Oh, the Humanity! - Best Disaster Books

With the great quake of 2011 behind us, and everyone gearing up for Hurricane Irene, I thought I’d recommend some good disaster-related fiction for my dear readers, in the event that you want to curl up with one of these tales while you wait for impending doom to pass.

Shipwreck

Life of Pi, by Yan Martel – Pi and his family are zookeepers, who pack themselves and the animals off to sea for a new life in a new country. But soon enough, their ship sinks, stranding Pi on a small evacuation boat with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and …a Bengal tiger. You can imagine the results. Or can you? Because the novel isn’t very clear cut. Was Pi really on a boat with animals? Or is the story just a child’s imaginative way of processing disaster? Deciding pretty directly correlates with your view on religion.

Hurricane

Stormy Weather, by Carl Hiassen – Set against the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew, Stormy Weather is hilarious, proving once again that nothing good comes out of Florida. Featuring a fentanyl addicted ex con named Snapper who’s running an insurance scam (or set of scams, to be more accurate), and a cracked ex-Florida governor known as Skink who’s trying to make a point about the Everglades, everyone in Stormy Weather has an agenda. And there actually is a point. Haissen is sarcastic as hell, but there was a ton of profiteering going on after Andrew, and someone needed to paint the picture.

Pandemic

The Stand, by Stephen King – We all know the plot by way of either the novel itself or the now-classic TV miniseries. But decades after The Stand was published, it still stands alone as one of the best novels showing the fear and the very real potential effects of a global pandemic that kills off more than 90 percent of the population. Say what you will about a show down with the devil, but the larger point of the book is to show that people break one of two ways in a disaster – they either try to rebuild or they try to take it all down.

Nuclear attack

Swan Song by Robert McCammon – Basically The Stand, but after a nuclear explosion destroys the entire nation. No devil, per se, but there are some sadistic bastards running around, with the added disadvantage of being sick and deformed by nuclear fallout. Sad thing about this novel is that the focus is on how there is no preparation for this type of attack. Those that burrowed underground to avoid the “Big One” were subsequently entombed there. And those that weren’t have to spend their lives struggling to find basic necessities in a wasteland, competing for resources with roving, murderous gangs.

Plane crash

Lord of the Flies, by Robert Golding – Another one we all had to read in high school, but with good reason. Look around. Are we sure we’re not living in a place free of adult supervision? Because things certainly look to have gone native out my window. To this day, Lord of the Flies is a great source of debate, underscoring some fundamental political divisions in our country. Are we born bad and just have a thin layer of society standing between civility and a flash mob? Or are we made bad over time by society’s injustices?

Breaking Up With Anthony Bourdain

I was a fan of Anthony Bourdain.

I read Kitchen Confidential over a decade ago, and immediately was hooked. Memoir is such an indulgent genre, one that by its very nature lends itself toward self-congratulation. But Kitchen Confidential was different. It struck just the right balance of hilarity, self-criticism and insight. In fact, in the canon of great memoirs, I’d put Kitchen Confidential right up there with Elie Weisel’s Night. The subjects couldn’t be more different, but Kitchen Confidential is every bit as unforgettable and cautionary– when’s the last time you ate out and ordered fish on Wednesday? Point made.

I also enjoyed A Cook’s Tour, the basis for Bourdain’s subsequent TV shows, which also used to be fabulous. I loved Bourdain’s humor, his pirate-y crassness, his unapologetic on-camera smoking, his ascerbic tongue. I also loved his in-your-face presentation of how the real world works – and, by extension, eats. It was a breath of fresh air.

It is because I loved Bourdain so much that I am about to rip him a new one.

He broke the rules.

Like a spouse who gains 100 pounds after having children, or one that suddenly discovers some culty religion 10 years into the marriage, Bourdain has changed. And I don’t particularly care for the new Tony.

I call this the Billy Joel effect. Remember when Billy Joel got married? And what happened to his music? If you’re like me, you remember and adored The Stranger and Glass Houses, and then it’s all a bunch of acapella 80s schlock and commercial jingles. No one wanted to hear Billy Joel sing songs of contentment. His draw was that he was a funny looking malcontent who drank too much, made an ass of himself and documented his self-destructive tendencies in song. We could, in short, relate.

And I believe the seeds of Bourdain’s destruction similarly lie in his new life as husband and father. So this screed was a long time in the making.

Sin #1 took place on No Reservations – the Washington DC episodes. Bourdain has been to DC twice, and both shows are criminally negligent. The first was total cliché, with Bourdain exploring how DC is a city of haves and have nots. Of power brokers, and the desperately poor. Gee, no one knew about that, Tony. Great show! And where does he eat in DC, for the 10 minutes of the show actually devoted to food? Fucking Chadwicks. That’s not a typo. He ate at CHADWICKS! Followed by two places in Arlington – not DC. He does pop over to Mini Bar, which is worth a segment, and eats crabs at the waterfront. But, I’m sorry … CHADWICKS!

The second episode is oh-so-preachy and dedicated to exploring the racial divide in DC. Again, how lazy and obvious? And what are the two great marvels of black cuisine featured on the show? Ben’s Chili Bowl and … wait for it… Busboys and Poets. Did anyone working on this show spend a millisecond actually researching DC? Ben’s has already been on every food/travel show known to man, so it was an obvious choice. But Busboys and Poets? Not so obvious, for obvious reasons. It’s a terrible place! It’s not known for its food, just its heaping portions of pretention.

No references in either show about what makes DC fun or unique. No mention of our diverse immigrant culture, particularly Hispanics. No discussion of our thriving punk scene – and this from a Ramones fan! In an episode devoted to questions of race, go-go – black DC’s self-invented musical genre - is not explored. Nor are places like Colonel Brooks, where upper middle-class black and white eat together in a racially mixed northeast neighborhood. No Komi. No Kaz Sushi Bistro. No Salvadorian food. No DuPont farmers’ market. No. That would have required actually talking to someone who lives in DC and eating somewhere other than a strip mall in Arlington.

Sin #2 was the Haiti episode, where Bourdain sucks off Sean Penn for having the “courage” to live in a tent until all the sins of post-colonialism can be righted. And this is done with a straight face. Sean Penn, who can buy and sell the entire nation, is choosing to live in that tent – almost solely for the purposes of enhancing his wanton narcissism. It’s not brave, it’s bragging rights. “You sent a check to the Haiti relief fund? Well, I went there and lived in tent! I’m better than you! I care more deeply.”

Sin #3 is the subject of this post, Bourdain’s latest book, Medium Raw. This is a hot mess of a “book,” part memoir, part enemies list and part cutting room floor essays from the show. Clearly capitalizing off the Bourdain name, Tony’s editors have become very relaxed, agreeing to publish the disorganized, random musings from an ex-chef with the greatest job in the world. Ability no longer matters. Just throw his picture on the front cover and collect the checks – Tony will be kicking it in Sardinia.

And that’s why I’m pissed. Because he has the greatest job in the world. He… gets… paid… to trot about to exotic ports of call, eat fabulous food, drink like a fish and write about it. So, when you phone it in for a book like Medium Raw, what does that say? You can’t even be troubled to do a job that most people, myself included, would kill for? Are you experiencing my tooth gnashing anger yet?

The problem is that Bourdain has become everything that he once criticized with such aplomb in Kitchen Confidential. He’s become lazy. And he’s buying his own publicity. He has no right to fight with celebrity chefs anymore – he’s just as bad. He just whores for the publishing world as opposed to developing his own line of frying pans.

That’s why it’s positively insulting when Bourdain anoints “heros and villains” of the food world in Medium Raw – without even a passing thought to the irony implicit in demonizing people for exactly the crimes he committed with this lazy, self-indulgent, piece of crap book.

And what’s the point of fighting with Food Network stars anymore? Once it was charming because Tony wasn’t one of them - they were the “other.” But now, The Travel Channel, which carries No Reservations, is owned by the Food Network! He IS a Food Network star. He’s been on Top Chef, seated right next to Tom Colicchio, whom he busts on in the book. What level of cognitive dissonance is required to ignore that? What hubris to think you’re still somehow above it all?

And yet, he continues. This week, waging war with Paula Deen. Say what you will about Paula’s food. Personally, I won’t eat it because I’d be better served nutritionally with a box of Hamburger Helper. But at least she’s not out there calling people assholes for the unthinkable act of earning a living exactly the same way she does.
 

I’m not against making fun of Food Network stars, but prefer it be done by those with the credibility to pull it off. Like the creators of South Park, who nailed it with one Cartman impression of Gordon Ramsay – “Rustic. Simple. Beef Wellington. You can’t COOK, get out of my kitchen!” It’s not nasty. It’s his own words. The comedy writes itself.

And with Medium Raw, Bourdain has made himself a joke. And not just any joke. A joke that he himself wrote, but doesn’t seem to get.

A Feast for Crows: The Weakest Link

No Tyrion, no John Snow and no Danerys. Boo-urns on all that.

Without the most compelling characters in the Song of Ice and Fire series, A Feast for Crows falls flat, and underwhelms after the intensity of A Storm of Swords.

Most of the characters in Crows are minor, and even the main cast is just…well, floundering about. Nothing too terribly interesting happens to Arya in this installment, Samwell spends most of his time on a boat, Brienne wanders around hopelessly looking for Sansa and Jaime goes to Riverrun. Ummmm. OK.

Probably knowing that Crows was not going to live up to the expectations that nearly everyone had after reading A Storm of Swords, George R.R. Martin does provide some bombshells toward the end, including an interesting new truth about Dornish loyalties, Brienne’s sad but faithful end and a bad turn of fate for Queen Cersei.

In fact, without the Cersei chapters, Feast would have been a total waste of time. Well, maybe not total, as the content in this book is setup so you have context for the good stuff that’s supposed to go down in A Dance with Dragons. But Cersei definitely does save this book from being only mildly interesting, and makes it much better.

So, what’s Cersei’s deal? As a narrator, you learn that Cersei is every bit as awful as the other characters would have had us believe all along. She’s been relentlessly plotting and scheming since Game of Thrones, but she’s always had her brothers Jaime and Tyrion and her father Tywin to serve as backstops, keeping her out of hot water when her plots go awry. But Jaime’s fed up with Cersei now that he’s grown a conscience and learned that some of her betrayals were at his expense, and her father is dead. It was only a matter of time before her duplicity bit her in the ass.

Cersei careens from one awful miscalculation to the next. She’s completely paranoid, seeing machinations everywhere. And she’s incredibly self-congratulatory and believes her counter-plots are outsmarting everyone. But the reality is that she’s not as shrewd as she believes herself to be, and she ends up making enemies rather than elevating herself to unquestioned power. In quick succession, Cersei totally screws up Kings Landing and the Lannisters' hold on it, appointing a pathetic counsel to serve as King Tommen’s advisors, stirring up feuds within her own family, turning to shady and dishonest people to form her inner circle and creating a new army of religious zealots not answerable to the Iron Throne. All of which plant the seeds of her own doom.

So, there was that.

Bottom line is that it’s been pretty well documented what happened in the creative process to create both Feast and Dragons – the number of characters and the enormity of the events in Westeros got too big and too complicated, requiring a single book to be split in two. And Feast is basically all the less interesting chapters of Dragons, made into a stand-alone installment.

The result is a book that is clearly transitional. But one that also must be consumed to truly “get” the entire series. Think of it as the broccoli on your plate that you have to eat before you can have dessert.

Books You Just Can’t Read in Public

I do a fair amount of reading in public – in line, on the Metro, at bars or restaurants. But there are some books that you just can’t read outside your house – for a variety of reasons. Below is my list of books that you should just leave on your nightstand.

Sperm Wars – Now, I can’t say enough great things about this book. It’s written by an evolutionary biologist, and I learned mountains about the science that underpins reproductive choices. And about how many of those choices aren’t choices at all, but are instead primordial impulses hard wired into our genetic code. I made the mistake of reading this in public and it was a constant nightmare. Men everywhere see a woman reading a book called Sperm Wars and think it’s some sort of invitation. C’mon, guys! I’m trying to learn something here. I’m not a pirate hooker, and I’m not out looking to be topped off with your seed.

American Psycho – Another fabulous book that has a lot to say about the greed and decadence of the Reagan era. That said, some scenes are so violently graphic that at one point, I had to get off the Metro on my way to work because the book was making me physically ill – I almost whorfed on a packed red line train. You need to be close to your bathroom when you get into this book. The rat scene in particular would make any sane person lose their lunch.

Mein Kampf – Any student of history needs to read this book. But especially in this era of economic woe and flash mobs, reading Mein Kampf out in public is red meat for the anger mill. No one wants to be called a Nazi and start a race riot, so just keep this book to yourself. I have not read this book in public, but it is in my house – I was, after all, a history major in college. Even having it on your shelves at home is a controversial choice. I can’t even begin to describe some of the debates I’ve had over this one.

Fear of Flying – I hate talking to people, especially during my morning commute with a train full of strangers. But when you read Erica Jong in a public space, invariably some 50+ year-old Angie Dickenson type will want to chat your ear off about the zipless fuck. I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t care about your opinions and I especially don’t want to discuss sexual politics with strangers. Write a letter to Gloria Steinem, ladies. She’s more likely to be interested than I am.