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Jim Harrison, Poet, Novelist and Essayist, Is Dead at 78

I probably did not read everything he wrote but damn near it.

And enjoyed every word too.

Lusty and full of life lived to its fullest, his writing was manly and tough.

In his later years he wrote from a woman's point of view I think to show that he could.

And he could.

I related so much to him.

As I get closer to my end, I realize that the kind of friends that I enjoyed, live or in books, are passing on too.

A long goodbye.

Labels: life, reading

A controversy over a book.

Imagine.

Books are passé. No one reads them, right?

Well not as many as used to but then there has always been that despair. The minds of our youth rotting. The cheapening of American Literature.

I read, a lot. I do not write about it here because I think that reading about reading is boring as well as redundant.

Besides, I have a special taste, honed over decades of books, which is not really very interesting to others.

I do still read the NYTimes Book Review which now comes as a paid for printed supplement. Also online. And I go through it with my fine tooth comb. Not a lot get picked off the lists. I hardly bother with the Best Sellers. I am not a snob but the list is someone else's preference. I like to go as close to the bone as possible.

In any case, I occasionally succumb and did so recently in the case of Harper Lee's presumed exhumed "companion" novel to her wonderful To Kill a Mockingbird.

Up to now, Lee had been thought to be one of that host of writers who one one off successes. They can't duplicate the first flashes of genius.

When this second book, Go Set a Watchman appeared there was a genuine swell of interest. I ordered the book for my Kindle and I started to read.

It has been a long time since "Mockingbird" but this book did not fit. It is meant to be a sequel but the characters are out of synch and out of time. Boring and flat. Is that the same thing? Yawn.

I quit. Took it off the Kindle and went on with my life.

As it turns out, all of us, the Harper Lee fans, were swindled.

Here it is all summed up for you, if you are still reading.

The Watchman Fraud

It is sad really. An old old lady, Lee seems not to even be a part of this. I hope that she is not. A sad ending if she is or is not. Sometimes a bad case of the "olds" is a blessing. You miss the nasty stuff as well.

Labels: reading

I have neglected writing about my reading.

Perhaps because when I am reading I am not thinking about writing and certainly not about writing about my reading at the moment. Or something.

I need to catch up.

I just put down a wonderful book called The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman. In this lovely novel, various characters get their own chapter. All are part of the staff or audience for a small English language paper published in, of all places, Italy. It is owned by a guy named Ott who has a business empire. He bought it and sort of forgot it many years ago. His story is one of those told. As well as that of his successor son who is a wastrel and idler.

This ownership situation allows the writers and readers have at it together for years without interruption or financial cares. A necessary removal of reality for the kind of things folks get up to here. It is a serious journalistic enterprise however and the mix of ex-pats and locals involved all live very interesting lives, indeed.

The Gelman family are newer Russian emigres and the youngest son, an aspiring writer, is the subject of A Replacement Life. Slava. There is no telling about him in a short review. He is a dolt and a genius and as he sets forth to write his grandmother's ghetto to holocaust to immigrant story. He gets swept up in the stories of a lot of her friends. He makes up grandiose stories which somehow end up being case making for reparations from Germany for their wartime depredations. And so on. His efforts are fraudulent and he is just on the cusp of arrest when, well, that is the story. Great dialect humor without being in dialect. I loved it.

I am currently reading Steve Martin's biography by Steve Martin. Born Standing Up

He says it is not an autobiography because he is writing about this other Steve Martin, the famous one, who became a comedian and not himself. OK. Good idea. It is fun to read. Breezy in the Martin style but not without some bittersweet details about where all that genius comes from.

Labels: books, reading

I have seen "best of" and all those lists but these are worse.

Look at this!

What Makes You Put Down a Book

Neat-O.

I do not know whether to feel superior or part of a crowd.

Of the top five "abandoned classics", I can say that I finished Ulysses, Catch-22 with enjoyment. I read the Joyce when I was 18. Precocious I guess. Years later I went back to check and realized that I actually "got it" at the time. I tried Finnegan's Wake and quit. Sorry.

Same with Catch 22.

I read the Rand cover to cover and did not enjoy it but found it sort of boring and, I think, badly written. Rand's ideas never appealed to me. A born liberal, me.

I missed the Hobbits entirely. I got to MIT and found people living in this dream world and was amazed by the zealotry around it but I looked at the people and decided to pass. I did go see the movie and liked the first half more or less and then found the rest of it including that awful little gremlin thing boring and terribly old hat. Maybe because, by that time, so many people had copied Tolkien's ideas and methods.

Moby Dick? I tried. God knows I tried. Over and over. Finally, about five years ago I put it in the toilet and started out again. I had even read Melville's earlier works and had enjoyed them. Not the whale. Not even the obviously gay heroes. Nothing.

As for the rest of the list, the current unreadables or meretricious, I am pretty much up there with the list.

I thought Eat Pray Love a hot steaming pile of feel good horseshit. I didn't even believe it. Not for a minute. Foolishly I tried the movie in case maybe I missed something. It was a bit better, an unusual thing, actually. My policy is not to see the film of the book or vv but since I really didn't read the book, maybe, maybe I would like the film. Sort of but the horsey odor sort of stuck to it.

I am not even tempted to read the "Grey" books. I hated the first Larrson book, hackey and full of obvious 'mistakes' and dead ends. A dubious heroine. Wicked is OK. I did not see the show or know anything much about it and read the book because I knew I would never see it.

The Rowling, I am just not interested in the precis I saw. I did like Harry Potter but our grandson was reading it at the time. More fun that, I suspect.

My policy on finishing is pretty straight forward. I stay until I cannot stand it any more. I have stayed with books I threw across the room and became seduced shortly after the tantrum.

I read reviews pretty carefully and dismiss some books out of hand entirely. I won't go over the list as it is a bit sexist and racist.

I am now on Kindle and they will let you read the first chapter. I think you can do this on line at Amazon now but I do not and have not done that.

I choose books on a hunch and pay attention when one is recommended by someone I like. The internet is a help on this.

I follow some authors religiously and will buy every single one of their books. If I like someones book I will probably read all of them from the juvenilia right up to the current times or the end if it is an "old author".

I took American fiction in college and specialized in it. I have read every word of Faulkner and enjoyed every word until I did not. Now, I can't go back. This is a common thread also. An author or a book fits into my age and time and disposition then. Not now.

I would like to know a dedicated reader's "batting average" on picks. Mine is at least 750. Very high, I think.

Some people I know have a pile of unfinished books they "intend" to read or finish some day.

I could not do that. When I am slowed or stopped, I stop.

I didn't spend much time with the "reasons" people would quit.

I do not require myself to have a reason.

Labels: books, reading

TV WORK OUT

I have given up in the videos in the gym.

The sets keep conking out and I finally realized that I was taking all too much energy worrying about "missing" a news show.

I go there to work out, actually, not watch the television.

This is an old complaint. It keeps coming up.

So, I have quit the teevee entirely. I have moved to the center of the stationary bike ranks where there are no television sets and I am reading a book.

As it turns out, this is far more time-melting than the televisions were. I am making good progress, now, on a novel that I enjoy very much. I do not have to fret about whether or not the set will be working and, if it is, what idiocy is pouring out of it at any particular time.

Labels: gym, reading

QUIET DAY

I met with a friend this morning to work on a project together.

Then, the house got cleaned while Booker and I moved back and forth to accomodate.

Not a lot else happened. I did some reading. Right now I am reading the authorized biography of Alan Bates, Otherwise Engaged.

I am not a frequent biography reader. Most are yawnworthy especially the authorized ones which are meant to be definitive. Based on private family interviews and records.

This is better than most. I am interested in Bates. He touched me as an actor. He had an interesting life. Not easy. He was a serious closet case but still had semi-long term relationships with some neat men and had a marriage and family. It cost him in the end. He died fairly young. 69.

I also spent some time today on removing our names from catalog mailings. You can do this too. Catalog Choice

It is pretty effective. We have used this before but now that catalogs are mounting up again.

Booker and I had a nice vanilla walk. Nothing big. No trails. No fountains. No crossing busy East Palm Canyon.

A quiet adventure.

That is about it. I don't know where the time went.

Nice. I like not knowing where the time went and not knowing how it got spent.

Labels: books, fun, reading

PULP WITHDRAWAL

We are now a week without the morning hard copy LA Times

It has not been an ordeal to detox from the daily ritual.

I called to cancel on Saturday, little realizing that they would pull the plug immediately.

That meant the Sunday Edition would not be delivered. Whew. The biggest pulp pile of all.

At least a tree. Well, no. More like 1/2700th but still.

Actually, it is the Sunday paper that had become most disappointing.

The magazine long gone, the California section relegated to pr and puff pieces from reduced staff, the ads piled high and those awful half page over folds that make you tear your hair out while you take them off the fold. I moved through the Sunday faster than the daily.

Then, the dailies have not been that tough. I am learning to navigate the web version.

I miss exactly two things. I have not gone to see "Zits" at the Washington Post although it was my intent. (The LAT does not have comics on its web page) and I missed a columnist I always read this morning. But I will find him.

So it has not been too bad.

Even easy.

I am still reading my way through breakfast. (I know. I should be doing mindful chewing)

I am reading The New Yorkers that have stacked up a bit and now I am even with the week. Also the weekly New York Times Book Review which we still subscribe to.

And I always have a book or two going.

I will manage.

Labels: ecology, life, reading

HERO

I neglected to mention J. D. Salinger as a special hero.

I mean beyond the writing and the successful elusion of attention all these years.

He got to be 90!

Happy birthday if you are reading this blog!

And many happy returns.

I hope to attain your high level of achievement in longevity.

I mean in years. I figure I won't come up to your high level of achievement in writing.

If you do decide to go public, do you mind sending me a line and letting me know whether I remind you of Seymour Glass?

Labels: reading

IMPRESSIONS revised

My early adult life was almost totally in sync with the years of J.D. Salinger's writing.

Catcher in the Rye was written in 1951. I was 14.

By the time I got to MIT, this work was part of the 20th Century canon and I studied it in my sophomore year.

It is now required, if at all, at high school level. So is calculus. About the same level of complexity, in my book.

Everything comes earlier to kids now. A good thing. I wasted so much time because they fed me pap.

Salinger produced further works at a slow speed which allowed me to catch up to him. For awhile I identified with Seymour Glass, his continuing main character, until Seymour committed suicide in Banana Fish. Gulp. Talk about pulling the rug out from you. But then there were other Seymour works. Different times. Different Seymour. Wonderful.

I loved the Glass family and I wished I had one like it. Sort of. Part of the time. I thought, as Seymour, I could straighten them all out.

I couldn't even straighten out my own family. Or me, for that matter.

I read everything Salinger wrote. Since I had started reading the New Yorker in my freshman year, I didn't miss a thing. That is where Salinger was.

Then, like Seymour, Salinger committed a kind of suicide himself. He quit writing. For years we waited for more. For a word. Nothing, to this day.

Still Paging Mr. Salinger

Imagine.

He is going to be 90. He is still alive. Mystery of disappearance unsolved. No one even looks for him to appear personally any more.

But still, there are those rumors about shelves of unpublished works. The Glass family chronicles. Other novels.

I don't know what, if any, his influence is today. Just another author for the young reader?

I doubt it.

Holden Caulfield still holds out a light for a different path.

At depth, the other stories told of our times. We felt like his characters. Some of the same stuff was happening to and for and with us.

Perhaps those were unique feelings of that generation. Perhaps the the writing is timeless.

I think I will pick them up again and see what's happening as I read them now.

J. D. Salinger. Hang on, baby. You had the stuff and I bet you still do.

Labels: reading

READING LIST

This has been a busy time for the reader.

Three of my favorite authors have come out with their annual productions. Robert Crais has a new Elvis Cole book. Lee Child has run Jack Reacher through another situation that he will have to conquer alone. It has been on the best seller list for 6 weeks.

On a different plane, Alan Furst has produced another wonderful spy novel set in Europe in the late thirties. I love these books and am reading all of them again.

I am still working through Pat Barker's novels. Competed the Regeneration Trilogy. Almost all of her work is around WWI in England and in the trenches.

A new author to me is Ian Mcewan who has written many literary novels and most recently has won the Booker Prize for his work.

I have read Amsterdam and Saturday. I have enjoyed these so much that I am getting all his novels. Another project.

Right now, I am reading The Leopard by Guiseppe Lampedusa. This violates one of my rules. Don't read something you saw in the movies.

But I so enjoyed Visconti's The Leopard with Burt Lancaster (a Netflix5) that I wanted to read the book. Lampedusa died before his book was published and then went on to become a world class best seller in many languages.

It is a great book and it brings a lot of the film back story to the forefront.

The mood is very much like the film so I feel as though it is Lancaster on the pages. Usually this would be a reason not to read a book after a film but, in this case, it is very pleasurable.

Another bias to reconsider.

Labels: reading

LULL

I am in one of those blogging lulls.

Nothing much is going on that I want to write about. There are a few things that I can't but they are, for the most part, OK things.

Things that I can't write about. Other peoples stuff. I try to keep others out of this. Privacy and all that.

I also lack some energy for it.

Every time this happens, I write about the bloc and the next thing I know, I am writing again.

Perhaps I am just engrossed in my reading these days.

I am reading Richard Price's new novel Lush Life and it is engrossing.

Modern NY neighborhood. Cops. A street killing. A guy who gets all jarred up with it. Hard to describe. Great dialog. Slang, figures of speech. Colorful.

Price writes thickly and intensely.

That means that the reading is very rewarding and slow.

I read his Clockers some years ago and enjoyed it as much as I am into this one.

I am always reading something and most of it is good stuff. When I hit excellent stuff, I slow down.

The weather may have something to do with it too. It is warm and very nice.

Slowing down weather.

We have not hit 100 yet which is unusual. So it is a cool warm.

I told you the other day that it was very, very dry.

Still is.

The pool is in regular use now.

A nice way to cool the warm and wet the dry.

I didn't do a movie today. Had a guy over in the PM for talk. Nice.

I gotta get back to my book now.

Labels: blog, life, reading

ENDINGS OF BEGINNINGS

I notice a tendency to skip followup in the blog.

I tell when things start but not when they finish. Sometimes.

For example, my smashed knee is 95% healed.

The guys cleaned up the big branch that fell from the carob tree earlier this week.

The beautiful zinnias are failing. Too hot and the grew up in front of their water source.

That kind of thing.

Another one.

I have quit my goal of reading the entire corpus (redundant?) of Herman Melville.

In fact, we are still at sea waiting to find that fucking white whale.

I put it down about, maybe, a year ago and haven't picked it up since.

Don't even ask what is going on in this picture.

Somehow, I fell in love with Typee and Omoo and figured I could only love the rest of his writing.

Authors get better don't they?

These were his first two semi-autobiographical works.

No.

Melville didn't get better. He just got dense.

Never mind what they say about Moby Dick.

It is a crashing bore.

Melville should have done as I am doing.

Do the first two and then quit.

Take the job in the NYC Customs office and work his way up in the bureaucracy.

Retire in 20 years and go do a B&B in Nantucket.

Labels: blog, garden, health, reading

FINI

Let the record state that I have finished the last Harry Potter installment.

I leave the series as a satisfied customer.

When I turn so much time and energy over to an author it is important that I have trust in being dealt a fair deal and Rowling has always done that.

We have read a lot of this genré of fiction—wand and sorcery—and this is not always the case. Somewhere in a series (an all of them seem to go on and on) there will be a blip or a crack and one's confidence in the author is lost. Or you get to see a glimpse behind the curtain and it is disruptive. Some authors trick you and turn the tables with heroes who turn out to be villains. Nasty stuff.

I am not interested in the merits of the series as literature, serious or otherwise.

The general interest in it has been phenomenal and by any measure, a great success. It has been fun to be a part of that also.

I will not spoil or reveal but only say that, as far as I can tell, every character in the long series is accounted for and every plot turn straightened out.

The grand finale manages to involve all the characters that we care about either gladly or with deep displeasure.

The emotions are deeply affected.

I had one 'difficult' night in the middle of the reading.

A very nice job indeed.

I am not sorry that I hung in.

It was never a burden but not always an unalloyed pleasure.

It was always involving whether I liked the involvement or not.

Labels: books, reading

ELMORE

I have finished the latest Elmore Leonard novel.

Up in Honey's Room takes place during WWII. It features Carl Webster who we met in The Hot Kid.

It is not as good as many other Leonards. Still excellent.

He has chosen to write what I consider a memoir of life in Detroit when he was a young adult.

Nostalgia.

Tons of detail.

Sometimes you can just hear the encyclopedia coming out of a character's mouth.

He also has to rehash Carl Webster's history which we already read but some readers have not.

This is always awkward where the same characters are used book to book.

This talkiness and descriptive stuff goes on for the first half of the book and it is a little annoying. Mostly as it is so transparent.

On the other hand, it is interesting because I was growing up at the same time. 12 years younger.

Midway through the book, things open up.

We get a good solid run for the money. All the usual Leonard fun.

I guess I can forgive him the nostalgia. He is 82 and this is his fortieth something book.

I met him once at a book signing.

I had him sign the page in his current book where I was reading at the moment. We also discussed our mutual interests in sobriety; a bit of personal history that he has not kept secret.

It was a very nice moment. In Chicago.

I was training and I timed the lunch so I could go see him.

Labels: books, nostalgia, reading

READING LIST

I have not book reported in awhile.

You know that I read in rotation, eh?

Literary fiction followed by pulp followed by another kind of literary fiction followed by another kind of pulp.

On the literary fiction front I am well armed with the complete works of Ward Just.

I have read a lot of them long ago but my interest in this fine author was revived by his latest; Forgetfulness which, ironically, made me remember how much I appreciated his work.

I am currently launched into reading another favorite author's latest; Jim Harrison's Returning to Earth.

I suppose that this reading is going to stimulate me to reread all of Harrison's stuff but not for awhile. I just completed the task four or five years ago.

I have standby novels for each of these when the rotation hits.

On the pulp front, I am nearly done with the 25 volume Richard Sharpe novels by Bernard Cornwell.

These wonderful books chronicle the career of a British soldier through his career in the early 19th Century; first in India, then Spain and, finally, France at the end of the Napoleon era.

I had been alternating Sharpe with the works of William Gibson but he has fewer than 25 novels so I ran out.

I was thinking of going to Phillip Dick but have decided not. He parallels Gibson too closely.

I am working on finding a detective series and think that I may have found one in the work of Robert Crais.

I still have a lot of Bernard Cornwell's novels to read. I am not sure whether they are literary fiction (whatever that is) or not.

But, when Sharpe is done I will put them in the rotation.

What else?

Hey!

Wake up!

This is important stuff!

Labels: books, reading