The 2011 NYT Best Book List: What I’m Waiting for in Paperback

Proudly, I’ve read all the New York Times notable books from last year that piqued my interest. With the exception of the book on Cleopatra. Haven’t found that one yet. But now it’s a new year, and a new list is out to replace the old. Below are the books I’m most interested in reading in 2012.

THE BARBARIAN NURSERIES. By Héctor Tobar. The NYT says it’s “a big, insightful novel about social and ethnic conflict in contemporary Los Angeles.” From the review, it’s about an interracial couple in LA, who experience an even more pronounced divide between themselves and their gardeners and maids even though they share a common heritage. An interesting topic for sure.

CHANGÓ’S BEADS AND TWO-TONE SHOES. By William Kennedy. From the NYT: “In Kennedy’s most musical work of fiction, a newspaperman attains a cynical old-pro objectivity as Albany’s political machine pulls out the stops to head off a race riot in 1968.” From my point of view, I love William Kennedy and will read just about anything he writes. But the saucy subjects of political machines and race rioting adds extra appeal.

11/22/63. By Stephen King. From the NYT: “A meditation on memory, loss, free will and necessity, King’s novel sends a teacher back to 1958 by way of a time portal in a Maine diner. His assignment is to stop Lee Harvey Oswald — but first he must make sure of Oswald’s guilt.” I’m intrigued because Stephen King normally doesn’t get props from the literati, and this book apparently is the new hotness. And it appears to be a big departure from fantasy and horror, King’s touchstones.

LOST MEMORY OF SKIN. By Russell Banks. From the NYT: “This novel, about a paroled sex offender, bravely tries to find humanity in people whom society often despises.” Plot description alone has me hooked. I’m curious as to how an author can pull that off.

THE MARRIAGE PLOT. By Jeffrey Eugenides. The NYT says, “Eugenides adeptly renders the patter of college intellectuals and the sweet banter of courtship, and is particularly astute on the uncertainties awaiting after graduation.” They had me at Jeffrey Eugenides, and then pushed me over with “the patter of college intellectuals.”

THE PALE KING: An Unfinished Novel. By David Foster Wallace. From the NYT: “Unfolding on an epic scale, this coherent, if uncompleted, portrayal of our age is a grand parable of late capitalism, set in the innards of the Internal Revenue Service.” For one thing, I believe the hype about David Foster Wallace. For another, I can’t wait for his take on Kafkaesque bureaucracy and capitalism.

TEN THOUSAND SAINTS. By Eleanor Henderson. From the NYT: “Henderson’s fierce, elegiac novel follows a group of friends, lovers, parents and children through the straight-edge music scene and the early days of the AIDS epidemic.” Interesting topics, interesting time period. Sign me up.

CATHERINE THE GREAT: Portrait of a Woman. By Robert K. Massie. From the NYT: “Massie provides a sweeping narrative about the impressive minor German princess who became empress of Russia.” How can anyone not be interested in reading about Catherine the Great? Plus, I know too little about Russian history. Pretty sure this will be super interesting.

CLARENCE DARROW: Attorney for the Damned. By John A. Farrell. From the NYT: “In this biography, Darrow’s unsavory side is on view, from his personal callousness to his purchasing of testimony.” Rich and compelling, no? I’m fascinated by Darrow’s cases, and learning more about his seedy nature should be illuminating.

INSIDE SCIENTOLOGY: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion. By Janet Reitman. From the NYT: “Reitman has rendered the most complete picture of Scientology so far.” I’m just dying to get my hands on this. I know little about Scientology, beyond some of the crazy overviews provided by South Park. It’s so hidden from public view, this should be highly illuminating.

A TRAIN IN WINTER: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France. By Caroline Moorehead. From the NYT: “Moorehead meticulously traces the fates of 230 Frenchwomen sent to Auschwitz as political prisoners of the Reich.” Stories about the abuses of the Nazis are always interesting, and I admittedly have gaps in knowledge about the French resistance. This should be fascinating.

A Visit from the Goon Squad: Good at the Time, but Unmemorable

I’ve been remiss in my blogging as of late. I’ve been reading, but haven’t had time to capture my thoughts on each novel. So, now I’m going back a couple of months to write the reviews I should have written at the time.

First up is A Visit from the Goon Squad, which I finished just before Christmas. And, although I liked it at the time I read it, I have to confess that I needed to re-read summaries of the book just to recall some of the more salient plot points. And that should tell you something – in about a month, I forgot a great deal about this book. With a couple of pretty notable exceptions.

The most interesting and memorable aspect of Goon Squad is the narrative style. A series of 13 different characters each get their own section of the book to advance the plot from their point of view. These tales cover about 40 years, go well into the future and do not follow chronological order. Instead, pieces are stitched together in order of importance to character development. To provide an example, the first chapter of the book is devoted to Sasha, who’s in a therapist’s office to deal with her kleptomania. We later hear about Sasha at work from the section narrated by her boss, her college experience from an old friend who accidentally drowns in the Hudson River, her family life from her uncle who travels to Naples to rescue Sasha after she’s run away from home and is paying her bills through prostitution, and her later marriage as told by the point of view of her daughter.

Not only do you get to know characters from the points of view of several different narrators, who often have differing and conflicting impressions, but each narrator has their own story telling style. Each chapter is wholly different, not just because the point of view has shifted, but because the nature of the narrative shifts to fit the different people and their place in the story. Perhaps the most incredible example of this is the chapter narrated by Sasha’s daughter, who tells her story in a simple, direct fashion, as children are wont to do, using PowerPoint slides. In the hands of a lesser author, this would be nothing more than a cheap gimmick. But Jennifer Egan not only manages to make the chapter believable as a child’s perspective, but you really do get insights into the family dynamic using the medium of a slide deck, something I’ve never seen before in modern fiction. In essence, it works.

By virtue of the volume of characters, and the short amount of time each of them are allotted to share their perspective, it’s easy to forget portions of the plot. But a few characters, particularly Sasha, have a fairly well rounded arc. And although memorability is a problem for Goon Squad, I do give points for style, and here the book succeeds with aplomb.

Getting Back to Business

Although I’ve been reading a LOT, my last few books weren’t really blog worthy.

I finally read Burr in the interest of completing the Gore Vidal American history series, and although it was slightly interesting, it was what it was. A book about Aaron Burr. There were some new insights on Washington, who apparently was a super crappy general, but I honestly have nothing more to say about it. The duel with Alexander Hamilton really wasn’t that saucy.

Then there was Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which was good fun, especially for the Halloween season. Basic plot here is that vampires are everywhere in America, and they are responsible for the murder of Lincoln’s mother. This spurs a lifetime dedicated to vampire hunting. Vampires, apparently, are also the cause of the Civil War, as they align themselves with slave owners in order to have a buffet of victims without fear of criminal action – provided they pay for them first. And, of course, John Wilkes Booth was a vampire, too. Fun, but that’s really all there is to say about that.

But now, it’s time to get serious again with Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers.

Now, I can’t say enough about Dave Eggers and my unending well of adoration for his work. Although I can take or leave his fiction, he is the most gifted memoirist in the history of the genre. I’ve been raving about Eggers since A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – which is on my all-time personal favorites list. And if you find that self-indulgent (which you should because it is…brilliantly so), What Is the What is far more restrained and beautiful, with none of the self congratulations. It is just an amazing, rich personal story of a Sudanese immigrant who had to go through hell and back to escape a brutal civil war only to find himself in a refugee camp for the better part of a decade, waiting for a chance to immigrate to the United States.

Closer to the tradition of What Is the What, Zeitoun tells the story of a Syrian American building contractor and his family (with the surname Zeitoun), who are living in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hits. For my part, I’m pretty tired of the endless parade of Katrina sympathy stories and, frankly, of New Orleans for continuing to bellyache about it six years after the fact. But this book is not about bellyaching. It’s a simple narrative of what happens to this family – there’s no screed against Bush, no winks to the “heckuva job, Brownie” or the “just tip the wing” comments. There’s no commentary about the Superdome. No complaining about the Army Corps of Engineers.

There’s no mention of these things, because they were never seen by the Zeitoun family.

What they did experience was a city that became completely flooded in the days after the storm so that the most reliable form of transportation became a simple aluminum canoe. In the wake of this devastation, Zeitoun sees no emergency responders or public officials. His only encounters with “help” are a couple of National Guard fan boats, who merely blow by Zeitoun in his canoe even though there are dozens of desperate people in the area in need of assistance. In the absence of any “official” response to the neighbors who remain trapped in their homes, Zeitoun starts making the rounds, rescuing elderly or infirm residents by himself or with the help of neighbors. Zeitoun even takes to helping the area’s abandoned animals, feeding his neighbors’ dogs with his own freezer full of meat.

After about a week of this community-organized assistance, Zeitoun is at one of his rental properties with a few friends who have also been helping out in the neighborhood. Out of nowhere, the property is raided by a makeshift band of law enforcement officers packing machine guns. Zeitoun and his friends are all imprisoned in an outdoor kennel-style jail hastily constructed by convict labor on a Greyhound parking lot. The charge? Terrorism. And with no evidence against them, they are held for over a month, without rights, a court arraignment, lawyers, or even phone call to tell someone, somewhere that they have been incarcerated.

The human rights issues aside, the book is most effective when detailing the totally screwed up priorities Americans had at the time of the storm. Or at least elected Americans, because the city’s residents seemed to have their hearts and minds in the right place.

What other conclusion can there be when you learn that the responders who came to New Orleans, under the auspices of helping help storm victims, spent their first days after the destruction building a new prison facility, before providing any food, water or medical aid? How much of what we heard about looting, baby rapes and roving gangs of murderers was exaggerated to fit within a salacious and sensational pre-determined storyline that would “sell” in white suburbia: That poor black people in New Orleans, faced with bad circumstances, would quickly devolve into post-apocalyptic banditos until the city looked more like Mogadishu than the United States? Obviously, officials went to New Orleans with that idea in mind first, and wild media reports kept adding fuel to the fire. And in a climate like that, what’s surprising isn’t that Zeitoun was arrested – it’s that more Zeitouns weren’t.

In the Garden of Beasts, or Gee, That Sounds Familiar

It’s an overused and much abused cliché in modern America to compare anyone that disagrees with your point of view to a Nazi. I’m not about to do that. But after reading In the Garden of Beasts, I can’t help but compare the environment that allowed brown shirts and thugs to take control of a modern world power with our own.

The first parallel is economic. At the time the Hitler government first assumed power, Germany was a busted economic engine, and as the book points out, the U.S.’s primary concern when it came to diplomatic relations was gaining assurances that the Germans would continue to pay off debt held by American bankers. Hitler represented a hope to Germany – a hope for jobs and growth. All of which he achieved … by declaring war on the world.

The second is social. As we all know, Hitler almost immediately sought to build a new Germany by declaring certain people enemies of the state. And although we’re certainly not sending anyone to concentration camps, there was a Presidential debate this week where the notion that an uninsured individual should be locked out of safety net medical care to die was soundly applauded. That charming salvo was followed up by a diatribe on vaccinating women to prevent cervical cancer.

In essence, it has now become ok and socially acceptable to express hateful racism, sexism, classism and a slew of other negative “isms” in public, on TV. Provided of course that it’s associated with “getting America back on track.”

To fail to notice this disgusting downturn in the public discourse is to fall into the same trap our government did when dealing diplomatically with Hitler. In the Garden of Beasts details the daily life of the first American ambassador to Hitler’s Germany. At first, we didn’t particularly care for the Nazis’ social policies, but did believe a new Germany was blooming, and that a basically good thing was happening under the new regime. We ignored all the early signs and sloughed off despicable behavior because we thought ultimately it would subside and economic prosperity would take its place. We were so very wrong.

Similarly today, we let shameful applause lines go without broad public condemnation, saying it’s just a sign of the times or the byproduct of our economy. And that’s true. But just because we’re in a financial pickle is no excuse for a lapse in morality.

And we are talking about morality, embodied in a rhetoric shift that warrants greater scrutiny. Think for a minute how some characterize the notion of “entitlement.” Entitlement is a bad word whenever a foreigner or person of color accesses the social safety net. In those cases, we’re fostering a culture of “hand outs” and creating a “nanny state” when people really should be taking care of themselves. But whenever an English speaking white person accesses the system, entitlements become a reflection of our poor economy and job losses. And Medicare is sancrosanct. So, it’s ok for some of us to use and need the safety net, but not others?

I point out this fact because it was once unthinkable that America could ever resemble Germany in the 1930s. But we’re there. In fact, we’ve gotten so drunk at the Tea Party that complete insanity now looks moderate.

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.