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

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.]

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.]

Author: Deborah Baker

2011, Graywolf Press

Filed under: Biography, Nonfiction

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Deborah Baker’s The Convert is billed as a biography of Margaret Marcus, an American Jewish woman who became an influential voice in the radicalization of Islam and fueled the modern understanding of Jihad. Baker builds Convert on extensive (but not quite exhaustive) research, primary source material, and interviews with living key players.

Even so, it’s a stretch to suggest that Convert reads like a typical biography. Excluding notes and acknowledgement, the book checks in at a relatively slim 223 pages. Those pages are packed tight with information about Marcus and her new Pakistani environment. But in the end, those pages don’t possess a firm sense of the truth. Nor does it feel like the truth is entirely unknowable. In many ways, the absence of such a conclusion could make a biography feel hasty, as if the writer had simply given up on knowing her subject. In this case, The Convert takes an interesting turn: it becomes a clever and well-written meditation on the relationship between a writer and her subject.

Margaret Marcus was a bit of an oddball. She had a homely appearance, few if any friends, and an oversized obsession with the Arab world. She spent countless hours in the library researching Islam. After reaching the conclusion that her beliefs were more aligned what she had been reading than with her nearly faithless upbringing, she converted to Islam, and changed her name to Maryam Jameelah.

Among the many writers she encountered in the library was Manwala Abul Ala Mawdudi, a strict thinker who believe in Sharia Law. Maryam found commonalities between her notions and Mawdudi’s words, and initiated a correspondence. When she expressed her belief that she couldn’t live happily in the West as a practicing Muslim, Mawdudi invited her into his Pakistani home and adopted her as part of his family.

If the story above piques your interest, The Convert would be worth picking up. But don’t expect an easy read. The book is as much about Deborah Baker’s discovery of Maryam as it is about Maryam’s conversion and life in Pakistan. In a typical biography, the writer starts as an authority on her subject. But Baker begins The Convert as merely an intrigued researcher. As Baker’s research goes on, Maryam’s story become more complicated, and the truth more convoluted.

The emotional crux of The Convert lies in the lifespan of Baker’s infatuation for her subject. That infatuation is sown, buds, blossoms, withers, and dies throughout the course of the book. It is a compliment to Baker that, as readers, we experience that lifespan similarly.

As Baker’s relationship with Maryam unfolds, the book intersperses Maryam’s letters and writings with historical context and narrative analysis from Baker. The strength of Convert lies in that analysis. Take for instance Baker’s description of Maryam’s decision to emigrate:

To achieve something noteworthy and enduring with the few gifts God had provided her was her keenest desire. Only then would God realize that she had not squandered her life, dishonored her limited time on earth by meaningless pursuits or sinful behavior. She planned to give a good account of herself.

Not only is this great analysis of Maryam’s motivation, it foreshadows the discoveries Baker will make about Maryam’s letters.

In many ways, The Convert is not a complete or thorough biography. But I, for one, am glad it isn’t. There’s a lot of power in the ambiguity of Maryam Jameelah’s words. At the same time, there’s a distinct separation between the real Maryam Jameelah and the persona she presented in her writing. That separation was a maddening discovery for the biographer, and as a reader, I have to admit that it was jarring for me as well.

Yet, on numerous occasions since I’ve finished reading The Convert, I’ve found myself thinking about the strange life of Maryam Jameelah. Any admiration I might have had for Maryam is gone, as is most of my curiosity about her. Yet her words, words rooted in a conjured, false self-image, helped lay the foundation for many extremist attacks on the Western world  I’m trying to decide what that means, and how it affects the world we’ve lived in over the last ten years.

The Covnert isn’t the best book I’ve read, but it’s important, and I have a sneaking suspicion that Maryam Jameelah will continue to invade my thoughts often.

Similar reads: This is really unlike anything I have ever read, but the historical aspects made me think a little (for a nanosecond) about Steve Coll’s books. I haven’t read the book, but the movie Cobb leads me to believe that Al Stump’s biography of the same name contains a similarly tumultious relationship between writer and subject. For a more traditional Biography try Berg’s Max Perkins, Editor of Genius.

2011, Black, Inc.

Filed Under: Nonfiction.

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In his foreword to Marie Alexandrine Martin’s Cambodia: A Shattered Society, Jean-François Baré wrote, “At the head of the list of vanquished, I would obviously be inclined, as would Marie Martin, to place the Khmer people, a martyred people. But the Khmer people also produced the Pol Pots, the Ieng Sarys, the Khieu Samphans, the barely adolescent yothea who, under their leaders’ directions, used methodical and murderous obstinacy in applying Bertolt Brecht’s sorrowful aphorism: ‘If something about a country is wrong, you have to change the people and choose another one’–this same Khmer people, imbued among other interacting factors with a concept of hierarchy (neak chuo, knowing one’s place) that worked both to help make Cambodia so peaceful and to make the Khmer revolution so terrible when ‘the children were in power,’ through an astonishing and terrible structural reversal.”

Forget about the tribes (whose countries are now called Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam) that migrated from their ancestral home in southern China to Southeast Asia and engulfed the lands of Mon, Khmer, and Malay. Forget about Thailand and Vietnam’s tug-of-war for supremacy in this region, using Cambodia as a rope, the ironclad colonization by the French, the American bombings, or Vietnam and China’s influences. Disregard the fact that the Khmer Rouge leaders consisted of ethnic Chinese and Vietnamese and studied Marxism in Paris. What Jean-François Baré is driving at in his foreword is: there’s no one to blame for Cambodia’s weakness and demise but the Khmers themselves.

No one revels in this sentiment more than Joel Brinkley in Cambodia’s Curse. He devotes his entire book to show how the Khmer leaders (psychopathic, autocratic, and kleptocratic) and people (ignorant, stupid, lazy, foolish and gullible) are a hopeless case and therefore, can’t be saved. Basically, the donors should not give Cambodia’s government any more money and should pack up and go home.

In fact, the premise of Cambodia’s Curse is to debunk those who attributed the American bombing to the rise of the Khmer Rouge regime, which ultimately killed almost two million of its own people and destroyed its entire nation.

Brinkley reflects,

In this climate William Shawcross, a British journalist, wrote his seminal book, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia. It concluded that the American bombing of Cambodia, intended to destroy Vietcong sanctuaries there, drove the peasantry to the Khmer Rouge and ensured their victory. The liberal media (and I was a card-carrying member; I read and admired his book while flying to Cambodia in 1979) heaped adulation on Shawcross.

He has come to a realization that “now, thirty years later, with passions cooled, it is quite clear that his conclusion was wrong.”

In this tragedy, Brinkley points his finger directly at King Grandfather Norodom Sihanouk for the rise of the Khmer Rouge. He avers King Grandfather acquiesced to the bombing, which began a year before the Lon Nol coup; and thereafter, under the mediation of China, called out, via the radio, to the peasants to join the Khmer Rouge to fight the corrupt Lon Nol regime. Brinkley claims that a majority of Khmers, unlike their neighbors, couldn’t read nor write, still lived primitive lives since ancient time, and owned no televisions or radios. Therefore, how could they know about the king’s call to join the revolution? Secondly, he misses or ignores the reports about King Grandfather’s outrage over the bombing that indiscriminately killed his own people, and his severing of ties with the United States due to this issue.

Moreover, Brinkley accuses King Grandfather of spending a decade “cultivating” the Chinese leadership, Mao Tse-tung and Zhou Enlai, since the late 1950s.

They grew to be Sihanouk admirers and friends—at a time when China had very few friends. Mao gave Sihanouk a magnificent mansion on Anti-Imperialist Street in Beijing and feted him every time he came to town—which was often.

Again, Brinkley must be wearing blinders. Didn’t Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger try to “cultivate” their own long-term vision or relationship with China? Dr. Kissinger even wrote a book about it called On China.

 King Grandfather did turn to western leaders for help but to no avail. Their disparagement and cold-shoulder pushed him to the only country that was receptive.

… like every American official then, Rostow regarded Cambodia as an irrelevant little country. 

As representative Tip O’Neill said during the floor debate, “Cambodia is not worth the life of one American flier.”

Given such an attitude, not that China had Cambodians’s interests at heart, who and where could Brinkley possibly expect the King of Cambodia to turn to for help? He doesn’t even mention Mr. Nixon and Dr. Kissinger’s contempt for this “insignificant” ruler of this “irrelevant” country.

Crediting the American bombing for delaying “the Khmer Rouge’s ultimate victory,” he refers to Marshall Lon Nol as “a different animal with different motivations.” He blames him for giving “the Americans carte blanche to bomb wherever they pleased,” citing his love for the U. S. dollars more than the love for his own people. “The Lon Nol government supported a large expansion of the target area for American bombers more or less in exchange for cash. The U. S. Embassy in Phnom Penh wasn’t interested in the victims. And among the other Westerners in town, undoubtedly some of them agreed with Gen. William Westmoreland, the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam. ‘The Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does a Westerner,’ he said in 1974. ‘Life is plentiful, life is cheap in the Orient.’”

This is to say that Khmers don’t even value each other’s life, so why should Westerners?

To support his argument that Khmers have no one to blame but themselves, in accordance with the views of Cambodia’s biased neighbors, journalists, and chroniclers before him, Brinkley points to the barbaric nature of Khmer people, which he says has not changed since ancient times. However, he doesn’t have to reach far back into history to show such examples.

Whether out of guilt, pity, or true sympathy, the United Nations spent three billion dollars to give Khmer people a fresh start, to bring peace and democracy to Cambodia, only to be undermined by the Cambodians’s leaders, especially Prime Minister Hun Sen and Prince Norodom Ranariddh themselves. Brinkley writes, “Cambodia’s leaders, all of them, were plotting, scheming, bribing, and backstabbing to come out on top, as if the election had never taken place.”

Even the elitist and United States’s golden boy, Sam Rainsy, who only looks to score political points, loses touch with the common folks and his own party members. Moreover, Brinkley holds Mr. Rainsy accountable for sabotaging the FBI’s investigation of the 1997 grenade attack on demonstrators, which was only inquired into because an American official was hurt. Mr. Rainsy is now seen as nothing more than a whiner or a complainer.

Currently, only one party, Hun Sen’s CPP, rules Cambodia, killing, exploiting, and destroying its own people and country for its own gain. Officials sell titles, positions, forests, and lands to the highest bidders and foreign companies while they dehumanize and truck their own people out of their homes and lands. The country is corrupt from top to bottom. The bigger guys get the bigger piece of the pie while the police and military officers and teachers get the smaller piece. The peasants are the victims in all of this. They get squeezed from every direction. They have no one to turn to, because the judicial branch of government is not independent and it’s corrupt, just like all public and private sectors in the country.

 CPP  like to think that Cambodia only has one choice: pick the lesser of the two evils.

All in all, Brinkley finds Khmers as unreasonable, stubborn, and uncompromising people. In a debate or argument, instead of agreeing to disagree, the loser gets defensive and turns to hostility and violence, as a way of “saving face.” In accordance to studies done by Raoul-Marc Jennar, a Belgian who worked for the United Nations in Cambodia, Brinkley concludes that, “killing was an automatic tactic for eliminating differences of opinion.” Therefore, political opponents are threatened, stabbed, hacked, mutilated, and killed. Servants or subordinates are abused, killed, or tortured to death, as the case of colonel Ou Bunthan, who accused his employee, Leang Saroeun, of stealing from him without reason or proof, poured gasoline on his victim and set him on fire, alive. The corrupt system in Cambodia caused the doctor to violate his oath (possibly there is no such thing as a doctor’s oath in Cambodia, not these days anyways) by refusing to treat this tragic victim, because the wife didn’t have money to pay him. Heartbreakingly, the charred man died at home, in unimaginable physical and mental pains, as his poor and distressed wife attended to him.

Brinkley sees no hope for Cambodia. He sees no courageous and adept leaders rising out of this small kingdom. All he sees are fools looking out for themselves. According to him, Darfur, North Korea, Haiti, Rwanda, etc. are way better than Cambodia. Cambodia’s Curse is painfully engrossing. Granted that Joel Brinkley’s knowledge of Khmer history, language, tradition, religion, and culture are as limited as the Chinese chronicler, Zhou Daguan or Chou Ta-Kuan (1296 -1297), resorting to hearsay and misinterpretations by misinformed individuals, just like the bigoted Chou Ta-Kuan, but his findings and observations of Khmer’s problems, attitude and behavior are not too far off.

Lastly, Brinkley may have been sarcastic about seeing change coming to Cambodia in his epilogue, but it was change that brought Khmers out of the Dark Age to become known as one of the most powerful empires in Southeast Asia for thousands of years. That power lies in education and knowledge. With knowledge Khmers built strong social and religious institutions and reigned supreme. The Khmer presence still remains throughout Southeast Asia. 

Eleanor Mannikka, the scholar and author of Angkor Wat: Time, Space, and Kingship, said it best when she wrote, “The architects of Angkor Wat were brilliant and well educated—true sages whose knowledge ranged from architecture to Sanskrit poetry to astronomy to religious rituals. They were extraordinary human beings for any society, in any era.”

That power was removed when newly arrived groups of people invaded the country, looted it, killed its people and scholars, and captured those extraordinary ones to build their own civilizations. Khmers lost that power and plunged back into the Dark Age, but the good news is, Khmers are survivors. It will take us a long time to gain new and old knowledge, but we are struggling to get it back. Khmers, like the Mayans and Aztecs, are one of the oldest groups of people in the world, but contrary to them, we are struggling against internal and external negative forces to stay alive. If anything, Cambodia is blessed. Let’s educate and help improve the lives of the 80 percent of Khmers who are illiterate and poor.

.

Suggested Reading: Angkor Wat: Time, Space, & Kingship (Mannikka), Cambodia: A Shattered Society (Martin), On China (Kissinger)

[A version of this review also appeared on Sambath's blog]

Author: Bob Mould

2011 Little, Brown

Filed under: Memoir

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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.]