Book Review:  Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen

Austin Powers, when asked by Basil Exposition what the other thing was that scared him, replied:  "Carnies. Circus folk. Nomads, you know. Smell like cabbage. Small hands."  In the novel Water for Elephants, author Sara Gruen draws her circus folk with more precision and insight than Austin Powers, though he retains the obvious comic edge.  Local blogger Aaryn Belfer recommends Water for Elephants for Culture Lust readers.  She sent me her thoughts on the book.

Water for Elephants: A Review

by Aaryn Belfer

“Either there’s been an accident or there’s roadwork, because a gaggle of old ladies is glued to the window at the end of the hall like children or jailbirds. They’re spidery and frail, their hair is fine as mist. Most of them are a good decade younger than me, and this astounds me. Even as your body betrays you, your mind denies it.”

So says nonagenarian Jacob Jankowski, the curmudgeonly yet loveable protagonist who you can’t help but root for in Sara Gruen’s novel Water for Elephants.

The circus is in town and the tents are going up just outside the convalescent home.  Inside, the home’s residents have gathered by the window with walkers and wheelchairs, jockeying for the best view. Most of them are excited about an upcoming outing to the circus, which promises freedom from the bland, antiseptic confines of their day-to-day routine. But for Jacob, the circus view and the failings of his aging body spark a wellspring of memories that pour out during his less lucid moments. Or they may be his clearest moments. Both may be equally true.

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A Defense Of The Short Story:  Nam Le’s The Boat

Seth Marko over at The Book Catapult is one of my trusted culture scouts, especially when it comes to books, and he's really angry that short stories don't get the respect they deserve.   He sent me the following defense, bolstering his argument by reviewing a new addition to the genre, Nam Le's The Boat.

A Defense of the Short Story, by Seth Marko

As a bookseller, I often hear the following refrain: “I don’t want that. I hate short stories.” To me, this is pure crazy talk. David Sedaris, Jhumpa Lahiri, Chuck Klosterman, and Nora Ephron are all fabulously successful based on their short writing pieces. So what gives? While I can understand not wanting to “get involved” with a story that isn’t novel-length – your emotional investment may be disproportionate to the number of pages available –  but to just dismiss what could be a potentially life-changing experience seems, well, too dismissive. Wouldn’t reading an eloquent, beautifully written short story that hits you like an emotional freight train be more worth your time than some forgettable, throw away, pulpy thriller you picked up in the airport?  I don’t mean to sound so righteous, it’s just that I feel passionately about this overlooked, kicked-around, stepchild of a genre and I feel it could use some love. Thankfully, a gentleman named Nam Le has written a brilliant collection of shorts called The Boat that just may change the way we all read (or don’t read) the short story.

The Boat is composed of seven stories, each set in vastly differing locales – Colombia, Iowa, the South China Sea - that are thematically tied together in such a way that you almost miss it at first glance. Each appears unrelated to the others, yet the emotional toll of living life manages to breathe on every page, creating a thematic bridge. I know, “emotional toll” doesn’t sound like much fun, but in the hands of Le, the raw emotional power shines through in a way I have seldom encountered.

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KPBS Staff Write Memoirs In Six Words

Last week a book arrived on my desk called Not Quite What I Was Planning:  Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure.  It's a collection of six-word memoirs submitted to an online project launched by SMITH magazine.  They made a book out of it and I'll tip my hat and make a blog post out of it.   

Of course, the original hat tip goes to Ernest Hemingway.  Legend has it Hemingway was challenged to write a novel in six words. Lord knows how many bottles of booze it took for Papa to brilliantly write, "For sale:  baby shoes, never worn."  Inspired by the legend and aware of a national memoir craze, the editors over at SMITH launched sixwordmemoir. com and received thousands of entries.  It didn't take long for the likes of Stephen Colbert, Dave Eggers, and Joyce Carol Oates to submt their versions. 

I decided to write my own.  Unfortunately, nothing came right away.

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A Cognac for Cormac

These Days host Tom Fudge is a Cormac McCarthy fan and here he tells Culture Lust readers why.....

A Cognac for Cormac 
By Tom Fudge

I didn’t spend much time watching the Academy Awards on Sunday, but I watched enough to hear the news that No Country for Old Men won the award for best picture. I enjoyed the movie, and I’m sure the Coen brothers deserve a lot of credit for making it. But the person most responsible for that movie was the man who wrote the novel, Cormac McCarthy.

Cormac McCarthy has become my favorite writer. It’s rare to pick up a novel and be immediately blown away by the quality of the prose. But that’s what happens when you read McCarthy. And if you’ve seen the movie, No Country for Old Men, get a copy of the novel. You’ll be struck by how much the scenes in the movie owe to the book. I don’t think this happened because Joel and Ethan Coen revere McCarthy. They simply realized there was no way to improve on McCarthy’s dialogue and descriptions.

One of the first things you notice, when reading McCarthy, is that he doesn’t use quotation marks when he’s writing dialogue. Here’s one example, from No Country, in which the killer, Chigurh, interrogates the owner of a gas station. If you saw the movie, you’ll remember this scene. Chigurh hears the owner say he goes to bed at about 9:30, then he says:

I could come back then.
We’ll be closed then.
That’s all right.
Well why would you be comin back? We’ll be closed.
You said that.
Well we will.
You live in that house behind the store?
Yes I do.
You’ve lived here all your life?
The proprietor took a while to answer. This was my wife’s father’s place, he said. Originally.
You married into it.
If that’s the way you want to put it.
I don’t have some way to put it. That’s the way it is.
Well I need to close now.

I’ve often thought writing is a visual medium because you see the written words. When your eyes pass over dialogue like McCarthy’s, you’re struck by how perfectly it captures the essence of the words and the drama of the situation. His method of leaving out punctuation is one way he does that.

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Book Review: Then We Came to the End, by Joshua Ferris

Seth Marko, avid and discerning reader of books (so few of these left!) and author of The Book Catapult, was kind enough to give Culture Lust some love and wrote for us the following review of Joshua Ferris' Then We Came to the End.  Make sure to check out Seth's website and other book recommendations.  

Then We Came to the End, by Joshua Ferris. 

“Genevieve had blond hair, cobalt eyes, and a tall, gelid grace. Even the women admitted her superior beauty. On Christmas one year, she was given as a gag gift a set of twisted redneck teeth, which she was instructed to wear year round in an effort to even us all out. But when she put them on, we discovered – the men among us, that is – a desire for rotted teeth we never knew we had.”

About a year ago – several months before the March 2007 release date – I got my hands on an advance copy of Joshua Ferris’s debut novel, “Then We Came to the End”.  The book’s jacket described it as “wickedly funny” yet “bighearted.”   But I thought its workplace, cubicle setting seemed like a setup for a playful novelization of “The Office.”  Would this be something I could read 375 pages of and enjoy? The publisher then sent me one of those notepaper cubes for my desk, coated in post-it note yellow and festooned with the author’s name & book title. I realized then the book would stay in my field of view for a long time. (The pad of paper has like 10,000 sheets, those crafty marketing departments)  Nevertheless, I read only 50 pages, got distracted by something darker & grimmer, and sent Ferris back into my endless, Jenga pile of books. 

Then, in December 2007, the New York Times released their annual ten Best Books of the Year list – 5 fiction, 5 non-fiction. I met several people who purchased all ten books as gifts for friends – regardless of their friends’ taste or reading habits, but simply because the Times suggested them. That’s power you can’t mess with. Of course, Mr. Ferris’s book was on this year’s list – now I couldn’t possibly resist!

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Legendary Writer Gay Talese on These Days Tomorrow!

I'm so excited - it will be one of those restless nights for me.  It happens when I get really excited about a guest.  I've been reading more of his writing and about his life for the last 24 hours.  You don't want to miss this interview.  We'll talk about the state of journalism, past and present.  We'll talk about Frank Sinatra Has a Cold, Talese's famous 1966 Esquire article, heralded as the beginning of New Journalism.  We'll also talk about sports writing, and his profiles of Joe DiMaggio and Floyd Patterson.  His book The Kingdom and the Power, about The New York Times, will likely come up often.  All in all, it should be a conversation full of colorful stories and sage reflection.

Tune in tomorrow at 10am to These Days.

On Guilt, Notable Book Lists, and Gifts for Book Lovers

The New York Times just published their list of 100 notable books from 2007. Each year, when this list is published, I suffer. I berate myself for not reading enough. I look back wistfully to my youth when all I did was read. I worry about my brain. I worry that I read more about books than the books themselves.

Basically, I work myself into a dust storm of anxiety and when the dust settles, I print out the NY Times list and post it in my cubicle. I assure myself that bearing witness to the list will prod me into literary rigor. At some level, I also look forward to the day in February when the long arm of The Times loses power over me and I tear down the list, relinquish my guilt, and happily return to reading about books and watching YouTube. But right now, dear readers, I'm in the middle of the dust storm and looking for absolution. I decide to consult more trusted sources on what to read. I email Seth.

Seth Marko is a bookseller and jack-of-all trades at Warwick's bookstore in La Jolla. Seth also writes an insightful blog about books called The Book Catapult. Check out his list of top 10 books for 2007 and his highly entertaining posts on My Life With George. Seth upset some readers by voicing his frustration with the publishing industry's obsession over neurotic dogs, a la Marley and Me. It's good stuff.

Anyway, I asked Seth what five books he would suggest as gifts for book lovers. He emailed me the following choices with his thoughts on each...

Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson (fiction)

Fresh from winning the National Book Award, Johnson's magnificent saga of the Vietnam War is one of those books I think will stand up as an important, politically poignant piece of fiction - most likely remembered as the quintessential novel of Vietnam. The story of humble, everyman soldier, Skip Sands, is funny, sad, serious, critical, cynical, all the time, on every page. I was pleasantly surprised at my level of emotional and intellectual commitment by the end, as one can't help drawing parallels to our current foreign predicaments.

Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon (fiction)

Chabon is one of those writers for whom I feverishly drop whatever I am reading whenever his latest crosses my path. This I wouldn't really call "serious" fiction - although Chabon's work rarely is - for it's clearly a playful piece for the author. (His working title for this was "Jews With Swords"....) Set in the neighborhood of 950AD, the "gentlemen" of the title are two compatriots & part-time swindlers/swordsmen, cut from very different cultural cloths, who spend their lives adventuring around the cities on the western Caspian Sea. Written with typical brilliant Chabon wordplay & filled with bizarre, beautiful characters (elephant lovers, harems of beautiful women, murderous Russian warriors, cruel emperors), this is escapist fiction at its finest.

Five Skies by Ron Carlson (fiction)

A heartbreaking, beautifully wrought masterpiece of devastating loss & questioned faith, of earned trust & unbreakable friendship. Ron Carlson's unerring command of language sweeps over you with its beauty and subtlety - there's something about his voice that utterly compels you to listen, to heed every word he has to say. Three men fleeing hardship and pain in their lives meet on a summer-long worksite, high on a barren plateau in southern Idaho. You can feel the mass of the sky above you, see the chasm of red rock canyon, and hear the sounds of the river below. As the men slowly begin to trust each other in work, they each begin to toil inward on their own wounds. Watching the transformation of these characters, these men, in the hands of Mr. Carlson is unlike anything I can recall reading. Easily the best book I read in 2007.

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman (non-fiction)

Weisman presents a readable, cohesive series of hypothetical situations in order to explore humanity's impact on our planet. What would the world be like if humans disappeared overnight? How soon would the earth reclaim? Would the damage we have already done be irreversible in global terms or would the planet rebound quicker than we would imagine? Really a fascinating book that subtly scares you with science, forces you to reflect on your own footprint, and tries to get all of humanity to view the world through greener eyes.

Clapton by Eric Clapton (non-fiction)

This is a very candid, (seemingly, hopefully) honest memoir of EC's life as a rock god, his struggles with fame, addiction, & healthy relationships, and the crafting of some of the greatest rock albums of all time. I think he realizes how lucky he is to have survived his own life - and his natural humbleness regarding his own work, as well as his awe for the artists he's worked with, feels genuine. I also heartily recommend dusting off any of your old Clapton LP's to accompany your reading - I spent a week with only 461 Ocean Boulevard and Derek & the Dominoes in my rotation. What can I say - "Clapton is God".

In the coming months, you'll find more book recommendations from Seth Marko on Culture Lust, but until then and in between, visit The Book Catapult.

Landmark Status of Charles Bukowski Bungalow Postponed

Bukowski in his home at 5124 De Longpre Avenue in Los Angeles

For the last couple of months, a movement has been underway to turn an apartment once rented by poet and novelist Charles Bukowski into a historic landmark. The bungalow apartment, located at 5124 De Longpre Avenue, is where Bukowski wrote Post Office, Factotum, and where Women was set. He also drank a lot there, living out much of the hard knock life he became famous for and chronicled in his work. Bukowski also mentions the apartment in a poem: "5124 De Longpre Avenue / somewhere between / alcoholism and / madness."

As of now, the row of bungalow houses composing the property are boarded up. The property owner bought the real estate in East Hollywood in 2003 for $450,000, but recently posted the property as a "tear down" on Craigslist for $1.3 million.

The Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission was to decide on the landmark status last Thursday, but the hearing was postponed due to an extension filed by the property owners' attorney. The attorney plans to challenge the landmarking on two counts: that Charles Bukowski was a Nazi sympathizer and that he was a person of low moral character.

The accusation of being a Nazi sympathizer stems from claims by Ben Pleasants, a former friend of Bukowski's who published a book about the author in 2004. Apparently, Pleasants came to his conclusion based on a conversation he had with Bukowski on the topic of Adolf Hitler.

If the Commission recommends the landmark status, the decision then goes to the City Council for approval. Lauren Everett, a Charles Bukowski home preservation activist, told Culture Lust the accusations put forth may due more damage at the City Council level because, "the members of the Commission all know Bukowski. They all know that Bukowski drank. The City Council has to consider all kinds of different things in their decision and these allegation could be used there." She was also quick to point out that the notion of Bukowski being a Nazi sympathizer is "unsubstantiated and ridiculous."

The Commission meeting has been rescheduled for Thursday, November 29th at 10 am, where preservationists and the property owners will both make their case. If you are interested in attending, you can find out more information here.

San Diego Literary Hub Hosted Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer died on Saturday morning at the age of 84. He has been on my mind recently, and just 6 days ago I posted a video of him from the Charlie Rose show. I've been following the coverage of his death throughout the weekend and the commentary has been all over the place, referring to him as a great man of letters, combative, volatile, controversial, difficult, a brilliant critic, and an egomaniac. My favorite description comes from Charles McGrath in The New York Times:

At different points in his life Mr. Mailer was a prodigious drinker and drug taker, a womanizer, a devoted family man, a would-be politician who ran for mayor of New York, a hipster existentialist, an antiwar protester, an opponent of women's liberation and an all-purpose feuder and short-fused brawler, who with the slightest provocation would happily engage in head-butting, arm-wrestling and random punch-throwing.

Now that's a life.

I suspected Mailer had made an appearance at D.G. Wills in La Jolla at some point -- only because I know Dennis Wills, the owner, to have impeccable taste in choosing writers and tireless in his pursuit of the best of them. I emailed Dennis and, sure enough, Mailer was there in 1995. I asked Dennis to share his memories of Norman Mailer - here is our email exchange...

Norman Mailer at D.G.Wills in La Jolla

What was the occasion for Mailer's appearance at D.G. Wills?

I cannot remember whether he appeared here just before or after a Los Angeles or San Francisco appearance, the usual sequence for many authors coming to this part of the country. I did write him a letter, and so did my good friend, colleague and Mailer expert Ted Burke. This is before I had a computer. One day Mailer's incomparable assistant, the late Judith McNally who died a few years ago, telephoned the bookstore. I had offered Mailer a thousand dollars honorarium and told him we could, say, charge admission to help defray our costs. Judith related to us that Mr. Mailer would waive the fee if we would waive the admission charge. Apparently Mr. Mailer was delighted with our letters; his inscription to me in "Oswald's Tale" reads "To Dennis Wills for his fabulous letter. Salutations, Norman Mailer, May '95." So it was May l995 when he was here.

I've been to readings at your store where the audience spills out onto the sidewalk and street - was it that kind of night?

Mr. Mailer and his charming gracious wife, Norris Church, arrived in a black limo. I put them up at La Valencia Hotel. There were perhaps 350 people at the event, including two Nobel Laureates, Francis Crick and Kary Mullis, and Jonas Salk in attendance. We had our big sound system set up outside so that you could hear him from across the street. Before the event, Mailer and I went into the back room to go over last minute details: for example, no flash bulbs while he was speaking as he had a detached retina; he didn't mind photos during the signing phase. He had somewhat of a sore throat that night. Thus we had a pot of herbal tea out front ready for him, and a bar set up in back with three or four different kinds of whiskey. When I asked him if he wanted some whisky in his tea, he grabbed a coffee cup and said he would have a little whiskey right now straight; and he continued in that manner throughout the event, didn't bother with the tea.

Do you remember any particular story Mailer told that night?

He was here to discuss "Oswald's Tale," his account of Lee Harvey Oswald in Minsk, although during the question and answer phase he touched upon many topics, the deleterious effects of advertising, excessive control of some aspects of the media on society, etc. He took many questions on many topics and handled them with insight and charm.

Which work of Mailer's has impressed you most?

I've always preferred his political reporting, especially Armies of the Night, for his insightful, first person singular perspective on the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in l968.

CORRECTION: Mailer's book about the 1968 Democratic National Convention was actually Miami and the Siege of Chicago. Wills likes it for the reasons stated above, but is equally as fond of Armies of the Night, which is about the 1967 March on the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War. Mailer won a Pulitzer Prize for the latter.

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Mike Sager:  The Story is in the Details

Mike Sager

Esquire writer-at-large Mike Sager was on These Days today, talking about his new collection of essays, Revenge of the Donut Boys: True Stories of Lust, Fame, Survival, and Multiple Personality. You can hear the interview here. If you haven't read Donut Boys, or Sager's work in Esquire, I highly recommend it. After today, I'll be a devoted reader, for a number of reasons.

First off, Sager's writing, hailed as New Journalism, is strikingly perceptive. He writes like a novelist, stocking his stories with the details and observations other journalists might toss away. Sager keeps them, weaving the seemingly incidental bits together to place you in the center of the story.

There you are watching an old man creaking his way out of bed in the morning. Or in Newark New Jersey, standing in front of a boastful young boy on crutches as he talks about stealing cars. Or in the apartment of young interracial couple with two children, struggling to achieve the American dream of middle class affluence on $50,000 a year in San Diego. In the latter story, Sager is able to capture the entire dynamic of their marriage and class struggle in one gesture, the gift of a Kitchen Aid Mixer.

I can see how Sager gets people to open up to him. We just started our Fall pledge drive today, which meant his appearance on These Days was interrupted by stretches of pledging. He and host Tom Fudge were left in the studio for four to five minutes at a time, waiting for the next on-air discussion as folks across the hall reminded listeners that we rely on them to keep quality radio in San Diego (PLEDGE NOW!) I was in the studio and could overhear Tom's conversation with Sager, though I would occasionally get distracted with production duties. Suddenly tuning back in, I hear Tom revealing how he once wanted to be an actor but decided the life of a journalist better suited him. Here's Tom Fudge, reserved talk show host, telling Sager of his former dreams of stardom. Classic.

Finally, I'll read Sager because he's funny - both in his writing and in person. At one point in the hall, he talked about how unpredictable a career can be. He then compared his career to a pool toy. You know, the blow-up kind. He went on to mimic the blowing, first you start out kinda asthmatic, can't really get it going, then you just keep chugging along, hoping it's going to work, and, in the end, you never know what the damn thing is going to look like or whether it will float. I was stunned by both the absurdity and brilliance of this analogy.

Sager will be reading and signing copies of his book tonight at the Whistle Stop Bar in South Park - around 8:30 pm - sponsored by the good folks at San Diego City Beat. He'll also sign books next Tuesday at Warwick's in La Jolla. If you're in the mood for a good yarn, go check him out and get his book.

Oh, and in the November issue of Esquire, hitting newsstands soon, Sager profiles basketball star Kobe Bryant. It includes descriptions of Kobe's impressive work ethic and a complicated portrayal of his wife Vanessa, whose role in the magazine's photo shoot is very telling.