A Literary Life

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (Tom Wolfe)

Tom Wolfe is known as a journalist and a chronicler of his times, and this book had been on my list for some time because it is one of his best-known works and, frankly, it has a really awesome title. True to the reputation of the novel and its author, it is a creative piece of non-fiction that stays true to its time even after that time has past, recreating the environment and the emotions (the aura, man, do you see the aura?) of that hippie existence so often satirized but so little understood.

Wolfe speaks in this book about Ken Kesey, the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and one of the founders of the psychedelic movement, and Kesey’s group of friends and fellow travelers who name themselves The Merry Pranksters. They’re the first to travel the country on a magical mystery tour (yes, before the Beatles) and one of the first to try to make acid and the ensuing mental expansion related to the drug a cultural and philosophical movement.

Tune in, drop out. Tune into the wholeness, the interconnected nature of the universe and drop out of square (meaning live to day to day with your head down) society. So long Mom, Dad, John and Jane Doe. Hello the true world, which is more than your parents with their antiquated notions of what is right and wrong, what the future should be, with their stuck-in-a-rut daily lives. In this book, you begin to see the “hippie” notion of expanding yourself rather than fitting into a conformist mold, or seeing the world in a new way, a spiritual journey of discovery rather than an oft-traveled path of marriage, career and death.

The Pranksters spread the message of LSD through parties known as Acid Tests, which in the media, are often thought of as multi-media experiences (think light shows, trippy music and such) that replicate the acid experience without the actual drug. But yeah right, the LSD was there! On the other hand, Wolfe brilliantly recreates the acid mindset, varying his prose and descriptions, making the reader feel as if they truly have the trip without the drugs.

It’s a great history of the sex, drugs and rock and roll of the time period told from the naive point of view of the time period, the perspective that they were doing something that had never been done, feeling emotions that had never been acted upon. And though the world has changed since the time the book was written, that idealism and spirituality shines through. It’s a fun jaunt back in social history, and it’s even more fun now that we are older, wiser and knowledgeable about the effects of the “hippie” movement.

While I didn’t imbibe the LSD, I feel I have learned a small bit of truth about history, about how it felt to be present in a certain time and place in American history. And, most importantly, I have been entertained.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - Book club selection

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (Alison Bechdel)

You know, it’s strange how life likes to intersects random themes, making it seem as if you see/hear/read/experience one thing over and over over a period of time, as if something is cropping up everywhere all of the sudden where you didn’t see it before. I first remember this happening when I was a kid and a cousin taught me the meaning of the word “porous,” and suddenly it was all over the TV and grown-up speak for a few days or weeks afterwards. Currently, I seem to be stuck in a cycle of homosexuality.

No really. Listen: I recently read a soft-core lesbian romance, some military big wig got in hot water for calling homosexual acts immoral and I recently attended a function where the Colorado Gay and Lesbian Fund was a main sponsor and was honored. There were more instances of homosexuality being hyperactive on my radar, too, that I can’t think of right now.

Anyway, so imagine my sense of coincidence and confluence when I opened this book, which got onto my list thanks to a review in Time magazine. It is the tale of a young girl, a lesbian, coming to grips with herself and her strange, dysfunctional family who happen to run a small-town funeral home. (I know, it’s all very Six Feet Under.) The funeral home = the FUN home. It was just all too ironic given the strange theme of gay-ness permeating my atmosphere recently. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Really.)
There was also something incredibly unique about this book, however: the fact that it is not only words but illustrations. In fact, it reads like a comic book from pane to pane with detailed black and white ink illustrations. I love something that blows my expectations out of the water like that and the technique was a breath of fresh air, as were the drawings, which were neither the overly masculinized comic stereotype (think large breasts, bulging pecs and muzzle flashes) or all sappy and girly comic stereotype (think puppies and Disney cartoons). They were realistic, even lewd or awkward when necessary, and the comic style made the book read incredibly fast.

Allison Bechdel tells a very interesting story using this method, the story of her life in fact. And despite my introduction, homosexuality is not its only theme or value. There’s also the power of family and of genetics, the struggle of the individual to choose and strive toward their own future, the universal themes of literature in everyday life and the struggle to make sense of the past, a struggle that is not as neat and tidy as the frames of a comic book. If your interested in Bechdel, you can check out her work via the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars - A book club selection for vacation reading

I Like You (Amy Sedaris)

According to Amy Sedaris, who many of you will recognize from the cult show Strangers with Candy and others will know if I say her brother is David, when you invite someone into your home, you are saying, “I like you.” And when Amy Sedaris likes you, you can expect styrofoam decorated like cakes, googly eyes on everything, strong drinks, Greek food, a theme, pressure to buy something off of her “Everything Must Go - 25 Cents!” table and (if the pictures speak the truth) lots of visuals of her ass — covered only in panty hose or lathered in whipped cream. Yum.

Seriously, yum. Well, so her recipes aren’t anything that I am hopping up and down with anticipation to try. They’re rather simple and 1950s Betty Crocker / add-a-can-of-cream-of-something-soup-and-you’re-all-set meals (see The Gallery of Regrettable Food). There are a few I’ll try, including the cheese ball. And while the book is incredibly funny, her wit isn’t as honed or sophisticated as her brother’s. Quite intentionally, I think. That’s just who she is: blunt, raunchy, retro, slightly morbid/grotesque and obsessed with her rabbit, Dusty, who has the run of her apartment.

Still, I stand by my “yum” because it’s a rare book on hospitality you can read from cover to cover, especially when you are not even planning a party. The best helpful hints?

• Fill your medicine cabinet with marbles before you have guests over so you can sound out the nosy partygoers.
• Pre-crack all of your liquor bottles. No one wants to be the first to dive in.
• In case of a drunk staying the night, make the guest bed with a rubber sheet.
• Sell unwanted items for 25 cents to all takers, clearing out your junk and giving guests a fun souvenir.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - Vacation reading

The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat (Oliver Sacks)

I don’t even remember where this one came from, but it’s been on the endless list for quite some time. Perhaps it was the whimsical title that made me finally check it out. That and the book was available, instant gratification on the shelf, and I was hungrily out of reading material. In such desperate situations, there is no time to wait on the hold list.

Sure, I was desperate, but I was also immensely satisfied by this collection of clinical tales by Dr. Sacks, a professor of neurology and author of several other books, including Awakenings (which, yes, is also a good movie with Robin Williams). In this book, Sacks attempts to explain — at least in part — the unremarked-upon right side of the brain, which is often thought of as the more primitive side. Yet, “it is the right hemisphere which controls the crucial powers of recognizing reality which every living creature must have in order to survive.” Disorders of the right are incredibly difficult for the average person to imagine. After all, how would it be to live with:

• The ability to hear perfectly, but not understand words
• The ability to understand words, but not tone/inflection/meaning
• The ability to see, but not process those images into faces/pictures (Hence the title story)
• The ability to feel direct stimulation, but not make your own muscles move

In addition to describing what he knows about these patients’ fascinating worlds, Sacks also delves into both mental “deficits” and “excesses,” savantism, mental handicaps, seizure-stimulated reminiscence and more, all the while linking these stories to the common theme of the human experience. What is “functioning”? What is identity? Can we more flexibly define the first? Can we divine if and how various patients, with various challenges and odd inner worlds, hold onto the second?

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - Book club selection

Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as … (Bill Buford)

… as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. Whew. That’s a title, alright. It’s also a very good book in the foodie tradition, which I figured I would wallow in for a few more days after finishing Julia Child.

As with quite a few authors of books I enjoy, Buford makes me green with jealousy–In a good way, I promise. He is a writer and former fiction editor of The New Yorker whose life changed when he did a profile on Mario Batali, the Italian-American chef made famous by the Food Network. (Red hair, baggy patterned pants, kitchen clogs, Iron Chef - You know who I’m talking about.) Always a foodie, Bill decided to go undercover to witness the life of a kitchen first hand at Mario’s famous restuarant Babbo’s, where he is so drawn into the culture of food, the chaos of the kitchen, the satisfaction of working with his hands, etc. that he quits the illustrious day job to persue his newfound addiction, to continue his education in the true nature of food.

Hey Ma! Wanna know what I (via Buford) learned?

1. That Mario Batali is quite a party animal (drinking a case of wine in an evening, admiting to partaking in the cocaine explosion of the 1980s, cussing like sailor and making racy comments to women the moment the camera is turned).
2. That you should never order pasta after 10 p.m. (Noodle water is starchy thanks to the pasta, and makes an excellent, flavorful thickener for sauces… and therefore the water doesn’t get changed. Ever. Well, until the next day, after it has acquired a purple hue. Purple?)
3. That random people often stick their fingers in your food before it arrives at your table, and that you should probably thank them for caring so much.
4. That eggs in pasta dough and tomatoes in Italian sauce are historical landmarks in the history of… everything, and that they can be tracked down and footnoted if you care enough. Buford does care enough. Be careful. He’ll make you care, too.
5. That you can buy a whole pig without the USDA getting involved if you buy it while it’s alive.
6. That everyone should drop everything and learn a dying art, reclaim the disappearing past. (And if not that, at least eat those dying arts.)
7. That French food is just ripped-off Italian food, brought over the Alps by that loose-lipped Catherine de Medicis.

And after this journey of a thousand miles, Buford taught me - or at least reiterated my own thoughts on the matter - that:

“For millennia, people have known how to make their food. They have understood animals and what to do with them, having cooked with the seasons and had a farmer’s knowledge of the way the planet works. They have preserved traditions of preparing food down through generations, and have come to know them as expressions of their families. People don’t have this kind of knowledge today, even though it seems as fundamental as the earth, and it’s true, those who do have it tend to be professionals–like chefs. But I didn’t want the knowledge in order to be a professional; just to be more human.”

And no, I don’t think that’s a spoiler. I think it’s good incentive to go pick up a copy.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars - A hardcover book club selection

Biography, Non-Fiction | Comment (0)

My Life in France (Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme)

There’s a lot I didn’t know about Julia Child. Sure, we all know her for her boulebaise and buerre blanc sauce; we all know her tall, squarish shape and the familiar (and oft-imitated), sliding cadence of her voice. But this book fleshes out her six-foot frame with the flesh of a real woman–her history, her love of her husband and the unexpected way she found her true calling in her 40s.

Speaking only school girl French and lacking the knowlege of what something as simple as a shallot was (a small type of onion, for those not in the know), Julia arrived in France with Paul, her husband of two years (she was 37 and he 47 when they married). Paul worked for the USIS managing government exhibits that would facilitate artisitc and cultural communication between the French and the Americans during the post-WWII Truman Plan era. Their first meal off the boat was truly one to remember, one that opened Julia’s eyes wide and set her about mastering this strange and beautiful, surprising art of French cooking. Though it is amazing for me to think of, her husband Paul–a foodie by nature–once thought there was no hope for his wife in the kitchen, and he was surprised and pleased as she began to improve thanks to her studies at the Cordon Bleu cooking school and the help of their gourmand friends.

This book doesn’t cover Julia’s whole life. It only encompasses the time she spent abroad, and it includes many pictures her artistic husband snapped and snippets of the many letters they sent home to family and friends. Therefore, her television career is only covered where it overlapped with her travels, which makes the book refreshingly humble and human. Written with the help of her great-nephew, Alex, Julia’s personality still manages to shine through with her stereotypical insertions (i.e. Hooray!, Yuck, or Hmmm). The writing style may be simple and straight-forward–nothing to get all excited about–but the simple, straight-forward story the words tell keep you involved from cover to cover.

If you are a foodie of any calliber, this book is a meal that is worthy of Julia’s unquestionable culinary seal of approval. Devour it as you would an excellent canard a l’orange and, as she was so famous for saying, Bon Appetit!

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars - a hardcover book club selection

The Gallery of Regrettable Food (James Lileks)

Once upon a time, James Lilecks moved to Fargo, North Dakota. Upon that time, his mother was greeted by the neighborhood “Welcome Wagon” with, among other things, a cookbook sponsored by the North Dakota Durum Wheat Commision called Specialties of the House. She glanced at it, shuddered and promptly shoved it into some lightless corner. Once upon more current times, Lileks, now a writer at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, stumbled upon said book, became sick to his stomach at the sight of the “specialties it contained,” and began a personal collection of regrettable vintage cookbooks. Eventually, he created a whole new world–including Lileks.com and this fabulous little book I got for Christmas.

No, you don’t need a passport to travel in this world. You just need a snarky sense of humor, a haughty (but light-hearted) contempt for advertising culture, a love of all things campy or retro (the colors turquoise and olive green, boomerangs as a decorative shapes, etc.) and, most importantly, a strong stomach. The food in this world, I admit, is rather bad. Do you know what an aspic is? Ha! You do now!

Something about those poor vegetables suspended in transparent gelatin, space explorers frozen in zero grav, is so very space age. Well, what was once considered space age. Learn new vocabulary words and much more with Lileks as your witty host. Find out what dish he calls, “pressed shank braised with smoker’s phlegm” or “Ring O’ Rectum Flan.” Dicover the power of ketchup and 7Up, the A1 guide to better sex, why smart people eat toast, and how to entertain guests at the late hour of–GASP!–10:00 p.m. Make fun! Make fun and have fun until your heart’s content or the book is finished–which happens way too soon. (Luckily there are loads more hours entertainment on www.Lileks.com.)
Says Lileks:

“We seem to think we’re the first people to roll our eyes at the commercial culture; we’re not. Even then, no one believed something just because the corporate cookbook said so. But these books don’t presume our disbelief–and that’s what makes them seem so honest and simple. The quality of the lie is purer; the nature of the fib is cheerful and straightforward. Did my mom believe any of these things would make her life perfect? Of course not. I think she kept these books for another reason. Some people smoked, some took pills, some ran to keep off the weight. Mom just looked at the pictures. The recipes kept her slim and lovely for one reason: she never made them.”

Perhaps it’s just bad photography. Maybe it is the attempts of industry to seep into the kitchens and recipe boxes of a new generation of post-War housefraus. Perhaps the use of new, modern food products and techniques was more important than the human palate. Who knows? But whatever the cause of all this disaster, I’m sure glad I am looking at a book rather than a steaming hot plate of some of this glop my mother or other innocent female (always female, you know) household chef tried to force down my gullet. Ummmm, I’m not really hungry. I had a big lunch, you see. And I sure am thankful for my darling Jen who gifted me this little gem of fun and fabulousness, inscribing it as follows:

You have so many pretty, tasty, dignified, and sane cooking mags and tomes, I think it’s time you had something like this. Regrettable? Yes. Awesomely hilarious? Also yes. Maybe someday you’ll invite me over for a heapin helpin of “Harlequin Spinach” or some kind of horrible aspic. Until then, enjoy!

Oh, I have. As for the aspic, well, do they still sell clear gelatin to send modern veggie slices into null grav? I shall have to scour the local grocer and you will be the first one to get an invitation when I do.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Buy the hardcover

Dress Your Family in Corderoy and Denim (David Sedaris)

Witty gay man tells stories: A great cocktail party or a great book by David Sedaris, whose talent is for taking the ordinary or the embarassing and turning the tables, painting over the black white and gray with a rainbow of colors. Though he hates the rainbow flag being associated with “alternate lifestyles” (read: alternate sexualities) and swears he wasn’t asked to vote on that one.

I didn’t enjoy this book quite as much as Me Talk Pretty One Day (read that review here). The stories in this book were more “a day in the life” tales, whereas the other colelction (his first, I believe) were more the stories he had been accumulating over a lifetime, refining and analyzing to comic perfection. The cast of characters, which includes Sedaris’ unique family and his long-time boyfriend, is still both funny and human, light and yet often moving.

Case in point. One story regards his visit to his sister’s, where she vents the family-wide annoyance with Sedaris’ work and how it puts them on display for the world to see–at their most vulnerable, naked to their core personalities.

“We stopped for gas on the way home and were parking in front of her house when she turned to relate what I’ve come to think of as the quintessential Lisa story. ‘One time,’ she said, ‘one time I was out driving?’ The incident began with a quick trip to the grocery store and ended, unexpectantly, with a wounded animal stuffed into a pillowcase and held to the tailpipe of her car. Like most of my sister’s stories, it provoked a startling mental picture, capturing a moment in time when one’s actions seem both unimaginably cruel and completely natural. Details were carefully chosen and the pace built gradually, punctuated by a series of well-timed pauses. ‘And then… and then…’ She reached the inevitable conclusion and just as I started to laugh, she put her head against the steering wheel and fell apart. It wasn’t the gentle flow of tears you might release when recalling an isolated action or event, but the violent explosion that comes when you realize that all such events are connected, forming an endless chain of guilt and suffering.

I instinctively reached for the notebook I keep in my pocket and she grabbed my hand to stop me. ‘If you ever,’ she said, “ever repeat that story, I will never talk to you again.’

In the movie version of our lives, I would have turned to offer her comfort, reminding her, convincing her that the action she’d described had been kind and just. Because it was. She’s incapable of acting otherwise.

In the real version of out lives, my immediate goal was to simply to change her mind. ‘Oh, come on,’ I said. ‘The story’s really funny, and, I mean, it’s not like you’re going to do anything with it.’

Your life, your privacy, your occasional sorow — it’s not like you’re going to do anything with it. Is this the brother I always was, or the brother I have become?”

Telling a story–telling a true story–can be a powerful thing, which is naturally why we love them so much, especially when someone like Sedaris is the story-teller. Those tales are real, real people, real circumstances… of someone who is not us, who we don’t feel bad about laughing at. In Sedaris’ case, though, he often makes sure we are laughing with him, with his family and friends. We laugh because we see ourselves there. And that is no mean feat.

Read this book. Read this book if, especially if, you don’t usually read books. It may just give you the bug.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - Book club selection

The Burn Journals (Brent Runyon)

So I received a reading list in the mail from a writer’s organization I used to be involved with at ASU, one that was too expensive for me to continue to be involved with, sadly. Sigh. They were putting together an online book club of sorts and, though I didn’t really feel like paying any money to be a part of such a group, I have no problem using their free list for my own purposes when I can’t seem to think of what I want to read next. This book was the October 2006 selection.

I guess I should have heeded the red flag in my head when I picked up the reserved book from my library and noticed a bright, green “Teen” label on the spine. Teen? I thought. Really? But I dismissed the thought because, after all, the recommendation had come from a reputable, college organization who wouldn’t have me reading childish bullshit. And there are quite a few good novels that cross the border between adult and chidlren’s lit. In my opinion, this did not turn out to be one of them.

The Burn Journals is the autobiographical tale of Brett Runyon, who set himself on fire when he was 15 in an attempt to commit suicide. He then survives a lengthy recovery and a change of heart about the purpose of his own life. While Brett is all grown up now, he still writes in the stilted and simplistic style of an adolescent boy, where he dismisses most emotional concerns in order to remember what then-popular program was on television. I think that Runyon is trying to explain why he would do such a thing with this book–I was wondering that too. Aside from some generic remarks about being “sad,” I am still wondering. There are emotional currents beneath the surface, currents I wanted to explore but that the narrator supresses (out of vulnerability? embarassment?).

It was like a real, teenage boy was stitting there telling me this story, brushing off my questions, trying to be cool about it all. And I wanted to wring his neck and have him tell me what was really going on, even if he didn’t quite know himself, even if the thoughts were incomplete and conclusionless. The book does serve a purpose within the genre so neatly stamped upon its spine: Every teen needs to know that they are not alone in having these nameless, unknowable, apocalyptic feelings and that, yes, they do pass. Things do get better, if not easier, with age because you have more control over yourself and your environment.

Runyon is doing the right thing reaching out to that group, especially the boys, who are under-represented in literature. But I have no idea why ASU would want me to read such a book or why they thought it would be worth discussing and critiquing as a group. I think the conversation would have only one basic thought and direction, something along the lines of:

“That was sad. I wish he hadn’t done that to himself. But now, he can help other kids not set themselves on fire, plus he graduated college. Good for him.”

To summarize, fire and depression bad. Helping others and sharing feelings good. Any questions?

Rating: 1 out of 5 stars = paperweight 

Blue Rage, Black Redemption (Stanley Tookie Williams)

ou must be wondering how something so uncharacteristic made its way onto my reading list. Frankly, I wondered several times in the middle of the book myself, times when I would rather have closed it, put it down and used it as a doorstop. But sadly, I had to read this memoir of Stanley Tookie Williams (the co-founder of the Crips gang) as part of a work assignment.

Not that the man is uninteresting–hardly. He grew up mean and tough and, if you can’t tell from the picture, built like a brick shithouse. As he liked to say, he was “yoked.” Regardless of several chances to reform his criminal ways in his youth, Tookie made himself King Crip and took pride in his recruiting and leadership abilities within the gang. Then, he was jailed for two separate intances of murder–four lives total–and sentenced to death.

So ended the “Blue” portion of his life and his “black redemption” phase dawned. After a long stint in solitary, separated for the first time in his life from his peers, he began to educate himself and came to see the error of his ways. In fact, he became an avid anti-gang activist, wrote several childrens books and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Thankfully, in my opinion, he did not win.

Again, I am not saying anything negative about the man himself. His story is rather inspirational, probably more so to someone who has more gang exposure than I. What drove me nuts was the way in which the book was written. The self-educated vocabulary peppered with 1960s slang and the obvious pride Tookie still had for the power of his youth turned me off. If you are interested in the life of Williams–or are forced to read about him for work or school–flip to the center for the pictures. By far the most enjoyable part of the book were the unbelievably bulging muscles and the foot tall Afros in those photos.

Rating: 1 out of 5 stars = Paperweight