Really? With the Books? Again?

How many books do you think Ahab read in a year? (Forbes.com)

Having a blog is a lot like taking care of one of those gold fish you’d win as a child at a street festival or county fair. There was that initial exuberance and excitement. The next morning though, almost inevitably, you’d find the gold fish, for whom you’d already gone to the trouble of naming and after feeding that first evening, scaring the shit out of by shoving your face up to the bowl, dead. Our parents, quick to avoid any pesca-tragedy would dispose of the little fella via a quick flush to sea. While that was always the case with my not so lucky goldfish, there are some people whose ability to keep their goldfish alive opened their eyes to the possibility of fish tanks filled with colorful aquatic life and the responsibility that comes with taking care of a fledgling eco-system residing in your dorm room or home.

Flipping through some old photos at what was my mom’s home a few months ago led me to one shot of me as a toddler in my father’s arm at street fair. Standing next to us was my Uncle Johnny doing his best BALCO impersonation and in my tiny hands was the top of a bag holding this bright orange fish. That fish and this blog have some things in common. But lets start with what they don’t so that inconsistency can be addressed. Most obvious is that that fish is alive and in the strictest of senses, this blog is not. It is a combination of coding and letters that become words that turn into sentences and paragraphs before hopefully transforming into something thoughtful and interesting.

If you don’t care for the fish, it’s not going to last. Just as if you don’t take the time to care for a blog or anything you are trying to create, it isn’t going to survive. Since we already established it isn’t alive, the blog is not going to die but it will drift away slowly. You might check in once and awhile, but it isn’t enough. And that, dear reader, is what happened here with The Composite. Life has a way of getting in the way. Over the course of the last two years this site has embarked on the possibly Quixotic effort to read all 100 Books on the New York Times’ Notable Books list in each respective year.

Born out of a desire to read a wider array of books, I now almost feel like a Bibliophile Ahab. Stymied two years ago with the onset of a job that demanded the entirety of my time, energy and focus, I strongly believed that 2012 was going to be the year. By March, I had already hit the 30 book mark – easily on pace to if not reach 100, get real close. And then life, again, inserted itself in ways unimaginable. Reading memoirs of loss stung too much, non-fiction about wars and tragedy were of no comfort and the saddest of it all, was fiction, which as a child was a world for our young mind’s to escape reality for just a little while, but now was littered with books about dysfunctional families, destructive relationships, death and situations where the possibility of hope was no longer in the cards. Staring loss head on meant turning away from the books, on the list and most any other. Until this week, I can’t remember a single book I was able to finish since I finished The Art of Fielding in April.

But unlike the legions of goldfish lost and the libraries filled with fictional characters doomed to repeat their fates with every new reader, the living, the truly living, have the ability to continue. And part of that continuation, for me at least, is to once again to try and read all of the books on 2012 iteration of the New York Times’ Notable Books list. The list was released the Sunday before Thanksgiving last year. And this Sunday, if all goes as planned, the race to 100 will begin anew. Lets see 2013 has in store for us.

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.”

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.

Boston Book Blitz – Pt. 23: An Encounter with Milan Kundera

Even before the first page of “Encounter,” Czech-French author/critic Milan Kundera lays out his book’s roadmap. These signposts come in the fragment of a larger line. Kundera writes:

“…an encounter with my reflections and my recollections, my old themes (existential and asethetic) and my old lives…”

What follows the quotation is exactly that. Some segments are pieces he wrote several decades ago. Others were written in the present. One splices his old work, not with revisions, but instead with his current thoughts on the same topic. A few chapters are more long form essays, sometimes broken up thematically, sometimes not. Throughout it all, we, the reader are encountering great works of art, iconic artists, historic social movements, and European history spanning several centuries through through Kundera’s perspective.

Encounter by Milan Kundera

Its not until nearly page 100 of “Encounter,” when writing about Martinique and the island’s literary community’s response to movements in the 1940′s does Kundera explicitly state what an encounter is. He writes, “Not a social relation, not a friendship, not even an alliance: an encounter which is to say a spark, a lightning flash; random chance.”

“Encounter” shares similarities with the previously reviewed “Changing My Mind” by Zadie Smith and “The Possessed…” by Elif Batuman in that all three books examine the meaning of literary works and writers who have influenced each author. With Kundera, however, most of these works get a few pages at most. It is the rare book to have a fully fleshed out chapter. Smith and Batuman give us the plot and all the characters before jumping into the analysis. Kundera is giving us “a lightning flash” with each work instead of a “friendship.” Kundera is interested in telling us his opinion of the work and artist.

The flipside of these brief encounters with writers, books, artists, paintings, political movements, composers, and the whole lot of folks and ideas that are crammed into the book is that Kundera presumes his readers know whom and what he is writing about. This goes back to a subject Zadie Smith discussed: the roles of the reader and writer. Being uneducated in the ways of Roland Barthes, who gets name dropped as part of an erudite joke in “Encounter,” I came away from this book feeling as if Kundera’s intention wasn’t to educate the uninformed, but instead to, at the age of 80 at the time of publication, let the world know where he stands on these matters.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being....Milan Kundera

As much as Kundera is presumably addressing a more educated and enlightened circle, his political mindset, as liberal as it may be, ends up being so very wrong when writing about NATO’s actions in Serbia. In the book’s final character, where Kundera addresses Malaparte’s two novels on World War II in Italy, he mentions NATO’s military action in Serbia and Kosovo. Kundera’s argument is that the Europe of the second half of 20th Century is a “New Europe.” It is a place born out of the defeat of an entire continent as it was both liberated and occupied at the same time. Kundera notes that there is one exception. He writes, ” Which is why Serb cities had to be bombarded for many long weeks in 1999: in order to impose, a posteriori, the “vanquished’ status on even that part of Europe.”

I could write how Kundera seems silly when describing NATO’s horribly late reaction to the actions of Milosevic and the Serbian government as an effort to finish off the vanquishing of Europe some fifty years after it began. The funny thing is I don’t have to since Kundera himself did it earlier in the book. In an earlier “encounter,” he writes about Phillip Roth’s use of sex in the novel as a development in our history. Kundera’s analysis is the counterpoint to his bombing claim.

“The acceleration of history has profoundly transformed individual lives that, in centuries past, used to proceed from birth to death within a single historical period; today a life straddles two such periods, sometimes more. Whereas history used to advance far more slowly than human life, nowadays, it is history that moves fast, it tears ahead, it slips from a man’s grasp, and the continuity , the identity, of a life is in danger of cracking apart.”

Kundera’s wrongness stems less from a disregard for the lives of those in Kosovo, but from the fact that today’s history has slipped from his grasp. It is an irony that a critic like Kundera would appreciate, if he could see it.

The Boston Book Blitz – Pt. 22: Tales of Russian Literature and Horrible No Good Interviews

The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them - Via Borders.com

I can’t speak Russian. I haven’t read any of the seminal works of the country’s literary greats. And I can’t see Russia from the porch of my house. Typically, this would mean a book that is one part-memoir about the author’s time studying Russian literature and another part exploration of the linguistic development of languages in the Soviet Republics would leave me high and dry. That “The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them” didn’t is a testament to Elif Batuman’s story telling skills. Thats not to say there weren’t times where I felt like I was diving into some serious academic esoterica, but it was always interesting and well-written.

At the outset, humble readers (a tad presumptuous on the plural, I know), I apologize for the lack of details below. This is the first in the series of books I read but failed to review over the last two months. These posts will be immediately recognizable because they will inevitably include red herrings that will hopefully distract you from the notable tardiness.

Batuman’s memoir/linguistics guide/travelogue is broken down into different chapters that focus on various parts of her experience with Russian. These sections includes tales from her post-grad studies at Stanford to her unintended summer abroad in Samarkland learning the Uzbek language. The summer in Samarkland, where the reader is introduced to the linguistic developments of languages in the Soviet Republics, is more than just a dry explanation of linguistics. It is a vivid description of the locales she lived in and visited, as well the people she met.

The Samarkland story is broken into three different sections. This editorial decision gives the reader a chance to mull over different characters in her life while we wait for the conclusion of her summer. While her glum boyfriend and super shady landlady are interesting, the real stars of Samarkland are the teachers she works with on a daily basis: Muzzafar and Dilorom.

Author Elif Batuman - Via Boston.com

Experts in Uzbek, able to speak at least two languages, they are woefully underpaid due to a state structure that misappropriates academic salaries to those who sit around with fancy titles and do little else. These academics toil in buildings that are rundown and lack the libraries of their academic contemporaries who call Western Europe and America home. Nevertheless, Batuman makes clear that these two tireless individuals teach her all they can and they deserve more in return from their government and country.

Having never read any of the Russian works that Batuman mentions throughout the book, I found myself taking her description and analysis as my own. Being unfamiliar with many of the authors beyond their names and works, I was not only appreciative of the biographical information she provided, but found it really interesting. One section of the book describes her experience at a Leo Tolstoy conference where she presented a fledgling theory that he was killed and also looks into a possible Anna Kareina/Alice In Wonderland comparison. Batuman also chronicles her trip to St. Petersburg to see the recreation of Anna Ionavova’s Ice House.

Toward the beginning of the book, there is the story of writer Isaac Babel and how his relationship with the political leaders of his day changed over time. The tale of the Babel Conference she helped put together, which included Babel’s wife and daughter and a lot of craziness along with her writing on the story Demons, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, are where Batuman turns the focus away from the language and literature to herself and her classmates.

Visit Samarkland - Via travelblogs.com

After explaining Dostoevsky’s Demons, Batuman describes how she felt herself and her classmates were following their colleague Matej, in a fashion like those in the story. Matej is mentioned periodically throughout the book, but it is only at the end where the full blown story between himself, Batuman, and their classmates is explained.

It was while reading “Possessed” this April that I had the worst interview ever. Not bad. Not awkward. Just the worst. I have had interviews where I’ve Biden’ed up, putting my foot in my mouth. I have had interviews where it is clear the interviewer and I just don’t mesh. This was not the case in April.

I had applied for a communications job with a New York City Councilor. A week or two later, I heard back from someone in their office. They wanted me to come down that week. I booked my bus ticket from Boston to NYC. I would go down the night before and after the interview, I would come back.

I get to the interview about 15 minutes early. I once had a boss tell me, “If you’re early, you are on time. If you are on time, you are late. If you are late, you are history.” That has a way of sticking with you. The person interviewing me is about five minutes late. I get it. Schedules are in a state of perpetual flux in politics. Then I’m kept waiting another ten minutes. Finally, I get brought in for the interview. My resume and cover letter are pulled out and glanced over.

The Ice Palace Recreated - Via BBC.co.uk

The first question is, “Are you still at Fordham?” My resume, very clearly states I graduated in 2010 – and that I’m living in Boston. Taken aback a little, I say, “No” and explain what the classes covered. My most recent experience on my resume is as Communications Director for a City Council candidate in Boston. There were zero questions about that job. The first question about my old job in New York City is, “How did you get it?” Not anything about my responsibilities, my experience, or what I learned in my time there. Combined with all zero questions about my current job, I was trying to figure out why these were the questions asked.

Towards the end of the interview, I was asked if I had seen the job description. I answered in the affirmative, saying I saw it in the posting for the position. The interviewer proceeded to recite it verbatim to me and upon completion, go silent. Thinking I was expected to answer this non-question, I made something up about how I fit the requirements for the job. At the end of the interview, I asked if I could leave my messenger bag and duffel bag there to use the bathroom. I was told I could and then asked, “Did you come down from Boston?” At this point, my head wanted to burst because it says Boston on the very top of my resume!

Walking from the office to the subway, I was absolutely frustrated. I had taken two days off from work and spent money I didn’t really have to interview for a job that seemed like a good fit. And upon arrival, it seemed as the person interviewing me was either 100% unprepared or 100% disinterested in the interview. I thought my time had been wasted and that the staffer was doing the Councilor a disservice by not taking this process seriously.

There were several times over the last two months that I thought about writing a post about this experience. I kept walking back the idea, thinking it wasn’t worth it, and since I had never heard back at all about the interview that there was an infinitesimal chance I’d get it. A week ago that all changed. I got a form email from the person who interviewed me. It read:

“Thank you for taking the time to send our hiring committee your resume. Unfortunately, at this time you will not be asked to interview….”

The email continued to explain why they wouldn’t be brining me in for an interview. You know, despite the fact that they had actually brought me in for an interview. That, my friends, is a front runner for email of the year. I like the Councilor this staffer works for. That is part of the reason I applied for the job. My hope is they realize the sloppiness and poor job this person is doing sooner rather than later.

Boston Book Blitz – Vol. 20: American Subversive by David Goodwillie

Rutland's Wal-Mart Parking Lot - Via flickr account of NNECAPA

Live in New York City long enough and some of your haunts will make their way into the pages of fiction or the reels of TV and movies. Spend your teenage years up in Vermont’s third largest city, you don’t expect to see its downtown play an important role in the plot of a critically acclaimed novel. In David Goodwillie’s “American Subversive,” Rutland, Vermont is just such a city.

Towards the end of the novel, is it revealed that two characters regularly meet at the Wal-Mart parking lot in Rutland. While any other city in Vermont could have been subbed in, it makes an already realistic book that much more striking. Nestled in downtown, near the Amtrak station, it is a parking lot I’ve driven by, walked through, and passed thousands of times. It is also, at least in “American Subversive,” where two folks discuss plans to use non-lethal violence to promote their fight for what they believe is a better America.

American Subversive by David Goodwillie - Via Observer.com

“American Subversive” is a story with two narrators: Aidan Cole and Paige Roderick. Cole is a blogger who writes for Roorback.com. Imagine Dan Abram’s Mediaite with the sarcastic and ironic bent of Gawker. Cole’s life, including his on again off again relationship with a journalist at The New York Times and his mysterious best friend Julian Touche, are nights filled with parties, access to exclusive clubs, and lots of hangovers. The reader hears from Aidan first and the opening chapter is set after the events of the novel transpire.

Roderick’s already tenuous existence is rocked by the death of her brother, who is serving in Iraq. Having drifted from New York to DC to work for an environmental think tank, she returns back to her native North Carolina. After spending time with her brothers friends, she realizes their back to the earth ways are a facade of sorts to an existence where they attack industrial targets. Roderick quickly rises through the ranks of this decentralized group and moves to Vermont with two other operatives, Keith and Lindsay.

The engine that sets the story in motion is the Vermont cell’s first “Action” as they are labeled. A bomb is placed in a midtown Manhattan office building, targeting a shadowy multi-national corporation. A few days after the bomb detonates in the early morning hours, a photo of Roderick casing the building is sent to Cole’s Roorback email address.

With the narrative switching back and forth, we learn about Cole’s efforts to find Roderick with the unwitting help of his sort-of-kind-of girlfriend and his friend Touche. At the same time, we learn that in the wake of the Vermont Action, the cell is looking for its next target. While this search is progressing, the dynamic between Paige, Keith, and Lindsey is shifting dramatically. This tension only ratchets up the intensity that comes develops with Keith’s unilateral decision to target a media company whose similarity to Fox News is so close they practically share the same Manhattan office space.

Author David Goodwillie - Photo by Marion Ettlinger

The novel, which is well-written and paced pitch perfectly, includes a handful of unfolding mysteries that come into vision as the story rushes to its conclusion. These include, but are not limited to: will Aidan, a J school drop out, find Paige? Will it make any difference if he does go public with the information he discovers? What becomes of Paige? Will Keith’s plan for the Fox News doppelganger succeed? All of these are answered as people in Aidan’s personal orbit, like his girlfriend, his best friend, and his mother’s upstate artist boyfriend figure into the story’s resolution.

Unlike many of the other novels on the Times list, the family structure is not the prominent construct pulsing through the story – it isn’t the identity that the characters are struggling with. Instead, the characters in “American Subversive”  wrestle with what it means to be an American in this century, as members of a generation who will be given a country that is gasping – overstretched by two wars, fighting a war against a tactic, hampered by an economy hobbled by a financial meltdown. These characters struggle with the real world issues of what it means to be an American. One chronicles the over-consumption of the rich and spoiled, the other lost her brother in the streets of Mosul. Paige and Aiden may be fictional, but their worries are real. They go beyond themselves. They see a world struggling and a country focused on the maximization of profit. “American Subversive” is a study of how far some people go when they have nothing else.

On top of the story, Goodwillie’s description of Manhattan and New York seemed spot on. Even when he name drops Zadie Smith, Jenny Lewis, and other bold names, it doesn’t feel ostentatious or showy. It fits and that is a credit to the author’s writing. That being said, there are two glaring instances and a particularly humorous edit in the book that I want to share. First, Aidan Cole takes Amtrak directly from New London, CT to Yonkers, NY as he travels to see his mother in upstate New York. The only way Cole could have made it to Yonkers from New London is with a transfer in Penn Station. Minor, I know, but still.

Second, Goodwillie is on point when he describes Williamsburg in the early to mid 2000s and its transformation into a destination today. However, when forced to describe the bar scene in other parts of Brooklyn, he is less sharp. A throw away line about a possible night out on Smith Street describes girls loaded with tattoos. I am not too sure that the streets of Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill are filled with those types of girls. Again, a small issue, but something that stands out.

Recently, I have been checking out my books from the Cambridge Public Library. On one of the pages, the word beneficiary had been scratched out and a previous reader had written in pencil, benefactor. To whomever this mysterious editor was, thanks for the chuckle and the concern for me, the future reader. My suggestion to you is to go out and get this book.

Boston Book Blitz – Pt. 15: Comedy in a Minor Key by Hans Keilson

There is something about reading a book in one sitting. Or if not in one sitting, in the same place with no change of locale. A few years back, I took a cross country train trip book-ended by a bus ride and a flight home. It was during this trip, as the Texas Eagle crossed the Mississippi and traversed the southwest en route to LA, that I started and finished Nick Hornby’s “A Long Way Down,” despite a friends warning to avoid the book. She was right.

Comedy in a minor key by Hans Keilson

Last week, in what might have been a haze of nostalgia and the not-so-warm New England sun, I rode the Boston T for a few hours. During this inter-city exploration, I started and finished Hans Keilson’s “Comedy in a minor key.” Despite being written in 1947, it was translated into English just last year. Set in World War II occupied Netherlands, it is the story of a married couple, Wim and Marie, who hide a Jewish man, Nico, in an upstairs bedroom in their home.

The novel revolves about Nico’s death from a long illness. Nico, who had spent a year in hiding with this couple, ends up dying in the middle of the war from natural causes. Already uncertain who to trust, Wim and Marie struggle to find a way to get rid of Nico’s body in a way that protects them and the same time is respectful of their former houseguest.

Despite running a mere 135 pages and housing no more than 10 or 15 characters, Keilson’s novel (novella? Didn’t do a word count, sorry!) addresses how different types of people, in times of war, embrace patriotism and rationalize breaking the laws of the land when it is the moral thing to do.

Hans Keilson has led a pretty epic life.

While the war is being fought with bomber planes flying over the Dutch cities, and the Holocaust casts a shadow over the characters’ actions, Keilson reminds his readers that life continues. The routines of humanity, in some ways, go unbroken. Accidental deaths, death caused by natural causes, the discovery of love between two individuals, the manifestation of that feeling in marriage and child birth continue. And that is what Wim and Marie, as well as Nico, embody.

Not for nothing, Han Keilson, a member of the Dutch Resistance in World War II who went into hiding at one point during the war, is still alive at the age of 101 years old. Unfortunately, he is not on Twitter. But his writing is exemplary and “Comedy in a minor key” is a must-read book.

The Privileges by Jonathan Dee Have Nothing to do with Gossip Girl, But Is Better Than Franzen’s Freedom

The Privileges Front Cover

The artwork for the front cover of The Privileges by Jonathan Dee does the book a huge disservice. The picture leaves you wondering if you’ve picked up the literary equivalent of the tv show Gossip Girl. The one note on the front cover that says otherwise is a glowing quotation from none other than “America’s Great Novelist,” Jonathan Franzen. The funny thing is Franzen’s Freedom and Dee’s The Privileges tell similar types of stories about contemporary American families. The only differences is that Dee tells the story better, shaves off more than 300 pages, and manages to only piss off the reader on the very last page.

The Privileges is the story of Adam and Cynthia Morey and their kids April and Jonas. Opening at Adam and Cynthia’s wedding, the couple is charmed. They have been  and throughout the story remain amazingly lucky. In the real world, Cynthia’s mid-book depression when the kids are not quite old enough for school would lead to greater trouble in the marriage than it does in Dee’s story. There is a similar flight of fancy when Adam manages to evade any SEC investigation into his investing success based on some not-so-public information. Thats not to say the story comes off the wheels because of these issues, but in a story so in tune with the way the world its characters occupy works, it is more obvious.

Jonathan Dee - Via NewYorker.com

The book concludes around the time Jonas, the youngest child, is finishing up his undergrad at the University of Chicago. In 200 some odd pages, Dee covers nearly a quarter century of this families history. The only troubling aspect to Dee’s story is the manner in which he concludes it. I’m not the type of reader who needs or wants the story to end perfectly, sitting there, as if the author typed the last sentence and then put a bow on it. In the world that is this story, the characters keep living and most days, here in the real world, do not end neat. Things are unresolved. Issues unfinished. Errands to run and people to get back to. All of this is to say, I understand and appreciate a less than neat ending. However, Dee gives us a vertigo inducing last page.

While all four major characters get their wrap-up, it is Jonas whose conclusion is the last in the novel. The situation Jonas finds himself in is kind of zany, but at the same time it allows Dee to use art and creating as a way to talk about human nature. It is immediately after Jonas’ situation is resolved, on the last page, the Jonas on that page is nothing like the character we have seen throughout the story. If an editor had excised that last page, this book would have been great. Now, with almost two different versions of Jonas, it is just very good.

Jonathan Franzen wants to share more details about his characters with you!

Still better than Freedom. The more I thought about it, the difference was that Dee sketches his characters’ histories with a lighter touch than Franzen, who seems deadset on providing a serious family tree for most characters while trying to push the story forward. Dee is also less caught up in providing the reader with every little detail about everything.  The one difference I truly appreciated was Dee’s ability to tell a tale about contemporary America without feeling like he had to shoe-horn in major events in American history like the September 11 attacks, the Iraq War, and the Bush Presidency/Obama campaign. For that, I say thank you to Mr. Dee.

Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross – The Story of The Fugitive, Marriage, And Momentous Flights

Mr. Peanut Book Cover - Via Adam-Ross.com

As we taxied, there was no indication of what the coming minutes would include. It was a gorgeous early April day in Chicago as my flight pulled away from the gate. I’ve always intrigued that planes leaving Midway for points east would take off towards the west and then bank 180 degrees to float over the residential streets, rail yards, the Dan Ryan, the Loop, and finally Lake Michigan as we rocket towards the east coast.

That afternoon, the take off was smooth, the initial ascent passed without issue. Then as we banked right to make our mid-air u-turn towards Chicago, the plane was rocked by a gust of serious wind. With the plane dipping to the right already due to the turn, it rocked even further down. Now, looking back, it was nowhere near the ground, but it was clear, this wasn’t on the flight plan. In the seconds before the pilots righted the plane, I looked across the the aisle to the left side to see if I could view what was going on outside the other side of the plane. As I did this, I made eye contact with a guy one row further up to my left. In that moment, his eyes betrayed what his mind was thinking – this was it.

Adam Ross - Via Adam-Ross.com

I mention this because several characters in “Mr. Peanut” by Adam Ross, experience life-changing events mid-air. One flight happens in the 1950′s and the other in the last few years. It is a credit to Ross, in a story with three male characters dealing with the same issues, that the similarities in their stories – which boil down to their struggles with marriage – don’t weigh down the story with redundancy. Instead it gives it’s strength.

“Mr. Peanut” is ostensibly the story of Alice and David Pepin, a married couple in New York City whose marriage has suffered over the years. Alice’s weight has been a constant issue and David, despite being an executive at a successful video game company, is frustrated with many things in his life.

After Alice dies in their apartment, the two detectives assigned are Sam Sheppard and Ward Hastroll. Yes, the same Sam Sheppard who was convicted of killing his wife in 1950′s Cleveland, only to be acquitted in a retrial. He was the inspiration for the TV show and film, The Fugitive. Ward’s wife has voluntarily confined herself to her bed.

Thats Detective Sam Sheppard to You - Via CBSnews.com

Ross’ book seems to be influenced by the films of Hitchcock and Escher paintings. Ross effectively builds suspense as he tells the story of the three marriages. In some ways, Alice’s death is a “macguffin” to three tales about the consequences of marriage which can include infidelity, stillborn children, contemplating murder, and second chances. The Escher painting, initially an inspiration for one of David’s video games, hangs over the novel. At one point, the reader may be confident in what is happening in reality, but that confidence can disappear on the next page.

I’m leery of sharing too much of the plot, and revealing spoilers that would lessen the power of the story, but there is one vague comment I can make. Part of “Mr. Peanut” is a story within a story. More of a working manuscript than anything else which forced me and will force you to reconsider much of what  is written,  before and after this revelation.

While I greatly enjoyed this book, talk about a downer on a marriage. Two wives are dead, another is alive in name only for most of the book. To reach these points, the love these couples shared is overwhelmed by life and all it brings. At the same time, it is clear, at least from these stories, that love and marriage are work, all the time. In “Mr. Peanut,” Sheppard and Pepin learn this lesson too late to save their marriages, but it leaves the reader with a complex book well worth reading.