VANISHED EMPIRES

Dedicated to classics and hits.

Monday, March 18, 2024

The Blackboard Jungle (1954) by Evan Hunter

1,001 Novels: A Library of America
The Blackboard Jungle (1954)
by Evan Hunter
New York: 35/105
The Bronx: 6/7

    Quite frequently I check out one of these 1,001 Novels: A Library of American books as an Audiobook for a library and find the experience simply excruciating.  I really learn about my own prejudices based on my positive/negative reactions- as clear an example of the "unconscious bias" phenomenon in my own life.  One of my most disturbing discoveries is that I have issues appreciating narrator voices that mimic the tones of the American underclass- of whatever ethnicity- I just find those voices grating and unpleasant, whether they be male or female, white, black, hispanic etc- a disturbing discovery and something that I am trying to address.  

   This book wasn't in that category, but it was in this category of American fiction from the earlier half of the 20th century that also gives me issues for different reasons.  

Ruby (1976) by Rosa Guy

Author Rosa Guy



1,001 Novels: A Library of America
Ruby (1976)
by Rosa Guy
515 Malcolm X Boulevard, Harlem
New York: 34/105
Harlem: 3/14

    Ruby is another YA title from 1,001 Novels: A Library of America.  This is the standard YA plot of a young woman who is trying to "get out of her bedroom" and into the wider world but faces difficulties.  Here, the narrator is the daughter of widowed West Indian immigrant of African descent, living in 70's Harlem, who falls in love with her female classmate.  Pretty daring stuff for the 1970's, and I didn't make it as a YA title while I was reading the book.   Rosa Guy is an iconic figure, the only female founder of the Harlem Writers Guild in 1950, a group that was instrumental in promoting the efforts of a generation of African American writers, including Maya Angelou. 

   This being a YA book, you don't hear much about Harlem or NYC, since Ruby, again, spends most of the book either inside her house, at school or racing around trying to dodge her controlling father.   Other than the precocious lesbian relationship, the most eye raising moment was the open use of the "N" word by a white teacher at Ruby's high school.  Hard to imagine that today!

Friday, March 15, 2024

You Glow in the Dark (2024) by Liliana Colanzi

 Book Review
You Glow in the Dark (2024)
by Liliana Colanzi
Translated by Chris Andrews

    I was intrigued with the New York Times book review that described this book by Bolivian author Liliana Colanzi as being suffused with an "Andean Cyber Punk" ethos and read its 144 pages on the Kindle app on my phone over the weekend.  It's a set of connected short stories based around the Goiania accident in Brazil, which happened in 1987.   The Goiania accident happened when radioactive materials were stolen from an abandoned Brazilian hospital by a couple of local hoodlums who wanted the encasing metal unit for perceived scrap value, they dismantled the machine and then pulled out the radioactive material and passed it around the neighborhood like a real bunch of ignorant slum dwellers.  People died before it got all sorted out.

  Anyway, this isn't spelled out in the book till the end and the characters certainly don't know what is going on, so it does have a cyber-punkish air for sure.  The fact that Colanzi doesn't provide a birds-eye overview of the sequence of events and keeps to the understandings of the characters gives each story an air of mystery. 

Foxfire 5 (1979) by Eliot Wigginton

 Book Review
Foxfire 5 (1979)
by Eliot Wigginton

   There is an elaborate scene in Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy where the Glanton gang is being pursued by Native Americans in the desert.  They are out of gunpowder and facing certain doom.  The character of the Judge leads the group to a nearby dormant volcano, where he creates gunpowder with the help of guano (bat poop) and human urine, leading the gang to surprise the attacking Native Americans.  In Notes on Blood Meridian by John Sepich, references this book, Foxfire 5 as the source for the recipe the Judge uses to manufacture the gunpowder.
 
 I was intrigued- Foxfire 5 doesn't sound like an academic journal.  I looked up the Wikipedia entry and found a copy in the LAPL system.  Foxfire was a journal put together by high school students(!) and their advisor, Eliot Wigginton.  The first issue came out in 1966.  The subject was documenting back-woods life in Northern Georgia.  A book version was published in 1972 and Foxfire became a national sensation.  Unfortunately, in 1992 founder/teacher Eliot Wigginton was convicted of some pretty horrific child sex allegations going back decades, and amazingly, got a sentence of one year in jail and twenty years of probation.  

  I surmise that was it for the national profile of Foxfire, though the Wikipedia page notes that it has continued under new leadership.  Anyway, Foxfire volume 5 is largely about iron making and gun making, which are both pretty interesting subjects but not seven hundred pages long interesting, at least to me.  The portion that relates to Blood Meridian is maybe ten pages long- it's actually a letter they receive from a certified Mountain Man living in far northern California about he makes gunpowder with his own urine and going into the different ingredients and such.  It seems clear that this, was, indeed McCarthy's source.

  The rest of the book are these hundred page long oral histories where these old coots are talking about the post-Indian removal settling of northern Georgia, and it turns out that manufacturing iron and gun-making were pretty important to the white settlers of this area.  It was/is extremely specialized knowledge and kind of incredible to visualize this process of building the first iron foundry in a given geographic area.

The Catfish Man: A Conjured Life (1980) by Jerome Charyn

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America
The Catfish Man: A Conjured Life (1980)
by Jerome Charyn
New York: 33/105
The Bronx: 4/7

      I can't remember this ever happening before, but I could not find a single review of this novel on the internet.  I used Google Books and found a reference to a review that appeared in Kirkus Reviews but that review is not online.  The New York Times reviewed plenty of his books, and he wrote reviews for The New York Times, but they did not review this book, which is today what we would call a work of "auto-fiction." 

   Jerome Charyn is one of those authors who will be revisited when he passes away but appears to be done with publishing books.  While he published, he was incredibly prolific, with over 50 titles to his name, including a run of 12 detective novels about a Jewish detective in New York City, several graphic novels, works of non-fiction about Quentin Tarantino and Ping-Pong and a grip of fictionalized biographies of historical figures- his book about Emily Dickinson caused a minor uproar when he put it out in 2010.  

   The Catfish Man is an example of his auto-fiction.  Apparently he wrote more than one auto fictional book but I can't figure out which they are among his oeuvre.   The first fifty pages, describing his childhood in the Bronx and attending an arts magnet high school in Manhattan are interesting- particularly his participation in a nascent weight-lifting culture in the Bronx in the 1950's.  He attends Columbia University and finds work ghosting adventure stories for the uncle of a classmate under a pseudonym.  Up to this point, The Catfish Man is a pretty typical NYC bildungsroman.  After graduation however, the author-protagonist relocates to New Orleans in pursuit of a story about a New Orleans based 19th century chess master who met an early death.

   Here, The Catfish Man goes badly off the rails, as the protagonist loses his mind-quite literally- and is institutionalized outside of New Orleans.  He escapes, goes back to NY, then back to the South, landing outside of Texas, where he takes over a gang of latino child bandits.   Here, The Catfish Man lurches into incoherence.  I can't remember reading a book where mental illness is treated so casually and unsatisfactorily.  I couldn't tell you the nature of the mental illness at play or why it manifests itself. It makes the last two hundred pages of the book remarkably tedious to read. 

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Spidertown (1996) by Abraham Rodriguez Jr.

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America
Spidertown (1996)
by Abraham Rodriguez Jr.
New York: 32/105
The Bronx: 3/7

   Spidertown is an extremely tedious bildungsroman about a teenage crack runner (don't call him a dealer!) living in the South Bronx in the 1990's.  As a criminal defense attorney working in federal court, I've spent many working days reviewing the text messages and phone calls of drug dealers so a three hundred page book on the subject wasn't going to add much to my understanding.  Nor, for that matter, is the love life of a 16 year old drug runner of particular interest.  Also, I didn't enjoy the fact that the whole book is written in South Bronx patois- there isn't an H pronounced properly in the whole book.  I didn't find any of characters convincing, nor did I find the author's depiction of the drug trade particularly accurate or compelling. 

   And, amazingly, Rodriguez makes the South Bronx of the crack era seem pretty boring culturally speaking- no references to the amazing NYC rap that dominated that era- rap that was often about dealing crack.  I've often had the thought- not generated by this book but from my work experience, that being a drug dealer is highly stressful and not particularly lucrative when one factors in the risks involved- whether at the hand of your own organization, a rival organization, the cops or the feds.  Also the lifespan of a professional drug dealer is often quite short and leaves the dealer unable to pursue a different line of work.  Other than manual labor I can't think of a worse way to make a living- personally I'd rather work at a fast food restaurant.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Show Review: Angie McMahon @ The Crocodile Seattle, WA

 Show Review:
Angie McMahon
@ The Crocodile 
Seattle, WA
3/11/24

  It used to be there was lots of mystery about the path from local band obscurity to stadium headliner.  Most artists started by playing local shows in local venues, then you would record a "demo," then you would look for a label or manager or both, then hopefully a booking agent, put out an album, do a van tour of the US, maybe a van tour of UK/Europe, then another record, professionally done, with a record label that has pr and def a booking agent, a second van tour as a headliner, hopefully a festival or two, then by the third record hopefully you were on a bus and playing theater size venues (1000+) and selling them out.  You would be judged by actual record sales of physical cds or records, the crowds you drew at your shows, and the press you got.  Obviously, the vast majority of bands/acts never made it past the first or second step, but plenty of artists fall off at each point, and the most succesful acts skipped one or many steps.

  Now, that has all changed.  Artists are essentially measured by two numbers: 1) their monthly Spotify streaming number, which updates daily 2) tickets they can sell to their concerts.   If you are low by the measurement of (1) you have to show that you have the power to sell concert tickets.  If you have great streaming numbers but can't sell tickets you can play festivals, but ultimately it is the live show on a big stage that is the only check on streaming era artists who have demonstrated their worth by (1).  These days, few if any artists start by playing live, rather they will record music and publish it themselves, either on bandcamp or, straight to Spotify and the other big DSP's.  I couldn't even tell you the last time I went to a local level show and saw an artist who didn't have a Spotify monthly streaming number already.

   This shift has certainly taken much of the mystery out of the lengthy process I described in the first paragraph at this post.  Now, every label, from the lowliest indie to the biggest major knows how many monthly streams you get and most of them know how many tickets you have sold (or whether you have sold any).  The biggest loser in this shift has been the press/music critics.  They used to play an important/critical role in helping artists get from the bottom to the top.  Today, literally no one gives a shit and if you have good streaming numbers and sell tickets to your shows, you don't need critics to pay attention.

  Take Angie McMahon.  I just got back from the first show of her sold-out US tour- in Seattle.  Angie put out her record last fall.  People said nice things about the record but she isn't a Pitchfork artist, and generally speaking, not much was said about her or the record, even though it was amazing.   Her streaming numbers are fine but essentially flat.   BUT- there I am watching her sell out a Monday night show at an 800 cap venue in Seattle, watching her evoke the kind of Audience response that most artists never obtain and hearing second hand about her being seriously considered for arena/stadium/big theater tours on three continents.  

  It was an astonishing performance and the crowd was incredibly diverse and enthusiastic. Truly a dream start to a US tour that promises to be the first step on a path that promises to follow that older path in an era of an obsession with streaming figures.  I think this summer is going to be interesting for many acts who built up their streaming figures over the past four years of pandemic-time with no pressure or opportunity to build up their live show.  I'm fully expecting some festival level disasters as these artists take the stage in front of big audiences for the first time, but that won't be Angie McMahon- she is going to be out there on the road slitting throats. Watch out!

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent (1991) by Julia Alvarez

1,001 Novels: A Library of America
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent (1991)
by Julia Alvarez
The Bronx, NYC
New York: 31/105
The Bronx: 2/6

   How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent is an example of a book from 1,001 Novels: A Library of America that was both something I didn't like AND easily recognizable as a good book despite my personal preference.  Alvarez is widely recognized as a path-breaking Latina/Dominicana author, with novels(adult and YA) and poetry to he credit, and How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent inspired a generation of Latina authors- see, for example, In Praise of Julia Alvarez- published in the New York Times in 2018. 

    Unlike much of the Latno representation on the 1,001 Novels list, the characters of Garcia Girls are not members of the underclass, the patriarch is a Dominican doctor who is forced to flee political unrest in the Caribbean for New York City, the Bronx, specifically.  Alvarez takes a non-linear approach, telling the story in four parts in reverse chronological order. I actually the parts that took place back in the Dominican Republic more compelling and the material set in the US less so.   Like many immigrant narratives, I found myself more sympathetic to the parents, sacrificing for their children than the children themselves, who, as is the case in many immigrant centered bildungsroman's come off as selfish dicks.   It is amazing to me how many characters in immigrant centered fiction decide they want to study to be writers, rather than going to school for some practical reason and then writing on the side. 

  Immigrant children in bildungsroman fiction seem to never grasp that one does not have to study art to become an artist, and that studying art is no guarantee of a career in said art. 

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Trust (2022) by Hernan Diaz

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America
Trust (2022)
by Hernan Diaz
Chelsea
New York: 30/105
Manhattan: 4/34

     Trust is last year's Pulitzer Prize winner.  I convinced my book club to read it before the award was announced.  Here is my post about it from August of 2022:

Book Review
Trust (2022)
by Hernan Diaz

   There is always a bit of lull for me in the reading year- starting in mid June and running until the Booker Longlist is announced in July.  I'm always inclined to wait for that longlist to come out before I venture beyond the books that grab at me from my feed.  Americans were strongly represented on this year's longlist- notably Nightcrawling by Oakland's own Leila Mottley, The Trees by USC literature professor Percival Everett and two books that I had already passed on until their inclusion made me reverse myself- Booth by Karen Joy Fowler and this book, Trust by Hernan Diaz.

   I'd read reviews when Trust came out earlier this year- I was both ignorant of the author, Hernan Diaz, which reflects poorly on me, not him, and leery of the elevator pitch, "Metafictional text about an extremely wealthy early 20th century Financier and his wife."  It sounded interesting but not compelling, but after the Booker Longlist arrived I quickly checked out the Audiobook from the Los Angeles Public Library.   Trust is a set of four different texts: The first is a work of fiction a la The Financier by Theodore Dreiser.  It's called Bonds, and its tells the ultimately tragic tale of the first and greatest Wall Street operator and his arty wife.  The next text is notes towards an autobiography written by the "real life" inspiration for the main character in Bonds.  The third text is a New Yorker type article by a woman who served as the personal secretary for said inspiration when he was writing his autobiography.  The final text is the pay off, and none of the reviews I've read actually discuss it, leading me to believe its revelation would consitute a "spoiler." 

  I quite enjoyed Trust, though I'm not sure its a short lister- it might be a National Book Award and/or Pultizer Nominee- vibe-wise Trust reminds me of Richard Powers- a recent winner and author of a book- Gain, that really reminds me of Trust, in that it attempts to convey an economic narrative in a novel.   I'm very into that idea, and I wish there were more books that took economics and money seriously-  I often have the thought while reading literary fiction from American and the English speaking world, that every writer of literary fiction is a teacher of literature  or a journalist.  Any novel that takes me outside of that narrow world is a win. 

Monday, March 11, 2024

Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) by Truman Capote

Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's.



 1,001 Novels A Library of America
Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958)
by Truman Capote
the Upper East Side
New York: 29/105
Manhattan:  3/34

   If you haven't started watching The Feud: Capote vs the Swans, this is your sign to start.  Capote has endured as an iconic figure in American popular culture based on his combining a couple of monster hits with an early presence in the nascent celebrity culture that has dominated the world in subsequent decades.  I re-read Breakfast at Tiffany's back in 2016 for the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die project- here is the post I wrote back then:

Published 2/19/16
Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958)
by Truman Capote


     Holly Golightly is one of the original Manic Pixie Dream Girls, she is even listed on the wikipedia table which contains examples.  Audrey Hepburn played in her in her iconic turn in the movie version of the book, and it is fair to say that it some version of the picture above that leaps to mind when I think of Breakfast at Tiffany's, either film or book version.  The book is a novella, maybe one hundred pages long.  It's told from the perspective of "Fred" a Capote-esque narrator struggling as a writer in World War II era New York City.   His downstairs neighbor is Holly Golightly, who like many other Manic Pixie Dream Girls is both irresistibly attractive to a wide variety of men, but who has more fraught relationships with members of her own gender.  This characteristic of hers is manifested in the parties she throws in her apartment, which typically have only one female guest (Golightly).

  Breakfast at Tiffany's has a reputation as being a work of light fiction, but the book is darker than that reputation.  As is gradually revealed, Golightly is a former child bride from Arkansas, who fled her (admittedly not terrible under the circumstances) "probably illegal" wedding for Hollywood, then wound up in New York City.  She is enmeshed in a conspiracy to allow a jailed mobster to run his rackets from inside Sing Sing.  In the end, she flees indictment for South America, never to be seen again.

  Capote was already famous before the publication of Breakfast at Tiffany's, but his critical reputation wasn't truly cemented until after his magisterial true crime opus, In Cold Blood.  In Cold Blood would also be his last decent book.  Like his contemporary J.D. Salinger, the lack of finished works turns Capote into another mid century "What If", firmly ensconced in the canon as the result of one masterpiece and another less masterpiece, but not a top flight author for the ages.

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