Francine Prose’s My New American Life – Blitz 2K12 Vol. 7

My New American Life (Not a show on NPR) - Via ColumbiaFestival.com

As I approach my 27th birthday, I’ve started to realize I can’t eat crap food everyday. At lunch time, I’ve excised the Chipotle burritos for salad made at home. I’ve switched out the faux healthy Honey Bunches of Oats for some bland fiber heavy cereal. I’ve even started taking Metamucil every morning. Gone are empty calories. Food with nothing in it has become persona non grata. In a lot of ways, Francine Prose’s My New American Life is the literary equivalent of empty calories.

Now that isn’t to say the book isn’t good. It has the feel of a well-done summer books that your parents use to take to the pool or beach and read as they hung out with your stuff. Maybe it was that the novels I read before and after My New American Life were exceptionally powerfully. Still, as I look back at Prose’s novel, I can’t shake an empty feeling. A feeling that leaves me wondering if this book really deserved to be selected as one of the top 50 pieces of fiction from 2011.

The titular new life in America is Lula’s, a twenty-something from Albania who landed in Manhattan’s Lower East Side with fellow Albanian Dunia. After working as a waitress at one of those Tex-Mex places better known for their large servings of alcohol and even larger groups of intoxicated New Yorkers, Lula is hired by Mr. Stanley to be a live in babysitter for his teenage son Zeke, and in some ways to him as well.

Mr. Stanley and Zeke find themselves living in a spacious house in Baywater, New Jersey in the wake of Mrs. Stanley going away on Christmas Eve. Originally a professor, Mr. Stanley was lured to Wall Street by big money and the belief that he could help the little guy. While the former happened, the latter never materialized. Set in 2005, he tells others about an impending economic crisis that sounds a lot like a laundry list of what happened in 2008. The other key player in this superficially placid suburban setting is Mr. Stanley’s friend, Don. A big shot lawyer whose specialty is immigration, he is also investigating ongoing detainee practices at Guantanamo Bay, and is working to get Lula in the country permanently.

Then all hell brakes loose and the novel sounds as grounded in reality as the Albanian fairytales Lula passes off as her own creative writing to Mr. Stanley and Don. While Zeke is at school and Mr. Stanley is at work, Lula is visited by three Albanian wanna-be mobsters who are nothing more than small-time thugs. After she lets them into the house, they ask her to hide a gun for them. The three of them – Alvo, the leader, Guri, and Genti – continue to visit her. She starts to fall for Alvo and when she notices signs that someone has been in the house while she is out, she hopes it’s Alvo in an effort to see her. In an evening that includes Alvo and Lula attending an Albanian concert in a Bronx warehouse, as well as  the return of Mrs. Stanley, and her subsequent departure, the story reaches its most incredulous.

All of this is happening around Zeke, an uninspired teenager doing everything he can to avoid college. Eventually his father forces him to visit a college and the sequence of events during that trip nearly matche the night of Albanians in the Bronx and Mrs. Stanley back in Baywater.

Francine Prose: Easily a Top 5 name for author - Via CUNY

Inevitably, the lies Lula has been spinning about everything from her short stories to her efforts to get Don to aid Alvo during his legal troubles are brought to light. Her hand is forced and she must find another way to keep her new American life going. Enter Dunia, whom Lula had assumed had been kidnapped. Turns out she hit the jackpot and married a plastic surgeon who lives in New Jersey. And the way that subplot is resolved feels like it was ripped from the id of a reality show producer who spends their day creating “reality” for suburban dimwits on cable channels you didn’t know you had.

The book ends with Lula on the George Washington Bridge. In traffic. In an SUV. The how she got there and the where she is going are just as improbable as the rest of the story.

Maybe it’s the suburbs or Jersey. I’ve never really lived in the suburbs and though I’ve spent a serious amount of time in the Garden State, maybe that is how things happen for some folks who make their lives in towns like Summit, villages named Baywater or other locales plastered on exit signs on the highways that lace through the state like veins. Or, maybe, the whole book is one big tall tale told written by Prose, told by some unseen and unknown narrator that has as much basis in reality as Lula’s Albanian fairy tales. Maybe.

Pauline Kael: Proto-Hipster? (Blitz 2K12 Vol. 6)

Pauline Kael: A Life In Darkness - Via NY Observer

There is a danger in writing a biography of someone who is either still alive or who lived recently. You can either get a fawning piece of work that is a disservice to the readers because we end up with only the best of the subject and the author’s limp dismissals of the person’s faults and failings. Or we can get a hatchet job where the individual’s biographer has a clear vendetta and does everything in their power to tear down the subject. While this can happen in any biography, the passion of a supporter or the vitriol of a detractor seems particularly vivid for those subjects who are either still living or recently deceased.

Brian Kellow’s biography of film critic Pauline Kael suffers from being the work of, if not an acolyte, a devoted fan. While this devotion helps keep the story of Kael’s life moving, rarely getting bogged down, it also serves as the biography’s downfall as you finish the book with the distinct sense that Kael got a free pass from Kellow.

The story of how Pauline Kael rose to prominence as the lead film critic for The New Yorker for more than 20 years is impressive and Kellow does a superb job of explaining how Kael toiled in obscurity until she was in her 40s and 50s.

Yet, it is Kael’s actions towards her friends, lovers, and colleagues and Kellow’s disregard for patterns in her behavior that starts to pop up as the book explores her struggles after leaving college. Even when Kellow acknowledges Kael was mean-spirited and wrong, he writes it off as  naivete on her part or justifies it in an explicable fashion.

Frustrated with the Bay Area, she and a friend pack up for New York City a few years after college. By the time they reach Manhattan, they are out of money until her friend runs into a pair of prominent musicians who take him in and initially help Kael. She falls out with the group after feeling like the fourth wheel and as her barbed comments rubbed the others the wrong way. Eventually, she returned to California where she ended up giving movie reviews on a local Bay Area radio-station after being overheard expounding on a film with friends while at a coffee shop. She then became involved in the Berkley Cinema Guild where she ended up writing blurbs for the movies she helped select and rose to even greater local prominence.

After a long unpaid stint at the local radio station, she made the jump to the printed word. Initially, she wrote for McCall’s and then The New Republic. But neither outlet was the right fit for Pauline Kael. McCall’s was trying to transition to a younger demographic and while Kael’s lively, feisty writing was well-received by younger readers, it went too far for the publication. The New Republic was no less of a success because their editors would change sentences and entire sections of her reviews without her permission. It was only at The New Yorker where she found the range and freedom to write what she wanted. Run by Wallace Shawn, The New Yorker rarely gave writers word limits and although they fought often, Shawn brought Kael on to help draw a new generation of readers.

Pauline Kael at home - Via The Guardian

By 1979, Kael had tired of splitting writing duties with Penelope Gilliat, the other movie critic at The New Yorker. It was then that she took Warren Beatty up on his offer to come out to Hollywood and help produce movies by having a say in scripts and casting. It went disastrously as her tendency to micro-manage and her inability to oversee underlings were major obstacles that she and the studio executives never overcame.

Pauline Kael was an exceptional movie critic. Her insight and range were impressive. But as a writer, Kael had her flaws and in his book, Kellow brushes these off as inconsequential. As her tenure at The New Yorker went on her reviews started to include bouts of hyperbole that the film or actor simply did not warrant. Her appreciation of good trashy films also led her astray to the point where she would approve of films that were just not that good.

Worse yet, Kael does not come off as a nice person. In particular, Kellow mentions how Pauline treated her only child, Gina. Kael’s daughter was home schooled by Pauline but was rarely an interest of hers. Kael relied on Gina to help her get her reviews finished, to get around since Pauline did not know how to drive, and serve as her assistant. Gina had no childhood or real life because of her mother’s pull. While Kellow mentions this throughout the biography, he consistently minimizes it.

Just as bad, throughout her personal and professional life, Kael treated her colleagues and, even friends, harshly without a second thought to their feelings or the impact it would have on their professional standing. Kellow tosses numerous examples of this behavior off as Kael being naive. Not only is this wrong, it comes off like a PR flak or fawning fan dismissing their client or idol’s missteps.

Biographer Brian Kellow - Via Slate

If there was any doubt as you were reading that Kellow is excusing much of Kael’s personality, he closes the book with a conversation she had with a friend in 1971. Her friend was overwhelmed by the fact that Nixon had just been named Time’s Man of the Year and that her son had been deployed to Vietnam. In the conversation, Kael paused, and and said, “And to think, there’s not even a decent movie to see.” Kellow wants us to take this as a sign of Kael’s unwavering energy. And maybe he is right, in that it is an energy for films, but it also shows a distinct lack of consideration for others.

If it were just her personality and run-ins with friends and other critics that Kellow was white-washing here, it would be less problematic. But it also extends to a professional episode that speaks poorly of Kael’s ethics. While it receives a whole chapter, Kellow lets her off the hook for her wrong-doing. Kael was working on a long-form piece on Orson Welles and the making of Citizen Kane. She found out that Howard Suber, a film professor at UCLA, had already done much of the same type of research and written about the film. She convinced Suber to team up with her on the article. Despite his mention of signing a contract, Kael repeatedly told him he had nothing to worry about.

We all know how this story ends. Kael’s article gets published, with no attribution to Suber, and she lifted some of his ideas and sentences. Kellow fails to take Kael to task for this intellectual theft. Yet, later on in the book, he takes one of Kael’s New Yorker colleagues to task for their plagiarism run-in.

In my title for this post, I ask if Pauline Kael was an early hipster. I pose this question because throughout the book she disliked most mainstream hits like the Sound of Music. Even more hipster of her, she touted new, up-and-coming actors, directors, and screenwriters and after they started to find acclaim and become stars, she soured on them.

Kael saw and reviewed some of the great movies of the 1960s and 1970s. Kellow adeptly integrates these films and Kael’s reviews into the book. He brings the characters on the silver screen and the characters around Pauline to life. It is just a shame that in his sketching of Pauline, he is more of a fan than historian.

Blitz 2K12 Gets A Very Belle & Sebastian Slogan [Video]

Spend 15 hours behind the wheel of a car, powered by nothing more than McDonalds, four bottles of Vitamin Water, and White Castle for dinner and you’ll come up with some ideas that will leave you scratching your head, like:

• I should totally learn how to throw a Knuckleball and try out for an independent minor league ball team. Admittedly, I’ve had this one before but it made a strong comeback during the ride.
• If switching to a sweater vest propelled Rick Santorum to near victory in Iowa, what could it do for me?
• What does it say about my life if I want to claim Mr. November by The National as my theme song?
• The Book Blitz needs a slogan!

Hands down, the best purchase I ever made in Peoria - Via Dandyshirts.net

Hey, that last one is pretty reasonable! Of course, as I drove along the surprisingly blue coast of Lake Erie between Buffalo and the Pennsylvania state line, I was listening to the Giants-Falcons game. As it went into the half, I switched over to a road trip CD I made a few years back. One of the first songs to come on was “Wrapped Up In Books” by Belle and Sebastian. Eureka! Just past the two-minute mark, Blitz 2K12′s slogan came over the speakers:

Our aspirations are wrapped up in books/Our inclinations are hidden in books.

And there it is. While there are some meanings in there that The Composite might try to unpack down the road, it is particularly fitting since I’m a proud owner of a Belle and Sebastian t-shirt that reads, “I’m a B & S Bookworm/Belle and Sebastian Scholastic Services.” I’m going to tweet this post at Belle and Sebastian’s official twitter handle and, who knows, maybe they’ll get a kick out of this.

In the meantime, here is the video to Belle and Sebastian’s “Wrapped Up In Books.” And below that is an update on where Blitz 2K12 stands in the race for 100.

Books Read & Blogged About

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
The Boy in The Moon by Ian Brown
Taller When Prone by Les Murray
Chango’s Beads and Two-Tone Shoes by William Kennedy
Space, in Chains by Laura Kasischke

Books That Have Been Read, But Not Blogged About

Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness by Touré
To A Mountain In Tibet by Colin Thubron
Midnight Rising by Tony Horwitz
Believing is Seeing by Errol Morris
The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje
The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

Currently Reading

My New American Life by Francine Prose

In The Queue

Pauline Kael by Brian Kellow
To End All Wars By Adam Hochschild

Why Hugh Grant Is Wrong – William Kennedy’s Changó’s Beads and Two-Tone Shoes (Blitz2K12 Vol. 4)

Would PM Grant Cut Love in an Austerity Budget? - Via Photobucket

Hugh Grant is wrong. Well, I guess to be more exact, the screenwriter who penned Love Actually is the one who is wrong here. But for argument’s sake, lets just say it is Hugh Grant.

At the beginning of Love Actually, over a montage of families, friends, and couples meeting at the airport, Grant tell us that despite recent events in the early 2000s, love is all around us.

Maybe. But, you want to know what is really all around us? The past. And I’m not talking you live a few blocks from a small skirmish in the Civil War or you use to get drinks at the bar where Joey Ramone learned his third chord. I’m talking personal past.

From visiting your childhood home that has become nothing more than a glorified storage unit for your stuff from your teen years to the subway station where you and an ex first kissed, you can’t outrun the past. It informs the present and will, inevitably, color the future.

While love plays an important role in William Kennedy’s “Changó’s Beads and Two-Tone Shoes,” it is the past that permeates the two settings for the novel: 1957 Cuba and Albany, New York.

Your Author: William Kennedy - Via Albany.edu

Centered around Daniel Quinn, we follow him along at three different points of his life – an 8 year old living in Albany, a 30 year old writer in Batista-era Castro, and finally, as an Albany journalist who knows everyone from the local prostitutes to the political kingpins, in the days and hours following the shooting of RFK in California.

While Daniel is the central character, the story not only revolves a host of other individuals who call Cuba and Albany home, it also focuses on two other members of the Quinn famiily: Daniel’s father George and his namesake grandfather who was a globe-trekking journalist-cum-author. It is the Quinn family’s past that takes Daniel to Cuba in the 50s, where he ends up befriending Hemingway, interviewing Fidel Castro in the jungle, meeting the men who would play critical roles in the latter part of the book, and his wife, Renata.

While the book is set in Cuba, the story is well-paced, but there is something uneven about the dialogue. Particularly in romantic moments, the characters sound flat or almost cliched. Kennedy tends to fall back on the notion of Cuba as some sort of geographic aphrodisiac.

Kennedy, who has spent decades living in and writing about Albany shows his prowess when the story shifts to the New York capital in June of 1968. Even during the flashbacks to Cuba that fill in parts of the narrative, Kennedy retains the naturalness of the dialogue he has established in Albany.

To explain the inner workings of Kennedy’s multi-faceted plot would require at least one scorecard. What it boils down to is this: Albany 1968 is facing the same issues every other major city in America. As RFK clings to life, the city is on the edge of a race riot, the mayor might be the target of an assassin, and an outspoken priest is having the screws put to him by the Albany political machine. While all this is going on, Daniel Quinn is dealing with a father who is mentally no longer there, a wife who is on the verge of leaving, and a niece who is caught between the mayor  and a local Civil Rights activist. On top of this most combustible mix is the appearance of an old Cuban friend of Quinn and his wife who needs one last favor.

Changó’s Beads and Two-Tone Shoes - Via Amazon.com

All of these characters trade on their past. The saddest character, in many respects, is Daniel’s father, who ends up spending the day wandering through Albany, avoiding dangerous spots, being at the center of the action, and continually thinking he is in 1930s Albany. His presence is a sober reminder that eventually we too get left behind, one way or another.

The only blemish – outside of the stilted dialogue in Cuba – is how Quinn mentions the idea of writing a novel about his adventures in Havanna and Albany. For me, it was a smidge too cute. But, it does reinforce this idea that even as we are living in the present, we are dutifully aware of the past.

To paraphrase a certain movie Prime Minister, if I will, “If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling you’ll find that the past is all around.”

Put Another Poem On The Barbie – Les Murray’s Taller When Prone (Blitz 2k12 Vol. 3)

Now That is What I Call a Poem

Anybody who read this blog last year might recall my struggles with poetry and the collections of poems on the 2010 list. But, it wasn’t always this way. In middle school, I actually won a poetry contest. Now, before you start thinking I was a young Neruda who left the stanza behind for the fame of glory of high school debate, let me fill in the blanks.

For some reason during seventh grade, one of the middle school teachers decided it would be a neat idea to have a poetry reciting competition. In my small catholic school, there were just six home rooms. Each class would hold their own preliminary round and the winner from each class would compete in a school-wide assembly.

Even at this point in my young academic career, I was more Economist than haiku. So, I went home, where the only poems I had in my library was a collection by the inimitable Shel Silverstein. My choice tapped into the as-of-yet unknown mopey vein of my personality – Nobody Loves Me, Nobody Cares. You can find the text of the poem at the bottom of this page.

To be fair, I don’t remember what the other kids in my class selected. All I know is that my self-effacing recital sent me to the finals where I ended up finishing in the middle of the pack.

This memory came rushing back to me as I read Les Murray’s most recent collection of poems, “Taller When Prone.” Not because the Australian Murray is a kindred spirit of Silverstein. After another poem where I was uncertain how I should read it, compounded by Australian slang that I was wholly unfamiliar with, I was left wondering how I’d ever come close to winning a poetry competition.

It is in the poems where Murray embraces his native country’s dialect and vernacular where I felt most lost. Almost as if I was a tourist plopped down in a rhyme scheme with no sense of syntax. I’m sure, based on the other poems Murray included in Taller When Prone, that these poems filled with Australian slang and Aussie references would come alive on the page to a reader far more familiar with the source.

Australian Poet Les Murray - Via CliveJames.com

Murray’s greatest strength in this collection is how in just a few lines, sometimes no more than five or eight, he can survey an entire scene and bring the individuals to life. He encapsulates decades across time with the same ease as he paints a single moment. The two stand-outs in this sense are The Toppled Head and The Double Diamond. In the former, Murray describes a couple in bed, where one of them is snoring loudly and the other person tilts the snorer’s head allowing them to once again breath unimpeded. In the latter, Murray tells us the life story of man who has transformed from a soldier into a husband and then from a father into his last role as an elderly individual.

In the copy of the book I picked up from the library, they previewed a poem on the inside flap. Entitled “Fame,” it is easily the funniest poem of the bunch. Murray writes about being mistaken at a restaurant for a famous chef whom his misguided fan has thanked. The other stand out poem is “Phone Canvass” where the titular individual is blind and tells the person at the other end of the line,”I can hear you smiling.” It is a devastatingly beautiful line.

Picking up a collection of poems by an author as talented and skilled as Les Murray makes me wish I knew how to read poetry to the point that I could appreciate the talent on the page. And to have a better grasp of Australian lingo to boot.

Nobody Loves Me, Nobody Cares

“Nobody loves me, nobody cares,
Nobody picks me peaches and pears.
Nobody offers me candy and Cokes,
Nobody listens and laughs at me jokes.
Nobody helps when I get into a fight,
Nobody does all my homework at night.
Nobody misses me,
Nobody cries,
Nobody thinks I’m a wonderful guy.
So, if you ask me who’s my best friend, in a whiz,
I’ll stand up and tell you NOBODY is!
But yesterday night I got quite a scare
I woke up and Nobody just WASN’T there!
I called out and reached for Nobody’s hand,
In the darkness where Nobody usually stands,
Then I poked through the house, in each cranny and nook,
But I found SOMEBODY each place that I looked.
I seached till I’m tired, and now with the dawn,
There’s no doubt about it-
NOBODY’S GONE!!”

Ian Brown’s The Boy in The Moon – Blitz 2K12 V2

The Boy In The Moon by Ian Brown

Living in Park Slope requires a high tolerance for being surrounded by children in strollers, children in tricycles, and children who probably have a better vinyl collection than you will ever have. Sometimes though, there is a kid who is so absolutely ridiculous it stops you in your tracks.

A few weeks ago, I was coming home from dinner in Manhattan and as I walked down a residential street, I saw a father in front of his stoop raking leaves. He was joined by his two year old son, apparently decked out in an all Baby J Crew line of clothes, with a yellow rake of his own, with one hand leaning against an oak tree trying valiantly to help his dad. Just ridiculous.

This Park Slope moment kept rattling in my brain as I read Ian Brown’s memoir, “The Boy In The Moon.” Billed as, “a father’s journey to understand his extraordinary son,” Brown’s son, Walker, was born with cardiofaciocutaneous syndrome – a genetic mutation known as an orphan syndrome.

As Brown explains, the cardio is the ever-present heart issues people with CFC have, facio is for the facial malformations, and cutaneous is from the “many skin irregularities.” Walker is among 300 known CFC cases in the world. Even at the age of 13, he couldn’t speak. He receives his medicine and food through a g-tube, and has to be restrained from bashing his hands against his head. Developmentally, Walker will never progress from a toddler state of being.

The author is more than just the father, he is also a feature writer at Toronto’s The Globe and  Mail. These dual roles are one of the things that make “The Boy In The Moon” the strong book that it is. With his perspective as a father and husband dealing with CFC, Brown gives us the parent’s perspective that a journalist or scientist might be less familiar with. As a professional journalist, it is his search for questions that brings Brown and the reader to a burgeoning CFC community and the scientists working to decode CFC and it’s possible connection to cancer.

It is Brown the father whose voice I enjoyed most. Here is a guy, who along with his wife, usually doesn’t get more than 4 hours of sleep two nights in a row as they raise Walker. We are there with them as they struggle to figure out what is ailing Walker – something that was noticeable from the moment of his birth but not diagnosed until later. Brown brings us into the doctors’ offices as they learn what their son will be and what it will require of them. As Walker ages, it almost feels like we are there with the author as he cares for his son, nudges him to sleep, calms him from his outbursts, and the parents find the proper schools for their unique child.

Eventually, there comes a point when the Browns can no longer handle their son. This opens a new chapter in their lives and the book as they begin the search for a place for Walker to live. More than just a place for him to spend his waking hours and sleep – they seek a home.

Ian and Walker Brown - Via CBC

If there is one flaw in the book is an unfulfilled sense of foreshadowing. Maybe this is less on the writer and more on me the reader, but as I went along, it almost felt like the audience was being slowly, softly prepared for the horrible news that Walker dies or something else horrific. Instead, it goes unmet.

The best parts of “The Boy In The Moon” are when Brown takes on why the historical underpinnings of why our society fails the handicapped and the hidden impact this has on the ones who love them and, usually, are their caregivers. Brown doesn’t pull any punches and shares his darkest moments. Fleeting thoughts of what it would take to quietly end his and his son’s life and the ravaged state of his marriage are put on full display.

This honest gloom is offset by what Brown acknowledges might be nothing, but  for him means so much – the language of clicks he and his son have which constitutes so much of the shared moments they’ve had and the joy that has come in their life. For Brown, Walker’s struggles will never end, but after reading this memoir, it is the joy of being able to step into Walker’s world that makes all the difference for Brown.

Dennis Johnson’s Train Dreams – Blitz 2K12 Vol. 1

Amtrak Joe Approves - Via Electric Literature.com

Trains tend to have an outsized influence on the imagination of those who get caught in the power of these iron horses. For these people, trains are the hallucinogen that prompts daydreams of riding bullet trains, gliding along mountain rivers or racing through small-town America in a foot-race with the sinking sun.

On a certain level, there is fallacy to these daydreams. In a way not found in other forms of transportation – partially in cars and definitely in planes – a train’s options are set. It is guided by the rails underneath it’s wheels and routes mapped out generations, if not centuries, ago. But this doesn’t tell the whole story. For trains, probably since the day Tom Thumb puttered down the track, being a passenger can be about more than just getting from Point A to Point B. Trains do more than than get us to locations, they can take us to places – in our mind and our memories.

For Robert Grainer, the protagonist of Denis Johnson’s “Train Dreams,” the trains that make their way into the Idaho Panhandle serve both purposes in his life. In the most literal sense, as a young child, they bring him to his aunt and uncle after his parent’s death leaves him orphaned. As an adult, he works on the construction of new routes through the mountainous northwest. The train’s whail and rumble are the noises he recall when he thinks back to being in his cabin with his wife and young daughter. It is the train that brings him from his remote cabin to town.

If, in a 116-page novella that deftly chronicles the 80 or so years of the protagonist’s life, trains are the means for which both Granier and story moves, it is death that constantly hovers over, and in some moments, envelopes him. With a structure that jumps to and from different points in Granier’s life, the story opens with a Chinese immigrant just moments away from death at the hands of railroad construction thugs. Even though the Chinese laborer escapes death, this is not a one-off moment Granier has with death. It seems that he is prone to being in the wrong place at the wrong time when it comes to death, except when it matters most – and it is this absence and loss that comes to define Granier the most.

It is a credit to him that in a short 116 pages, Dennis Johnson not only successfully fleshes out Granier and those whose lives briefly intersect his, he also brings the northern reaches of Idaho to life. Even when an epic forest fire rips through his region in the middle of the book, the destruction is immediately evident to the reader in the wake of Johnson’s vivid description of the forests, valleys and towns of Panhandle Idaho.

It was rail that opened up these communities like Granier’s Bonner Falls to the outside world in a way never previously imagined. Towards the end of his life, Granier takes a short flight on airplane while visiting the fair. This flight, and the discomfort it brings, while brief, are a sign that the world Granier has called home is not the long for this world.

You Can’t Stop The Book Blitz, You Can Only Hope To Contain It

A room with a view - Via Adventureguy.com

I was wrong and I failed.

I’ve been saying that a lot lately. But this time, I’m referring to something I wrote in one of the initial posts for this blog. At the time, I was beginning the Boston Book Blitz and had settled on the mountain climbing metaphor. I went so far as to compare reading all 100 books on the New York Times 2010 list as the literary equivalent of climbing Mount Everest.

With the release of the New York Times 2011 list this afternoon, my quest has come to a close. And as I checked my list one last time for the 2010 publications, I concluded that finishing all the books on this list is nothing like climbing Mt. Everest. Instead, it is like running a marathon.

If for no other reason than that there is no sherpas when it comes to finishing the books on this list. This year, I made it through fifty books and wrote reviews for thirty of them. Two of the reviews got retweeted by the authors of the books and another author thanked me on Twitter for my positive review. So if I were to have stuck with the Everest metaphor, I would have made it to the top but had no way of getting back down – though I would have had cell service at the peak.

That is why I find the marathon comparison comforting. If you pull up lame at mile 13, you can call it a day, go back to the drawing board and start from scratch for next year. And that is exactly what I’m doing in 2012. I hope you will join me again on this journey, that I am dubbing, Book Blitz 2K12 as I make my way through the best writing of the last year, sharing my thoughts, limited insights and anecdotes along the way.

Just watch out for mile post 21 – I hear it is a doozy.