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: 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: Katherine Boo

2012, Random House

Filed under: Nonfiction

Find it at Goodreads

In the forty-odd years since New Journalism broke down the walls between reporter and subject, the first-person voice has become a plague in the world of nonfiction.

In certain situations, stories can benefits from reporters’ active involvement—like, say, if the reporter is Hunter S. Thompson and whatever he’s doing is more interesting than whatever he’s supposed to be covering.

But usually, these days, the word “I” points to some weakness or flaw in the writing: a lack of solid material, or a lack of effort on the part of the writer. By explaining how he came to find certain subjects, he can gloss over whether or not those subjects are crucial—or even important—to the story at hand.

For example, in a recent issue of the New Yorker, a piece about Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker included mini-profiles of two signature-gatherers for the petition to recall Walker. The writer, William Finnegan, finds his first signature-gatherer, Joanne Staudacher, seemingly at random, and then latches onto another one through her. Finnegan writes:

Staudacher said that her hero was another Oshkosh circulator, known as Fighting Bob. I asked to meet him. Staudacher contacted him, and Bob—Bob Bergman—and I rendezvoused in downtown Oshkosh. Indoors.

This paragraph is mostly fluff, but it uses the writer’s personal experience as connective tissue between the two circulators. Why did Staudacher call Bob her hero? How had they met? Are either of these people central in any way to the signature-gathering? Are they average gatherers or did everyone else have a different experience?

The sentences describing how Finnegan moved from Staudacher to Bob obscure a lot of those points, and they make it feel like Finnegan talked to precisely two gatherers. But there are worse ways this technique, in the wrong hands, impacts journalism. From the next paragraph in the same article:

[Bob] had collected, he told me, eight hundred and thirteen signatures to recall Walker …

By sliding in that “he told me” Finnegan distances himself from the facts of the situation and from having to, like, count signatures. He also makes that statistic entirely worthless as a piece of reportage. That “he told me” translates to “I didn’t confirm.” It’s accepted laziness, and it’s become pervasive in today’s journalistic landscape.

So it’s refreshing and engaging to read a nonfiction book from which the author has absented herself entirely, leaving only hard-won facts to take her place.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers takes place in a Mumbai slum called Annawadi, a precarious patch of swampland wedged between the Mumbai International Airport and the fancy airport hotels (and tucked behind a wall covered in ads for an Italian floor company that proclaim, “Beautiful Forever” over and over).

In Annawadi, more than 3000 squatters stuff themselves into barely 300 hand-built huts, next to a lake of sewage (take another look at that idyllic-looking cover—it pictures literally an enormous puddle of shit). The most lucrative line of work here—other than organizing government corruption—is sorting and selling the garbage that scores of pickers scavenge or steal, mostly from the airport.

The central figure of the book, 17-year-old Abdul Husain, runs his family’s garbage business, sorting trash for hours on end, every day, and then packing it up and hauling it across town to the recycling facility.

Throughout the telling of Abdul’s story, Boo’s most remarkable talent is her intimate knowledge of her subjects, such that her narrative reads like a novel with an omniscient narrator. For example:

[Abdul's mother Zehrunisa] stepped carefully over one of his younger brothers, and then another, bending low to Abdul’s ear. “Wake up, fool!” she said exuberantly. “You think your work is dreaming?”

Superstitious, Zehrunisa had noticed that some of the family’s most profitable days occurred after she had showered abuses on her eldest son. January’s income being pivotal the Husains’ latest plan of escape from Annawady, she had decided to make the curses routine.

It’s a stunning style, and it makes the narrative immersive in a way first-person journalism can’t touch.

Here’s another passage, about the corrupt problem-fixer Asha and her beautiful daughter, Manju:

Asha grasped many of her own contradictions, among them that you could be proud of having spared your offspring hardship while also resenting them for having been spared. When food was short in Asha’s childhood, the girls of the family went without. Although most people talked of hunger as a matter of the stomach, what Asha recalled was the taste—a foul thing that burrowed into your tongue and was sometimes still there when you swallowed, decades later. Manju looked at her mother with compassion, not comprehension, when Asha tried to describe it.

Asha resents her daughter for other reasons, like the fact that Manju attempts to actually run the small school that Asha receives a government subsidy for—most schools convene only to take pictures or for the visits of government regulators.

Behind is full of moments like this: the problems of India, in microcosm, woven deftly into elegant, complex characterizations. Still, these characters and details aren’t Behind’s only strong suits. There’s also an engrossing, heartbreaking plot.

When a neighbor, jealous of the Husains’ success, finally loses it, she sets herself on fire and tells the police that Abdul tried to murder her. Abdul runs, and his father—a semi-disabled man whose absence won’t reflect in the family’s bottom line—tries to take the blame.

The Husains have to decide who to bribe and who to snub (they can’t afford to bribe everyone), and Abdul, in jail, becomes contemplative and compassionate in a way the slum never inspired.

Meanwhile, the Husains learn that their real enemies are not the airport officials threatening to pave over the slum and kick out all the squatters, and they are not the rich people trying to ignore their existence—Annawadians’ real enemies are each other. They fight amongst each other for every scrap of trash, and they let crippling jealousy turn them against each other.

It’s such a powerful narrative, with such well-defined characters, that I often forgot that it was all true. Until, that is, I hit the first video.

A still from the book's first embedded video, "Annawadi"

That’s right—videos. The “enhanced” ebook version of Behind comes with 4 videos, shot by both Boo and the denizens of Annawadi, at a total cost of $1 more than the unenhanced ebook. It’s an elegant use of ereading’s capabilities, and it serves an important function: reminding you that Abdul and Manju (and everyone else) are real people.

I’m no expert on Indian politics or society—for that kind of stuff look to a review like this one. But I can tell you that Behind is a remarkable experience. Anyone remotely interested in its subject matter should pick it up.

Similar books (selected with help from our nonfiction guru Marc Velasquez): Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers; Homicide, by David Simon; A Civil Action, by Jonathan Carr; Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand; Levels of the Game, by John McPhee; Among Schoolchildren, by Tracy Kidder

Also: here’s a profile of Boo herself.

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.]

Author Jeff Ryan

2011, Portfolio/Penguin

Filed Under: Nonfiction.

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Ninetendo’s Super Mario character is easily the most iconic video game character ever created. Mario games were and are still to some extent so popular that you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who’s never heard of them.

Nintendo has a talent for that kind of ubiquity (cf. the Wii’s popularity with senior citizens), and on Mario’s shoulders the original Nintendo Entertainment System made “Nintendo” synonymous with “videogame” for a decade or more. Unless you were one of those kids with a Sega (sorry), your house was probably as likely to have an NES as a VCR. If it didn’t, you certainly had friends who had one.

Someone gave my grandfather an NES when I was 4 or 5. It had Super Mario Bros. (like lots of other adults he pronounced it Mare-E-Oh which drove me nuts), the combo pack with Duck Hunt and Track Meet (remember that weird PowerPad?). I was soon obsessed. More than two decades later, Nintendo games still have a significant claim on my leisure time staked out. I likely play more video games than most people my age–but that’s hard to guess, because in the past few years the rise of geek chic has made videogames socially acceptable.

So essentially, this book is a history of a toy company that’s been siphoning my money for almost 30 years and will probably continue to do so for a long time to come. It makes for an interesting story primarily because (and I’m admitting a weakness here) of how hard it is for Nintendo to do wrong by loyalists like me (I have a Virtual Boy in my closet). It’s a curious success they have, one I’m sure other companies wish they could achieve. I certainly don’t have the same rabid devotion to Random House.

Of course, most of Nintendo’s story was unbeknownst to us kids back then. But they do actually have a pretty interesting history. Nintendo began as a playing card company in the 19th century. Before video games they dabbled in a little bit of everything, even “love hotels.” Everything changed with the rise of the arcade though. Nintendo–who had found success making LCD games–tried to get in the action with a Space Invaders style game called Radar Scope. They made a boatload of arcade cabinets (literally), set up shop in America, then couldn’t sell the damn thing.

With nothing left to lose, they let a low-level guy in their art department design a game with which to convert the Radar Scope cabinets. His name was Shigeru Miyamoto, and he was shaggy-haired and kind of an oddball. The game he invented was Donkey Kong. Fast forward a few years and and Donkey Kong ruled the roost. There was a DK machine in every arcade and half the pizza places in the US, and its stumpy, overalled plumber avatar was well on his way to reaching Mickey Mouse levels of international recognizability.

Miyamoto, who in addition to Mario and Donkey Kong made The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Kirby and number of other beloved franchises, became the patron saint of video games. France even knighted him a few years ago. Jeff Ryan wisely builds his history around Miyamoto, as well as a few other key Nintendo figures. (They used a fuedal samurai system of delegation. Billionaire owner Hiroshi Yamauchi as shogun, with his daimyos Miyamoto, Gunpei Yokoi (inventor of the Game Boy), Yoshio Sakomoto (he made Metroid), Minoru Arakawa, and later Howard Phillips.)

I went into this book knowing the outcome. Nintendo made Scrooge McDuck amounts of money, lorded over video games with an iron fist (called the Nintendo Seal of Approval, which meant they controlled all production rights to NES game cartridges–a policy not unlike Apple’s 30% cut on ebooks), then built a new console with Sony but in a colossal failure of overconfidence tried to dick them over. That resulted in the creation of Nintendo’s archrival, the Playstation, and almost put them out of business. Nintendo went from pauper to king to a tyrant usurped. For years Nintendo reeled, delivering systems that were brilliant and loved by many but not the masses, who preferred the higher tech promises of Sony’s Playstation and (later) Microsoft’s Xbox lines.

Ryan practically drools over his subjects. To him and and fans like him, the monumental success of the Wii and DS–both Hail Mary products initially derided by the industry–demonstrates the company in a moment of glorious reascension. And indeed, the enjoyment I derived from this book came about from some sort of affirmation of my indulgence. I was constantly rooting for Miyamoto’s next great game idea to get them out of a jam. It’s similar–identical–to a baseball fan reading a book about baseball and feeling a rush about a World Series game long passed.

Ryan writes well enough, and while the book’s organization occasionally stumbles into tangential clutter, he for the most part does a good job of creating a linear history. However, this book could have used another once-over. There’s a handful of spelling and syntactical mistakes (“Facebook’s low-res fare such as Parking Wars is a glorified game of mail chess…”) that slipped in, but also another fact check would have been nice. I can’t really help myself, though, and have to flash the nerd badge here.

*pushes glasses up nose

Bowser did not return in Mario 2, it was a giant toad dictator name Wart. And Ness wasn’t the baseball toting boy hero in Mother, that was Ninten. Ness–from the sequel Mother 2, or Earthbound stateside–looked pretty much the same, but was in fact a different character. It’s minor stuff, sure, but when you’re writing a book basically solely for an audience of dorky manboys known for being, let’s say, persnickety when it comes to all things Nintendo, you should be sure to have all that stuff nailed down.

In the long run, those and the few other mistakes like them are minor. And I liked that Ryan’s work allowed me to get my inner dork riled a bit. Most people will not at all care about this book. But if you took an interest in Nintendo when you were a kid, or if you own stock in Nintendo, Super Mario is worth picking through for curiosity’s sake. If you never really grew out of it like some of us, you’ll draw plenty of entertainment out of it–be brave and read it on the subway, ignoring the condescending looks from other adults.

Similar Reads: The House That Ruth Built (Weintraub), The Extra 2% (Keri), Faithful (King/O’Nan)

2004, Bear & Company

Filed Under: Nonfiction, Historical, Sci-Fi.

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Not that I buy into them, but pseudo-documentaries like the kind often played on The History Channel are a guilty pleasure of mine. Sitchin’s books (there are many) were mentioned in one I’ve been watching recently called “Ancient Aliens.” That show’s title pretty much sums up Sitchin’s thesis: aliens used to live on earth, and live amongst humans as gods.

Sitchin’s clearly a smart guy. He reads multiple languages (including Sumerian), and has spent a lot of time studying ancient artifacts. His basic supposition is that if Homer’s Troy (long thought by scholars to be a mythical place, until its excavation around the turn of the 20th century) can transcend myth, there’s no reason to outright discredit the rest of his rendition as untrue just because we don’t believe it. Hence there were really gods and demigods involved in the politics of men.

Based upon Sumerian legends of “sky people” called Anunaki, legends from which he inferences robots and rocket ships, Sitchin takes his literalist line of logic surrounding Troy one step further and asserts that the gods were aliens. It’s all pretty ridiculous of course, but what follows is some interesting, and often exciting, quasi-science. (I ought to point out, as batty as all this sounds, that if you were to reductively sum up the “plot” of pretty much any of the world’s major religions into a single sentence, it would probably sound equally as ludicrous.)

The book is broken into sections, with the ancient objects targeted for his various trips to the the Mediterranean and Middle East (a carving of a rocketship, a statue with an “airtank,” Sumerian characters charved into an unrecognized bronze smelting ruin in Greece) used as thematic dividers. More than once he roots a premise on what he believes is a mistranslation, such as the Hebrew “Elohim” for God, which he asserts is actually plural–and referring to alien “gods.”  If Indian Jones were an aging, paunchy Jewish man prone to excitability and content to walking tours rather than whip-swinging through temples and tombs, he’d resemble Zecharia Sitchin.

Still, Sitchin does bring up a lot of interesting comparisions between ancient cultures that existed oceans apart. Sitchin draws lines between the Maya, the Egyptians, the Sumerians, the Greeks, the Olmecs. Of course, when you approach such a topic looking for such comparisons, they’re not hard to find. Things like a certain style of tongue on certain idols indicate, to Sitchin, a relationship between the gorgons of Greek mythology and a Mayan god-beast. This connection could mean that Medusa’s family could have traveled freely across the ocean, or it could touch on some archetypal imagery used by ancient humans, or it could just be coincidence.

Sitchin does this over and over: he points out an interesting connection, poses an interesting question, jumps three steps ahead of himself and calls it “irrefutable” proof that the ancient alien Anunnaki once co-inhabited the planet with us. He even claims that the smoking guns are being shadily hidden away, or possible destroyed, by museums. Assertions like that push the book too far into paranoid conspiracy theory for my taste. Moreover, you can’t just pick and choose myths to “prove” true–the sun isn’t pulled by a chariot, and why would an advanced civilization capable of intergalactic travel fight primitive wars with arrows and build space stations out of rock?

That’s not really a criticism, though–it’s not like I went into this believing it anything other than hooey–because it’s fun. Sitchin ties most of his conclusions to a single place, the one he believes was the Anunnaki “Mission Control Center”: Jerusalem’s Temple on the Mount.

Was this Holy of Holies, the former home of the Ark of Covenant, also a launching pad for an ancient rocket ship? Probably not. But the enthusiasm with which Sitchin relates his (admittedly pretty ballsy) sneaking into a prohibited inner sanctum of one of the most sacred places on Earth makes me wish, just a little, that he had stumbled upon a bunch of aliens playing canasta around the Ark of the Covenant.

I really liked this book. Take it for what it is: a man who looks at statues and convinces himself they are wearing spacesuits, then enthusiastically shares his “discovery” with you. It’s mindrot, but it’s fun mindrot.

Similar Reads: I’ve never read anything like this. Watch “Ancient Aliens” on the History Channel (and Netflix streaming) for a taste.

2011

Filed Under: Memoir, Nonfiction, Short-run

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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.]

2011, Titan

Filed Under: Biography, Nonfiction.

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Towards the end of Fever, author Susan Whitall describes a public feud in the late 60s between soul singer Joe Tex and James Brown regarding Brown’s sobriquet, “Soul Brother No. 1.” Tex argued that title really belonged to Little Willie John, who at the time was serving a sentence for second-degree murder, and openly campaigned against Brown’s using it. Obviously Tex lost, and Brown tossed the phrase atop a pile of bragadacio that also includes “Godfather of Soul,” “Hardest Working Man in Show Business,” and “Mr. Dynamite.”

Fever is a more detailed and nuanced extension of that argument. Whitall, who evidently worked closely with the John family, especially Willie’s sons Kevin and Keith, mounts a campaign to install John in the soul music pantheon, alongside acknowledged greats Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, and James Brown. He certainly deserves renewed attention—while the other three are staples of oldies radio formats, Willie John’s voice has long been relegated to a kind of cult status, the stuff of record collectors, critics, and nostalgics. The oversight is unaccountable, given how exciting and advanced John’s records are, and how many singers and musicians cite him as a formative influence.

In fact, much of Whitall’s biography of the singer is built around the glowing testimony of his contemporaries, along with friends and family, just about all of who agree that Willie John was a preternaturally gifted singer and showman, a loving son and brother, dedicated father and husband, and a generous, easy going friend. Which isn’t to suggest that Whitall shies away from the less positive aspects of John’s career (his drug use, various affairs, and imprisonment) – but those issues are addressed gingerly, as if dwelling too long on whether cocaine and alleged heroin use might’ve exacerbated his epilepsy, or the effect of his seeing other women on his marriage would hamper the Little Willie John rehabilitation effort. On the one hand I understand the impulse completely—the tabloid-friendly aspects of an artist’s career too easily distort the narrative and draw attention away from their work. But the book suffers a bit from the absence of that perspective.

That said, Whitall makes hay with the paucity of archival information about her subject. Discovered at the age of fifteen, Willie’s career lasted only another fifteen years before he died at age 30, under mysterious circumstances while imprisoned. He recorded nine albums and dozens of singles in that time, but very little of the media that would give us a sense of who Willie was when he wasn’t in a recording booth (television and film appearances, radio interviews, etc.) or personal documents (letters, diaries, etc.) has survived. Whitall apparently made up for that lack with a remarkably thorough brace of interviews, piecing together the “real” Willie from recollections and remembrances. She goes as far a-field as interviewing Art Swanson, the prosecuting attorney for King County who tried Willie for second-degree murder (it turns out he was quite fond of Willie, and has some very specific criticisms of the defending attorney.) Its like biography based on gestalt theory—the subject is largely missing, but the context completes the picture for us.

Whitall’s prose is confident if not florid. She often defers to direct quotes when describing John’s music, but her own descriptions are quite evocative, as when she’s detailing “Fever,” Willie’s most enduring hit:

While the song is in a minor key, the combination of blues and jazz licks gives it an uptown, urbane feel. Willie, the veteran of so many Count Basie gigs, swings effortlessly with his voice, echoed by a bluesy backup chorus. Even the finger-snapping ends up adding to the charm, giving the recording a cool, late-night vibe.

Speaking of “Fever”: I found the book most interesting when it dug into the possible reasons for John’s relative obscurity despite being a major artist of his day, among them Peggy Lee’s well-known cover of that particular tune. The white man (or woman) who steals the blues is a well-worn critical archetype, but that doesn’t make it any less valid. Lee’s “Fever” has a permanent place in our cultural lexicon, advertising shorthand for slinky sexuality and available to sell everything from pudding to coffee filters; John’s original recording is superior, but little heard. But even more than that, the story of “Fever” gives me a more legitimate reason to root for Willie than taking his friends and family’s word for it that he was a nice guy.

In the dedication and acknowledgements page Kevin John, Willie’s oldest son, wrote for the book, he mentions “four wishes regarding [his] father’s musical legacy,” which include induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, wide release of Willie’s music, participating in a book about Willie’s life, and finally seeing that story told in film. He notes that all but the last have been accomplished, and hopes for the fourth. But Fever is so consumed with rounding off the corners of Willie’s life that it makes a poor movie pitch.

After years of reductive write-ups, there’s certainly a space for the John’s family and Susan Whitall’s take on Willie’s story, but I hope it isn’t the final word. In the wake of increased attention to his life and music, a more critical look at the subject would be more than welcome. I finished Fever really liking Little Willie John as a person and a musician, but I’m not sure I had much of a choice in the matter.

Recommendations: Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke – Peter Guralnick; James Brown: The Godfather of Soul – James Brown; One Nation Under a Groove: Motown and American Culture – Gerald Early

[A review copy was provided.]