Book Review: Democracy in Print

Democracy in Print: The Best of The Progressive Magazine, 1909-2009

Edited by Matthew Rothschild

Published May 1, 2009

University of Wisconsin Press

390 pp.

ISBN 0-299-23224-7

Reviewed November 22, 2009

Out of all the casualties the economic crisis has been wreaking on the world (your humble narrator’s well-paid publishing job among them) one of the most tragic has been the regular shuttering of newspapers and magazines. Print media has been in a bad position for the last few years with its base of readers and advertisers going to digital news, and newspapers from Seattle to Boston have shut their doors. Others have laid off staff, slashed their size and made the move to publish solely online – sad stories that don’t do much to reassure our descendants will remain well-educated.

But for all of these sad tales there are still a few inspiring moves out there, and fittingly one of the recent ones comes from The Progressive. In August, Editor-in-Chief Matthew Rothschild issued a personal appeal to all readers that the magazine needed $90,000 to keep publishing, saying that it was in more danger than it had been in the last 25 years. Readers responded by donating over $120,000 in two weeks, saving the publication Senator Robert La Follette founded as “a magazine of progress, social, intellectual, institutional.”

For the key examples of this tradition – and reasons why readers see The Progressive is worth defending – one need look no further than “Democracy in Print,” released to coincide with the magazine’s centennial. Collecting close to 200 essays, speeches, interviews and poems, the book is a keen collection of the left’s thoughts, as well as a valuable source for arguments that still remain relevant as of today.

Like most compilations of articles, this is definitely a book built for browsing rather than reading in one sitting, going to one particular issue for reflection or research. Wisely, “Democracy in Print” chooses not to split its content up chronologically but by issue, focused on several of the most hot-button issues of the last hundred years, ranging from the rights of women, African-Americans and gays, to serious reform for labor and environmental policies and an end to wars. Writers reflect the depth of the magazine’s contributors, with La Follette and his extended family, senators, union activists and media critics all expounding on their favorite topics.

The Progressive has always been a magazine with a mission – I see it as the polar opposite of the National Review, standing athwart the gates of history yelling ‘Go!’ – and unsurprisingly the content of the book rarely deviates from the far left: war is never the answer, equal rights for all, etc. It can’t boast variety, but what it can boast is undeniable passion. Its history and content boasts a willingness to fight for ideals, calling out our highest officials and even fighting a prior restraint judgment from the U.S. government to publish an article on the hydrogen bomb.

Several of the essays also come across as shockingly relevant to our current political climate, and (tragically) are far more articulate than the existing discourse. Witness Harold Ickes, FDR’s secretary of the interior, speaking on how the wealthiest families and companies led America into a “peacetime catastrophe,” it’s clear that the circumstances that put us in the recession are not new ones. Or La Follette, railing against how workingmen who lose limbs are paid per appendage – an argument that would probably come in handy as the Senate debates healthcare.

“Democracy” is not entirely speech-based however, as the book also explores the history of The Progressive’s cultural ties by reprinting a selection of interviews with musicians and authors. Each of the figures being interviewed waxes on a particular topic tied to their work, and each one is uniquely enjoyable: Kurt Vonnegut on how politics has devolved into entertainment, Allen Ginsberg on sex and authority, Frank Zappa on the decline of art to name a few. The interviews give a sense of not just being experts, but also defenders of traditions that seem to be dying out.

The recent campaign for funds waged by The Progressive proves that defending its beliefs is never going to be easy, but the content they have generated proves that they have the energy and brainpower to keep going. “Democracy in Print” is a solid collection of liberal journalism and eloquent discourse on its most important fields, and a valuable tool in the arsenal of anyone writing about the issues of the time – ours, last decade’s or last century’s.

Book Review: Dear Everybody (or: When a Poet Writes a Novel)

Dear Everybody

By Micheal Kimball

Published September 1, 2008

Alma Books

288 pp.

ISBN 1-846-88055-6

Reviewed September 24, 2009

Unlike actors who become politicians or Disney’s tween actors with platinum-iced singing dreams, I like authors who figuratively cut off the hands that made them famous and go at it with a new pair.

What writers seem to maintain when they pack up and skip out on their genre, that these other annoying public figures don’t, is sincerity. Readers tend to see such attempts by authors as the cultivation of  some new basement brew of ingenuity. The writer seems to be holding the values of literature, which consistently hail curiosity and imagination, closer to them so as to examine more shrewdly from a different angle.

In the case of Micheal Kimball, the writer of the novel “Dear Everybody,” we have a writer trading in the high-speed, downtown feel of  poems for the stretching,  interstate highways of a novel.

“Dear Everybody” is a collection of letters, conversations, diary entries, and encyclopedia articles that makes Jonathan Bender’s life finally come together just when it has completely dissolved. Jonathan’s suicide forces his brother, Robert, who insists that he never understood or was close to Jonathan, to create a self-portrait that Jonathan himself – crippled by depression and memories of childhood abuse at the hands of overweight, adulterous father – was only capable of seeing in blurry bits and pieces.

In the beginning of the novel, Robert remarks snidely, in brackets drawn on the bottom of the page, that he wishes Jonathan had just written one letter to “everybody.” It’s a statement that is absolutely heartbreaking in it’s dismissive tone. However, for the reader it starts off the first echo of a demand that haunted Jonathan his whole, stunted life.  “Why can’t you just make things easier for all of us?”

Despite Jonathan’s mental bruises and moth-eaten social skills, it’s clear he cares deeply for those he tries to connect with. He gets painfully close to getting it right with his wife, Sara. Seeing the glass shards of those few relationships clustered together exposes the inevitable patterns of Jonathon’s behavior. Depression and dark memories were the only thing Jonathan could consistently keep around. Though the ending is, of course, defined from the beginning, the clever addition of skeptical Robert does allow the reader to hope that someone from his Jonathan’s life has finally heard him.

Kimball’s background as a poet is apparent in his ability to isolate and frame small moments of a particular character’s experience. Fine attention to detail is exercised both as an art and as a special effect, heightening and diversifying the book’s emotions at a clipped pace. You will finish this book in a day or two. It has a surprisingly strong dark humor for being about such a serious topic, his observations are keen and quirky, and he knows how to let imagery make a scene swell. It all keeps the book far away from being saccharine and sentimental.

Plus, there’s something about letters, right? Kimball’s letters seem like purgatory to me. The letter writer reaches out for the people  he wants to feel close  to, but only after it’s too late.  He damns himself, and the reader, over and over again with each letter. He  purges honest feeling and pent up regrets, but it’s an illusion of resolution. He wants nothing to do with responses and at the end of each letter: no matter how alive the prose feels, he is still dead. This writing spree has all the highs and lows of a drug binge.

I think it’s telling as well that the novel wouldn’t even make sense if the letters made up the novel by themselves.  Gaps must be filled in by several other one-sided conversations. Jonathon’s mother’s diary fills in many gaps, as does Sara’s eulogy and Robert’s commentary. No one manages to speak to anyone else in this book, and the book ends up being a sad consequence of that. All of this seems like a  sly jib from Kimball towards a piece of writing or an individual that fail to do anything but listen to itself speak.

Jonathan’s beautiful letters are a collection of broken wires – every one is unfinished and loss seems to be the only thing that pushed Jonathan to keep writing towards the end. Every time the reader imagines the physical presence of Jonathan, you’re supposed to see a man with his mouth clamped shut, a man who has lost control of the conversation.

Book Review: The Art of Making Money

The Art of Making Money: The Story of a Master Counterfeiter

By Jason Kersten

Published June 11, 2009

Gotham Books

304 pp.

ISBN 1-592-40446-4

Reviewed July 30, 2009

Over the last few years, there have been a variety of changes made to the style of U.S. currency, and few of them have been rated as aesthetically pleasing. Larger portrait heads, oversized numbers and multicolored inks have all led to criticism and unflattering comparisons to phony money – but the reality is entirely opposite. These new designs incorporate minuscule factors like fine-line printing, color-shifting ink and watermarks, all of which are designed to place the dollar beyond replication.

But the best counterfeiters, an egotistical group by nature, tend to see these developments as a challenge rather than an impasse and master new techniques to create the most accurate copy possible. In “The Art of Making Money,” Jason Kersten tracks the development of one of these schemes, getting into the mind and methods of the counterfeiter who was able to break the most secure bill in decades. Along the way, he manages to pull together a story with some of the most classic literary themes: rags to riches, best intentions laid low and a son desperately trying to live up to an absent father.

The subject of “Making Money” is Art Williams, a product of the slums of Chicago who grew up surrounded by gangs and a troubled family life. Rather than being a drug dealer or stick-up artist however, he had the good fortune to become a pupil of a talented Italian counterfeiter who taught him the science and good sense needed to survive in the field. After a few small-time scams, Williams set his sights on a true challenge – replicating the “New Note” hundred-dollar bill released in 1996 for the purpose of shutting down his profession.

Kersten tracks Williams’ exploits across the United States, from the bunkers in Chicago where he started his printing operation to the wilds of Texas and Alaska where he’d lay low after a bust. He presents his narrative in a very compelling way, showing how Art would sell his merchandise to a variety of Chicago gangsters or liquidate it himself in cross-country mall trips. On the other side, we also see how Art’s broken home life shaped his business decisions, and how more than once his attachment to a deadbeat father pulls him back into a life of crime.

The book originally began in 2005 as an article for Rolling Stone – much of the article is transferred over in fact – and it retains the feel of a magazine feature with heavy emphasis on quotes and narrative. Williams was the key source for the story and is quoted regularly, but Kersten also weaves in interviews with his wife and family and cohorts from his glory days. The reporting style makes the book a relatively quick read, and the narrative’s presentation regularly allows for other sides of the story and how the players were affected.

The glory days do seem to sway Kersten’s attention a bit too much though, and more than once he waxes romantic on Williams’ escapades. He points out a series of near-misses the police had, speculates on the ways things could have gone different for Art and even paints him in a heroic light at one point – giving a good portion of his gains to charity. Williams is a fascinating character, so this can be forgiven – though it’s less easy to forgive the occasional overwrought sentences like this one describing the feel of Williams’ bill: “It was the lovely, husky crack made by the flying whip that drives the world economy – the sound of the Almighty Dollar.”

Thankfully though, he manages to keep these lines to a minimum and balance Art’s stories with some more in-depth research on the counterfeiting details. He walks us through the technical aspects of how a counterfeiting shop worked, the records and routine of the anti-counterfeit agency – the Secret Service – and the details of how the 1996 bill was made more complicated. A lot of these details are very interesting (did you know the Secret Service was originally founded to crack down on counterfeiters, and guarding the President came later?) and he meshes the facts well with Williams’ tireless efforts to beat the security measures with phone book paper and auto paint.

As Kersten portrays it, counterfeiting is a complicated, time-consuming and overall dangerous prospect – and it’s also one that has the potential to give one almost everything they ask for. “Making Money” is an excellently constructed true crime story, assembling every step of Williams’ journey from success to sorrow. For a story about a man who made his living on fakes, it comes across as a very real tale – just be careful not to get so caught up in it you debate photocopying twenty-dollar bills.

Back Shelf Review: The Year of Living Biblically

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible

By A.J. Jacobs

Published October 1, 2007

Simon and Schuster

392 pp.

ISBN 0-743-291476

Reviewed July 20, 2009

While the concept of gonzo journalism is most regularly associated with excessive drug use and acts of mayhem while reporting, the founding ideas are a bit more serious. Hunter S. Thompson defined his creation as the pinnacle of engagement, comparable to “a film director who writes his own script, does his own camera work and somehow manages to film himself in action.” The driving principal is that in this deep level of engagement, the author cannot remove himself from the story and as such greater depth can be attained than through straight reporting.

From this technical perspective, it’s easy to consider A.J. Jacobs as some form of gonzo practitioner. Jacobs’ writing career regularly involves chronicling a series of social experiments he subjects himself to, ranging from outsourcing his daily life to India to striving for honesty in all cases to studying every last piece of information in an encyclopedia. Not content with these lengths though, he moved from the collected knowledge of man to the collected knowledge of God in his book “The Year of Living Biblically” – and the journey proves to be entertaining and surprisingly poignant.

The book’s title summarizes its intent perfectly: for one year, Jacobs strove to follow the Bible to the letter, ranging from its most basic commandments to the most obscure proverbs. Visibly, this meant donning all-white single-fiber garments and growing a beard resembling the brush outside a haunted house; and behaviorally it meant regular prayer, never lying and giving away 10 percent of his salary. He presents his findings in a journal format, tackling a new issue each day and recording his results.

Of course, the issue with following these rules is that many of them aren’t truly applicable in modern life, and therein lies the real humor of “Living Biblically.” Not eating fruit unless the tree is five years old, not wearing any garments that have more than one fiber, not touching any woman for a week after her period (his wife Julie is not amused) – Jacobs tries to keep to all of these and more, often going to great lengths and annoying those around him. He never betrays any frustration at the limitations, only an increasing curiosity at their origins and how he can work them into his daily life.

The real problem – from his perspective at least – comes up in the variety of instances where the Bible seems to contradict itself, especially when moving from Old to New Testament.  A key instance comes in what should be one of the simplest rules, the Sabbath: “A friend of mine once told me that even observing the Sabbath might be breaking the Sabbath, since my job is to follow the Bible. That gave me a two-hour headache.” Jacobs come across as neurotic and yet likable, determined to find an answer no matter what crazy direction it takes him.

Jacobs doesn’t try to work these issues out alone, consulting with a wide variety of scholars and professors to seek interpretations of the Bible and interpretations of those interpretations. He runs the gamut from a sect of snake handlers to openly gay Christian fundamentalists, and even makes a pilgrimage to Israel where he herds sheep and speaks with his “spiritual omnivore” guru Uncle Gil. As with the proverbs he judges none of them beforehand, but simply admires and comments on the strength of their faith.

His neutrality is helped by his own lack of religious background – raised in a secular family and a self-defined agnostic – but as the year goes on he finds that immersion in faith is starting to rub off on him, creating an alter ego dubbed Jacob. Jacob scolds him for paying attention to Rosario Dawson’s sex life, puts olive oil in his hair and pays attention to every little moral choice made during the day. With every prayer or simple “God willing” he inserts into conversation, it’s clear as the book goes on that his journey has changed him, not dramatically but in very subtle ways of thought and appreciation.

At one point in the book, as Jacobs begins to show some frustration at why the Bible can be so contradictory or hard to understand, one of his spiritual advisers offers him a key piece of wisdom: “Life is a jigsaw puzzle. The joy and challenge of life – and the Bible – is figuring things out.” In many ways, “Living Biblically” is defined by this wisdom – a book that confronts hundreds of challenges, and winds up being a joy for the sheer fact that the journey is being undertaken.

Poetry Review: Sudden Anthem

Sudden Anthem

By Matthew Guenette

Published February 8, 2008

Dream Horse Press

84 pp.

ISBN 0-977-71824-7

Reviewed July 16, 2009

On my summer reading list, I labeled Matthew Guenette as, “The Hometown Hero” because, unbeknownst to me, he has been teaching at the technical college in Madison for a few years now and Sudden Anthem, was released shortly before I graduated from the UW. Since most people living in the Midwest tend to be friendly and laid-back, I imagine I could’ve managed to chat with him or get a signed copy of his book for less than I paid to have it shipped to Asia from some faceless, worn warehouse in Indiana.

My point is: Poets. You are shopping next to them at the farmer’s market.

“Sudden Anthem” is the product of a seven year labor, which I think ends up suiting the book well. Guenette is still a really young poet, but his first book is evidence that he’s already spent a lot of time experimenting with his style. Like photographers, poets can create a lot of pictures of the same thing or the same place in their work, trying to get the perfectly worded money shot. But this book has obviously moved with Guenette, seen a lot of different landscapes and taken on a lot of different jobs. In his biography, Guenette mentions that he’s been a busboy, a landscaper, and a salesclerk. It mentions a childhood in New Hampshire, several stops in and around the Midwest.

Instead of posed shots and still scenes, the book offers up a disorganized scrapebook of gas stations, malls, and contorted self-portraits. In the “Seven Prepositons of a Bus Boy”, the split narrator states, “The Ghost of Me/It already exists…My ghost should have serious questions for me/like, who do you think you are? Or, what the fuck?”

Guenette, however, doesn’t resist this chaos and seems willing to promote range as a strength. The first half of the book is written in a more straightforward style while the second half toys with form, drawing you further into Guenette’s clever imagination. What keeps it all together is the consistent tightness of his language, which has punch that hovers between joking and real. “The evening/ divides (in two) couplets./ Sizzle steak. Wasp’s sting,” the poem “Problems of Transcendence” quips. Figures from popular culture and the academic world drink in the same bar, and Guenette’s narrator, like much of the world, seems confused as to who to look to, who to take seriously, or at least, unable to look away. He writes in the poem, “The Hush of Something Endless,” “But a stone-rhined Dolly Parton/kept bring more and more bottles of wine./Pretty soon I was terrifically drunk,/tripping from room to room like one/of Faulkner’s minor fools telling ridiculous/ lies to anyone who would listen.”

While reading this book, I immediately thought of how well it answers to a quote by David Foster Wallace I furiously underlined in his introduction to the 2007 edition of The Best American Essays,

“Part of our emergency is that it’s so tempting to do this sort of thing now, to retreat to narrow arrogance, pre-formed positions, rigid filters, the ‘moral clarity’ of the immature. The alternative is dealing with massive, high-entropy amounts of info and ambiguity and conflict and flux; it’s continually discovering new areas of personal ignorance and delusion. In sum, to really try to be informed and literate today is to feel stupid nearly all the time, and to need help.”

We receive a million hits of all kind of information and images every day. We, ourselves, are more popular than any video on YouTube. It’s the reality, as we all know by now, of the modern world. And Guenette, unlike many writers, doesn’t seem fearful of it. He’s critical of it, certainly. In “Problems of Transcendence,” he writes, “And look how helpless we are; that’s one message/Another one is huh? and what?” But he also pushes forward, and that’s what makes his poetic voice sane. “We know the dream is other dreams smashed/to fragments but sometimes the fragments/fight back,” he writes in the poem “Arkein.” Guenette’s voice is smart and witty, almost nimble enough to seem one step ahead and laughing at all of us. But there is still a sense of intimacy there, and poignancy, rooted in a willingness to embrace the near-infinity of experiences available in the world.

Book Review: Losing Mum and Pup

Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir

By Christopher Buckley

Published May 6, 2009

Twelve Books

272 pp.

ISBN 0-446-54094-3

Reviewed June 15, 2009

Ever since the death of William F. Buckley Jr. in February 2008, his son Christopher appears to have a target painted on his back. Although he chiefly works as a humorist, with satirical government-based novels such as “Supreme Courtship” and “Thank You For Smoking,” a rather vocal group seems to think he is under a moral obligation to preserve the family legacy in the ways they deem appropriate. When he joined the ranks of Republican intellectuals endorsing Barack Obama for the 2008 presidential election, the backlash was so voluminous that he was forced to resign from the very magazine that his father founded and which he still owns one-seventh of.

But that excoriation pales in comparison to some of the comments directed at his latest book, “Losing Mum and Pup,” which has been criticized as full of selfish, petty smears against parents who are no longer around to defend themselves. Once again, the reaction is overblown and completely missing the spirit of his actions, as it’s hard to think of a book that feels more like saying a fond farewell. Mixing his trademark wry humor with sentimental honesty, it’s not an insult but a tribute to people who may have been difficult to live with but never impossible to respect or love.

Between April 2007 and February 2008, Buckley suffered the loss of both his parents – a loss whose difficulty was compounded by their public reputations. His father was credited as the founder of modern conservative thought (as well as National Review and “Firing Line” and over 50 books); and his mother was “the chic and stunning” Patricia Taylor Buckley, queen of New York socialites for decades. They were people of immense reputation and charm, and Buckley was their only son – a relationship regularly strained by faith, black humor and intellect.

Buckley traces over these difficult months, from his mother’s deathbed to the final memorial service for his father in Connecticut. He was pushed into a variety of roles, ranging from nursemaid to an often obstinate patient to literary executor to organizer of elaborate memorial services (the book has regular asides on the minutiae of cremation costs and military honors). Along the way we also see how his parents’ loss touched the political world, with vignettes on his father’s close friends from Henry Kissinger to George McGovern.

Detractors will make the claim that Chris Buckley is kicking out the pedestal his parents were placed on, and to some extent this is correct. He does not skimp over his mother’s acid tongue, treating us to uncomfortable dinner scenes where she humiliated her granddaughter’s best friend and refused Ted Kennedy a car (“There are bridges between here and Gstaad”). His father is shown as distant and difficult, not at his son’s sickbed or graduation and reviewing “Boomsday”  in a uncomplimentary sentence (“This one didn’t work for me. Sorry”).

But none of these comments really ever comes across as mudslinging, more presenting pieces of what made his parents such a complicated package. As Buckley himself says, “larger-than-life people create larger-than-life dramas,” and he more than counters their dramas with the reasons they were larger than life. Pat Buckley could be cruel but she was also a hostess without peer, backing every one of her husband’s ventures without hesitation (after first trying to talk him out of it) and ripping into anyone who dared to insult her son. And WFB was for all his faults “the world’s coolest mentor,” teaching his son how to navigate by the stars and then pushing his limits by sailing in a borderline-monsoon storm.

And the complaints by the indignant reviewers also gloss over the fact that this is probably Buckley’s best-written book to date. He has publicly stepped away from “channeling” his father’s ghost, but between the brisk precision of the word choice and the speed of composition (he has said he wrote it in 40 days) it’s easy to picture WFB offering a spiritual boost. Opening with an Oscar Wilde quote on losing ones parents (“looks like carelessness”), literacy permeates the text with references on everything from P.G. Wodehouse to Joseph Conrad to the labors of Hercules. His mother’s ghost also makes an appearance with various barbs to break the tension: “Oh, do pull yourself together and stop carrying on in this fashion.”

But it’s in the moments where he realizes his looming orphanhood that “Losing Mum and Pup” takes on a singular power, needing no narrative devices other than straight reaction. He may portray his parents as weak but he is in almost as much pain, seeking to rationalize his own thoughts and leave things on as even a keel as is possible. The instance where he gets the call on his father’s death is painfully immersive, showing a war with instincts and emotions and wondering if he should continue what he was doing before, the taxes: “Maybe if I do them, this won’t have happened.”

If there are conflicting opinions about “Losing Mum and Pup,” they may be justified as Buckley’s own opinions were conflicted – but anyone who despises him for daring to show William and Pat Buckley as flawed is blind to the wash of affection he shows them, and the affection they had for each other. “Losing Mum and Pup” is a beautiful piece of work, funny and touching, giving a view of Buckley’s own coming to terms and the universal pain of saying goodbye to your parents.

Book Review: And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks: A Novel

By Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs

Published November 1, 2008

Grove Press

224 pp.

ISBN 0-802-11876-3

Reviewed June 8, 2009

The unpublished, undiscovered work will forever hold a special place in the hearts of literary fans: the idea that in some forgotten wooden chest, some rusted-shut safe deposit box or broken desk drawer sits a masterpiece from their favorite author. It’s this spirit that drives periodic efforts to track down the rumored complete manuscript of Truman Capote’s “Answered Prayers” and what keeps scholars gainfully employed in going through the estates of deceased authors to see what they can turn up.

“And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks” was until recently one of these mysterious works, a collaboration between Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs before the two secured their roles as the respective patron saints of vagabonds and drug addicts. Rejected by publishers at the time, yet long discussed amongst Beat scholars and fans, the original manuscript remained in storage and has now only seen publication after both writers are dead. It’s a historical curiosity, and one that provides an interesting look into how these two writers began their craft.

Like a majority of Burroughs and Kerouac’s work, “And the Hippos” is based on a true story, one of the darker moments in the Beat Generation’s history. In 1944 Lucien Carr, a Columbia student responsible for introducing Burroughs, Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg to each other, murdered an older man named David Kammerer. Kammerer, a childhood friend of Burroughs, had been pursuing Carr sexually for years, growing more possessive and eventually pushing Carr to fatally stab him in self-defense. While he only served two years it was a sobering moment for the nascent Beats: both Burroughs and Kerouac were arrested as material witnesses and Burroughs’ opium habit picked up shortly afterwards.

The collaboration between Burroughs and Kerouac takes the form of each man writing alternating first-person chapters sharing their side of the story, under the respective pseudonyms of bartender Will Dennison and merchant seaman Mike Ryko. Burroughs’ chapters focus chiefly on Ramsey Allen (Kammerer’s doppleganger) and his mad attraction to Philip Tourian (Carr), while Kerouac’s chapters feature Ryko and Tourian wandering New York trying to get money and dreaming of sailing to France. The co-authorship never gets in the way of readability, and also allows for some comparison of style: Kerouac is all about energy and flow, while Burroughs takes a dry careful look at events.

And that comparison is one of the main reasons to view “And The Hippos.” As the first book written by either of the two men, it is full of clues to their developing voices. Kerouac’s chapters are fast-paced, filled with tales of drinking and women and constantly moving from one location to another. Even then he was in love with the run-on sentence, pouring out all the details he can get for fear he’ll miss an experience. His last line (“I walked toward Columbus Circle, where two big trucks went by that made me want to travel far,”) is borderline prophetic, foreshadowing the wanderlust of “On the Road.”

Burroughs, by contrast, is less a player in the story than an observer, with Dennison chiefly in his apartment or loaning money for Ryko and Tourian to keep their energy going. He looks on the world with distrust, seeing hostile arguments all over America and idly finding narratives during morphine experimentation – a thought process that matured easily into “Junky.” We even get a glimpse of his later surrealist word salad in the title, a phrase he fixated on after overhearing it during a news broadcast on a circus fire and could easily be a “Naked Lunch” routine.

But while the book does offer glimpses of what Kerouac and Burroughs would achieve, it doesn’t hold up as well when authorship is taken out of consideration. At its core, the book is simply a reiteration of a few days that happened to have a dramatic climax, and a climax neither of the narrators were present for. There’s no sense that something important is being looked at, something new is being said or that a destination is being reached – it’s just a reiteration of an event, exaggerated for effect and over when it’s over. In his later years Burroughs himself was dismissive of the book as “not a distinguished work,” and at several points it’s hard not to agree with the many publishers who originally turned it down.

Of course, that is a factor that often comes into play with unpublished works: the mystery is more interesting than the final discovery. “And the Hippos” certainly has a role in the Beat Generation canon and it’s a historical curiosity to its fans, but there are a wide variety of titles that newcomers would be better served to read first (“Junky” and “On the Road” are the most relevant). It’s a prototype work, not to be taken as a polished work but an example of how it all began.

Book Review: The End of the World Book

The End of the World Book

By Alistair McCartney

Published February 13, 2008

Terrace Books

320 pp.

ISBN 0-299-22630-1

Reviewed May 25, 2009

While the Internet has wreaked its share of havoc on the newspaper and magazine industries, a less prolific casualty of its spread has been the encyclopedia. The format itself is certainly still popular – moreso than ever in fact with the advent of wikis – but hard-copy, multi-volume encyclopedias have essentially been phased out in favor of easily updated online editions. The new format may be more convenient, but it removes the physical feeling of having complete knowledge in front of you, and the youthful belief that you can learn everything from A to Z.

It’s this feeling that Alistair McCartney clearly longs for, and pays homage to, in his first novel “The End of the World Book.” Well, “novel” doesn’t quite cover it – it’s a work that’s part memoir, part essay, part collection of poetry, part social commentary and part compendium of knowledge. It’s certainly like no book that has ever been written before, an experiment that may not be for all readers but is certainly to be commended for its scope and creativity.

Like an encyclopedia, “The End of the World Book” is split into 26 alphabetical chapters and filled with entries on historical figures and events, professions and religions, activities and items. Unlike a traditional encyclopedia, however, McCartney’s entries are heavily dependent on his own interests and connections, mixing in the names of loved ones and personal totems. Additionally, none of the entries are presented as straight fact, but rather brief prose where he considers just why it is matters.

McCartney falls on this classification system because to him “when faced with existence, it seemed the only thing to do was to describe and categorize.” A melancholy, almost fatalistic tone permeates the entirety of the book, regularly trying to escape into a dreamlike state where each item cataloged can achieve some sense of permanency. While the writing style comes across as overdone for some entries (“you can always find me in the space halfway between the world and its destruction”), the fact that there are hundreds of topics means readers shift easily to the next and not be turned off by the work.

And it’s truly surprising the amount of things that matter to McCartney and what he can write about. In one letter alone – F for example – entries range from the mortality of fingerfucking to flies cutting their wrists to the Dominican monk Fra Angelico to Marie Antoinette’s taste in furniture. It’s random but creative at the same time, each entry going off in a direction sometimes only tangentially related to its topic. As a result some absurd extensions result, such as comparing the Bronte sisters to Los Angeles cholo gangs or speculating on how Franz Kafka would have written gay pornography.

While the format may not lend itself to a narrative, McCartney manages to tell stories by linking up the various entries, using successive articles on hair and dreams as mini-biographies for his childhood. There are also several recurring items: “Anna Karenina” and Kafka make multiple appearances, as do several almost Burroughsian references to young men and assholes (one particularly entertaining section points out no two are the same and they identify as well as fingerprints).

Ironically, “The End of the World Book” ends up something very hard to classify under one word or even one letter. At various points inspiring and frustrating, and by definition not the sort of book to be read in one sitting, it’s an ambitious work that occasionally gets bogged down in pretension but immediately makes you laugh or think with the next entry. McCartney’s entry on the world itself states he loves “every object and every hairline crack in every object,” and that fascination shines through and makes his book as weighty and interesting as any gold-edged encyclopedia volume.

Book Review: Beat the Reaper

Beat The Reaper: A Novel

By Josh Bazell

Published January 7, 2009

Little, Brown and Company

320 pp.

ISBN 0-316-03222-0

Reviewed May 17, 2009

When you look at mainstream television and wade past the slew of reality shows and generic comedies, scripted drama tends to be dominated by two genres. First is the criminal world, represented by epic series like “The Sopranos” or “Law and Order”-style procedurals; and second is the medical field, headed by the “ER” juggernaut and a slew of comedic dramas such as “House” or “Grey’s Anatomy.” Both series have their own distinct traits but also share common threads: overly tense environments, a heavy dose of gallows humor and a professional lingo that takes a few episodes to understand.

Despite the similarities between and popularity of both genres, the two rarely come together – which is a mistake, if Josh Bazell’s first novel “Beat the Reaper” is any indication. A mix of “ER” and “A History of Violence,” casting a hitman in the role of a downtrodden medical resident, “Beat the Reaper” is a book with a distinctive voice, an educated grasp of its subject matter and a talent for delivering some truly shocking scenes.

The hitman in question is Pietro “Bearclaw” Brnwa, alias “Peter Brown” – a contract killer for a New York crime family who has been placed in witness protection and now works agonizingly brutal graveyard shifts at Manhattan Catholic. At the start of one of these shifts, he finds out a terminal cancer patient not only recognizes him, but has contacted a friend to put the word out in the event of his death. With the patient about to go under the knife, Brnwa has to feverishly find a way to keep him alive – while at the same time dealing with every other demand an understaffed hospital encompasses.

Obviously there’s a big difference between the Hippocratic oath and murder for hire, but Bazell does a surprisingly solid job of melding the two. The story, told in first-person present tense, shows how Brnwa’s mind processes the situation from a medical standpoint, such as when he downs mugger with brutal efficiency and goes through the anatomy of breaking the elbow. It’s a wry, cynical voice reminiscent of Edward Norton’s narration in “Fight Club,” and it drives the story on through his narration and a variety of wry footnotes rattling off medical facts and legalese.

Brnwa makes for an interesting character, but it’s the hospital he operates in that commands your attention. Bazell, who holds both an MD and an English literature degree, has stocked the book full of details that could only be known by someone operating in the healthcare trenches. Readers will learn how residents function during obscenely long shifts (stimulants procured from drug reps, Milk of Magnesia poured over cold cereal), see just how sexist an oncologist can be in the operating room and how a doctor can tell how old you are at first glance. All of these asides are offered in the same cynical and resigned tone, resembling the narration for “Scrubs” as read by Mel Gibson.

The medical terminology is so well mastered that the mob sections – flashbacks filling every other chapter – regularly come up short. There’s a fair share of gratuitous violence and commentary on the state of America’s legal system, but many of the characters depicted lack the realism and personality of the hospital residents. A few scenes are simply over-the-top even in the book’s context and there are also one or two unnecessary plot twists – one in particular involving the background of Pietro’s grandparents – that feel like Bazell is reaching for impact.

And reaching isn’t something he needs to, as the book is ripe with truly disturbing scenes. Beyond the burnout and apathy of the general hospital staff, Manhattan Catholic is rife with events that require a strong constitution to even witness. Syringes of unidentifiable contents, legs that swell up with blood for unknown reasons and clearly unsanitary surgical equipment all populate the area, and give Brnwa more immediate concerns than mafia shooters. The last few chapters are particularly macabre, with a trapped Brnwa once again falling back on medical school to create the most wincingly painful improvised weapon in literature.

While the book is a bit too eager to set up a sequel – the epilogue chapter is almost ham-handed in presenting plot threads – the majority of the volume is so well done that its continuation is encouraged. “Beat the Reaper” is entertaining and fast-paced, a thinking man’s suspense novel with enough of the real world in it to make readers even more uncomfortable about their next visit to the hospital.

Back Shelf Review: Novel with Cocaine

(Editor’s note: After a reread I decided this book could use a more professional review, so it’s now been completely retooled from an earlier post. I don’t usually do this, but I like this book enough I wanted the review to measure up.)

Novel with Cocaine

By M. Ageyev

Published 1934, reprinted October 1998

Northwestern University Press

204 pp.

ISBN 0-810-11709-6

Reviewed May 13, 200

“Novel with Cocaine” (also translated as “Cocaine Romance”) is a book that is very much a historical curiosity. It is the only novel from mysterious author M. Ageyev, first published in the early 1930s in Paris and only rediscovered by chance 50 years later in a second-hand bookstore. Despite its obscure nature, it enjoys several distinctions: it was a favorite of John Updike, an influence on William S. Burroughs and it was even alleged to be the work of Vladimir Nabokov writing under a pen name (a notion Nabokov’s son has dismissed).

The accolades and comparisons are varied, but the novel justifies all of them. “Cocaine” is a startlingly well-done book, not overly long or convoluted in the manner of more well-known Russian novels, and also not as surreal and off-putting as some drug memoirs. After reading, it’s actually surprising that the book has not seen wider publication, as it fits easily into both of the previous canons with little difficulty holding its own.

“Cocaine” is the coming-of-age story of Vadim Maslennikov, a young man growing up in World War I Russia. As the war wages on and hints of what would become the Russian Revolution stir in the country, Vadim is fixated only on his personal development and the easiest way for him to reach what he sees as his rightful place in the world. Reflecting the title’s dual meaning, he seeks fulfillment in a serious relationship and, when his darker side drives her away, runs to the electric power of cocaine.

Vadim is an unlikable character from the start, a self-centered adolescent reminiscent of Alec from “A Clockwork Orange.” The first half of the book is filled with his own indulgences, desperate attempts to polish his image and maintain his sense of superiority. He shoves his impoverished mother away in public, looks for casual sex while recovering from syphilis and takes more pride in insulting classmates rather than speaking to them. Ageyev makes it impossible to like Vadim but never impossible to pay attention to him, exposing the insecurities and self-loathing beneath his preening.

Vadim’s faults are regularly on display, but they never ruin the novel chiefly because the quality of the writing outweighs them. From an almost ornamental description of Russia in winter to the almost foppish nature of Vadim’s cohorts, Ageyev displays himself as a craftsman in constructing his sentences. The novel’s descriptive passages are evocative without being overblown, and many of the passages border on brilliant (a particular favorite is Vadim’s trolling for sex, where “A woman who smiled at a look like mine could only be a virgin or a prostitute”). We also see a picture of the revolutionary Russian mindset, its educational and political reforms shown in the vicious intellectual character of Vadim’s classmate Burkewitz.

The chief place where the writing skill comes into play though is in the book’s titular narcotic, as one melancholy evening Vadim comes into contact with drugs and loses his “nasal virginity.” At this point, the book turns from a story of growing up to a drug-centric tale, and as such gains a new series of responsibilities. Whether the topic is heroin or mescaline or LSD or some cocktail of the above, an drug author needs to fill the same role as a pusher: gradually reel them in by showing the benefits of the drug, and then once they get comfortable let the horror of withdrawal sink in.

While it’s impossible to know just how much of “Novel with Cocaine” is based on the truth, Ageyev’s descriptions of the effects and aftereffects of cocaine are so frighteningly vivid it’s hard to imagine he wasn’t at least a casual user. Vadim’s first night captures the awkwardness of learning the ritual, the terrifying icy feeling of the first snort quickly turning into joy, the manic urges and periods of catatonia and fixation on rituals such as smoking cigarettes. It’s taut writing that pulls the reader into a nightmarish state, and is easily the book’s best section.

As Vadim falls into the inevitable madness of excessive cocaine use, Ageyev uses him to philosophize in much the same way he used Burkewitz earlier in the book to explore the Russian mindset. He speculates on the nature of pleasure and how it is tied to external elements, using it as a rationale for his continued drug use – a rationale that evaporates as soon as the drug wears off, leading him to delirious reflections on mankind’s bestial nature. It’s a starkly intellectual way to depict the highs and lows Vadim goes through, though it does nothing to make a reader feel sorry for him as the symptoms get worse.

It may be hard to pity Vadim as he is destroyed by faults entirely his own, but it is even harder to quit following the story to the bitter end. At varying turns frightening, evocative, romantic and deplorable, “Novel With Cocaine” is a well-constructed novel that will interest readers of various genres. While the identity of Ageyev may forever be a mystery, “Cocaine” keeps his name alive – as well as the hope that in some Paris attic exists a chest of his unpublished works.