Obviously, I should never have doubted Abdurraqib's incredible talent and ability to make me cry over things I never would have imagined getting emotional about. I will admit that some knowledge of NBA history definitely helps during certain sections of this book, but rest assured, this is about a lot more than basketball. Among other things, this collection of interconnected essays is a kind of love letter to Abdurraqib's home state of Ohio, and in a larger sense, a gentle rebuttal to the idea that success means leaving the place where you grew up. (Oh, to be a fly on the wall and see what happens every time someone has ever suggested to Hanif Abdurraqib that he should really move to New York or LA).
There are a dozen excerpts that I wanted to quote, but this was the first lengthy passage I marked:
"Three days after Christmas in 2002, a white pair of kicks, clean enough to still be worn, swings from the telephone lines a few blocks outside of Value City Arena in Columbus, Ohio. Jordan 7s. White and blue. The pair that had just dropped two weeks earlier. If one looks long enough, the thin wires blend into the dark sky and the shoes emerge as though they are swinging from nothing, ornaments at the mercy of the clouds. There are a greater number of older white people than usual in this neighborhood today, a cluster of them walking ahead of of me, nervously trying to make sense out of the mythology of the sneakers swinging from phone lines, rattling through rumors they'd heard from their kids or things they'd read on the corners of the still-young internet. Drugs, they decided. People sell drugs here. ...I didn't know the kid who was shot a few blocks south of here on Christmas Eve. I knew he was younger than me, and he could hoop. I'd seen him at the park in my old neighborhood once or twice. Quick first step, never passed but could get to the rim anytime he wanted. The bullet that hit him wasn't meant for him, but the bullet doesn't apologize and isn't especially discerning. The bullet only knows what is in front of it. I don't trust people who don't love a place to understand how that place remembers its dead. The living who throw an item the dead once cherished toward heaven, wrap it around the highest wire. So high that it looks like the shoes are swinging from the sky itself. Like two legs are hanging down from the edge of a cloud."...more
"This book is a party - not a set of grievances. It's a weird party for a woman who has returned from grief. It's a peppy procession of all my little "This book is a party - not a set of grievances. It's a weird party for a woman who has returned from grief. It's a peppy procession of all my little weirds. Many different scenarios present themselves at a really good party. Somebody kisses somebody. Somebody falls. Cake is eaten. Cake is thrown. The lights go out and somebody screams, 'My jewels!' You meet your husband for the first time. Somebody gets kicked out. There are snowballs and cannonballs. There are fragments that come together as a whole. My book is a thing in motion - just as you would respond to the questions, 'Is there a party going on?' with the answer, 'Yes, it is in progress!' Here it is, a book that represents the wholeness that I built after everything toppled. A book that honors my fragmentation by giving itself to you in pieces. If you want it, you will have to be my partner in giving in to what it is. I had to find my own language and terms."
"I open my mouth and reach an invisible hand down into the deepest part of me. I get into myself even though it is scary. If I deny that the root is in me, I will never change. I know that nobody is immaculate and so I don't shame myself anymore - I just try to weed myself so that I don't wither and weep. I reach down and start to pull the root. I am pulling and it tortures me, make no mistake. When I yank the vine a bit, when I disturb the root in its little grave inside of me, it shows me all of the memories of all the times that I honored the pod like a drooling fool. Holy moly, this shitty vine grips tight to my soft pink brains and infuses my thinking. It says that I am a hypocrite and it says it in the voice of authority figures, ex-lovers, even my own mother. But I am allowed to rehabilitate and move forward, so I give myself reasonable counsel: 'This is nothing but spooky stuff from a freaked-out root. This is what happens in an exorcism, babe. The bad thing wears the faces and forms of your failures and family and it says you are hurting me.' I keep an eye on my stamina and I pull slowly and consistently. ...Eventually I reach so deep that I rip out the root. I dangle it in front of my face. It is a shrunken, sad root, quite small compared to my heart, dull in color and unable to pump life. I take one last good look at that poison pod and I just go ahead and fling it. I fling that pod back into that gloomy section of outer space that is for bad gods with sickly and sour spirits. I wipe my mouth off and I say out loud, This stupid old root was nothing but a cosmic clog. I need a helpful myth to show me what came before. I need a new made-up story to deliver me into the real life that I would like to live."
"As the image of myself becomes sharper in my brain and more precious, I feel less afraid that someone else will erase me by denying me love."...more
"Hello, 911? I am unwittingly at the mall with my skinny rich friend and she insists that I follow her into Anthropologie, a place I can neither respo"Hello, 911? I am unwittingly at the mall with my skinny rich friend and she insists that I follow her into Anthropologie, a place I can neither responsibly afford nor comfortably browse because everything is doll-size and expensive, and no one here actually cares about anything I'm doing probably because they can tell by my shoes that I am poor, but I know that if I pull something called a 'cropped draped anorak' (color: warm buttermilk; cost: approximately $1,726) off the fucking rack, everyone is going to immediately stop whatever it is they're doing (ogling overpriced throw blankets knit from angels' delicate wings, or mentally justifying the purchase of yet another set of whimsical teacups) and their heads will swivel in unison to behold whichever form my shame is going to take today: Will my cheeks blush burning scarlet as I attempt to wedge my human-sized arm into the infant-sized sleeve only to have it get irreversibly stuck? Or will I ignore all evidence that nothing here is made for my body and confidently stride to the register carrying a breezy wrap skirt that costs roughly the same as my rent past these chiselled, gawking faces, only to have my credit card be declined in a spectacular display of computer-generated shrieks and ominous beeps?! Find out on next week's episode of the endless drama This Is Why I Rarely Go Outside."
From "The Josephine Baker Monument Can Never Be Large Enough":
"It is not difficult to manipulate the imaginations of men, with so many of us doing halFrom "The Josephine Baker Monument Can Never Be Large Enough":
"It is not difficult to manipulate the imaginations of men, with so many of us doing half the work ourselves before anyone else arrives with intentions of manipulation in mind. Still, for Josephine Baker, manipulation was part of the power. To manipulate the imagination of those men, and of that city, at that time, was a unique undertaking. Remember: Paris had saturated itself with ideas of Black art, Black minds, but not many actual Black people. For as liberal as the city was, there were still some who thought Black people were, by nature, primitive beings. To see the early performances of Josephine Baker in La Review Negre was to see someone taking the absurd stereotype and making it so absurd that it circled around to desire. The men laughed until they found themselves choking on all they wanted but could never have. The people who think they can never be played are the ones all true performers know to go after."
And from "I Would Like to Give Merry Clayton Her Roses":
"It's the second syllable of 'murder' the third time it's sung. This is the part of 'Gimme Shelter' that people have probably told you to listen to. The part of the song where Merry Clayton's voice bends, and then breaks, a door slowly giving way to the army of noise pressing up against it. Clayton's emotional and vocal intensity had been rising as the song progressed, and around the 2:48 mark, when she got a chance to take on the song's lines that were meant for her all on her own, she seized the opportunity. It is good to sing the word 'murder' like you fear it, but better to sing the word like you aren't afraid to commit it. It is best, though, to sing 'murder' somewhere in between those two extremes. In the first turn of 'rape/murder,' Clayton sings the word as if she fears it. On the second turn, the word is sung just a touch too eagerly, ending with an expressive 'yeah!' as a bookend. In the run-up to the third rotation, Clayton's voice cracks slightly on 'it's just a shot away,' but she is already too far in, careening towards the obvious crescendo. It's the third time 'murder' rolls around that encompasses every emotion: fear, anger, a slight undercurrent of glee. What people love to talk about is the way a listener can hear Mick Jagger in the background let out an exclamation of awe and excitement. But in the isolated vocal track, even beyond the shouts and yelps of the Stones in the studio, you can hear a slight hesitation as Clayton makes the transition from the voice-cracking howl of 'murder' to the next line. The Stones kept it in the final track, but it's a subtle pause between 'it's' and 'just a shot,' throwing off her rhythm ever so slightly. As if some spirit entered her body and then left before anyone could notice."
From "Fear: A Crown":
"I am afraid not of death itself, but of the unknown that comes after. I am afraid not of leaving, but of being forgotten. I am in love today but am afraid that I might not be tomorrow. And that is to say nothing of the bullets, the bombs, the waters rising, and the potential for an apocalypse. People ask me to offer them hope, but I'd rather offer them honesty. Black people get asked to perform hope when white people are afraid, but it doesn't always serve reality. Hope is the small hole cut into the honest machinery. The milk crate is still a milk crate, but with the right opening, a basketball can make its way through. If I am going to be afraid, I might as well do it honest. Arm in arm with everyone I love, adorned in blood and bruises, singing jokes on our way to a grave."...more
I learned about Jake Adelstein's existence through, of all things, Tumblr. There was a post going around about the time that actual Yakuza gangsters sI learned about Jake Adelstein's existence through, of all things, Tumblr. There was a post going around about the time that actual Yakuza gangsters sat down and reviewed a line of Yakuza-themed video games, and gave the rundown of what was realistic and what wasn't. The reporter who gathered this group of criminals and sat them down with a Playstation and some whiskey? Jake Adelstein, who, it turns out, has been working the crime beat in Tokyo since the late 90's and has cultivated professional relationships with a wide variety of characters from Japan's criminal underworld. (here's a very brief blurb from The Atlantic about the experiment)
So his book has been floating around in my mental "to-read" list for a while, and what finally made me decide to get the book from the library was finishing (and thoroughly disliking) Lost Girls and Love Hotels. I still had a "seedy Tokyo underbelly stories" itch to scratch, and it seemed like Adelstein's book would do the trick.
Jake Adelstein started working as a crime reporter in Tokyo right out of college, and quickly learned that in order to do his job, he would need to establish a few close professional contacts within the Tokyo police force, who would then provide scoops on various criminal investigations. Tokyo Vice follows the trajectory of Adelstein's career as he learns how to locate and charm sources, suss out information, and investigate various criminal operations without getting brutally murdered.
I have this book shelved under "essays" because that most accurately describes the format of this book: disconnected stories from Adelstein's decades-long reporting career, most of them having little to do with each other. The book doesn't really gain focus until Adelstein does - later in his career, he decided that he was going to focus specifically on investigating sex trafficking in Japan, an obsession that ended up getting him a job directly assisting the FBI with their investigations of various gangsters, and also resulted in the brutal rape and murder of one of Adelstein's sources.
This is not light reading, obviously. Adelstein was well and truly in the shit, often being forced to sit down and share drinks with men who he knew were responsible for countless murders and trafficked human beings. Adelstein himself is a difficult protagonist to root for - when he's not humblebragging about the time he had an affair with a yakuza gangster's mistress, he's telling us about how he always chose working over spending time with his wife and young daughter as if this is just a natural consequence of the journalism field and everyone should just be cool with it. Also he's a journalist, not a novelist, and therefore his "just the facts, ma'am" style of writing means that his narrative voice is often dry and removed, and the stories often don't carry the air of drama and excitement that I felt they should....more
The Catch-22 of Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory is this: the ideal reader for this collection of short stories is someone who has The Catch-22 of Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory is this: the ideal reader for this collection of short stories is someone who has never seen BoJack Horseman, because this book serves as a great intro course to Raphael Bob-Waksberg's particular storytelling style, without ever reaching the incredible heights he achieved with his Netflix show. But the only people who will seek out this book are the ones who are already familiar with the show (which, it cannot be stressed enough, is a cartoon about a talking horse that will make you cry real actual tears).
So maybe there's a chance that this review pops up in the update feed of someone who has never seen the show, but has maybe heard of it, and needs a reason to dip their toe into Bob-Waksberg's writing. If that's the case, and it managed to find you, I encourage you to give this a shot. Some of the stories are silly, some are sad, and some manage to come close to something truly heart-shattering. And then you can go watch BoJack Horseman.
Here, have an overly-long excerpt from "You Want to Know What Plays Are Like?", which I absolutely read in Will Arnett's voice before I realized the speaker was a woman:
"Here is my impression of a play: Okay, so first you gotta imagine it's a hotel room, right? Just a normal, boring-looking hotel room, on the nice end of things, as far as hotel rooms go. And the audience is coming in, and they're taking their seats in this dinky little theater in lower Manhattan, barely bigger than a Winnebago, this theater with seats that feel like someone just glued down some thin fabric over a block of hard metal. The main thing of a theater - like the whole point of it - is that there's going to be a lot of sitting in it, so you'd think they would at least consider investing in some comfortable chairs. Word to the wise: if they can't even get that part right, which absolutely most of the time they cannot, then buckle the fuck up, because I can tell you right now you are in for an ordeal of an evening. ...So then the play starts and the first thing that happens is two ladies burst into the hotel room, one after another. These ladies are supposed to be sisters, probably, because when plays aren't about hookers, ninety percent of the time they're about sisters. But, of course, because it's a play, these sisters look nothing alike. For starters, one of them's like fifty and the other one's like twenty, because apparently when you're hiring people for plays, it's impossible to find two women who are about the same age. The older one goes right for the minifridge and pulls out a bottle of white wine, even though since it's a play, the white wine is actually water, if there's even something in the bottle at all, which - spoiler alert for all plays - there probably isn't. The younger lady kicks off her shoes and jumps onto the bed. And they start talking in that very fast, stutter-y I'm-a-character-in-a-play way that guys who write plays think is naturalistic, even though nobody actually talks that way except for people who just tried cocaine for the first time." ...more
I read it and enjoyed it a lot, but trying to write a review of Shrill almost a year after reading it (shut up, I have a backlog I’m working my way thI read it and enjoyed it a lot, but trying to write a review of Shrill almost a year after reading it (shut up, I have a backlog I’m working my way through), I realize that I honestly don’t remember much about it. The essays are really good, and Lindy West is alternately full of righteous anger and so goddamn tired of all of it, and her voice was clear and engaging.
The best section comes when Lindy describes her online interactions with a particularly vicious Twitter troll who went so far as to create a fake account where he insulted her online while posing as her dead father. West manages to convince this person to sit down for an in-person interview with her, which is pretty incredible, even if the interview itself doesn’t end up being especially illuminating. (Spoiler alert, her troll is a man who hates fat women and doesn’t know how to deal with his anger in healthy or constructive ways, which is neither interesting or surprising.)...more
A well-written, well-researched and well-argued critique of geek culture through a feminist lens. Kameron Hurley definitely has the qualifications forA well-written, well-researched and well-argued critique of geek culture through a feminist lens. Kameron Hurley definitely has the qualifications for this, being a sci-fi and fantasy author herself, and I loved the perspective she brings to different aspects of geek culture (even though I believe that Mad Max: Fury Road is a feminist masterpiece and will defend it to the death, Hurley’s essay on the movie made me rethink how some of the minor female characters function in the story, and how they could have been presented better).
Geek culture is one that has always been openly hostile to women, even though women created many of the foundations that it rests on (*coughMary Shelleycough*), and it’s truly sad that even in the year of our Lord 2019 there are still men whining about how they shouldn’t have to allow women (and POC) into what they’ve always believed should be a Straight White Boys Only clubhouse. So I’m glad that we have people like Kameron Hurley to slam an entire book’s worth of arguments onto the table and say, “Move over.”
I had never heard of Hanif Abdurraqib (although I don’t read a lot of essay collections, so he might be more well-known in those circles), so it was bI had never heard of Hanif Abdurraqib (although I don’t read a lot of essay collections, so he might be more well-known in those circles), so it was by pure coincidence that I was in a local bookstore looking for Christmas presents and saw his book on the shelf of Staff Picks. If you want the short review, here it is: this is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Not one of the best essay collections – best books, full stop.
Even though I read and enjoyed [title] by Chuck Klosterman, there was definitely a generational divide that kept me from getting really immersed in his essays. Klosterman’s main focus is the music of the 1980’s, which I just don’t know very much about. It feels unoriginal (and a little reductive) to call Abdurraqib the Chuck Klosterman for Millennials, but if you were to ask me for my elevator pitch for They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, that would be it. Abdurraqib writes about music that I have a much more personal relationship with, so I enjoyed his essays a lot more than Klosterman’s.
But to reduce Abduraqib to just a music or pop culture critic is to undersell the brilliance of his writing. Abdurraqib isn’t just writing about music; he’s writing about how music seeps into every aspect of our lives, and how it can shape and change our experiences. Abdurraqib doesn’t just write about concerts he attended; he writes about how it feels to be one of the few black kids at a punk concert. He writes about Fleetwood Mac and how artists commidify heartbreak (“At some point, a person figured out that the performance of sadness was a currency, and art has bowed at its altar ever since. Sometimes it’s a game we play: if I can convince you that I am falling apart, in need of love, perhaps I can draw you close enough to tell you what I really need.”). He writes about the concert he was at when the news came out about Trayvon Martin, and how nobody could get cell service inside the venue so when the show ended everyone was standing in the parking lot, staring at their phones as they read the news. He writes about the history of Fall Out Boy, and it becomes an exploration of ego and fame and then Abdurraqib makes it circle back to the beginning of the essay, when he wrote about an old friend who committed suicide.
“Patrick [Stump] once said, ‘I sang because Pete [Wentz] saw, in me, a singer,” and I think what he meant is that Pete saw, in him, a vehicle. This was the band’s great fascinating pull. That they were a bit of a mutation: a shy and otherwise silent frontman with a voice like a soul singer, belting out the confessional emo lyrics of a neurotic narcissist. Pete, who wanted the attention, but not enough to sing the words himself. I’m thinking about this again in a bar in Austin, Texas. Wearing a patch taken from my dead friend’s old bedroom, and considering the things we saw in each other that kept us whole for our brief window of time together. Tyler fought kids who fucked with us at punk shows because I saw, in him, a fighter. Until he stopped getting out of bed some mornings and I told myself that I saw, in him, a burden. Until the dirt was shoveled over the black casket and I saw, in him, nothing but a collection of memories.”
Music is so much more than just music.
Hopefully I’ve raved about this book enough to convince you to go out and buy a copy, but just in case, I’m going to quote the end of Abdurraqib’s (fucking transcendent) essay on Prince’s performance at the 2007 SuperBowl halftime show. If you’re not familiar with it, please watch this video and then come back to the review.
“There is no moment like this one in any other halftime show, before it or since. Prince, only a shadow, putting his hands to an instrument and coaxing out a song within a song. And of course there was still rain, beads of it covering the camera lens from every angle, drops of it covering the faces of the people in the front row, and still none of it visible on Prince himself. And of course there were two doves scattering themselves above Prince’s head when the sheet came down and he was whole, in front of us again, walking to the mic and asking, ‘Y’all wanna sing tonight?’
Yes, Prince. This is the one we know all of the words to. Throw the microphone to the ground and walk away. We don’t need you now like we did in that moment, but we will remember it always. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called Life. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to cast away another hero on the face of a flood that began on a Miami night in 2007 and never stopped. Dearly beloved, when the sky opens up, anywhere, I will think of how Prince made a storm bend to his will. How the rain never touches those who it knows were sent into it for a higher purpose. Dearly beloved, I will walk into the next storm and leave my umbrella hanging on the door. Please join me.” ...more
Samantha Irby’s first book was given to me by my best friend, who is a legit writer who performs her nonfiction essays in front of people like some kiSamantha Irby’s first book was given to me by my best friend, who is a legit writer who performs her nonfiction essays in front of people like some kind of professional and is my go-to expert on which essay collections to read. I wasn’t familiar with Irby, or her blog, before this book was given to me, but I’m officially a convert now. Her essays are personal and heartfelt and really, really funny, and her voice is so strong that it practically leaps off the page – I have never met Samantha Irby, but reading her essays felt like I was sitting across from her at brunch, snorting my mimosa out my nose while I listened to her telling me about her dating life:
“If I never get banged on a king-sized bed with NO SHEETS and ONE LUMPY PILLOW ever again in my fucking life it would be too goddamn soon. Dudes always want to try to fuck you in the abandoned warehouse in which they’re squatting. Or at least that’s what the shit fucking looks like, all bare walls and “furniture” procured from alleys and shit. Would it kill you motherfuckers to put a mat in the bathroom? To buy soap with a moisturizing agent? …Why do you dudes only own one towel? And a hand towel at that? Why do you have no paper towels? Why is all your shit in garbage bags even though you moved in two years ago? Why does it smell like gym shoes and testicles in your apartment? Why do you refuse to purchase a fitted sheet at the very least? Do I really have to SLEEP IN MY GODDAMNED CLOTHES TO STAY WARM UP IN HERE?”
Or hearing about her meeting with her accountant:
“So it’s tax time, and my homeboy was over the other night badgering me about filing a return, asking me about all my receipts and bank statements and whether or not I saved the checks I used to pay for that class I took. Um…yeah, right. I’m sure I either burned that shit or flushed it down the toilet or used it to line Helen Keller’s litterbox. Save my receipts, for what? To prove to the government how many times I purchased the same exact black sweater at the Gap? Hold on to my bank statements, for whom? To prove how many times I stopped and started and stopped and RE-started paying for eHarmony, or whatever? YEAH, RIGHT. Is there some sort of loneliness deduction I don’t know about? Some alcoholic tax credit? No? Then get the fuck out of my face with that.”
Amid the humor, Irby also shares frank, unsentimental stories about her childhood and her chronic health problems, and they’re never presented as misery porn or “let me get all philosophical about my struggles and how they made me who I am.” Instead, Irby recounts everything with a clear-eyed, “so get this shit” tone that never gets maudlin or flippant. Meaty is definitely one of the most fun and entertaining essay collections I’ve read in a long time. ...more
Although Medium Raw isn't, technically speaking, a sequel to Anthony Bourdain's first collection of restaurant indu"Order the fucking fish on Monday."
Although Medium Raw isn't, technically speaking, a sequel to Anthony Bourdain's first collection of restaurant industry-related essays, it's definitely a companion volume - to the point where if you read Medium Raw without first having read Kitchen Confidential, you're not really getting the full experience. Kitchen Confidential was a brash, cranky, profanity-filled collection of essays detailing the ugly ins and outs of the restaurant industry and the people who make a living from it, and even the positive essays were still brimming with piss and vinegar. One of the most quoted essays from the book explains why you should never order fish on a Monday, so it's a good indication of how much Bourdain's worldview has changed since Kitchen Confidential. The crankiness is now tempered with weariness, and a resigned irritation (mostly directed at himself) that so many people have held him up as some kind of all-knowing expert on the restaurant industry.
If Kitchen Confidential is a bitter, ultra-boozy triple IPA, Medium Raw is a cask-aged stout - still strong, still bitter, but complex and well-aged. In fact, I think the thesis of Medium Raw can be best summed up by this single line by Bourdain: "I'm through being cool."
A lot of Medium Raw has Bourdain holding a critical lens to his previously-fast-held beliefs, and re-examining with the benefit of hindsight and decades in the industry. In addition to wearily telling his readers to just "order the fucking fish on Monday," he also spends a chapter discussing the concept of "selling out" and how it's stupid to hold yourself to some kind of high moral standard when it comes to endorsement - if selling frozen food on infomercials is what keeps your restaurant open, you do it, and you do it with a smile. Medium Raw also presents us with a Bourdain who is, if not nicer, then at least more willing to live and let live. He still has nothing but contempt for Sandra Lee, but a chapter where he endlessly snarks on Alice Waters ends with him warmly and genuinely singing her praises. (Of course, this is immediately followed by a chapter explaining why a certain food critic is, in no uncertain terms, a total douchebag. Tigers can't change their stripes)
It's not all backtracking and reflection - Bourdain also takes us through the history of the Food Network and how it's changed over time, and how the company became a profitable business model (Food Network Magazine is one of the few print magazines left that's still profitable), but did this at the expense of the chefs who founded the network. He also reflects on his career, and how he's ultimately stumbled into this career. Another really good chapter has Bourdain delving into what he tells people when they ask him whether they should go to culinary school, and it manages to be both intimidating and inspiring.
The boldest aspect of Medium Raw, however, is when Bourdain puts his ego aside entirely and admits, simply, "I am not a chef." It's true - Anthony Bourdain hasn't been in a working kitchen for decades, and he doesn't hesitate to admit that there are thousands of infinitely more talented people working in the culinary world, and that his fame is only partially built on his abilities in the kitchen.
But we don't read Anthony Bourdain's books because he's a great chef. We read his books because they're written with a clear, engaging voice, and because he knows how to tell a great story, and has plenty of great stories to tell. (Also, if you can, try doing what I did and listening to this as an audiobook - hearing Bourdain himself tell the stories in this book is half of the appeal)
Anthony Bourdain is right -he's not a chef. He's a writer. And thank goodness for that....more
I first learned about Chuck Klosterman through my friend, who is a nonfiction writer and swears by his essay collections. Klosterman is primarily a muI first learned about Chuck Klosterman through my friend, who is a nonfiction writer and swears by his essay collections. Klosterman is primarily a music writer (imagine Lester Bangs if he had grown up in the golden age of hair metal) and most of the writings featured here are from Spin and Esquire. The collection is framed as a retrospective, with Klosterman introducing pieces by commenting on how his views have changed by then, or why he now hates the article he's about to share (he even includes articles on the Fargo rock scene that he wrote when he was twenty-three, and he's appropriately embarrassed about it). The include celebrity profiles, "Best Of" lists, what-if scenarios, and musings on VH1 Classics and the Olympics. At their best, his essays blend pop culture and philosophy seamlessly - the book is worth it just for the article detailing the time Klosterman met Britney Spears and tried to unravel the mystery of who she actually is vs. who she pretends to be ("After I spent my time with Spears, people kept asking me, 'What is she really like?' My answer was usually, 'I don't know, and I don't think she does, either.'").
I'll be the first to admit that my music tastes are not very refined, so it was sort of a relief to see Klosterman writing almost exclusively about bands that I had actually heard of. He writes most frequently about bands he grew up listening to in the 80's, but there are also some fascinating profiles of The White Stripes and Radiohead ("Everyone in this band reads more than you do; hanging out with Radiohead is kind of like getting high with a bunch of librarians."). I was worried that Klosterman would turn out to be a music snob, and he sort of is, but for the most part, he presents his love of pop music frankly and matter-of-factly, and I always appreciate someone who acknowledges that popular culture becomes popular because lots of people like it, and that's not a bad thing. His revelation (helped by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy) that he actually kind of likes Jet is great:
"Now, nearly everybody I know thinks Jet is ridiculous; they've become the band hipsters are legally required to hate. So I made some joke (and I have no idea why) about how Jet was terrible and that it was somehow predictable that the only people who would want to cover Jet songs would be second graders. Tweedy didn't understand why I would say something like that. He looked at me like I had just made fun of a quadriplegic and asked, 'Well, don't you like rock music?' And then I felt stupid, because I realized that (a) Jet plays rock music, and that (b) I like rock music, and that (c) I actually liked Jet, both tangibly and intangibly. So that was something I realized about Jeff Tweedy: musically, he remembers what is obvious."
Another great example of Chuck Klosterman's refreshing lack of musical snobbery:
"I've probably written more about tribute bands than any sensible man should. I really like them, though. Tribute bands often reflect what I like about rock n' roll more than the authentic bands they replicate."
(this passage comes at the beginning of a piece about all-female cover bands with names like AC/DShe and Lez Zeppelin, and it is fantastic)
The only rough patch is at the end, when Klosterman includes an excerpt from a book that he tried to write when he was a reporter for a newspaper in Akron, and I suspect he included it for the dual purpose of proving how unashamed he is by what a terrible writer he used to be, and the hope that someone would tell him it's actually very good.
Overall, a great collection of essays that are in-depth and thoughtful enough for hardcore fans, and frank and approachable enough for the casual reader. ...more
I mean, it's funny. Amy Poehler can't write a book and not be funny, because she's Amy fuckin' Poehler. But (and this is noThis is not a comedy book.
I mean, it's funny. Amy Poehler can't write a book and not be funny, because she's Amy fuckin' Poehler. But (and this is not the first time I'm going to compare the two memoirs) where Tina Fey's Bossypants contained humorous essays written specifically for the purpose of being funny, Poehler's does not. Everything is presented in a straightforward, matter-of-fact, fashion, and although a lot of the book is very, very funny, it never seems like this was the specific goal behind the essays.
This is also not a book about comedy.
Although Amy Poehler discusses her time on improv groups in Chicago and New York, Saturday Night Live, and Parks and Recreation, she never gets more in-depth than "then we moved to New York and started working at this theater." Her time on SNL is reduced to a chapter of brief (but fantastic) anecdotes. Amy Poehler is renowned for her ability to play vastly different characters - somewhere on the internet is a photo gallery of all her Second City characters - but she never discusses what goes into each character. The closest we get is this description of her preparing her Hillary Clinton imitation and finally getting a bead on the character by playing her as someone who is tired of always being the smartest person in the room.
Okay, so it's not a comedy book, and it's not a book about comedy, and it's really not even much of a memoir - Poehler does not discuss her divorce because "it is too sad and too personal. I also don't like people knowing my shit." So what, exactly, is Yes Please?
It feels weird to classify this book as a self-help book. But that's what I got out of it. Maybe your experience with Poehler's book will be different, but as I was reading it, the parts that left the greatest impressions on me are the ones where she is demonstrating how to be a good person. The title itself references this - Poehler spends some time discussing how the improv rule of always replying with "yes, and..." is also a good rule for life, and how she tacks "please" onto that because Amy Poehler is truly, genuinely, wonderfully nice, and that's always refreshing. But lest you think she's some kind of pushover, rest assured that Amy Poehler is also a badass who gets what she wants, and if you pay attention, she can teach you how to do that:
"When someone is being rude, abusing their power, or not respecting you, just call them out in a really obvious way. Say, 'I can't understand why you are being rude because you are the concierge and this is the part of the evening where the concierge helps me.' Act like they are an actor who has forgotten what part they are playing. It brings the attention back to them and gives you a minute to calm down so you don't do something silly like burst into tears or break their stupid fucking glasses."
She also teaches you how to be good at what you do, in a very good essay called "Treat Your Career Like a Bad Boyfriend":
"Now, before I extend this metaphor, let me make a distinction between career and creativity. Creativity is connected to your passion, that light inside you that drives you. That joy that comes when you do something you love. That small voice that tells you, 'I like this. Do this again. You are good at it. Keep going.' That is the juicy stuff that lubricates our lives and helps us feel less alone in the world. Your creativity is not a bad boyfriend. ...You have to care about your work but not about the result. You have to care about how good you are and how good you feel, but not about how good people think you are or how good people think you look."
I don't want to imply that this is all heavy, here's-how-to-be-a-successful-person stuff. There's lightness in this book, and like I said, it's funny and fluffy, but there's a solid gold center deep within this seemingly light read that makes it stand out from other comedy memoirs I've read. I treated this book as a manual on how to become Amy Poehler, and there are worse things we could be.
Have I mentioned that Amy Poehler is nice? She's so nice. She does the same thing Tina Fey did in her book where she lists a lot of the people who work on her TV show with her and it's basically an excuse for her to gush over how much she likes the people she works with (she calls Aubrey Plaze "a big-hearted warrior"). She spends a long chapter talking about her sons and how much she loves them. Tiny Fey's book featured a chapter called "We Don't Care if You Like It (One in a Series of Love Letters to Amy Poehler)." Amy Poehler's book returns the favor by including an acrostic poem about Tina Fey, which might seem disingenuous, but it's clear on every page how much these two great people love each other:
"Sometimes Tina is like a very talented bungee-jumping expert. All it takes is for Tina to softly say, 'We can do this, right?' and I suddenly feel like I can jump off a bridge."
I don't know how you guys reacted to that line, but when I read it I had to put the book down and immediately send a text to my best friend telling her I loved her. That's the effect Amy Poehler's book had on me: it taught me how to do what I wanted, how to feel good about myself, how to deal with whatever terrible things life throws at you, and it reminded me to be kind.
And it's pretty fucking funny, so there's that....more
Donna Leon and I have a strange relationship. She's nowhere near the top of my list of favorite detective writers, yet I've read six of her CommissariDonna Leon and I have a strange relationship. She's nowhere near the top of my list of favorite detective writers, yet I've read six of her Commissario Brunetti mysteries (sort of how I really don't like Rent all that much, yet through an odd combination of circumstances have seen the show three times). Her books always leave me feeling unfulfilled, even though at this point I should know better than to expect miracles from them. But I keep coming back to her books, hoping to find that really great one that I know is hidden in the series, and I do this for one reason: Venice. Much in the way that I will happily watch paint dry if the narrator from Bridezillas is providing commentary, I will read just about any book that takes place in Venice. It's a killer setting, especially for a mystery, and despite all her weaknesses as a writer, Leon uses the setting to its full potential in every book.
Which is all a long-winded way of saying that when I found this book, I was delighted - Donna Leon discussing Venice, without the distraction of her half-baked murder mysteries and useless filler scenes? Sign me up.
The book, as the "Other Essays" part of the title suggests, is about more than just the author's experiences in Venice (where she's lived for over twenty years). There's a lengthy section on opera, some stories about Leon's country house in Italy, a lot of essays bashing the United States, and a few essays that get into Leon's childhood and frankly fascinating career history (she was living in Iran at the time of the revolution, and also did a teaching stint in Saudi Arabia - Donna Leon, I am delighted to report, is a badass).
Other reviewers took issue with the negative tone of a lot of the essays, but I found her curmudgeonly air delightful. If she's not complaining about going back home and being surrounded by fat Americans who have probably never even been to Europe, gross, she's expounding on opera and how once a friend forced her to go to a non-Baroque opera, prompting a delightful list of "warnings meant to govern attendance at the opera," the first of which goes like this:
"1. Beware of beds. If, at any time during a performance, a bed appears on stage in a place other than a bedroom it is probably being used as a symbol. Opera directors often use symbols in place of ideas. They are not the same."
My only complaint is that many of the essays feel too short. They're more like anecdotes instead of fully-formed stories, and there are potential essays hidden within the text that I would have enjoyed reading. In one of her opera pieces, Leon gets to the end and mentions that when she was at the reception, she started imagining how a murderer would escape the room, and says that this is one of the perils of being a detective writer. I could have read an entire essay about how Leon can't stop imagining grisly murder scenarios everywhere she goes, but instead it's tacked on at the end of a completely unrelated essay, which was frustrating. She also has some essays about writing at the end of the book, including some advice on writing detective stories. I enjoyed this, although she seemed to have sort of a dismissive attitude towards the detective genre (I forgot to mark it, so I can't quote the line directly, but I remember her implying that mysteries are not "real" books). It was weird to watch Leon essentially bite the hand that feeds her, and it made me wonder if she only started writing mysteries because of the money, which makes me sad. Although it would explain why none of her books have managed to impress me so far....more
As part of the promotional tour for this book, David Sedaris made a stop in a Barnes and Noble in my city, and I ended up going sort of by accident (IAs part of the promotional tour for this book, David Sedaris made a stop in a Barnes and Noble in my city, and I ended up going sort of by accident (I bought a copy of the book on a whim the day before the event and learned that, by purchasing the book, I had also unknowingly purchased a ticket to the reading the next day). It was a fun event - Sedaris is charming and adorable in person, and was very polite to the requisite crazy people who tend to show up at every author reading I've ever attended (I remember one particularly memorable woman at a Margaret Atwood reading who started out asking Atwood's opinion about Britney Spears and her costumes throughout the years, and ended by shrieking that "What they did to Britney was A SIN! It was A SIN!" and it was the most amazing thing I've ever seen). A word of advice for anyone attending a Sedaris event in the future, though: the man is chatty. There were only a few dozen people in line to get their books signed, but he stopped and talked with every single person, sometimes for almost five minutes each. It took a long fucking time, which I wasn't expecting, so be prepared for that. By the time it was my turn, I was just tired and didn't have anything fascinating to say, but he was very nice and asked me some polite questions as he drew an owl on my book, and then he offered me one of the chocolates that another fan had apparently made for him. I suggested jokingly that they had been poisoned, because I don't know how to talk like a normal human being, and he just kind of blinked at me, so I thanked him, grabbed my signed book, and ran. Anyway, add that to the list of Madeline's Awkward Author Encounters and let's get to the real review bit.
Like Sedaris's previous collections, the essays here can be divided into three categories: stories about Sedaris's childhood and early twenties, stories about his travels (usually featuring his boyfriend Hugh, who I'm sort of in love with), and essays written from the perspective of a fictional character. The last category is the hardest to spot, because often they'll have the exact same tone and voice as his other essays, so you assume that they're nonfiction until he reveals that the speaker is not, in fact, him. My favorite kind of Sedaris essay has always been the travel kind, and this book has plenty of those. I always love reading about his experiences learning new languages, and there's a good passage about the differences between Japanese and German lessons:
"There's no discord in Pimsleur's Japan, but its Germany is a moody and often savage place. In one of the exercises, you're encouraged to argue with a bellhop who tries to cheat you out of your change and who ends up sneering, 'You don't understand German.' 'Oh, but I do,' you learn to say. 'I do understand German.' It's a program full of odd sentence combinations. 'We don't live here. We want mineral water' implies that if the couple did live in this particular town they'd be getting drunk like everyone else. Another standout is 'Der Wein ist zu teuer und Sie sprechen zu schnell.' ('The wine is too expensive and you talk too fast.') The response to this would be 'Anything else, Herr Asshole?' But of course they don't teach you that."
The essays dealing with Sedaris's childhood are distinctly bittersweet, because although they're still funny, there's an underlying sadness to them that's brought into the open much more than it was in his previous collections. This was the first time I had read anything about the abuse of the Sedaris children, and the saddest thing about these details was the way David Sedaris seems to calmly accept it as a normal part of everyone's childhood, which I don't think is true. Someone at the reading actually asked him about how his parents would beat him when he was a kid, and his response was essentially the same as it is in the book: he shrugged, and said that that was normal at the time and that he still didn't find anything unusual about it....more
"No, I want to tell you about the dark recesses of the restaurant underbelly - a subculture whose centuries-old militaristic hierarchy and ethos of 'r"No, I want to tell you about the dark recesses of the restaurant underbelly - a subculture whose centuries-old militaristic hierarchy and ethos of 'rum, buggery and the lash' make for a mix of unwavering order and nerve-shattering chaos - because I find it all quite comfortable, like a nice warm bath. I can move around easily in this life. I speak the language. In the small, incestuous community of chefs and cooks in New York City, I know the people, and in my kitchen, I know how to behave (as opposed to in real life, where I'm on shakier ground). I want the professionals who read this to enjoy it for what it is: a straight look at a life many of us have lived and breathed for most of our days and nights to the exclusion of 'normal' social interaction. Never having had a Friday or Saturday night off, always working holidays, being busiest when the rest of the world is just getting out of work, makes for a sometimes peculiar world-view, which I hope my fellow chefs and cooks will recognize. The restaurant lifers who read this may or may not like what I'm doing. But they'll know I'm not lying."
Before No Reservations, there was Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain's straightforward, occasionally too-honest account of the restaurant industry and the demented geniuses who make their living from it. Although there are plenty of meditations on food (the very first section describes the moment when Anthony Bourdain first fell in love with food) and cooking, this is first and foremost a book about restaurants: what kind of people work there, what sort of people should and shouldn't own one, and what goes on behind the scenes. This really functions more as a collection of essays rather than a straightforward memoir, because although events happen in mostly chronological order, there are large gaps missing (for instance, in one chapter Bourdain discusses the time he worked at an Italian restaurant and learned to love Italian food, and in the next chapter he's describing a typical day at his job as head chef of Les Halles) and there's no clear narrative arc. It's a good, in-depth look at the inner workings of restaurants, well-written and brimming with Bourdain's signature no-bullshit piss-and-vinegar tone that I love so well:
"Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is not a life worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all that I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food."
I've worked as a waitress for about two and half years now, so most of the things Bourdain reveals about the food service industry weren't all that shocking to me (people working in a restaurant are often drinking and/or on drugs during service? yawn.) but the book was still able to give me a new perspective into a part of the restaurant industry that I was unfamiliar with. In a restaurant, working the floor and working back of house are two very different worlds, and it was cool to get a look into how the other side lives. It also gave me more sympathy to how damn hard the cooks have to work - after reading sections like the description of Bourdain working as the head chef during the dinner rush, I will never complain again about the cooks where I work taking twenty minutes to make two burgers in the middle of Friday night dinner rush:
"The printer is going nonstop now. My left hand grabs tickets, separates out white copy for grill, yellow copy for sautee, pink copy for me, coffee orders for the busboys. My right hand wipes plates, jams gaufrette potatoes and rosemary sprigs into mashed potatoes, moves tickets from the order to the fire positions, appetizers on order to appetizers out. I'm yelling full-time now, trying to hold it together, keep an even pace. My radar screen is filled with incoming bogeys, and I'm shooting them down as fast as I can. One mistake, where a whole table comes back because of a prematurely fired dupe, or a bad combination of special requests ties up a station for a few critical seconds, or a whole roasted fish or a cote de boeuf has been forgotten? The whole line could come grinding to a dead stop, like someone dropping a wrench into a GM assembly line - utter meltdown, what every chef fears most. If something like this happens it could blow the whole pace of the evening, screw up everybody's heads, and create a deep, dark hole that could be very hard to climb out of."
Required reading for anyone who plans to eat at a restaurant in the near future.
One last thought: does anyone else remember Kitchen Confidential being a failed sitcom once upon a time? I faintly remember watching one episode when it briefly aired, and it was about one of the chef guy's mentor coming to the restaurant, and I remember that he was this really tough exacting guy who would tell his students that he "made two chefs like you in the toilet this morning." I was sure that I was misremembering and that the two weren't related, but then I got to the bit where Bourdain describes his time at the Culinary Institute of America and one of his instructors totally used to say that. Does anyone remember that this show happened? ...more
GAH! I can't look away from this cover that Goodreads provided. My copy of Arguably is plain, blinding yellow, which sometimes gives me a headache butGAH! I can't look away from this cover that Goodreads provided. My copy of Arguably is plain, blinding yellow, which sometimes gives me a headache but at least it doesn't stare into my soul. I feel sorry for anyone who actually owns a copy with this particular cover of doom on it.
Before his death, I had a vague awareness of Christopher Hitchens, having read some of his contributions to Vanity Fair, but he never struck me as someone I should be paying close attention to until after he had died and I was reading some of his most memorable quotes online. Click the link and read #11. It changed my entire perception of Hitchens and made me respect him so much more - I was raised Catholic, and you simply do not criticize Mother friggin' Teresa. It just does not compute for us. But the thing is, he was absolutely right. After I read that, I decided that I had to read more of Hitchens' stuff.
The essays in this group are divided into sections: first are a series of book reviews (which are less about the books in question and more critical essays on the various dead British men who are the subjects); then a bunch of straightforward worshipful essays on mostly dead British male authors; a bit entitled "Amusements, Annoyances, and Disappointments" which, had I been in charge of this collection, would have been titled "Hitchens Bitchin'" (tip your waitresses, you've been great); foreign policy essays dealing mostly with the Middle East, "Legacies of Totalitarianism"; and finally a series of brief little essays on a wide range of subjects, including a history of the King James Bible, a discussion of the evolution of the word "like", and the joys of the phrase "fuck off."
They're not all awesome. I freely admit that I skipped the essays on Edmund Burke, Stephen Spender, and Edward Said because I don't know who those guys are/don't know enough about them to make the essays compelling. Hitchens can be unbelievably crotchety, particularly in a piece where he whines about how much he hates it when a waiter interrupts dinner (ie, interrupts Hitchens speaking) to pour wine for everyone at the table. Also he has a remarkable tone-deaf essay in which he laments that he isn't allowed to say the n-word in any context without everyone getting mad at him. And of course, his infamous "Why Women Aren't Funny" essay is here, and it's so mired in smugness and antiquated gender stereotypes that it's not even worth reading, much less taking seriously (I'll save you the time and tell you that Hitchens's argument boils down to, "women can't be funny because they're too preoccupied with having babies." No, really.) In fact, Hitchens is pretty damn insufferable whenever he has to talk about women, and he is especially irritating when he's discussing Middle Eastern women. He has a terrible essay on why it's a good idea for France to ban burquas (I personally prefer Jon Stewart's take on the issue, which is that forbidding women to dress a certain way is just as bad as forcing them to do so), and seems to be personally offended by the idea of any woman wearing a burqua, hijab, or even a headscarf. In fact, whenever a Middle Eastern woman is mentioned in the book, even if she's just been seen from a distance, Hitchens has to make sure to let us know if she's wearing a headscarf. This is weird, because although he frequently seeks out other experts to weigh in on whatever topic he's writing about (he even emailed Nora Ephron and Fran Lebowitz for their opinions on his "hurr, women can't tell jokes" bullshit, because apparently they are the funniest women Christopher Hitchens knows, which makes me sad for a lot of reasons), he never mentions asking a Muslim woman about why she does or doesn't wear a headscarf. The idea that a woman would choose to wear a headscarf, rather than being forced to, doesn't seem to have occurred to Hitchens.
But everything else he writes about the Middle East is very, very good, and possibly the best essays in the entire collection are when he's discussing his experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan - there's a particularly stirring essay where Hitchens willingly allows himself to be waterboarded and reports on the experience. And despite not always agreeing with it, I was in constant awe of Hitchen's voice and its intelligent, no-bullshit tone. One thing that at least can be said for Christopher Hitchens: he does not condescend to his readers. In fact, he expects you to be as smart as he is, and understand all of his references and jokes, and I'll admit that I couldn't always keep up. Also admirable is his absolute refusal to cave to any sentimentality - he calls the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings an "exhausting national sob fest."
Not that he's heartless. One of the most moving essays is about the uses of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, and what Hitchens saw when he visited victims who were permanently disfigured because of the chemical. I'll give the last word to Hitchens and let him describe the experience himself, because there's really no better way to demonstrate what a talented, brilliant, and secretly compassionate man he was:
"At a school full of children who made sign language to one another or who couldn't sit still (or who couldn't move much at all), or who couldn't see or couldn't hear...I was then asked if I would like to say a few words, through an interpreter, to the assembly. I quite like a captive audience, but I didn't trust myself to say a fucking thing. Several of the children in the front row were so wizened and shrunken that they looked as if they could be my seniors. I swear to you that Jim Natchway has taken photographs, as one of his few rivals, Philip Jones Griffiths, also took photographs, that simply cannot be printed in this magazine, because they would poison your sleep, as they have poisoned mine."...more
"In Other Worlds is not a catalogue of science fiction, a grand theory about it, or a literary history of it. It is not a treatise, it is not definiti"In Other Worlds is not a catalogue of science fiction, a grand theory about it, or a literary history of it. It is not a treatise, it is not definitive, it is not exhaustive, it is not canonical. It is not the work of a practising academic or an official guardian of a body of knowledge. Rather it is an exploration of my own lifelong relationship with a literary form, or forms, or subforms, both as reader and as writer."
I'm still kicking myself for not being able to make it to Margaret Atwood's Ellman Lectures at Emory University a few years ago, where she lectured on science fiction and her relationship with the genre. Luckily for me, Atwood decided to do us all a favor and put those lectures, along with other essays on science fiction, into a single volume for fans like me to buy on the day it came out (Prompting a minor panic attack when I couldn't find the book on the New Releases shelf at Barnes and Noble, which resulted in me getting a staff member to retrieve the single copy from the back. Do not get between me and a Margaret Atwood book, is the lesson).
As the introduction states, this is a very personal collection, detailing Atwood's own interest in science fiction and how her interest began as a child, continued into her college years, and culminated in her writing three science fiction/speculative fiction novels. She describes reading Animal Farm as a child without being aware of the symbolism, escaping her literature thesis by going to cheesy B-movie showings as a college student, and the process of creating the futuristic worlds for The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake. And then just for fun, she throws in a few short fiction pieces at the end that are inspired by what the book discusses.
I loved this, not just for how thoughtfully Atwood discusses and dissects such cheap B-movie tropes like mad scientists and sexy demon women, but for how broad the scope of these essays are. She discusses Never Let Me Go, the relationship between devils and evil aliens, 1984, Brave New World, Avatar, fictional maps, superheroes, gene splicing, and HG Wells. Did I mention superheroes? Because oh my god, you guys, Margaret Atwood discussing superheroes is my new favorite thing. She does a Jungian analysis of Batman using the three big villains - the Joker, the Penguin, and Catwoman - and does such a good job analyzing Robin that for the first time I didn't utterly hate the character:
"Then there's Robin, the Boy Wonder, who is Bruce's ward. Is Bruce gay? Don't even think about it. From the point of view of we mythosophists, Robin is an elemental spirit, like Shakespeare's Puck and Ariel - note the bird name, which links him to air. His function in the plot is to aid the benevolent master trickster, Batman, with his plans. From the point of view of we Jungians, however, Robin is a Peter Pan figure - he never grows up - and he represents the repressed child within Bruce Wayne, whose parents, you'll recall, were murdered when he was very young, thus stunting Bruce's emotional growth."
I'll be honest: I never thought I'd see the day when a multiple-award-winning Serious Author was discussing Batman with a completely straight face. And that, I think, is the central idea behind this collection: that the stories of aliens and mad scientists and superheroes and magic, so frequently dismissed as pulpy trash, deserve to be regarded with just as much respect and thoughtfulness as traditional Great Literature. Stories of aliens taking over the world and sexy vampires have a rich and far-reaching literary ancestry, and many of the tropes that define science fiction can be found in the kind of books that are taken much more seriously than anything involving monsters and made-up worlds.
Summary: Science Fiction is legit, guys, so you best respect. The Atwood commands it. ...more
I rarely find craft essays fun to read, but these are actually very enjoyable. Lots of writers, most of which I've actually heard of, all contributingI rarely find craft essays fun to read, but these are actually very enjoyable. Lots of writers, most of which I've actually heard of, all contributing essays on very specific topics in writing. Sample titles include "When to Keep It Simple" by Rick Bass, "Revisioning The Great Gatsby" by Susan Bell, "Fairy Tale is Form, Form is Fairy Tale" by Kate Bernheimer, "Le Mot Incorrect" by Jim Crusoe, "Lost in the Woods" by Antonya Nelson, and my personal favorite, "Hard Up for a Hard-on" by Steve Almond (if you only ever read one craft essay on how to write a successful sex scene, make it this one). ...more
A collection of very nice craft essays by a variety of different authors. My favorite was by Joyce Carol Oates, where she discusses why she writes so A collection of very nice craft essays by a variety of different authors. My favorite was by Joyce Carol Oates, where she discusses why she writes so many books about abused women - when she was in school, Oates was constantly bullied by a couple of boys, and she writes stories about women being abused as a way of dealing with this childhood trauma.
I read this, thought about how often I complain about how Joyce Carol Oates always writes about how Men Are Bad And Will Hurt You, and immediately felt like the world's biggest jackass. Sorry, Joyce. ...more
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