarely wavers (even if they don’t resemble conventional plots). Supergods is just as readable, perhaps more so considering Morrison has nothing to gain thematically or dramatically by employing unusual structures or oblique dialogue. He keeps his prose light and often quite funny, reflecting the boyish enthusiasm that informs his thesis. Even when discussing difficult concepts like fifth-dimensional beings (more on that later), the text stays lucid and expansive, as Morrison clearly wants readers to follow along.

The structure of Supergods also contributes to that readability. It’s part history book, part treatise, and part memoir, with all three modes braided into a single coherent narrative. For instance, Morrison folds his recollections of childhood and his writing career into the history of superheroes, discussing the cultural impact of the Silver Age Kennedy-era superheroes along with his own first experiences with comic books as a boy growing up in Govan, Scotland.

Later, he breaks down the first page of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s classic series Watchmen, while expanding on how the deconstructed, realistic approach runs contrary to the very nature of superhero comics and their paper-god status. This structure is also key to the book’s appeal; there’s no shortage of superhero histories, but precious few with such a strongly defined point of view and direct access to a celebrated creator’s life story.

In fact, many of the most interesting passages in Supergods concern Morrison’s take on his own career, particularly his self-willed transformation from wallflower to bon vivant. Directly inspired by superhero comics, Morrison turned himself into the kind of person he often wrote about—confident, curious, open to every possible experience. Of those experiences, the most likely to get attention in reviews of the book is Morrison’s encounter with fifth dimensional beings in Kathmandu. I won’t even try to describe what happened—any attempt to summarize or condense the story inevitably leads to distortion and incoherence—suffice to say that it’s a surreal and highly entertaining tale that requires a bit of lateral thinking to comprehend.

It’s also the story detractors most often point to as evidence that Morrision is crazy, or a binge pscyhedelic drug user, or a fabulist who embellishes his biography to accumulate counter-culture cred. Morrison himself acknowledges that there are a number of ways to interpret what happened in Kathmandu, and doesn’t quibble with those who maintain it’s nothing more than a particularly memorable acid trip—what’s important, he argues, is how the experience changed his worldview and led to a fervid creative period he’s maintained for almost twenty years.

There’s an almost spiritual quality to the Kathmandu story, and to much of Supergods, but it’s a spirituality rooted in creativity. Morrison is aware that superheroes aren’t real people, that they only exist on paper (in fact, that’s a key point in his criticism of Alan Moore’s take on superheroes, specifically Watchmen—sure to be another flashpoint for controversy), but he maintains that those same characters can have a real, substantial impact on our reality, just as we can have an impact on theirs.

You can’t pray to Superman and expect him to save you from a burning building, but perhaps through fiction and storytelling you can interact with him, and draw hope from his example. For Morrison, superheroes don’t just represent warmth and bravery and loyalty and love; they’re a way to directly access to those very same qualities in ourselves, which too often go undiscovered and unexpressed.

Recommended reading: All-Star Superman, by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely; The Invisibles, by Grant Morrison and various artists; Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book, by Gerard Jones

[A review copy of this book was provided by the publisher.]

Author: Bob Mould

2011 Little, Brown

Filed under: Memoir

Get a copy at Powell’s

If you aren’t familiar with Bob Mould, listen to Hüsker Dü’s cover of The Byrds’ “Eight Miles High”—the breathtaking speed, anger, and emotional muscularity of that performance will give you a good idea of the cultural shorthand that’s been attached to Mould’s name since the mid 80s. Not that he didn’t earn his reputation for peevishness and volatility honestly—he admits as much in this autobiography (note the subtitle: The Trail of Rage and Melody).

Mould and co-writer Michael Azerrad clearly haven’t set out to dispel the image of Mould as a temperamental rocker, but they do argue that the black-and-white image—a 21-year-old wailing his anger and frustration, throttling his guitar as he fronts a legendary post-punk band—that’s just one slide in the carousel. The Bob Mould of See A Little Light is candid and self-effacing, and eager to come to terms with his every incarnation. In fact, Light has more in common with Mould’s songwriting, which is often aggressive but just as likely to be tender and vulnerable.

The book’s principle arc concerns Mould’s sexuality, particularly his transition from a closeted gay man in the sometimes socially non-progressive indie music scene to a very public and very active member of the gay community who also happens to be a musician. And while sexuality isn’t the lens through which every chapter of Mould’s life is addressed, he does continually return to the question of whether being a bit closed off and sometimes militantly private affected the way he behaved as a member of Hüsker Dü, or his reaction to friend and manager David Savoy’s suicide, or even the success of his second band, Sugar. So it makes sense that the reading becomes far breezier about three quarters of the way through, when, following his public outing in a Spin Magazine interview and the dissolution of a long-term relationship, Mould chooses to enter fully into the gay community and begins leading a happier, more productive life. His narrative voice becomes lighter, and he tells more stories but with less detail, as if the years since that transition are pleasant enough that extra scrutiny or investigation doesn’t feel as necessary. That isn’t to say that the last few chapters aren’t still interesting, but just that the stakes feel lower, more like a genial conversation than a drive toward the end of a story.

But Mould hasn’t sanded off all of his corners and become just another elder of the indie world, and his cutting intellect is nowhere more evident than in his matter-of-fact assessment of the discord within and dissolution of Hüsker Dü. The acrimony that ended that band is well documented by music writers and historians elsewhere (including co-author Michael Azerrad’s excellent Our Band Could Be Your Life) so the details of the break-up aren’t new. Still, it’s exciting in a voyeuristic way to read Mould’s take on the conversation in drummer Grant Hart’s kitchen that ended the band, to find that twenty-three years later his contempt and disappointment haven’t abated, even if he’s matured beyond active participation in a feud.

Maybe it reflects poorly on me as a reader and a fan that I responded better to the sections where Mould revisits those beds of emotional quicksand than the pleasant denoument, but I think it also speaks to the nature of autobiography and memoir. We know that Bob Mould turns out okay in the end, not only because his foreward says so, but because he’s written the book in the first place, so any dramatic tension is replaced by a desire to see just how low the lows got.

That said, I do think Mould succeeds in creating a multifaceted narrative voice in See A Little Light, moving between introspection and exposition with ease, never straying too far into the twin pitfalls of overly frothy humor and melodrama. I particularly enjoyed the chapter detailing his brief stint with the creative team behind World Championship Wrestling, a career detour that only seems odd if you don’t also know that Mould’s wrestling fandom dates back to his childhood. He doesn’t narrate those sections any differently than he does, say, the passages on recording Copper Blue or touring with Hüsker Dü; the light bits get a touch of humor, and the serious bits are analyzed and plumbed for meaning.

It’s that evenness of approach that sells Mould’s thesis—if disproportionate space were given over to the Hüsker Dü years, or his solo work, it would be harder to buy the idea that all of his various identities are important—but it also leaves the reading a little flat, particularly when delving into the creative process. Mould does discuss his songwriting and reveals some of the stories and experiences that inform specific songs, but much of the discussion of writing feels too vague. Maybe preserving some of the mystery of the creative process is good, but it feels like an oversight, particularly juxtaposed with the dozens of pages dedicated to various tours that start to feel a bit redundant.

My favorite chapter of Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life deals with Hüsker Dü, but it always felt unfinished—Azerrad ends the chapter just after the band signed to Warner Brothers and then imploded, but abandons narratives about the individual band members, particularly Mould and his sexuality, that made the chapter more interesting and relatable than those covering other bands. See A Little Light takes that thread and follows it backwards and forwards, showing where it frays, becomes knotted, loops back around on itself, and eventually binds with others.

Similar reads: Our Band Could Be Your Life, by Michael Azerrad; Deflowered, by Jon Ginoli; Rip It Up and Start Again by Simon Reynolds

[A review copy was provided.]

Author: Patton Oswalt

2011, Scribner

Filed under: Memoir, Humor

Get it at Powell’s

Anybody familiar with Patton Oswalt’s stand-up comedy career knows the man can spin a good yarn. His act is peppered with seemingly unrehearsed tangents, thoughtful wordplay, and absurdist ramblings that could be cobbled together and written down to form, at the very least, a collection of cracked-out short stories.

Oswalt’s success as a comedian relies on his ability to acutely observe the human condition and his willingness to root around in his own neurotic life, but it’s always a question whether the funnyman’s gift can function within the confines of a page as well as atop the stage in a dimly lit club. Oswalt answers well: the man can write, and his debut book, Zombie Spaceship Wasteland is hopefully the first of many more to come.

A word of warning: those expecting a light-hearted, funnyman’s romp may want to browse further along in the humor section of their local bookstore. Make no mistake, Zombie Spaceship Wasteland is a very funny book, but like Oswalt’s stand-up, the laughs come from a dark and truthful place. The book is a series of autobiographical essays, broken up from time to time by less serious “filler” material (a satirical wine tasting menu, punch-up notes on a fictional, idiotic comedy, etc). The essays detail Oswalt’s childhood and adolescence in the Washington D.C. suburb of Sterling, Virginia, his rocky road to a successful stand-up career, and his life in the entertainment-biz bubble of Los Angeles.

Nowhere in the book’s criminally short 192 pages does Oswalt forget that he’s a comedian. However, couched within tales of suburban wage-slave woe lurks a clear agenda. These memoirs are written with the express warning that our lives are miserably short, and becoming inert or satisfied with mediocrity is a criminally self-destructive act. Oswalt unflinchingly exposes his feelings towards those middling souls he has encountered on his journey to artistic fulfillment (equal parts contempt and heartache), but Zombie Spaceship Wasteland never feels angry or didactic.

In a chapter titled “Peter Renfola,” Oswalt discusses his complicated relationship with a mentally unhinged uncle, who, despite his own personal failings (or perhaps because of them), helped the author see past the neighborhoods he was born into. In a pivotal scene, Uncle Peter reads young Patton “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe:

…he read it like a little kid discovering it, making a poem about adult regret and loneliness seem like the greatest thing to a kid who thought coolness acted like the Fonz, sounded like Kiss, and rode a motorcycle like Evil Knievel.

It’s through passages like these that Oswalt brings new life to common coming-of-age memoir tropes. He continues:

Uncle Pete was the first one ever to heave open the gates that sealed ancient pages and make me suspect there were worlds within and without the world I was in. That there were worlds outside of the time I was living in. All of this he carried against his will, in his head. But unlike the other adults, with their resentments and their anxiousness or anger, he seemed eternally, uncontrollably entertained. I really envied him.

As the chapter concludes, the disparity in potential between the worlds raging in Uncle Pete’s head and his own insubstantial lot in life grows, affecting the young Oswalt most profoundly when he is informed of his favorite relative’s demise.

At this point in my life, I’d traveled over a fourth of the planet…I was still hungry to travel and move and create and connect—and I always will be—but I’ve got to admit something. There’s a little bit of Pete in me…I still don’t agree with spending a life the way Pete did, but I understand it and respect it. Who knows how many lives have been saved and villains vanquished by those who sat still?

Simultaneously conversational and elegant, Oswalt’s voice engages at a level that’s both persuasive and informative. Describing one of many revelations that led to his exodus from Virginia, Oswalt writes:

It’s only now, as I write it, on another coast, that I see what the time in the echo chamber of the ticket booth did. There were future musicians standing at the back of Fugazi shows, watching the band and the crowd and drinking in the pulsing thrum. They galvanized their identities while, at the same time, they bled faceless into the crowd, the band, the walls, and the memory of the evening. The book and the cassette tape—they did the same thing for me. People will find transformation and transcendence in a McDonald’s hash brown if it’s all they’ve got.

Encapsulated in these sentences is the overriding theme of Zombie Spaceship Wasteland: inspiration comes for us in the smallest of ways, and we have the power to self-start and improve our situation beyond our meager beginnings. While the memoir trope of “if I did it, so can you!” is as tried and true as they come, Oswalt’s examination feels fresh and encouraging, and in uncertain economic times, fledgling creative minds may find solace, and yes, inspiration, in the author’s words.

Similar reads: On Writing, by Steven King; Fargo Rock City, by Chuck Klosterman

Author: Dirk Hayhurst

2010, Citadel Press

Filed Under: Memoir, Nonfiction.

Get a copy at Powell’s.

Dirk Hayhurst was a pro baseball player. A long reliever in the San Diego Padres’ farm system, he was mostly a career minor leaguer. This memoir is an honest and quite fun look at a life that is often not fun. Hayhurst is slightly eccentric, a not-that-jocky dork (just google “Garfoose”). For much of the book, he is more an observer than a participant, which would feel weird if we didn’t know he was a teetotaling, twenty-something virgin during the majority of this story–not at all the type of guy you imagine in a farm league locker room.

Although the book opens with a minor league postseason series and a few key games and plays punctuate the book, the majority of the memoir occurs off the field–sitting in the bullpen, in a team hotel, or aboard a cross-country bus. Near the beginning of the book, we see Hayhurst in the off-season after a bad year in a AA league, living on his curmudgeonly grandmother’s floor and working at a local batting cage in order to afford time to work on his slider. Throughout the Gospels we learn more about Hayhurst’s unenviable home and family. His father is disabled and emotionally unresponsive; his brother is an abusive drunk; his mother is a frazzled victim caught in the middle. Mostly estranged from them, Hayhurst struggles though the minor leagues with middling success and a craving for his familial approval seemingly his only motivator to keep trying.

It’s hard not to sympathize with Hayhurst, perhaps all the more so because he’s often an outsider. I can’t help but wonder what his fellow players and managers think of him in the wake of being mentioned in his book. He writes about them candidly–and is less than flattering–but is also deferential and affectionate. Still, he’s a likable narrator and writes with a playful and self-deprecating tone. While reflecting on a period when he considered quitting the game and ending his career, Hayhurst touches on some deep stuff. This memoir is a soul-search conducted from the corners of musky locker rooms.

Luckily, the stuff that goes on in those is damn entertaining. Bullpen Gospels is full of colorful characters and their antics. There are jokes and pranks perpetuated by guys with names like Slap-nuts and Blade. There are a few congresses of Kangaroo Court that are particularly humorous, and plenty of oversexed locker room banter to keep readers laughing. Recognizable baseball personalities such as Trevor Hoffman, Chase Headley, and Kevin Towers make appearances as well.

The hijinks and jokes are fun to read and all, but at its heart, this is a genuinely strong memoir. Hayhurst paces his narrative nicely, striking a fine balance between anecdote, reflection, and introspection. As Dirk begins to pitch better and turn his career around (the majority of the book occurs in a season that began for him in A ball and ended with a AA championship), his chances at a big league call-up improve. It is then the deeper themes become more readily recognizable. Hayhurst learns, then relates, that even when baseball consumes a player’s (or fan’s) life, baseball is not life. Nor is living merely for the approval of others. Only when he started doing things for himself did he really break out of his shell.

Fun, honest, and engaging, The Bullpen Gospels is one of the best baseball books I’ve ever read, and very much a Great Read.

Similar Reads: The Extra 2% (Keri),  Into the Silent Land (Broks)