→ October 7, 2008
→ By

The Sot-Weed Factor.

John Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor (on the TIME 100) is a spot-on parody of the picaresque novel, a genre that includes Klaw 100 entries Tom Jones and The Pickwick Papers, novels with wide-ranging comical adventures running to seven or eight hundred pages. The style had been out of favor for well over a century at the time that Barth began work on his magnum opus in the late 1950s, and in satirizing it Barth also managed to imbue his work with a strain of social commentary and of symbolism that the earlier works often lacked.

The book’s unusual title comes from a real poem of the same name, written by Ebenezer Cooke, an English poet who sought himself to satirize the culture and society of the Province of Maryland, about whom little was known at the time that Barth decided to build a false history/biography of the man. “Sot-weed” was another name for tobacco, and a factor is, of course, a middleman in the trade of tangible goods. Barth takes Cooke and makes him into the poet laureate of Maryland, a man bent on preserving his innocence even as he is caught up in various political, military, and criminal intrigues that involve him, his twin sister, the fallen prostitute who is the object of his affections, and his childhood tutor, the shapeshifting Henry Burlingame. Many of these machinations are apparently at the whim of the God-like Lord Baltimore and the Satanic sociopath John Coode, although their appearances in the novel are oblique, to put it mildly.

In great picaresque style, Barth takes Ebenezer from his childhood to his dissolute days of drinking and idleness in London and then sets in motion a Rube Goldberg-like chain of events that lead him into and out of such troubles as marriage, kidnapping, bankruptcy, various threats to life and limb, the loss of his father’s estate, and endless encounters with impostors, not to mention at least three people who pretend to be Ebenezer when he’s not around to defend his name. Like most picaresque novels, The Sot-Weed Factor starts to drag in its final third, but Barth rallies for a slam-bang finish with a sham trial, the exposure of the frauds that remain on the table, and the settlement of all of the loose ends still untied, all set in motion by another pair of coincidences (a standby of the genre) that put Ebenezer and two of his comrades in just the right place at just the right time.

Barth’s novel also veers from the picaresque norm, perhaps by way of deepening the parody, through its sheer bawdiness. The prose is full of double entendres and euphemisms for sex and the body parts used therein. Men are often depicted as sexual animals who’ll take whatever they can get – in some instance, not distinguishing between man or woman, and in one instance between man or beast – while women veer from manipulators who use sex as a tool or as trade to victims-in-waiting for rape or abuse. (Indeed, the offhand treatment of rape was the one glaring negative aspect of the experience of reading the book; whether or not it is appropriate to the time in which the book is set and faux-written does not make one more comfortable with reading about rape, even when it’s never brought to pass on the page.) Tom Jones, at the least, had plenty of sexual shenanigans, and part of the book’s climax (!) comes as the title character nearly unknowingly commits incest. Barth gives the reader more sex, particularly more talk of sex, both satirizing the giants of the literary genre but also setting contrast to the willful virgin Ebenezer, whose drive to protect his innocence is a joke that runs through the entire work to the very last pages. One of the best in-jokes of the book is the alleged “true story” of John Smith and Pocahontas, after which you will never think of an eggplant in the same way again.

Next up: Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Filed Under: Literature, TIME 100 Tagged With: , , , , ,
→ August 3, 2008
→ By

Bel Canto.

All the brilliant things we might have done with our lives if only we suspected we knew how.

Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto, winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and a PEN/Faulkner Award, is a beautifully written, intelligent novel with one of the best-developed character ensembles I have ever found in a work of literature.

Bel Canto is based on the 1997 hostage crisis in Lima, where fourteen members of a fringe guerrilla group invaded the Japanese embassy and held 72 people hostage for four months, at the end of which the Peruvian army stormed the embassy and killed all of the terrorists, with one hostage dying of a heart problem in the assault. Patchett’s version is in an unnamed, poor, Spanish-speaking country, in the Vice-President’s residence, where a party is being held in honor of a Japanese executive, Mr. Hosokawa, who may be about to bring a large capital investment to the country. However, he only agreed to attend the party when the organizers agreed to fly in Roxane Coss, a world-famous opera singer and Hosokawa’s favorite artist.

Patchett tips us off up front that the eventual murder victims will be the terrorists, not the hostages, although of course the characters don’t know that as we follow them through the ordeal. Patchett has created an amazing number of fleshed-out characters, showing skill both at delving into human emotions and at painting characters with the flourishes that give them definition. Once the initial period after the raid has ended, each character, terrorist and hostage alike, finds his or her niche within the makeshift commune, like the Vice President who becomes the housekeeper, or the poor priest with a secret love of opera. (In a flashback scene, Father Arguedas confesses his love of opera to his priest, who responds, “Art is not sin. It’s not always good. But it’s not a sin.” The priest asks Arguedas if he prefers Verdi or Wagner, and when Arguedas responds, “Verdi,” the priest answers, “You are young. Come back and tell me again in twenty years.”) But more impressive is the way Patchett takes the relationships between some of the hostages and some of the terrorists beyond simple Stockholm Syndrome territory, showing how factors such as age, size, gender, and skill define interpersonal relationships and building a web of interactions on that basis.

If there’s a flaw at all in Bel Canto, it’s that Patchett made her terrorists too sympathetic. Most of the rank and file members are just teenagers without ideology, and each of the leaders has some distinct humanizing trait. It’s good writing, but also the book’s biggest departure from reality.

Bel Canto lacks a linear plot, instead telling the stories around the shift from the captor/hostage dynamic to a commune that is so tranquil that some of the hostages find they lose their desire to leave. Whether this is because they’re truly happy or because they’re happy to be escaping from the tedium or stresses of their daily lives is left to the reader to decide.

Next up: I owe you reviews of Embers and the nonfiction book Manhunt, but the next book for me to read is a behemoth, Thackeray’s Vanity Fair.

Filed Under: Literature Tagged With: , , , , , ,
→ April 6, 2008
→ By

Kafka on the Shore.

Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami’s most recent novel, wasn’t quite the masterpiece that its predecessor, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, was, but it’s still in the upper echelon of contemporary novels I’ve read.

Murakami’s narrative is split into two, although we know from the start that they will converge near the book’s conclusion. The first narrative, told in the first person, is the story of a fifteen-year-old boy who runs away from home for reasons that are never entirely clear and adopts the pseudonym of Kafka Tamura. Kafka flees to the city of Takamatsu, on the island of Shikoku, largely because there’s a library there to which he is inexplicably drawn. The second narrative, told in the third person, follows a sixty-year-old simpleton named Nakata who can talk to cats and who is either a mystic or a pawn of mystical forces. Kafka is, to some degree, on a quest to find the mother who abandoned him and his father when he was four years old. Nakata ends up committing a crime he doesn’t understand that may have involved an out-of-body experience … and this just skims the surface of the events in the book.

Like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore is a mind-bender with plenty of magical realism and dreamlike passages. And like its predecessor, it has one scene of very graphic violence (this time against animals, not that that’s much easier to tolerate) and lots of slightly awkward descriptions of sex, although confused sexuality is a major theme in the novel, perhaps as a subset of the larger theme of confused identity. Murakami also raises questions about independence and fate, but like any skilled writer, offers little in the way of set answers other than a few platitudes in the book’s closing pages.

What I particularly enjoy about Murakami’s writing is the way he makes coincidence and fate a part of the novel without allowing the characters to ignore it. They’re either amazed by the coincidences, or are pondering whether it’s fate or Fate at work. Even the magical realism elements get mixed reactions, with some characters unfazed but a few always there to offer some double-u-tee-eff thoughts on the matter.

Next up: We’ve had Paolo Coelho’s The Alchemist for some time, and I’ve even brought it on a few trips, but never got around to actually reading it.

Filed Under: Literature Tagged With: , , , ,
→ February 23, 2008
→ By

Foyle’s War.

Many readers here and at ESPN.com have recommended various TV series to me, notably The Office and The Wire, so I’m going to return the favor by recommending a series that you’ve probably never seen. It’s a British series called Foyle’s War, and it might just be my favorite TV series ever.

Foyle’s War doesn’t fit the description of a typical American television series. Each episode is 100 minutes long, which in the U.S. would make it either a movie or a “very special episode.” The show, which just finished its sixth and final season in the UK, has just nineteen episodes in total. It’s bleak, set in the southern English town of Hastings during the early years of World War II, with such topics as the Blitz, German fifth column elements, biological warfare, and anti-German/anti-Italian sentiment all coming into play. And everything about the show is understated, almost magically so.

I’ve watched my share of American crime dramas – God knows we have a few of them – and the one trait they all have in common is the gotcha. Each hour is broken up into six or seven segments (separated by commercial breaks of unendurable length), and each segment ends with some sort of “Gotcha!” moment – a big twist, a sudden discovery, or just some deus ex machina event of critical evidence just falling into the investigators’ laps. If you love that style of show, Foyle’s War will seem slow in comparison. The stories, while complex, are writ small, with the title character, Deputy Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle, unraveling mysteries by uncovering minor details and using them to guide his next interrogation. It’s so subtle that it could probably never work as an American series, even if a writer could successfully transplant its setting to our shores.

The superb plotting is enhanced by the incredible performances of Michael Kitchen as DCS Foyle. The writers have gifted him with an economy of words, and he maximizes their impact through small gestures and facial expressions, as well as a classically English way of delivering a cutting remark to ensure that it breaks the skin. Never has a television character uttered the words “Is that so?” to such devastating effect.

In addition to purchasing the first season on DVD via the link above, you can get the first five seasons (four DVD sets) via Netflix. There’s also a great Foyle’s War fansite (with its own updates blog) if you’re looking for more detailed info on the series.

Filed Under: DVDs Tagged With: , , ,
→ February 9, 2008
→ By

The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear.

Walter Moers’ The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear was described in a Washington Post review as “equal parts J.K. Rowling, Douglas Adams, and Shel Silverstein,” which isn’t too far off the mark. It’s a flight of fancy, a children’s book written for grown-ups, showcasing an amazingly creative mind, but a little light on storyline.

The book follows Captain Bluebear from his first memories as a tiny cub afloat on the ocean in a nutshell through his first thirteen and a half “lives” – a bluebear has twenty-seven, although these are lives in the sense of chapters of his life, rather than twenty-seven separate mortal coils – each of which is sort of a self-contained story. Most take the form of “Bluebear finds himself in a new environment, gets into trouble (generally not of his own making), and needs to escape.” There are recurring secondary characters through several of the stories, and Moers’ facility with creating both secondary characters and unusual places is incredible – for example, the Earspoonlets:

Even more innocuous and equally beneficial to society were the acoustic vampires popularly known as Earspoonlets, which lived on speech. They were little bigger than dachshunds but had hearing organs of which a young elephant need not have been ashamed. They spent most of their time lying around in public places and pricking up their ears – an extremely amusing sight. Earspoonlets were capable of storing up all they heard for months and regurgitating it before it was fully digested. Thus they were much in demand as itinerant purveyors of information of witnesses of arguments. You could easily annoy them by noiselessly opening and shutting your mouth as if talking. This made them bounce around like mad things, vainly trying to catch the words they thought they were missing.

The whole book is deliberately silly, and there’s little narrative greed to drive you towards the end – no big foozle to kill, no major question to answer, etc. It doesn’t have the relentless plot of the Harry Potter books or the cheerful nihilism of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but instead floats along on its own absurdity. It’s a bit like empty calories, but speaking as someone who loves a rich dessert, empty calories are a perfectly acceptable part of a balanced literary diet – as long as they’re worth it.

Next up: Ian McEwan’s Atonement.

Filed Under: Literature Tagged With: , , , ,
→ October 3, 2007
→ By

Never Let Me Go.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is not what it first seems to be. Set up initially as a wistful remembrance of a childhood in boarding schools, with an apparent destination of an adulthood encounter that brings old wounds to the surface, it turns out that it’s a drama of ethics within a romantic tragedy.

And if you want to read this book, I suggest that you stop here and go pick it up. There’s no way I can write about Never Let Me Go without revealing an early, major plot twist, and the experience of reading the novel will be much more enjoyable if you either figure it out (it’s not that hard) or if you come let the big revelation take you by surprise.

It turns out that Never Let Me Go is set in an alternate universe that is very much like our own but for one detail: Human clones are created and raised to adulthood so that their vital organs may be harvested for donations to conventionally-created humans. The three central characters, including the narrator, are all such clones, being raised in one of the few enlightened wards for these human livestock, and the narrator takes us back to their childhood, then adolescence (including the time when they learn their ultimate fate), then to the period of their “donations.”

The novel’s two parts – the dystopic horror story and the romantic tragedy – are perfectly integrated, but they weren’t equally effective. The romantic tragedy fell short for me; Kathy, her moody and often malicious friend Ruth, and the slightly simple but passionate Tommy end up in a sort of love triangle, and we’re to understand that Kathy and Tommy are in love with each other but are kept apart to a degree by Ruth. That feeling never came through in the characters’ words or actions, or even Kathy’s thoughts; she and Tommy are clearly friends, with a bond stronger than that between Tommy and Ruth, who are an actual couple during part of their time in boarding school and their time in the “cottages” where they spend their college-aged years. Kathy’s feelings towards Tommy seem to range from friendship to an almost older sister/younger brother dynamic, but romantic love didn’t come through until the two do become a couple as adults, when Tommy has begun his donations and Kathy is a “carer,” a visiting nurse to donors who will eventually begin her donations after a few years in carer service.

On the other hand, the quasi-morality play which Ishiguro presents to the reader is powerful and disturbing. The clones themselves seem to accept their fate without overtly questioning it – Ruth at one point asks, “It’s what we’re supposed to be doing, isn’t it?” – yet they show clear signs of humanity as well, falling in love and hoping they can find a way to defer their donation periods to enjoy a brief period with their mates, thinking and dreaming about living normal lives with normal jobs (Ruth dreams of having a routine 9-to-5 office job), and looking for the “possible” from whom they were cloned (much as an adopted or abandoned child might look for his/her biological parents). There are even discussions of whether the clones themselves have “souls” – Ishiguro seems to presume that they do, at least within the story’s context – and we see glimpses of the ethical discussions that go on in the fictional world of how to treat these clones: as people or as livestock (my word, not Ishiguro’s). Ishiguro even presents us with an argument that might sound very familiar to anyone who is squeamish about the idea of meat and poultry coming from the deaths of living creatures when he has one of the school’s teachers explain that people want organs to save the lives of their loved ones so long as they don’t have to know anything about where the organs come from.

It’s an uncomfortable read, but despite the slight failure of the romantic tragedy to capture my interest, it’s a riveting one that you probably won’t be able to put down once you’ve started it. I couldn’t, even though at times I wanted to once I realized that something was seriously amiss in the novel’s world, and that these characters were, by and large, just accepting their fates. It will force you to consider questions you’d rather not try to answer, because to many of them, you won’t find answers you like.

Filed Under: Literature, TIME 100 Tagged With: , , , , , ,
→ September 18, 2007
→ By

Empire Falls.

The moral of this story is that I need to listen to my readers when they recommend a book, because they’re two for two so far. The most recent successful suggestion is Richard Russo’s Empire Falls.

The book’s jacket describes Russo as a “compassionate” writer, which sounds like something that some halfwit in marketing came up with after reading two or three pages of the book, but it turns out to be an incredibly apt description of the way Russo creates and develops his characters. Empire Falls is set in a declining mill town in Maine, and the plot centers on the slightly hapless Miles Roby, manager of the Empire Grill, father of a teenaged daughter, en route to a divorce from his longtime wife Janine, who is leaving him for Walt Comeau, the “Silver Fox” who owns the local gym and is forever challenging Miles to an arm-wrestle. His daughter, Tick, is having her own troubles, including an ex-boyfriend with anger issues, a classmate with a terrible family life and who never speaks, and difficulty dealing with her parents’ divorce, which she squarely blames on her mother. And Russo has populated the town with a number of other characters, all surprisingly well developed despite limited screen time, from Miles’ kleptomaniac father, Max, to the young and possibly gay Catholic priest Mark, to the omnipresent town matriarch, Francine Whiting, who has Miles and perhaps the rest of the community by the balls. Yet with perhaps the sole exception of that last character, everyone in the book is presented with some degree of compassion or at least understanding – people are shaped by their circumstances, some of which are beyond their control, and while many people manage to overcome disadvantageous backgrounds, it’s too easy just to pile blame on those who can’t or won’t.

The story revolves around Miles Roby’s divorce and some of the events in his life that the arrival of the actual legal event (as opposed to the end of his marriage, which happened some time prior to the book’s opening) sets in motion. He has spent twenty years of his life at the restaurant, forever awaiting the day when Francine Whiting will give him the restaurant, probably through her death, which doesn’t seem all that imminent. Russo tells Miles’ story through intermittent flashbacks and changes in perspective, revealing in stages the history of the Whitings, Miles’ family history, and even some of the stories behind the other characters. And since the town is so small, all of the stories intersect at multiple points with other stories, characters run into other characters, and in very thin sheets Russo gives us more and more details on each of them.

The book also reads as an allegorical history of small-town New England, which is dotted with slumping or failing former mill towns that have never really recovered from the end of the area’s textile industry. Empire Falls residents continue to cling to hopes that the mill will re-open and that those who remained will get their old jobs back, remembering, perhaps, good old days that weren’t all that good, and that aren’t coming back even if the town does find a new industry.

The story finally turns in its last fifty or so pages on the one real event of the book, the external stimulus that shocks Miles out of his emotional stupor. It was foreshadowed for a while in the book, but Russo handled it deftly and quickly, almost as if he disdained writing about action when he had dialogue and introspection to write.

A couple of quick notes:

  • This is the seventh winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction that I’ve read, and it’s been a mixed bag. Beloved and To Kill a Mockingbird are among my favorite novels, but Independence Day was disappointing, and I thought The Shipping News managed the twin feat of being vulgar and uninteresting.
  • I was helping out at the Tepper School of Business’s table at an MBA recruiting event on Sunday, and had my copy of Empire Falls sitting on the table. One prospective student noticed it hidden behind a sign, pointed, and just said, “Great book.” Turns out he’s a Mainer and thought that Russo did a fantastic job of capturing the culture of the state’s small towns.
Filed Under: Literature Tagged With: , , , , ,
→ August 10, 2007
→ By

Long Beach eats.

Since I got to my hotel around 11 am Pacific Time, it kind of felt like I was caught in between breakfast and lunch. It seemed like a good time to try Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles, recommended by at least two readers. Much to my surprise, I loved the chicken and didn’t care for the waffles. The chicken was “southern style,” although I’d dispute that since the breading was thin, but either way it was delicious, salty and spicy but not hot-spicy, and it had clearly just come out of the fryer. The white meat was still moist, which to me is always a good test of a kitchen’s frying abilities. The waffles, however, were pale and limp, clearly undercooked, with little sugar (needed for taste but also helps browning) and an overwhelming taste of ground cloves. I did order a biscuit on the side, just on a whim, and it was good even though it was no longer hot – nice flaky texture, buttery flavor, just lacked that crispy exterior I like in a good southern biscuit.

Sunday night I wanted sushi, and since my favorite place from last year (Kinokawa) isn’t open on Sundays, I tried Japengo in downtown Long Beach. It was excellent, with fresh and flavorful fish and very friendly and quick service. I ordered two nigiri, salmon and eel, and two maki, spicy tuna and avocado. A small edamame dish comes with dinner, and after I chatted up the guy making my sushi (from Mexico, but there was at least one Japanese sushi-ya behind the counter), I ended up with a freebie: a roll with salmon and avocado that had been tempura’d whole, served with two sauces, one teriyaki and one mayo-based that didn’t have much taste. I’m not usually big on semi-cooked foods like that – the salmon wasn’t cooked, but it wasn’t quite raw any more either – but I wasn’t going to insult the guy by not eating it, and other than that one objection it was excellent. I do think the salmon was farm-raised, since it was very pale, but it had a good flavor and I’m more concerned with that than I am with how it was raised. Japengo also gets points for very good green tea.

Monday breakfast was a return to the Pot Holder, which was my favorite of the two Long Beach breakfast spots I’d hit last year (the other being Egg Heaven a few blocks away). I went for the chorizo scramble, which – as you might imagine – is scrambled eggs with a healthy dose of chorizo sausage. If, as Mario Batali claims, parmiggiano-reggiano is the undisputed king of all cheeses, then chorizo is the king of all sausages, with a smoky, spicy flavor that can’t be replicated by any pretenders to its throne. The Pot Holder’s chorizo scramble was heavy on the chorizo; the eggs were a bit overcooked and so the whole dish didn’t really hold together, but let’s be honest: I was there for the chorizo. The dish also comes with some solid home fries, soft interior with a nice hard crust, and toast. Total cost for that plus tip was an even $10. I went back the next day and had one of the specials that included scrambled eggs (fine but slightly overcooked), link sausage (straight from a package), and pancakes (solid average).

Monday lunch was In-n-Out. I don’t want to hear it. I like their fries, and I’m not brooking any dissent here.

Dinner was with a friend from college at a place in LA right on the Santa Monica line called Sushi Sasabune. (This appears to be the restaurant’s home page, although it’s more focused on their Honolulu location.) I’ve never been to a sushi place like this. Sasabune bills itself not just as a restaurant that serves only traditional sushi, but as the veritable guardian of the sushi tradition. There are two signs at the front counter stating that they do not serve spicy tuna or other hand-cut rolls like California rolls. It’s not clear if there’s a menu for ordering à la carte; we ordered the omakase, which means that it’s the chef’s choice. As sushi arrived – usually two pieces at a time for each person – the waitress instructs the diners whether or not it is acceptable to use soy sauce on those pieces. The restaurant’s motto, which appears on the wrappers of the steamed hand towels served before the meal, is “Trust Me,” which one lengthy review posted on the walls outside the restrooms translates as, “Shut up and eat what I tell you to.” Such a restaurant wouldn’t likely stay in business long if the food wasn’t good – granted, it might stay in business a while because of idiots who would be drawn to the novelty of the thing – but the sushi here is amazing. The selection of nigiri included but wasn’t limited to halibut, salmon, yellowtail, two kinds of snapper, albacore, butterfish, and kampachi (a real standout, since I hadn’t liked it when I’d tried it previously but liked it here). The last item was a long uncut roll of minced crab and rice. Several of the nigiri came with a sauce already on them, and several had sliced scallions or other tiny accoutrements on top. What stood out about the fish was the amazing texture, which was softer than any sushi I’d ever had previously. The flavors were outstanding, and I can’t remember a dud in the bunch even though some of the sauce-sushi combinations were unusual (to me, at least). It’s not for the fiscally faint of heart: the total cost was over $50 per person. For that kind of money, I don’t just want good food, I want an experience, but Sasabune delivered.

Tuesday’s only new place was Kinokawa, the sushi place I’ve mentioned in chats before. I ended up eating a smaller dinner than normal; I went with soup, salad, some salmon and some unagi – very fresh – plus a cut roll that’s worth mentioning. Last year, they had some ridiculous cut roll (maki) that caught my attention; I remember it had shrimp tempura in the middle and salmon on the outside, and avocado in there somewhere. Well, this time they didn’t have it listed anywhere, so I ordered something similar in the hopes that it would be the same thing or close to it, but it wasn’t. The one I ordered, called the Frederic Roll (I’m sure that’s the traditional Japanese name, too), had shrimp tempura and avocado in the middle and spicy tuna on top. That was fine, but the whole thing was covered with ponzu sauce and a bit of a mayo sauce, and it was just gluttony – too rich, too sweet, too heavy for sushi. I usually avoid fancy rolls because they obscure the taste of the fish, but I was trying to unlock a memory, and unfortunately the teahouse was out of madeleines.

The last good new spot was another breakfast place, The Coffee Cup on 4th. I was pretty happy with the Pot Holder, but I have to say now that the Coffee Cup’s food is better – it’s just better prepared. I went with a special that included two eggs, two sausage links (better, but still generic), and two pancakes, and I ordered a side of toast. The scrambled eggs were cooked just right, barely cooked through but not runny. The pancakes were actually a little overcooked on the outside, with a slightly burned taste, but the cakes themselves were very good, with a light texture. (They came slathered in butter, which is really too bad, because there’s no way I wasn’t going to eat that part first, no matter how bad it is for me.) And unlike at the Pot Holder, the toast at the Coffee Cup wasn’t cold when it reached the table. I’d still have to try a chorizo scramble-type dish at the Coffee Cup to make the switch, but I’m just about sold.

One last note – I did try the Green Field churrascaria, just east of the park where Blair Field is located. Turns out that this is a chain, and I’ve been to one of their locations in Allston, Massachusetts. The food really isn’t that good. It’s not authentic churrasco, since the meat isn’t anywhere near seasoned enough, the feijão is bland, and there were no fried plantains (I don’t know if that’s really authentic, but I’ve had them at other churrascarias, and who cares if they’re authentic or not – they’re plantains, and they’re fried). And this particular place was very disappointing – one of the meats was beyond rare in the middle, while the lamb was well done (that’s not good), and the sides on the buffet table (bad sign) weren’t hot. Skip it.

Off to San Diego…

Filed Under: Food Tagged With: , , , , ,
→ May 25, 2007
→ By

Blood Meridian.

Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian is one of the most brutally violent books I’ve ever read, but in spite of that, it’s also one of the most beautifully written.

McCarthy’s prose is often compared to Faulkner’s, and while some of that is because they’re both from the South (just like every right-handed pitcher from Stanford is automatically compared to Mike Mussina), there are definite similarities in their styles. There’s a lilting quality to many of McCarthy’s sentences, even when he defies conventional sentence structure. He can be sparse with details when it suits his purpose (the novel’s protagonist is never identified beyond “the kid”), but can also fire off a stream of seemingly minute details that in the end paint a rich picture of a scene, a character, a moment. He never descends into the sheer inscrutability that scares so many readers away from Faulkner, who was an original in many ways but who’ll always be loved and reviled most strongly for his prose.

The story revolves around the aforementioned kid, a fourteen-year-old who runs away from his father (his mother died giving birth to him) to head out west and falls in with a group of mercenaries who are hunting an outlaw named Gómez while also collecting scalps of Apaches, all under the auspices of the Mexican government. And that’s where it gets violent – ruthlessly, sociopathically so. The violence isn’t disturbing because it’s graphic – it is, somewhat – but because it’s so effortless and is achieved on so grand a scale. It is genocide writ small, and it’s made all the worse by the fact that McCarthy based it loosely on the real-life Glanton gang, using Glanton’s top lieutenant, Judge Holden, as the primary villain.

The plot didn’t pick up until I was about halfway through the book; the kid seems to take forever to fall in with Glanton/Holden’s gang, and it’s not until things start to go awry that the plot gets interesting, with the kid and Judge Holden gradually forming the central conflict that defines the last third of the book.

If you’ve got the stomach to get through several scenes of extreme – but, as TIME wrote in its summary of the book, never gratuitous – violence, then I would certainly recommend Blood Meridian to anyone who enjoys Faulkner, morality plays (even ones where the moral lines are blurred), or great American literature. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you when the scalps start flying.

Filed Under: Literature, TIME 100 Tagged With: , , , , , ,
→ March 12, 2007
→ By

Scoop: Feather-footed through the plashy fen…

So in a recent chat, I mentioned that I had Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop on my to-be-read shelf, and a reader said something to the effect of, “You HAVE to read Scoop!”

Dear Anonymous Reader:

You were right.

Keith

It’s been a while since I ripped through a classic novel the way I tore through Scoop last week. It is brilliant, hilarious, sublime, a pinpoint satire with an everpresent smirk. It’s the novel I wish I could write.

For those who, like me, were introduced to Waugh by means of the good but serious Brideshead Revisited, here’s a quick synopsis of Scoop: John Boot is trying to land a high-paying, low-work job to escape from a persistent girlfriend. Lord Copper, the head of the tabloid newspaper The Beast, ends up with his request and hires the wrong man, William Boot, as their new foreign correspondent and sends him to cover the brewing civil war in the African nation of Ishmaelia. Misadventures ensure, including a question of whether the civil war brought in the reporters or whether the reporters (especially William) brought on the civil war.

I’m hesitant to say anything more for fear of ruining any of the jokes. It’s a hilarious book, laugh-out-loud funny in many places, and amusing throughout, with shades of Wodehouse in the snarky prose and Molière’s touch for satire, with almost everyone and everything in the book looking like a sendup of someone or something else. My favorite joke in the book involves the Ishmaelian town of Laku, including the origin of its name. You’ll have to read the book to understand why, but you won’t regret the choice, either.

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