Chamber Four

Author: Steve Almond

2010 (self-published)

Filed Under Literary, Short Stories, Nonfiction

(Note: to the best of my knowledge this book is only available through on-demand publishing via an Espresso Book Machine. There is one at the Harvard Bookstore)

This is a tiny little book, split into two parts of about 40 small pages each. It really won’t take but a minute to read, well, maybe an hour. One side is titled “Essays” and the other “Stories” and they are flipped 180 degrees, so neither (or both I guess) comes first. There are three separate covers to choose from, and Almond has already revised it once since the initial printing. I think I’m a fan of this new fangled on demand printing thing.

Seeing as I really only know of Almond as a fiction writer (I very much enjoyed his 2005 collection, The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories), I opted to open with the “Stories” half first.  These are all short shorts, none longer than 4-5 paragraphs. There’s no plot thread connecting these and not much of a thematic line. Short shorts aren’t really a form I’m all that into. I read it like I do poetry, mostly for language and not so much for substance. I enjoyed these, but it’s not really the type of thing I tend to go back to. Almond is a talented writer, and the language is quite good:

This is where the cranes come to sleep, the ripped out yard-by-gravel mile between the bus terminal and the freeway still unconstructed, its fading gray ramps into nothing. They bundle here under night, clanking, steel thread and iron, the hard things of this world. Neglected by their soft owners, the cranes huddles and murmur old jokes, somber, worn, from the duties of lifting and sniffing on each other the perfume of oil going black. They know not to nod their giant necks, not to run their hooks against loose rebar. This is the hour of rest, when nothing is built or remembered. The wind through their loose parts is idle syncopation and notes whistle up, a song made with every measure of grace, as where honest labor has been done and fellowship means beast and machine. Sleep, good citizens, it is not yours to hear this sweet offering.

The “Essays” side of the book is the one I’d assumed I’d like less. Almond, however, surprised me with one of the best guides to writing I’ve come across to date.

Unlike the stories, Almond’s essays follow a sequence of questions and answers, almost as if he’s inserting his own responses into a writerly catechism.  It’s really written for students (enrolled in a program or otherwise) of writing. But anyone who entertains writing fiction or is interested at all in the writing process should defintiely give this a read. And, speaking from many dreadful workshop experiences: writing teachers should read this, as well as a few of the books I’ve suggested below.

Almond’s now-recognizable voice comes through especially clear in these essays. He reminds me a lot of George Saunders: biting and sarcastic and a little insane, yet undeniably wise. He writes in a funny yet serious tone that screams authority but doesn’t demand it. Writers should read this book, and everybody should read Steve Almond.

Similar Reads: Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut (Vonnegut), On Writing (King), Eats, Shoots, & Leaves (Truss), The Evil B.B. Chow (Almond), The Braindead Megaphone (Saunders)

This book has been chosen as  a Great Read

Author: Anthony Pagden

2008, Random House

Filed under Nonfiction, Historical

So I’ll say right away that I really enjoyed Worlds at War (I’ve nominated it a Great Read). I don’t have much experience with history books, so writing this review was a tad tricky. It would take 3000 words to summarize this book even cursorily, so I can’t do that.  Therefore, this review is pretty short, but please don’t mistake my brevity for disregard. …
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Author: Sarah Palin

HarperCollins, 2009

Filed Under Memoirs

This book was very tough to review. I have to be honest, I’ve started this review several times, and each time—after indulging fitful rants and political diatribes—I’ve had to delete the incoherent blather from my computer’s memory. It’s embarrassing, really, some of the emotions this book has elicited from me. I used to think I stood closer to the center of the political spectrum than to either of its poles. I used badmouth elitists, and I used to believe that all of their derisive commoner-hating was just a mirror image of the populist movement that made Going Rogue possible. Yes, I used to believe that liberal elitists were just as bad for our collective progress as, say, the Tea Partiers. Then I saw some of the things I wrote, some of the hateful, bilious criticism of both Sarah Palin and her followers, and I realized that I sound like (gasp) an elitist asshole.

Has there ever been a more polarizing political figure than Sarah Palin? Not only do we all have an opinion of her, we all have a very strong opinion. She’s either the best thing to happen to this country, or the worst. So how, then, does one go about reviewing her book—a book that will only further calcify one’s strong opinion of its author?

Going Rogue is shit. It sucks. It is both literarily and politically a steaming pile of moose excrement. …
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This book has been selected as a Great Read.

Author: Mary Roach

W. W. Norton, 2008

Best ebook deal: Audiobook available at Seattle Public Library

If you’ve ever wondered about how a male chimpanzee woos a mate, how human pheromones function, or whether Viagra will work for women, this is the book for you. The study of sex has a long and harrowing history, which Mary Roach explores in an in-depth, but not overly technical manner. In other words, it’s a science book for non-scientists. My curiosity about Bonk was piqued when I saw Roach speak on the TED blog back in May. Her talk had a provocative title (10 Things you didn’t know about orgasm), and after listening to her for a few minutes, I had to know more.

Roach is extremely thorough with her research and it shows. In Bonk, she starts at the very beginning, at the foundations of the body of work on sex, when scientists were studying animals to try to figure out how humans functioned. She recognizes the important work of all of the players, from Kinsey (whom we’ve all heard about, thanks to the popular film) to Masters and Johnson, who studied laboratory sexual encounters for years and published their intriguing findings in 1979 – an article entitled Homosexuality in Perspective.

She explores behaviors from the 1500s, when a woman could sue her husband for impotence, and to prove the fact, a team of observers was required to enter his bedroom to verify the facts before granting a divorce. She looks at the trajectory of ED (erectile dysfunction), and the crazy lengths people have gone to cure it throughout the ages. She examines the machines that have been developed to aid in intercourse, and the orgasmic capabilities of people with spinal injuries. She is willing to participate in studies, attend talks, and go to otherwise great lengths to collect her data, and writes about these experiences very candidly. As someone hasn’t read a lot of nonfiction lately, apart from the depressing, the dry, and the painfully detailed, I found Bonk to be a breath of fresh air – it’s also full of fun trivia that you can use to wow your friends and family at the dinner table. …
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Author: Daniel Pinchbeck

Tarcher, 2007

Best ebook deal: eBooks.com

The title of Pinchbeck’s 2012 is an archeological artifact written literally in stone by the Mayans about a thousand years ago. In 2012—specifically, on December 21—the rising sun will mark the end of the 5125-year Mayan Long Count Calendar by achieving conjunction with the center of the axis of the Milky Way galaxy.

The Mayan prophecy on the completion of the Long Count is the return of the Mesoamerican deity Quetzalcoatal, translated as “Sovereign Plumed Serpent.” Quetzalcoatal is a supreme deity responsible for civilization and time itself. The Mayans believed that the end of the Long Count will mark the end of our present world civilization, when Quetzalcoatal will intervene to hand down another.

2012 is the high-energy, complex, fascinating tale of Pinchbeck’s personal pursuit of this prophecy. It’s a fun read, simultaneously a global treasure hunt, a mystical inner quest, and a personal redemption following the death of his father. It also has the ambition and scale of mythological revelation. …
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Authors: Robert Boswell and David Schweidel

Cinco Puntos Press, 2008

Best ebook deal: Unavailable

We all know the traditional arc of a story: beginning, middle, end; goal, obstacles in pursuit of goal, attainment of goal; boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back.

Same goes for any good treasure story. Boy discovers treasure map, boy seeks treasure, boy finds treasure.

The problem that Robert Boswell and David Schweidel had to wrestle with during the fourteen years it took to write What Men Call Treasure was this: how do you successfully tell a true story about buried treasure that doesn’t end with boy finding treasure? …
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This book has been chosen as a Great Read.

Author: A. Scott Berg

Riverhead Books, 1978.

Best ebook deal: Currently Unavailable (disagree?)

Unless you’re a huge literature dork who regularly reads biographies about editors and newspapermen, you’ve likely never heard of Maxwell Perkins. However, if you close your eyes and imagine an editor (not the porcine, cigar chomping news editor of comics, but the prosaic, behind-the-scenes type–you know who I mean) the soft-spoken but fierce person you might imagine is probably a close estimation of Max Perkins. Perkins is legendary in certain circles for being the editor and buttress for legendary–in all circles–writers such as Papa Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and F. Scott Fitzgerald to name a few. If one were to dust modern literature for fingerprints, traces of Perkins would be abundant. …
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