23 June 2009

Mony Tiksak's Bords on Wooks

Like you, I listen to Mony Tiksak’s Words on Books whenever I can. It’s a really good show, as I think we all agree, and it doesn’t cost this radio station a single penny to produce.

Many Sundays I simply forget to go listen to myself. I already know where I’m going to cough and what I’m going to say. I wrote the script. So I miss it, the day goes on, no big loss.

However, the program that follows Words on Books on Sundays, This American Life with host Ira Glass, is a different bag of bones. It’s a must-listen, driveway-moment stunner of a show that never fails to elevate my spirit and my weekend.

The danger is that This American Life and a number of other expensive programs may soon be subtracted from the play list of this station, due to long and short-term budget shortfalls.

Listeners who have been paying attention already have heard about this dire situation. The rest are beginning to find out now. Programmers are chattering amongst themselves. The Anderson Valley Advertiser is reporting the situation in their reliably unreliable way. The board of directors is yakking. GM John Coate is communicating. The bottom line: We will soon go broke for good unless the station makes some painful changes.

My humble opinion about all this: Lose nothing, keep everything. And I understand why that particular jolly option is rapidly sliding off the table. We have to keep our limited funds for electricity and salaries and all the rest. Other expensive things, like Prairie Home Companion, have necessarily become optional.

Still, I say do not slam the brakes on Car Talk. Don’t end This American Life. Don’t fricassee the BBC or burn down the Prairie. That’s my wish, anyway, and my wishful thinking.

A great number of similar organizations and worthy businesses are bailing the same boat. I was struck by the relevance of this interview with author Patti Callahan Henry, printed in the Fayetteville Observer and distributed by the newsletter Shelf Awareness.

Ms. Henry said, “...I've watched the commitment and dedication that it takes to keep an independent bookstore afloat, viable and interesting... I believe many people love their independent bookstores but don't understand the problems the bookstore is going through. Readers are very upset when a local indie shuts down, yet they don't understand the things they could have done to prevent the bookstore's demise! I think the best things we can do to help save our local indies are to visit them, buy our books from them and spread the word about them. Buy local: It's not just a slogan, but a real way to save our indies and help the local economy thrive."

Henry’s words could just as well apply to this community radio station. We need to think globally and listen locally. Utilize KZYX and pay for it. Cough up money and volunteer time. Double the amount each of us contributes. Stuff like that.

A group of business people and concerned citizens in New England have started a new movement they call the “10-Percent Shift.”

They take a pledge “to shift 10% of their existing purchases from non-local businesses to locally owned and independent businesses.” One member said, “If the five million households in New England take 'The 10-Percent Shift Pledge' we can create thousands of new jobs and keep billions of dollars of economic activity in the region.”

That goes for this station as well. Even though many of us also listen to other radio stations, read newspapers both in print and on line, watch TV, rent movies and play our own music, all of us also make use of this station for entertainment, music and news.

KZYX&Z gives us a feeling. We feel connected to each other and to the wider world.

There is hardly anything more important than that.

It’s your turn to help. Now. Thank you.

NOTES:

Patti Callahan Henry in an interview with the Fayetteville Observer, redistributed by the online news service for the book trade, Shelf Awareness. Her latest novel, “Driftwood Summer” Penguin paperback $15, ISBN 9780451226884, focuses on the complicated relationship among three sisters as well as the challenge of running an independent bookstore.

This American Life has its own financial worries:

“Help Keep the Podcast Free! As you may have heard, last year it cost Chicago Public Radio more than $120,000 to pay for the bandwidth required to deliver our free podcast and streaming files. That's not computers. That's not staff. That's not the production of the show. That's just the server bandwidth required to get the show to you on the internet. In the past we've been able to cover these costs with a flood of small donations—if we can keep that up, we can keep the podcast free. Would you consider helping out? Five, ten bucks—anything you can give will be greatly appreciated!”

17 June 2009

Stone's Fall

So I finally finished “Stone’s Fall” by Iain Pears, he of the very hard to spell first name, he of the very entertaining and complicated historical novels, forward slash mysteries. You may remember Pears for “An Instance of the Fingerpost,” which was a smash hit some time ago, and “The Dream of Scipio” from 2002.

When I say “finally finished” I mean it... “Stone’s Fall” is almost 600 pages, weighs a ton, covers a century of time and dozens of characters, not all of whom make it through to the surprising end. Several times along the way I asked myself, “Self, why are you spending your valuable time on this brick?”

I’m still asking myself that. Two weeks of intense concentration on one complicated novel is almost too much for this pea-brain. Next up: “War & Peace” or “Ulysses.”

“Stone’s Fall” opens in Paris, 1953: “The Church of St.-Germain des Pres, at the start of what was supposed to be spring, was a miserable place, made worse by the drabness of a city still in a state of shock, worse still by the little coffin in front of the altar which was my reason for being there, worse again by the aches and pains of my body as I kneeled.”

From Paris we swiftly move to London, 1909, remaining there for about 200 pages; then Paris, 1890, Venice, 1867, and finally back to London.

I am glad I persevered. The book is rich in so many ways: setting, atmosphere, characters, pretty much overstuffed with detail. Then there’s the twisting, surprising finish. Suddenly, in the final pages, the entire novel lights up and appears in a new light, retrospectively. I put down the book and tried to recall aspects of the convoluted plot and complicated characters, thinking “Aha! so THAT’S what happened... I get it now, probably.”

Were there a couple of characters left over? Whatever became of Xanthos, John Stone’s lifelong and ruthless accomplice? Did we finish with Mary, the harlot-turned spiritualist assistant? A few loose ends remain in a book stuffed with minor but intriguing characters.

The main characters will be remembered: First, the astonishing Elizabeth Stone, aka Lady Ravenscliff, aka the Countess Hadik-Barkoczy von Futak uns Szala, aka Madame Robillard. She is someone to admire and to fear.

Then Mr. John Stone himself, central to the story, creator of an armaments empire, marionette-master behind intricate financial and political arrangements.

“Stone’s Fall” is a great achievement, but I’m not certain it’s an altogether satisfying work. Still, you cannot write a book this large and all-encompassing without getting off some interesting observations along the way. These two among many others caught my attention:

On money: “Money is merely another term for people, a representation of their desires and personalities. If you do not understand one, you cannot hope to understand the other.”

On travel: “I wished to meet a man who knew about (Venice) – knew how it worked, that is, rather than knew about its buildings, which is always the easiest thing to discover... I have always found it strange that people are willing to travel to a place, and devote some considerable energy to doing so, yet leave with not the slightest knowledge or interest in the lives of the inhabitants.”

“Stone’s Fall” is an absorbing read, but this may be one of those books to borrow from a friend or library or wait for the cheaper paperback.

NOTES:

“Stone’s Fall” by Iain Pears. Spiegel & Grau (Random House) hard cover $27.95 ISBN 9780385522847.

“The Dream of Scipio” by Iain Pears.Riverhead Books (Penguin) paperback $15. ISBN 1573229865.

“An Instance of the Fingerpost” by Iain Pears. Berkley Publishing Group (Penguin) mass market paperback $7.99. ISBN 0425167720.

NY Times review of “Stone’s Fall”

An excellent blogged review of Stone's Fall.

10 June 2009

You won't need those bookshelves much longer...

I’ve been thinking about how I ruin books. Maybe I should go electric, get a Sony E Reader, or an Amazon Kindle 3Dog Fire Starter, or whatever they call electronic book reading devices these days.

My real books are displaying distressing amounts of wear and tear, plus water stains from wet hands.

I have in the past inflicted serious damage upon books, especially novels of great length that take weeks to finish. Take the one before me, for example: “Stone’s Fall” by Iain Pears, 594 pages.

To keep it fresh, I took off the dust jacket and hid it somewhere. When I finish peering at the acknowledgments, outside flyleaf, inside flyleaf, right rear flyleaf, left outside rear flyleaf, typeface explication, table of contents, Also By This Author page, title page, second extra big title page, copyright page, To My Mother page, Part One page, and page one itself... when I finish all those pages and the book itself, I will go hunt for the dust jacket. If I haven’t accidentally torn it, or crushed it under a box, dropped it in the sink, or hit it with a splash of chocolate milk, I will put it back on the book like a clean diaper, protecting the body from dust damage.

These potential disasters would be history if I owned an electronic book reading machine. If you drop Kindle into the bath tub, pull it out immediately. If you do that to your book, well, that’s why they invented the microwave. Tip: Do not microwave your Kindle. It makes sparks and funny noises!

To get my hands on a Kindle, short of stealing it from someone who falls asleep using it in a public place, I would have to buy it for, say, $359 dollars, no sales tax, because this is The Internet.

I’d want that leather book cover, $29.95. After a couple of recharges and some extended excitement downloading things I could have 1500 titles in my hands, some free, others $9.99 each, unless marked otherwise.

Another way I hurt books is I carelessly leave things inside. Last night I dozed off near page 312 and left a bundle of Post-it notes inside the book. This afternoon I realized I had bent the spine by laying other books on top. You can’t do that to a Kindle, unless you rest a chair leg on the screen and then sit down by accident.

I have a lot of books due to lack of electronic book reading machines. Few of my books are well cared for, though most are loved. Some are stacked the way they should be stacked, in tight, neat rows on bookshelves. Others recline sideways and upside down, in piles on the floor, on tables, at my elbow, behind my back, on footstools and on benches in the garden. Some of these books will eventually fall to the ground, get eaten by snails, or stepped on by me, the wife, the cat, or all three of us and this would likely be less of a problem with a Kindle.

This morning in my local independent wood-and-nails bookstore I saw Michael Chabon’s collection of literary essays, “Maps & Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands” and it jumped into my hand. Then I picked up Charles Bukowski’s early poetry collection, “The Roominghouse Madrigals,” to check on a particular poem. Somehow those books followed me to the cash register, two irresistible puppies.

The Kindle experience could be something like that. There are many intriguing titles (online you can: Look Inside the Book!) and it’s easy to buy them. After you have a couple hundred in your Kindle, there’s the question of finding time to read one all the way through.

The Kindle is neat and efficient, and its editorial contents are not likely to rot, mold, bend or get eaten by puppies.

Look at that new Kindle, resting on the empty bookshelf. Kind of makes you want to sit down with a good book, doesn’t it?

03 June 2009

Gods Barely Behaving

Artemis is walking the dogs to get out of the house. Apollo is shagging Aphrodite for the millionth time with another million to go (they’re immortal, after all). Old man Zeus is holed up in the attic watching TV, and his wife Hera hasn’t spoken in years. Demeter’s in the garden, Hephaestus is repairing the house, Hermes rides a motorcycle to collect dead souls and Dionysus is mixing songs for his nightclub. Eros is a Jesus freak and oh yes, Ares spends his days fomenting wars in faraway countries.

“ ‘You need a shave,’ said Artemis, standing in the doorway.

“ ‘Mmm,’ said Ares, without turning his head. ‘This War on Terror isn’t producing enough casualties. Bringing in Iran is the obvious choice, but I don’t think they’ve got enough firepower yet. I wonder if I could somehow antagonize Japan?’ ”

The quote is from the novel, “Gods Behaving Badly,” by first-time British author Marie Phillips. In her book the Greek gods are living unhappily together, crowded into a squalid flat full of uneaten food (they don’t eat human food; they just like to look at it) and dusty cobwebs.

“The family had moved there in 1665,” she writes, “when the plague was keeping property prices rock bottom, and just before the destruction of the Great Fire sent them spiraling upwards again. This had been a typically canny piece of financial engineering by... Athena, the goddess of wisdom.”

The gods have always behaved badly, of course, but in the old days humans believed in them, tolerated their faults and feared their arbitrary power. The popularity of monotheistic faiths robbed them of much of their strength.

In “Gods Behaving Badly” Phillips wallows in the fun of imagining Greek gods on the downlow. She spent some considerable time arriving at this idea.

In a short essay called On Writing and Thinking and Lying Down, Phillips says, “I rewrite so obsessively that my computer is littered with files labeled ‘final draft’ ‘final final draft,’ ‘absolutely the last draft,’ and ‘absolutely the last draft with changes.’ The book that I end up with bears little relation to my opening draft or even to the idea that began it.”

On YouTube, in another interview, Phillips continues: “In the first draft (these gods) were very powerful.... I was trying to satirize organized religion a bit, and that didn’t really work for me. And then I realized, of course, it’s more realistic... it’s more fun, to imagine them having been forgotten. They really could be living in a run-down flat in London. It really COULD be happening this way.”

“Gods Behaving Badly” is a great deal of fun to read. Juxtaposed with the unruly and selfish gods are two highly ordinary humans, Alice and Neil, who are slowly falling in love with each other. Alice finds herself the obsessive object of Apollo’s love and Zeus’s anger, expressed as lightning bolts from the sky that kill her dead. With the help of the gods Neil undertakes a quest to bring Alice back from the underworld and, by the way, to relight the Sun, accidently blown out by Apollo.

It turns out one entrance to Hades is located at Angel tube station on Upper Street in the London district of Islington. Hermes uses it all the time to transport souls. It’s down the stairs on a secret platform “on the other side of (a) wall at the bottom that leads to a train to the underworld.”

That particular train is likely to remind readers of Harry Potter’s Hogwarts Express. Even if American readers can’t possibly decipher all the inside jokes, “Gods Behaving Badly” will be a quick and delicious read.

NOTES:

Gods Behaving Badly” by Marie Phillips. Back Bay Books paperback $13.99. ISBN 9780316067638

A non-visual interview with Marie Phillips

TV interview with the author

Islington described on Wikipedia with literary references to writers Phillips admires, such as Neil Gaiman and Douglas Adams. Adams lived in Islington; Gaiman named a character after the Angel tube station: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islington

Italy, Spring 2009

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