MarysLibrary

Seven Books

Yesterday I picked up some books I had reserved at the library. Allowing patrons to search the catalog online and reserve books no matter where in the Spokane Public Library's system they reside is a priceless tool that most libraries can provide now that they are no longer dependent on card catalogues. 

We are allowed to reserve 20 books at a time and my reserve list is often full. This is because I read reviews of books before they are published and request them right away. They sit on my reserve list for weeks and sometimes months while they are still on order. So my active list is only about 10 books or less.

But a little bird has told me that there is talk of increasing the number of books we are allowed to reserve. (They will undoubtedly call it the Mary Drew Reserve List Increase Policy.) That would be a boon to many of us.

Here are the books I borrowed yesterday:

Elders, Ryan McIlvain

Ordinary Grace, William Kent Krueger

The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli

The Travels of Marco Polo, Marco Polo

All That I Am, Anna Funder

The Good Earth, Pearl Buck

The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting, Alice Miller

I put Elders and Ordinary Grace on reserve because they have been suggested for next year's Buff Orpington Tournament. Yesterday afternoon I read the first 30 pages of each and I can recommend both of them, judging from how they begin, the characters we meet, the setting, the plot (gleaned from inside the book jacket), and the quality of the writing. They both concern religion.

Elders is about Mormon men of 20 who are in Brazil on the two-year missionary work required of every Mormon lad. An enthusiastic Brazilian missionary is matched with an American man 18 months into his two-year stint. He is losing his enthusiasm and perhaps his faith. They rub one another raw at first but eventually they reach a comfortable friendship. Both are searching but with very different results.

Machiavelli and Marco Polo made their way onto my list because I realized I had read neither and they are pretty basic. I just discovered that there is some question about whether Marco Polo actually went where he said he went and did what he said he did. I don't think that matters. The book is a classic even if it's quasi-fiction.

All That I Am went on reserve because a handful of the people whose reading I follow on Goodreads have it on their virtual TBR pile and Fay at Read, Ramble recently recommended it. Published in 2011, the book takes place in Berlin just as Hitler becomes chancellor and then in England to which a quartet of young people flee. They attempt to bring the dangers of the Nazis to the attention of the world and the story of that attempt is given us in a document written by one of them as it is interpreted by another 60 years later.

Fay at Read, Ramble is also the inspiration for my decision to re-read The Good Earth by Pearl Buck. There has been much controversy over the years about Pearl Buck's novels and whether she deserved the Pulitzer Prize and whether her books are worthwhile. I think it's safe to say they are middlebrow but that does not make them unworthy. I was encouraged to read this by my father when I was about 10 and I still remember parts of it vividly. But I suspect I missed much of the point of the story.

And finally, I got the Alice Miller book, The Body Never Lies, because I read in an interview with Hilary Mantel that she was re-reading all of Miller's books. Miller's theory, propounded through all of her books, is that many people must admit that their parents demeaned them when they were children, criticized them too sternly, or physically punished them, and that these cruel parenting styles have left a lasting scar on them now that they are adults. I have read Miller in the past and I am ambiguous about her theory. So much is true but much strikes me as way off the mark.

Buff Orpington Tournament Semifinals

The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson

vs

Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan

Judge: Wendy Weise Cohon

In many ways, these novels are similar: both critique totalitarianism and feature American foreign relations; both address issues of identity, authenticity, and dissimulating; both speak candidly about the craft of writing and relish telling stories within stories, and both tell tales of love. Yet, the two books could not be more different.

OSM is bleak and disgusting, from the sewers to the torture chambers to the work camps, abused animals and discarded orphans. An overwhelming sense of death and defeat mark this text, despite the government’s daily cheerful rereadings of its citizens’ misfortunes.

It is self-consciously literary, although not gracefully so, particularly in the first part of the novel. Johnson, too, is trying to do hard work here: critique totalitarianism in narrative form and undermine that form by revealing that nothing is as it seems. Everything is a sham.

However, there are major problems with the novel. Part I, actually reads as if it is tacked on to Part II—and was done so in a rush. Its bizarre, melodramatic events depict the protagonist as part ingénue part superhero.

Part II, the real heart of the novel, refers to these incidents only tangentially and builds its conclusion upon a relationship established in Part I that is utterly absurd and improbable. One could argue that this may be part of Johnson’s goal, concerned as he is with what people are willing to believe and for how long. But it is a lot to ask of a reader.

I was excited to read this recent Pulitzer, but The conclusion features a major plot hole, and the political critique (haven’t we already read our Marx, our Orwell for that matter?) feels as if its at least half a decade late. I don’t feel edified by the novel or charmed by the its craft, and I can’t think of a single compelling reason to recommend it--to anybody.

After reading OMS, Sweet Tooth was a breath of fresh air.

The tone is light and entertaining and like OMS, there is a sense, which the narrative here freely admits, that someone has “dream[ed] up a scheme to please his masters. But no one knows what it’s for, what the point is. No one even asks. It’s right out of Kafka.”

Indeed we follow the plights of Serena Frume, a new recruit in MI5 enlisted to participate in a secret operation called Sweet Tooth: she must convince an unsuspecting academic that he has won a grant and will be free of teaching commitments so that he can write. There’s no real sense what “Sweet Tooth” hopes to achieve, except that it will compete with the CIA’s sponsored literary journal. Largely, ST focuses on Ms. Frume’s affair with her rather unappealingly-described academic, rather than political espionage or intrigue. As their affair grows, tension builds: will she compromise her identity or no?

At times, ST reads as if it could be retitled, “Bridget Jones, Spy Girl.” Frume comes across as naive and silly, because she so willingly complies with whatever MI5 asks, regardless of reason and without question. I have taught undergrads in Cambridge: the cultural slang brought me right back and McEwan’s got the young, newly graduated coed down. She is sweet and well-meaning, educated, if a little clueless.

I find it rare now that novelists write satisfying endings, but McEwan does so in an epistolary form that changes one’s reading of the entire novel. Like OMS what one initially assumes is not as it seems. It’s delightfully playful.

Is it as literary as OMS? No. Is it as flawed as OMS? No. Is it as politically motivated as OMS? No. Would I recommend it to a friend? You bet.

Ok, fellow Buff-Opingtons and Pulitzer prize judges, you now know that I too am not as I seem and cannot read modern literature for the life of me: I pick _Sweet Tooth as the winner for this semi-final round.

Buff Orpington Tournament Semifinals

Quarterfinals Judge: Ann Stetson

My books for the semifinal were:

Telegraph Avenue" by Michael Chabon

and Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan.

I think my matchup may come across as a little different than most.

I had already read, Telegraph Avenue, and had not especially liked it. I view some books as books for people who don't read many books, but want people to know that they read Important Books. These books (IMHO of course), have character development that doesn't interest me, or engage me, and dialog that does not sound like anything people would say in real life.

But be that as it may, I had to forge ahead, and approach this assignment with an attitude of, "each book should be judged as if I had never read it before".

So off I went, to re-read Telegraph Avenue. To be honest, I thought some of the themes of the book, were better dealt with in Tom Wolfe's 1998 novel, A Man in Full. And I think he's the more readable of the two authors, at least as far as these two books go. (don't read, Back to Blood. Seriously, don't read it.)

Both Wolfe and Chabon like to go off on tangents. The difference between the two is that Wolfe's tangents are pretty consuming, while Chabon's remind me at times of a 6 year old, riding down the block on a bike, screaming, "LOOK AT ME!!" while he takes his hands off the handlebars. Before crashing to the curb.

Chabon and Wolfe do inhabit the same territory of large American novel that examines in great (some might say excruciating), detail, some small part of social nuance. But here's where I think Wolfe can, even when he stumbles, write rings around Chabon: he is about 50 years older than him, and even when his writing doesn't hit the target, there is still more to it. Chabon doesn't have the life experience yet, to hold his own with Wolfe. If Wolfe had written Telegraph Avenue, it would have covered the entire Bay Area, not just a small part of Oakland. The geography would have been much more of a character in the book.

So having gone off on my own tangent, let me proceed to my next book, Esi Edugyan's, Half-Blood Blues. This is Ms Edugyan's second novel. That's intriguing: it's not like she's decided to write 20 books featuring an adorable yet feisty detective. There's no way to go on with the characters from this novel: World War II happened, and then it was over. There's no possible sequel or prequel to be generated from the books. It must stand alone on its own merits. And that's pretty daring for a new writer. I think it bodes well, in that she has more to write about.

I tend to divide authors into two major groups: those who have one novel in them, a thinly veiled autobiography or something equally close to home, and those who have an imagination that can reach as far as any human's possibly can. Now, her first book was exactly that: an account of a man coming from Ghana to live in Canada. But she transcended that, which is why I put Edugyan into that rare category of transcending origins to explore boundaries.

What she writes next will no doubt also be out there, in a realm that no one ever thought about before. I mean, come on: a fresh take on Germany during WWII via jazz? How novel! (no pun intended).

Now I have to say I am not a fan at all of jazz. It's not my thing, as far as music goes. So she had to work harder to sell me on finding this a compelling topic. But she's good, and it worked.

So here we go: who is my winner? The underdog, Half-Blood Blues. I will be watching to see where the two authors go with their next books, and Edugyan may surprise me and not be able to produce again (I know Chabon will, as he has a larger collection of already published novels), but I think she is something to keep an eye on.

Some Good Advice

Summer Rental

Whenever I state categorically that I don't read some genre (Sci Fi, romance, self-help, memoirs of abuse in childhood, violent suspense) somebody strongly recommends a book in one of those categories and I find myself enjoying it despite it's genre. I don't read chick lit, or romance, or beach books. But when Wilhelm's sister was visiting recently she gave me Summer Rental saying Mary Kay Andrews is one of her favorite authors, and as I know Betty Boop doesn't read trash I gave it a try. And to my surprise I rather liked it.

We have three 30-something women who grew up as best friends in Savannah. They are now spending a month in a ratty old beach house on North Carolina's Outer Banks, renewing their close friendships, and sharing the career and romantic difficulties they face, some of which are pretty daunting.

Ellis is a banker - or rather she was a banker before she lost her job after 11 years of hard work and neglect of her private life in favor of her career. What's next for her? Julia is a model, working these days for catalogs like J C Penny. She hates her job but she can't seem to make a commitment to her boyfriend, who wants to marry her. Dorie is a schoolteacher with more problems than she can count. Her husband has announced he is gay and is divorcing her, she is in a nasty bickering triangle with her mother and sister, and she realizes after she has split up with her husband that she is pregnant. Where will she live? Will she be able to keep her job ( the school has a policy about ex-husbands and wives both teaching there)? How can she tell her mother about this? Will her sister help or hinder?

Add a fourth woman, Madison, a run-away wife who keeps to herself but pays the rent, which the others need badly. The reader knows that her husband has been stealing millions from the companies he works with and has threatened to kill her, but the three friends just think Madison needs to get away for a while. Until they discover $100,000 and a gun in her room.

The house they are renting is old and beautiful and has been in the landlord's family for generations. But Ty Bazemore, the owner, is about to lose his beloved house to foreclosure. So he rents the house during the summer and lives above the garage. Not wanting to be bothered by renters' complaints, he does the rental by text messages and calls himself Mr Culpepper. The super-organized Ellis repeatedly sends Mr Culpepper texts complaining of too few dishes in the kitchen, a drippy faucet, fleas, and much else, not realizing that the man she is complaining to is the hunk living next door.

I dare say for some this is a boringly familiar sort of plot, but as "I don't read chick lit" it's not an old story for me. The author writes smoothly and the characters are slowly revealed as the month goes on and they confess their problems to one another and work together on solutions. The mysterious fourth renter becomes less mysterious and Ellis and Ty get to know one another much better. Nothing is jarringly unrealistic.

Food and clothes in a novel always interest me and there are plenty of both in this story. The author never takes herself too seriously, often using a bit of sly humor. The women and Ty are likeable. There is a scene of threatened violence but even that is played with an undercurrent of semi-slapstick. And the Outer Banks and the Atlantic are lovingly portrayed.

The Art Forger

On the night of St Patrick's Day in 1990 when the attention of Boston was focused elsewhere, thieves entered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and made off with art valued at $500 million, including three Rembrandts, one of only 34 known paintings by Vermeer, and works by Manet and Degas. Because the eccentric Isabella insisted in her will that nothing be changed in the museum (nothing!), the empty frames remain on the walls as a sad reminder of what has been lost.

This story, which fascinates the art world still, is at the heart of the 2012 novel by B A Shaprio, The Art Forger. Our heroin, Claire Roth, is a painter who has been blackballed by the art world because of an incident three years earlier that earned her the sobriquet The Great Pretender. The reason she became burdened with this reputation emerges slowly in the course of the novel.

While painting her own works (but not selling them), Claire makes her living copying famous paintings for Reproductions.com, a fictional website, and has become an expert in creating what would be called forgeries if an attempt were made to sell them as originals. She is also an expert on Edgar Degas.

So when Aidan Markel, owner of Boston's preeminent (fictional) art gallery, arrives at her studio offering to give her a one man show at his gallery and a great deal of money if she will do him a favor she is tempted even when she discovers that the favor is to forge one of the (fictional) paintings stolen from the Gardner. She faces an ethical choice. But she agrees.

Watching Claire employ the techniques used by a painter of high-quality reproductions (or forgeries) is engrossing, and the examination in the course of the story of what constitutes truth in art, the development of a relationship between Claire and Aiden, Claire's dilemma as she begins to suspect that the Degas she is copying is itself a forgery keep the pages of this book turning at a brisk clip.

The Art Forger should send readers off to visit the Gardner museum, which is near the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and which I visited as a child when my family would make a visit to Boston every July to see the Red Sox play and to visit the MFA, the Gardner, or the Agassiz Museum at Harvard (to see the glass flowers.) From the street the Gardner looks like a not very prepossessing factory; inside is a fairy-land courtyard with palms that reach almost to the four-story glass ceiling, and gallery after gallery of more than a thousand works of art acquired by Mrs Gardner with the help of Bernard Berenson.

The museum, by the way, admits for free anyone with the name Isabella and anyone at all on his or her birthday. Mrs Gardner's eccentricity lives on.

I first heard about this book in a review by Carol on Goodreads.

Related articles

In Praise of the Fake

What We Can Learn From Art Forger, John Myatt

Buff Orpington Tournament Quarterfinals

Judge: Laurel Hicks

 Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth

 

vs

Mohsin Hamid, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

Oh, dear. I didn't really care for either of these books, perhaps because I am just not modern enough for them. My main problem is that they are both filled with what embarrassed Bobby just once in The Love Song of Jonny Valentine.

Filthy Rich chronicles the rise (and fall?) of a nameless boy in an unspecified Asian land. Hamid deftly does Hilary Mantal (Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies) one better -- he writes the whole thing in present tense, second person, and he does give a good picture of the struggles of the lower classes of the country, whatever country it is. The book moves swiftly, flawlessly, and soullessly.

McEwan's Sweet Tooth is the tale of a bright and beautiful young woman who gets into MI5 and, because she is -- I'm sorry -- a slut already, is assigned to persuade a writer to toe the party's line in his books. There is quite a good twist to the story, which I cannot tell you, or you might have to kill me. McEwan brings it off deftly enough that I think I'll declare him the winner. I'd rather vote for The Orphan Master's Son again, but I know I can't do that.

Winner: Sweet Tooth

Buff Orpington Tournament Quarterfinals

Judge: Bobby Lee Eason

Teddy Wayne, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

vs

Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master's Son

 

The Love Song of Jonny Valentine by Teddy Wayne: In 21st century America we label our age groups—Boomers, Millennia, and Gen Z. Gen Z is current and are also called Boomlets. This group includes ‘tweens’ children between 8 and 13. Wayne’s book, speaks to this group’s infatuation with pop music and the tweens that produce it. The talent of these individuals is usually thin but heavily marketed. Think Lindsay Lohan, Miley Cyrus, and the Jonas Brothers. Because so many of the tween stars later experience untoward candid photos, paparazzi and drugs, Wayne’s novel explores how these negatives might happen and how child stars are exploited especially by the star’s parents.

One of the reasons Wayne is a Whiting Writer’ Award recipient is his ability to tell interesting stories with multiple themes. In Valentine there is betrayal, forgiveness, addiction, divided loyalty, greed, loneliness, and mentoring. The story is about an eleven year old with great pipes, cute looks, and an opportunistic mother. Off stage and earlier, Jonny has made millions but now is having to work hard to maintain the cash flow necessary to support his mother/manager’s opulent lifestyle. And then suddenly Jonny’s dead-beat father is back after a four year MIA with his hand out. The narrative is episodically anchored to a coast-to-coast tour starting in LA and ending in Madison Square Garden. Other than blushing through Jonny’s sexual awakening, the book told an important message in a most entertaining way.

The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson: Johnson is a creative writing professor at Stanford University and way more than worthy of being imitation by his brightest students. For example his narrative style brilliantly uses three narrators, two 1st person narrators and one third person narrator to tell his story. With nuclear threats coming from Pyongyang and immature party leader Kim Jong Un, the timing for Orphan Master could not be better placed. The plot involves modern North Korea and how propaganda is used to sustain a hardened police state that allows its citizens to starve while maintaining the health of its million man army. In counter point is the outspoken hero Jun Do. From a lowly orphan beginning, Jun Do rises to the height of power and risks it all to tell the world of the human rights atrocities being committed by the past and current North Korean regimes. The plot is reinforced with exquisitely developed themes of power, love, jealousy, compassion, loneliness, greed, despair, competency, sorrow and betrayal.

And Advancing to the Next Round: In the spirit of the Sweet Sixteen March Madness format, in this bracket we have a Cinderella (The Love Song of Jonny Valentine) taking on a number one seed, The Orphan Master’s Son. Reading about the coming of age of Jonny and his backstage manipulative mother/manager had the power of novelty as the reader learns about a little understood topic of pop star manipulation; but, it wasn’t for nothing that Johnson won the Pulitzer prize for Orphan. In a blow-out, the winner was The Orphan Master’s Son. Reading Orphan was like reading Hemingway, Faulkner, Egan and Roth; I enjoyed every page.

Buff Orpington Tournament Quarterfinals

Esi Edugyan, Half-Blood Blues

vs

Thomas Mallon, Watergate

Judge: Brooke Lunee

For me, this was an easy choice. Half-Blood Blues grabbed my attention and kept it!! I was quite intrigued, drawn to Sid's voice - bad grammar and all. "I ain't sayin. I just sayin".
 
A very intriguing story. Half-Blood Blues begins in Berlin/Paris in the 1940's during Hitler's reign and toggles back and forth to a return trip back to Berlin in the 1990's. I enjoyed the back and forth between time periods to see who and what Chip and Sid were to who they became and the catalysts for their actions and lives. The book explores the lives of all type of blacks - American, Rhinelander and Octoroon in Berlin and the consequences of being "stateless" and worse yet, a Jazz musician. And of course, a woman is involved. Lastly there is the question of what happened to the most amazing young trumpet player of all time - did he die or is he really in Poland?

Winner: Esi Edugyan, Half-Blood Blues

2013 Buff Orpington Tournament Schedule Update

Opening Round

April 15

Judge: Mary Drew

Dennis Lehane, Live by Night

vs

Michael Chabon, Telegraph Avenue

 

April 16

Judge: Pamela Thomas

John Kenney, Truth in Advertising

Vs

D J Taylor, Derby Day

 

April 17

Judge: Anonymous

Gilian Flynn, Gone Girl

vs

Thomas Mallon, Watergate

 

April 18

Judge: Cynthia Tooley

Esi Edugyan, Half-Blood Blues

vs

Kent Haruf, Benediction

 

April 19

Judge: Laurel Hicks

Elizabeth Strout, The Burgess Boys

vs

Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master’s Son

 

April 20

Judge: Kilian Metcalf

Liz Moore, Heft

 vs

Teddy Wayne, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

 

April 21

Judge: Mary Drew

Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth

vs

Joyce Carol Oates, The Accursed

 

April 22

Judge: Kilian Metcalf

Mohsin Hamid, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

vs

Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time

 

Quarterfinals

May 2

Judge: Pamela Thomas

Michael Chabon, Telegraph Avenue

 vs

John Kenney, Truth in Advertising

 

May 3

Judge: Brooke Lunee

Thomas Mallon, Watergate

vs

Esi Edugyan, Half-Blood Blues

 

May 4

Judge: Bobby Eason

Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master’s Son

 vs

Teddy Wayne, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

 

May 5

Judge: Laurel Hicks

Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth

 vs

Mohsin Hamid, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

 

Semifinals

May 15

Judge: Ann Stetson

Michael Chabon, Telegraph Avenue

vs

TBD (winner of 3 May)

 

May 16

Judge: Wendy Weise

TBD vs TBD (winners of 4 and 5 May)

 

Championship

June 27

Judge: Dave Irwin

TBD vs TBD (winners of 15 and 16 May)

  

Bufff Orpington Quarterfinals

Judge: Pamela Thomas

Michael Chabon, Telegraph Avenue

vs

John Kenney, Truth in Advertising

Michael Chabon spins a tale of the same caliber as Kavalier and Clay in Telegraph Avenue. Bombarded with brilliant but occasionally weighty prose, his observations on the way people, especially the downtrodden, live and think are unsurpassed. He has a joyfulness and curiosity in his writing that is intriguing – I sometimes wonder if he’s had time to live his own life while he’s paying so much attention to the lives of others! For me Telegraph Avenue would read better without Michael Chabon trying to stuff every possible piece of history and culture into this one work, which he writes as if he’ll never get a chance to write on the subject again. It makes it hard reading at time, but he’s worth it. Every few pages, Chabon writes of a philosophy of living or on an emotion or a place and time that just strikes home no matter what the reader’s background. When his wife coll apses in his arms and she’s so heavy with child that he fears he cannot hold her up, the thoughts he expresses are funny and endearing and familiar.

  ...She went completely boneless on him, expecting him to hold her up, all one hundred and sixty-odd pounds of her, bloodstains and belly, arms thrown around his shoulders. He resolved to do it. He belted her to him with his arms like her chute had failed and they were plummeting earthward a hundred miles an hour at the mercy of wind, cable, and rippling silk. He resolved on the spot to be equal to the challenge of bearing up. He was a husband who could be true. He was Superman grabbing hold of the train engine as it plunged from the bridge.

How can you not love a book that observes us all so well?

I appreciated Truth in Advertising because of its moments of friendship and pathos and humor, but Telegraph Avenue tops it with its story of an era, a culture, and the human condition. Winner: Telegraph Avenue.

Reading with the Fair Elaine

This morning Elaine and I again read a handful of delightful newish books and added our favorite, Thomas the Tank Engine. You have to be careful with the Thomas books. Most of them are modern, based on the original stories published in the mid-1940s. The new ones are uneven. The originals, written by the Reverend Wilbert Awdry for his son, Christopher, are delightful.

Elaine had waiting for me The Amazing Hamweenie by Patty Bowman which was probably the book we enjoyed most because it's the most ridiculous. It's the tongue-in-cheek story of poor Hamweenie, who has it really rough. (Wink, wink.) The illustrations are delightful.

Benny's Had Enough is also silly, and also features a creature (a pig this time) who is dissatisfied with what he's got (a mother who wants to wash him and his toy) and runs off only to find he was better off at home. This story is by Barbro Lindgren and Olof Landstrom and translated from the Swedish by Elisabeth Kallick Dyssegaard.

Let's Go, Hugo! by Angelica Dominguez, is about a bird who is afraid to fly. His friend, Lulu, tells him how beautiful the Eiffel Tower is but his fear of flying keeps him on the ground until his friend, the owl, practices with him.

What with one thing and another my half hour with Elaine extended itself to an hour and a half! Time really does fly when you are having fun.

Buff Orpington Pause

The Buff Orpington Tournament is pausing so that the quarterfinal judges can read the books assigned to them. Here's the schedule with the judges and books:

 

Quarterfinals

May 2

Judge: Pamela Thomas

Michael Chabon, Telegraph Avenue

 vs

John Kenney, Truth in Advertising

May 3

Judge: Brooke Lunee

Thomas Mallon, Watergate

vs

Esi Edugyan, Half-Blood Blues

 

May 4

Judge: Bobby Eason

Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master’s Son

 vs

Teddy Wayne, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

 

May 5

Judge: Laurel Hicks

Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth

 vs

Mohsin Hamid, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

 

Winners will be announced beginning 2 May.

Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster

For more than 15 years, the Boston underworld was ruled by a mobster from the tight Irish neighborhood of South Boston named James "Whitey" Bulger. He and his minions murdered more than 20 people with impunity because they were protected by the Boston FBI office. He raked in millions of dollars from book making, extortion, drugs, theft, and any other criminal enterprise that took place in Southie or most of the rest of Boston. And until fairly late in the game most people knew nothing about him. Corrupt law enforcement including some Boston police, state police, and DEA but primarily the FBI, protected him and his associates.

For generations Boston's most powerful politicians were Irish and the police and fire departments were heavily Irish (they still are.) And the city's gangsters were ruled by the Irish. By the time he was done, Whitey Bulger had reduced the Boston Mafia to a pitiful few Italians unable to do much without his approval. The New England Mafia was run from Providence.

Boston Globe reporters Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy gathered information for decades on Bulger's life and crimes from his youth stealing from the waterfront of South Boston to his years in Alcatraz and his lengthy reign in Boston, including the numerous murders he committed. But until he went on the run in 1994 no reporter could write about Bulger or crime in Boston without risking their lives. Anyone who went to the FBI to report on him was soon eliminated, one way or another, by the Irish mob. The FBI was passing information to Bulger about anyone who was talking to law enforcement about his activities. He was also protected by his brother, Bill Bulger, the president of the Massachusetts state senate and the most powerful man in state politics.

Tipped off by the FBI in 1994 that he was about to be arrested because of the work of honest law enforcement in the state police and the Boston police department, with the help of an incorruptible judge and the district attorney's office, Bulger and a long-time girl friend left Boston days ahead of the expected arrest. For years he kept in touch with family and with associates in the Boston underworld, who were still getting information from the FBI. He did return to the Boston area in 1995, exchanging his original companion for another girl friend of 30 years, Cathy Greig. And he remained on the run, un-apprehended despite a 2 million dollar price on his head and his position at the top of the 10 Most Wanted list.

Bulger had planned for his "retirement" for many years. He had put millions in safety deposit boxes all over the US and abroad. He had established an alias on Long Island and acquired a Social Security number and a driver's license in a dead man's name some 15 years before he went underground. He used dozens of different names and personas while on the run. He lived with Greig for 15 years in an apartment near the ocean in Santa Monica using the names Charles and Carol Gasko.

He was caught because of a cat.

The apartment building where he lived did not allow pets and both Bulger and Greig were animal lovers. Carol fed and cared for a stray cat that lived around the apartment block and a neighbor, Anna Bjornsdottir, stopped often to pet the cat and talk to "Carol" and "Charlie." Years later the former Miss Iceland was watching TV back home in Reykjavik when a news report came on about the search for Whitey Bulger and she recognized her old neighbors from Santa Monica and called the FBI. Within days Bulger and Greig were in custody and he was under indictment for 15 murders and numerous other felonies.

Murdering anybody is abhorrent, but the murders of innocent people that Bulger committed over the years are particularly despicable. One of his victims was Michael Donahue, a young truck driver, the father of three boys, who had agreed to give a neighbor a ride home. The neighbor was Brian Halloran, a former Bulger associate who was talking to the FBI. As they pulled up to a red light, Bulger and two other men pulled alongside and shot and killed both men.

Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt that Brought Him to Justice is detailed and heavily footnoted. This is not a book that offers: "He probably . . ." "It is thought that . . ." or "It is believed . . ." These authors have quotations from court testimony and interviews with family, neighbors, gangsters, victims, politicians, law enforcement, and other observers. These are not unfounded accusations. The story of Whitey Bulger and what he got away with for so long is truly appalling.

2013 Buff Orpington Tournament Schedule Update

Opening Round

April 15

Judge: Mary Drew

Dennis Lehane, Live by Night

vs

Michael Chabon, Telegraph Avenue

 

April 16

Judge: Pamela Thomas

John Kenney, Truth in Advertising

Vs

D J Taylor, Derby Day

 

April 17

Judge: Anonymous

Gilian Flynn, Gone Girl

vs

Thomas Mallon, Watergate

 

April 18

Judge: Cynthia Tooley

Esi Edugyan, Half-Blood Blues

vs

Kent Haruf, Benediction

 

April 19

Judge: Laurel Hicks

Elizabeth Strout, The Burgess Boys

vs

Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master’s Son

 

April 20

Judge: Kilian Metcalf

Liz Moore, Heft

 vs

Teddy Wayne, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

 

April 21

Judge: Mary Drew

Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth

vs

Joyce Carol Oates, The Accursed

 

April 22

Judge: Kilian Metcalf

Mohsin Hamid, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

vs

Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time

 

Quarterfinals

May 2

Judge: Pamela Thomas

Michael Chabon, Telegraph Avenue

 vs

John Kenney, Truth in Advertising

 

May 3

Judge: Brooke Lunee

Thomas Mallon, Watergate

vs

Esi Edugyan, Half-Blood Blues

 

May 4

Judge: Bobby Eason

Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master’s Son

 vs

Teddy Wayne, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

 

May 5

Judge: Laurel Hicks

Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth

 vs

Mohsin Hamid, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

 

Semifinals

May 15

Judge: Ann Stetson

TBD vs TBD (winners of 2 and 3 May)

 

May 16

Judge: Wendy Weise

TBD vs TBD (winners of 4 and 5 May)

 

Championship

June 27

Judge: Dave Irwin

TBD vs TBD (winners of 15 and 16 May)

Buff Orpington Tournament Day Four

Esi Edugyan, Half-Blood Blues

vs

Kent Haruf, Benediction

Judge: Cynthia Tooley

Two friends of mine, Mary Ronan Drew and Kilian Metcalf, came up with an answer to sports March Madness.  They proposed that a group of us madcap reading addicts give opinions by comparing two new popular books and deciding which we preferred.  I HEAR YOU.  There are some of you out there wondering if we can’t find better things to do with our time but hey as long as folks continue to spend hours watching supersized athletes chase a ball up and down a court there we be deviants like us with our noses in books.  At least we’re quieter, well, at least until we start opining if only through our keyboards.

Mary’s blog can be found here.  : www.maryslibrary.typepad.com

The Buff Orpington Facebook page is here.  : https://www.facebook.com/groups/632270633456669/

By the way I had NOTHING to do with choosing the name Buff Orpington.  I think it’s a chicken thing.  You have to admit it’s not much sillier than naming other book contests Booker or the Orange Prize or the National Book Award or Pulitzer!  For what it’s worth (and if you’re still reading thank you) below is my examination of Kent Haruf’s Benediction and Edugyan’s Half-Blood Blues.  Each book is reviewed on its own with no spoilers, then at the end I give my opinion on which is the better book. 

Benediction by Kent Haruf

Benediction is a lovely story beautifully written.  The theme is reminiscent of Marilynne Robinson. The Christian message transcends a niche and expands into something universal.  Haruf creates an ideal template for living yet he shows the people who try and live it complete with their warts intact.  He takes on a lot of issues in 250 pages.  The central theme is loss.  At the book’s heart is Dad Lewis who’s just found out he has a fatal disease.  He tackles death as it approaches and naturally looks back over his life.  He’s failed to understand and accept his son and they’ve been estranged since the boy’s youth.  This absent son is the second loss.  What Dad has done well is love his wife and daughter and run a successful business.  These things sustain him. 

There is also a subplot of a local minister and his family that explores the limits of human kindness in this small Colorado town.  Is it possible to live according to the gospel?  Or is the good book a metaphor?  In the midst of these extraordinary issues ordinary people try and get on with the day to day of their lives.  They confront intolerance, they sacrifice, and they love or choose not to love one another.  Is death ever ordinary?  Dad Lewis struggles to accept the blessings of his life and his failures as do the people around him.  With such themes Haruf could so easily have slipped into over sentimentality and he does bump up against it from time to time but there’s an undeniable realness to his book that saves it even if some of his characters resist saving.  It’s possible to die with grace if only just barely possible. Go in peace. Dad Lewis does.

Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan

In 1992 Chip Jones (a professional drummer) and Sid Griffiths (a base player as a young man) take a trip together back to Germany where they spent part of their youth during the beginning of World War II. They return as VIP guests for the showing of a documentary based on their fellow band mate and trumpeter Hieronymus Falk. It highlights Hiero's legendary talent but it also peripherally covers their entire jazz ensemble. Chip makes some comments in the film that appall Sid, maybe because they are too true. Sadly Hiero, or the Kid as they called him, disappeared in 1940 and his friends fear he was sent to one of the concentration camps, picked up by the Nazis because of his mixed African and German heritage. Chip and Sid, both Americans though also black, managed to escape to France and then home to the US where they resumed their lives always lamenting the loss of Hiero's monumental talent. Sid has another level of guilt since he'd been at the café when Hiero was arrested.

I'm addicted to World War II lore and interested in music so I thought I'd like this book. What I wasn't ready for was how much more it was. Half-Blood Blues explores the nature of friendships that are formed when one is young and living in dangerous times. When Chip and Sid, as Americans were lauded almost as Gods by the German subculture who loved jazz yet they were reviled by the Nazis they had to hide from daily. The story of the danger of those times is intense and exciting. The long slow lament of their part in losing their friend is tragic, especially for Sid who almost obsesses over his role. As an old man he second guesses himself. The book also relives snippets of Chip and Sid's Baltimore childhood where they were friends, enemies and competitors and how those dynamics played out in Germany.

Edugyan explores the nature of friendship, jealousy, love and the struggle to distinguish yourself in a given field. Her characters don't have easy choices. They struggle. When Chip and Sid return to Germany they go on a journey attempting to find peace with their pasts and current lives. This is one of those books you'll keep thinking about long after you've finished it.

Ya know how on old maps they used to write along the edges ‘There be dragons’?  Well this section slips into that beyond and should probably considered ‘There be spoilers’ so stop reading if you don’t want to be exposed to plot points.

Both Benediction and Half-Blood Blues are end of life novels.  Dad and Chip look back on their younger selves and evaluate what they did wrong or right, what was beautiful and what was ugly in their experience.  Benediction is about the extraordinary in the ordinary and Half-Blood is the opposite.  Chip is a black man in a foreign country during a war.  As an American musician he’s lauded by jazz oficionados at the clubs but as soon as he steps into the daylight his life is in danger.   He’s caught up in history making events and eventually he and his friends must flee for their lives.  Going back to the scene of the crime in order to honor their lost friend is emotional.  He’s confronted with his younger self’s choices and he’s not proud of all of those.  He’s also angry about the choices others have made, an anger that still seething inside him.

Dad Lewis on the other hand has lived a quiet, mostly uneventful life.  History hasn’t taken him hostage but, like Chip, he can’t help dwelling on his mistakes and omissions.  Sadly it’s too late to change things.  Dad has the advantage of not being angry with others so much as at himself.  Forgiveness of others, forgiveness of self are what Chip and Dad are trying to reconcile in their old age.  In a way they both get second chances, they definitely begin to see themselves more clearly.  For both of them there is a catalyst, a person they haven’t treated fairly or with compassion.  This person is ‘different’ and this means they’re perceived as dangerous.  The odd thing is that neither catalyst in themselves is threatening.  It’s in the context of their particular setting that others see them in that way.  This person is one that helps Chip and Dad grow the most because of this very challenge.  Both Edugyan and Haruf depict this issue head on.  It’s this clarity that helps their novels transcend.

I suppose I’m required to choose which book I like the most and this is difficult.  Without a doubt Benediction is the better written book.  Half-Blood has a more memorable and compelling plot.  I love World War II settings and this one included the jazz milieu which are both passions of mine.  It also has an explosive ending whereas Benediction has a comforting one.  They both excel at looking head on at troubling issues.  I’d have to say Half-Blood slightly edges out Benediction perhaps only because I’m about fed up with the exploration of why it’s so bothersome to some people who loves who and what consenting adults do sexually.  HOWEVER, as long as it continues to be an issue books like Benediction continue to be important.  Both books are end of life reflections with a renewed opportunity to forgive self and others.  You won’t lose by reading either of them.  Remember how Julia Child used to say ‘bon appetit’?  In this case I’ll end with ‘Happy Reading’.

Buff Orpington Tournament Day Eight

Mohsin Hamid, How To Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

vs

Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

Judge: Kilian Metcalf

This was a tough choice. Time Being is an intricate, delicate story within a story. A bullied 16-year-old Japanese girl writes about her life and her grandmother and seals the story in a Hello Kitty lunch box and throws it into the sea. Thousands of sea miles away, a writer named Ruth finds it washed up on the shore and takes it home. There are levels of narrative, several different voices, multiple storielines and timelines that shift around under the reader's feet.

How to Get Filthy Rich is an exuberant, rollicking tale of a peasant boy's rise from squalor to luxury, told within the framework of a How-To-Get-Rich, self-help book.

One is a perfectly constructed banquet of dishes, delicately seasoned, served perfectly on a table setting that Martha Stewart would approve of. Filthy Rich ...is a sloppy, barbarian Dagwood sandwich, oozing filling and condiments and slapped down on a paper plate with bits falling off into your lap.

Which is better? Depends on your appetite at the time. I'm in the mood for hearty peasant food over the delicate flavors of the formal banquet. I can't resist the robust heartiness of the voice in Filthy Rich, so it is my choice in this round.

I pity the judges in the semi-final and final rounds of this tournament, and I'm glad I don't have to be one of them. These books are all winners.

Buff Orpington Tournament Day Six

Teddy Wayne, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine
vs

Liz Moore, Heft

Judge: Kilian Metcalf

When Mary and I started talking about the Buff Orpington Tournament, one of the first challenges we faced was the choice of books. Mary posted a list of the most-reviewed books of 2012. I was reading Heft at the time and thought it would be a good candidate. Looking at her list, I was drawn to the description of The Love Song of Jonny Valentine. The recent activities of the Justins, Bieber and Timberlake, were in my consciousness. I wondered what it would be like if the Justins were real people instead of wooden Pinocchio-clone sock puppets. I already knew the pain and isolation of a life as a massively obese person, so Heft is familiar territory to me, although I am nowhere near as impaired as the main character.
...
I was suprised to find that both books have very similar storylines. While Heft starts out with the focus on the isolated, immured Arthur, it soon shifts to the story of the young son of an impoverished alcoholic mother. The two stories are told in parallel arcs, meeting only at the end.

The Love Song of Jonny Valentine is a cohesive whole, an insider's look at the life of a moderately gifted young boy who happens to catch the wave of preteenage adulation. In his own way, Jonny is as isolated and lonely as Arthur.

I expected that I would choose Heft. It seemed so much more serious and literary. Instead I found that the double story meant half as much pleasure rather than double.

I reluctantly came to admire the craft and sheer writing ability of Teddy Wayne. The essential dilemma of what to do with the temptation to exploit a child's talent, the price the child and the parent pay for financial security, and the challenges of growing up in the artificial world of show business creates a dramatic tension this is deftly navigated by the author.

My choice: Love Song of Jonny Valentine.

Buff Orpington Tournament Day Five

The Burgess Boys, Elizabeth Strout

vs

The Orphan Master's Son, Adam Johnson (winner)

Judge: Laurel Hicks
...
The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout

This is a well-told account of a modern American family, their past and present relationships, and how they affect each other and those who come in contact with them. I listened to it on an Audible download and found it to be intriguing and easy to follow. The varied possibilities of how the tale would turn kept my mind active. I got quite annoyed, however, with the language. Why people can't think of more creative ways to express their emotions than repeating the same two "shock" words over and over is beyond me. I listened through to its quite satisfactory end, though, and think it is a book worth reading.

The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson

When a cruel regime rules by fantasy, the people respond by entering into the fantasy. Adam Johnson joined into the surreal enigma of North Korea by creating a fantasy of his own that spares none of the cruelty and horror while generously giving us the humor of the affair. Johnson's tale of North Korea is a tour-de-force, and the clear winner in my eyes. I'm having a hard time describing it--it just needs to be experienced.

Buff Orpington Tournament Day Seven

Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth

vs

Joyce Carol Oates, The Accursed

Judge: Mary Drew

   Please note that the postings of some of these essays is out of order.

Judging these two books has been an intriguing experience, filled with anticipation, disappointment, U-turns, and finally, great satisfaction with both.

Last December I borrowed Sweet Tooth from the library. I found it plodding and pedestrian and sent it back after I had read 135 out of 300 pages (I keep notes.) This was mildly surprising because I really like Ian McEwan's later novels (his earlier books strike me as unripe, he's trying too hard.)

So when I was faced with comparing the book to The Accursed I borrowed it again but began first to read Joyce Carol Oates. And what a delight that turned out to be. I'm not particularly a fan, having read only two or possibly three of her many previous works. But this book is just the sort of thing I enjoy. It is, at least at first, a straightforward story, set in Princeton, NJ, the town and the college, in 1905-1906.The young Woodrow Wilson is the president of the college and he is in a battle to the death with a senior dean over . . . well, over anything and everything Wilson wants to do. A remarkably humorless and self-absorbed man, he is putty in the hands of the older man, who enjoys playing with him and balking his every move.

The story is about the relationships between the faculty, the old families in town, and a couple of well-known figures (Jack London, Sinclair Lewis) who live nearby or visit. The narrative voice switches among various characters (diaries and letters) and then reverts back to the self-satisfied, quirky amateur historian who is purportedly writing the story. A mysterious stranger appears one day and not long after he runs off with the bride immediately after a big society wedding. Why did she go? Who was the stranger? Are the purported sightings of her in later months valid or somebody's imagination?

There's a hint that the stranger may be the devil, but how do you go about determining the validity of a theory like that?

So I was perking along with this book, enjoying the story, the characters, the setting, the quirks of plot, the atmosphere. But it's 600 pages long. So I decided to put it aside and get to work, and it did look like it was going to be work, on Sweet Tooth.

The thing about Sweet Tooth is that it's told in the first person by a young woman who works for MI5 in the early 1970s. She lies for a living. She's a spy. Sort of. She isn't too bright, she got a third in mathematics from Cambridge and although I don't understand the British educational system I do understand that a third cannot be good. The folks at MI5, the heirs of Ian Fleming and John Masterman and the other men who devised Operation Mincemeat, creating The Man Who Never Was, one of the most creative and successful espionage tricks since the Trojan Horse, have come up with a pedestrian scheme to fund writers they have identified as being anti-Communist, as leaning rightward politically. The money is provided through a foundation at a third or fourth level from MI5 and should be impossible for the writers or the press to trace back.

Our heroine is assigned a novelist (who, by the way, bears a remarkable resemblance to Ian McEwan) to whom she offers the money and who accepts. This is a woman who loves men and who hops from one bed to another, inevitably hopping into the bed of the novelist whom she is "handling" or "controlling" as they say in MI5. This is dangerous and becomes more so as her novelist becomes increasingly sought after by big-name publishers and wins a major prize much like (only better and older than) the Booker.

But things don't feel quite right. The reader has some questions about what's happening and how sincere some of the characters are and what is really going on between them. Part of the reason I gave up on the book the first time around was because I dislike unreliable narrators. I don't like to work that hard to figure out what I'm reading.

But it turns out I stopped reading too soon. Half way through the book, but still, it was too soon, because around the middle it starts to get increasingly complicated and the reader's suspicions grow until they cannot be ignored. Somewhere around page 200 is the tipping point. After that I was reading faster and was more engrossed, the book had become a page-turner. I had to know what was going on, what would happen next, what was I really reading?

I didn't figure all that out until about 20 pages from the end when it was handed to me on a platter. Why didn't I see this coming? I knew something strange was going on with this story and Ian McEwan has a knack for this sort of gotcha (think of the end of Atonement) so I should have been prepared.

When it was time to go back to The Accursed the bubble had burst and I found it dragged just a bit. I did enjoy watching the author shred Woodrow Wilson (a well-deserved shredding in my opinion), I was eager to see how the story would turn out, and it was quite satisfying in the end. But the book couldn't compare with Sweet Tooth, which is why I picked that book as the winner of Day Seven of the Buff Orpington Tournament.