The Loved One

The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh, 164 pages

Although Dennis Barlow initially came to Los Angeles to write for the movies, he soon found a more tasteful job working at the Happier Hunting Ground pet cemetery.  Then his host kills himself and the funeral arrangements fall to him, bringing him to Whispering Glades, the human cemetery, where he quickly becomes the third leg of a mortifying love triangle.

Waugh's satirical work often centers around his hatred of the vulgar, and given his estimation of America as the empire of vulgarity and Hollywood as its capital, it is no surprise that his usual grotesques are even more grotesque than usual here.  Yet it is the Englishman who comes off worst in the end - his mention of Henry James is neither accidental nor superfluous.

Handful of Dust

A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh, 308 pages

A Handful of Dust is an emotionally devastating, wickedly funny novel of shameless self-interest.  Tony and Brenda Last have found a measure of peace and comfort in Tony's spacious but unfashionable ancestral home, seemingly insulated from both the ordinary vicissitudes of life and the treacherous jungle of London society.  All that crumbles with stunning speed, however, sending Tony fleeing into the relatively safer confines of the Amazon.

The title is an allusion to The Waste Land, and the book shares the same moral universe as Eliot's early poetry - a heap of broken images inhabited by genteel savages.  The writing is executed with Waugh's renowned wit and light touch, all in service to a tale of moral despair, resulting in a novel that masterfully manages to be both dreadful and amusing.

Road to Wellville

The Road to Wellville by T Coraghessan Boyle, 476 pages

In the first decade of the twentieth century , the capital of healthy living was Battle Creek, Michigan, and the center of Battle Creek was the Sanitarium made famous by Dr Harvey Kellogg.  Dr Kellogg, in turn, is one of the main characters of T Coraghessan Boyle's tragicomic novel of those seeking health and those seeking wealth in Battle Creek.  He is joined by the Lightbodies, Will and Eleanor, she devoted mind and body to the Doctor's gospel of healthy living, he somewhat more reluctant and skeptical; Charlie Ossining, a would-be cereal entrepeneur who increasingly comes to suspect that his partner, Bender, is conning him as well as their investors; and Dr Kellogg's Luciferian adopted son, George.  Individually and collectively, they must struggle to stay fit in a treacherous world of obsession, greed, lust, and daily enemas.

Boyle is undoubtedly a skilled writer, and there are definite moments where The Road to Wellville shines.  More frequently, however, there is a certain atmosphere of artificiality - the characters are not quite realistic enough to be entirely believable, not quite caricatured enough to be absurd.  The novel seems to promise a colorful cast of characters, from the quacks at the Sanitarium to the hustlers in the town, but remains stubbornly focused on the main characters, of whom only Kellogg is particularly interesting.  Combine this with the indulgent length of the novel, and many readers are likely to find reading about Dr Kellogg's Sanitarium as interminable as Will Lightbody found his stay.

Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan: Escape into Understanding by W Terrence Gordon, 338 pages

Marshall McLuhan exploded into public consciousness with the publication of Understanding Media in 1964, although he had already built a considerable reputation with his previous works, The Mechanical Bride and The Gutenberg Galaxy.  In the '60s and '70s these pioneering studies of media resulted in him becoming a media star himself, appearing on the cover of Time and Newsweek, in Woody Allen's Annie Hall, as well as on countless talk shows and even more untelevised lectures.  He was hailed as the prophet of television and the wise man (or, perhaps, the holy fool) of the global village.  Although his reputation has declined in the years since his death in 1980, McLuhan continues to serve as a starting point, signpost, and icon for many in the fields of media studies, cultural criticism, and electronic communication.

Gordon depicts McLuhan as, above all, a man struggling to make sense of the world.  He emphasizes the provisional nature of much of McLuhan's work, portraying his subject as an explorer continually probing reality, searching out the patterns that will reveal the deeper underlying structure.  As such, McLuhan's work was grounded in objectivity - his studies of how to survive in the media environment no more constitute an endorsement of that environment than a scientist's study of climate change endorses such change.  Gordon demonstrates how McLuhan's playfulness, which serves to amuse as well as confuse critics and admirers alike, was enabled by this detachment, but was rooted in an imagination that sought understanding through metaphor and analogy.

The Edge of Lost

The Edge of Lost by Kristine McMorris  352 pages

I picked up this book based on the cover. In the background is Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, the island prison in San Francisco Bay. I had just returned from the Bay area and was eager to hold onto its sights and sounds as long as I could.

The story opens on Alcatraz in 1937. Inmate 257 tends his greenhouse at the warden’s home.  He strains to hear the sounds of a search for a prison guard’s missing ten-year-old daughter. Alcatraz inmates were only known by their number. On the outside, Inmate 257 was known as Tommy Capello. However, that was not his real name.

The story shifts to Dublin in 1919. Shanley Keagan (Shan) is a twelve-year-old orphan living with an abusive uncle. Shan can sing, do impressions, and tell jokes. He becomes a regular in his uncle’s pub and other pubs around the city. When he discovers a letter from his departed mother, he realizes that his father is not dead. He is an American; Shan is elated. He’s also eager to find him and a make a new home. With his uncle forced out of business and failing health, the two decide to go to America.

The ship-ride over is harrowing. When the boat finally docks in New York, Shan is alone. He meets an Italian-American family returning from a protracted visit to Italy. The family adopts you Shan and he grows up as any young Italian-American boy would. The story follows Shan-now-Tommy over the next twenty years. Tommy and his new family become close. In an effort to help his brother Nick , when they are both adults, Tommy ends up convicted of murder and is transferred to Alcatraz.

I was disappointed that two-thirds of the story took place in New York. I was really looking forward to reading about Alcatraz during its heyday and feeling the cold Bay breeze gently brush against my cheeks as I immersed myself in the tale.

I enjoyed the story a lot; it was a quick and easy read, not one that I found easy to put down once I started.  But my disappointment in the story’s locale forces me to give it 4 out of 5 stars.

Freak Show

Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit by Robert Bogdan.  299 pages.

While the idea of attending a circus or carnival freak show is distasteful for many of us, from 1840 to 1940, these shows and displays were common across the U.S.   Author Robert Bogdan writes in his preface that "The meaning that disability has in our culture has been an interest of mine for a long time.  This book on 'freak shows' flows directly from a project in which I examined villains in horror and adventure movies."   Bogdan has done a lot of research and in this book presents the history of the traveling show in America, but also discusses the people, themselves.

I found the book to be interesting, and the author's take on this part of history to be sympathetic.   I knew some of the people he wrote about, like Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren (a/k/a Mrs. Tom Thumb), and the Doll Family, but I didn't know much about the Hilton Sisters, or the history of "tattooed exotics."  The author included information on many people, including the managers and promoters of these shows.  It was also interesting to learn about how, as time went on, the ascent of professional medicine transformed these people from being seen as marvels to pathological specimens.   Bogdan did a lot of research, and his extensive notes at the back of the book are very helpful and insightful.

I thought Bogdan's philosophy to be thought-provoking.  He states, ""Our reaction to freaks is not a function of some deep-seated fear or some "energy" that they give off; it is, rather the result of our socialization, and of the way our social institutions managed these people's identities. Freak shows are not about isolated individuals...they are about organizations and patterned relationships between them and us. Freak is not a quality that belongs to the person on display. It is something that we created: a perspective, a set of practices - a social construction."  (Preface, p, x).

Empire of Sin: A Story of Sex, Jazz, Murder, and the Battle for Modern New Orleans

 

Empire of Sin: A Story of Sex, Jazz, Murder, and the Battle for Modern New Orleans by Gary Krist    448 pages

I’ve always been fascinated with New Orleans. It’s such a contradictory city, with a touch of evil hovering over it, and an unsavory feel that often makes me nervous to visit. Yet, the foods that come from that part of the country are unparalleled.

Until I read Gary Krist’s nonfiction piece, Empire of Sin: A Story of Sex, Jazz, Murder, and the Battle for Modern New Orleans, I had come to believe that the debauchery of the 1960s through the ‘70s was at its height there. To me, and what I knew about the city, New Orleans made Las Vegas seem like a night out for nuns and priests.

Krist focuses on a scant thirty years, from 1890 to 1920. When I first realized that the book 448 and that 105 of them were the bibliography, notes, and index, I was a little overwhelmed, afraid that the writing would be too deep for me to sink my teeth into. However, Krist’s has written an easy-to-read narrative that held me attention from the beginning.

I enjoyed reading/learning about such characters and places as Storyville (where the city tried to coral its vice) and Tom Anderson (its unofficial mayor). There were the madams like Lulu White and Josie Arlington. There were the saloons and gambling houses. There was the immigrant population---Italians, whom too seemed to be in the same mess today’s illegals are in. I ws mesmerized by the corruption that ran rampart from the slums to the highest echelons of state government. Old Huey Long was a saint compared to some men back then; they make today’s politicians looks like humble old ladies.

I knew that New Orleans was a port-of-entry for many Italians, and they lived in slums and ghettos that reminded me of New York’s tenements. And I had learned of “Little Sicily” from a PBS special, The Italian-Americans.

There are three areas in the book that I really enjoyed reading: First, of course, are the jazzmen. Guys like Robert Charles, Buddy Bolden, Jellyroll Martin---how they created the music form that we now know as jazz, and how hard it was a musician wanted more than a gig in a whore house.

Second, was the Mafia or the Black-Hand. Krist could have delved into that more in my opinion, but still the rise and fall still fascinated me.

Third, the serial killer, The Axeman, seemed to target the Italians.  Brutality knows no generation.

Empire of Sin: A Story of Sex, Jazz, Murder, and the Battle for Modern New Orleans is an easy read that I highly recommend. I give it 5 out of 5 stars.

I received this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for this review.

Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste

Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste by Luke Barr  309 Pages

When I was a kid, I always admired my grandmother, who shopped daily for the family and the priests she for whom she cared. It seemed cool and at the same time, like a lot of work.  I’m a Baby Boomer from the late 1950s. During my childhood, and up until say about twenty years ago, food and its preparation was focused on quick and easy. No one wanted to cook anymore, everything was canned, frozen, and drive-through. I vividly remember the first Banquet frozen TV dinner that Momma put in the oven after weeks of begging for it.  It was ghastly. I’ve never eaten one since.

But back in the 1970s, people like M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard were trying to bridge the gap between the between the exotic, complicated gourmet cooking and cooking for every day. Julia is perhaps the most famous of these chefs, thanks to television. But the others were making their mark.

Barr, having access to his great-aunt M.F.K. Fisher’s papers, has given readers a look back at those who were changing the way we eat. The story centers around the six best known food writers of the 1970s: M. F. K. Fisher, James Beard, Julia Child, Simone Beck, Judith Jones, and Richard Olney. They found themselves in Provence, France, at roughly the same time, meeting with, and talking to one another.

Their influence on getting back to natural products, cooking from scratch, and not being afraid to try new things that is still influencing professional and home chefs today.

Barr’s book gives is a history but reads like a novel. It’s an intricate look at the six chefs and how they worked, ate, played, and their interactions with each other. The climax of the book that week in December 1970, when the six gathered at Julia and Paul Childs’ vacation home in France. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall. The downfall of the book, to me is a personal one. I'm not familiar with French cooking. Therefore, when the menu was presented in French terms, I often had no idea was what being served. 

I received this book for free from Blogging for Books for this review.