Something Rising (Light and Swift) by Haven Kimmel (audio)

Posted on March 14, 2013 by pagesofjulia

somethingrisingSomething Rising (Light and Swift) was an amazing audio listening experience. I was transfixed, and need to go looking for more Haven Kimmel immediately.

This is the story of a girl named Cassie, whom we meet at, oh, ten years of age and follow until she is about 30. Her mother is from New Orleans but as a young girl followed a handsome pool player named Jimmy to a little town in Indiana, where they married. They had two daughters, Belle and Cassie, but Jimmy was a bad choice from the start, never sticking around long, mostly continuing to shack up with his prior fiance. He’s not a terribly good father to the girls, but through him Cassie learns to worship the pool table he plays on. It’s not Jimmy but his brother, Cassie’s Uncle Bud, who teaches her to play; and this is how she makes her living, supplemented by the odd day labor.

The fact that Cassie is an extraordinary pool player is not the point of her story, although it does help define her personality and her tendency to be roughly competitive. Her appreciation for geometry and order help her make sense of the world. She is also a handywoman, outdoorsy, and a good and generous friend if not loquacious. Early in life she worships Jimmy, but that will change.

Cassie reminded me of the protagonist of Once Upon a River. Both young women are untameable and live by their own rules on the edge of the civilized world. Both are sensitive and vulnerable despite being strong and capable. Laura, Cassie’s mother, is a proud, damaged Southern belle out of a Tennessee Williams play, but stronger; Belle, Cassie’s older sister, goes quite nuts under the strain of Jimmy’s failures and Laura’s anger. Laura and Belle are literary women, and Cassie by contrast feels that she is not, but she does awfully much reading & writing (partly to communicate with her mother and sister) for a woman without literary leanings of her own. I think this is something she doesn’t see in herself, but it’s there.

The story is full of drab, flat, gray American landscape and the ennui of the working class upon it, which is also a somewhat familiar theme; but it’s evoked so crisp-and-clearly, so beautifully, that it took my breath away. I shared a teaser with you the other day, but I couldn’t stop collecting more exemplary turns of phrase:

  • “Every day was a vaccination.”
  • “‘Howdy’ was always ironic, except when it became a habit. And then it was the speaker’s entire life that descended into irony, and later into self-parody. Cassie studied Wally’s face in profile but couldn’t tell where he stood.”
  • “Cassie was the daughter of a great romance, if what was meant by romance was wreckage.”
  • “CDs instead of records, but the songs she wanted to hear: if that didn’t sum up the struggle.”

A large part of what I loved about this book was Cassie, her story, the strange sad beauty of her life & her world; but another large part was the lovely way with words that Kimmel employs. This book is a poem. And the audio reading was divine as well: Chelsey Rives renders Laura’s New Orleans accent, Belle’s nervous worryings, and Cassie’s clipped tones perfectly. I didn’t want this book to end, not least because I wanted to know what happened next, but also because I wanted to hear Chelsey tell me more about the sultry Gulf Coast and the knockings of the pool balls at Uncle Bud’s.

Something Rising (Light and Swift) is a sad story, but with all the dignified grace of the greatest sad stories, and although Tennessee Williams peeks out here and there, there’s far more hope in Cassie’s world than there is in TW’s: this is also a coming-of-age story, and ends with a possible future. I wish I could follow Cassie into it.

Clearly I loved this book, and recommend the audio highly. And… I’m off to find more Haven Kimmel.

Rating: 9 cigarettes.

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In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson (audio)

Posted on March 7, 2013 by pagesofjulia

gardenAs the title indicates, this is a creepy work of nonfiction. Erik Larson, popular author of (among other things) The Devil in the White City, here tackles the subject of one American family living in Berlin in the years leading up to World War II. William E. Dodd was an unassuming professor of history in Chicago in the early 1930’s, wishing for a little more free time to finish his life’s work, a 4-volume history of “the Old South.” He lobbied Roosevelt, through his modest political connections, for a quiet diplomat’s post to somewhere like Belgium or the Netherlands. There he hoped to settle down to finish his books and not have to do too much real diplomatic work, to which he readily confessed he was not well suited. Instead, owing to a strange combination of forces – mostly, no one else being willing to take the post – he was appointed to be the United States’ diplomat to Berlin in 1933. He traveled to Hitler’s Germany with his wife and grown son, Bill Jr., both of whom play almost no role in the story, and with his grown daughter, Martha, who stars next to the elder Dodd himself.

William E. Dodd is a conscientious man, rather to the point of annoyance. His sense of humor is wry and not well appreciated in diplomatic circles. He comes from a modest background and lives on a professor’s salary, and now a diplomat’s, which is quite moderate; in Berlin he plans to live within the bounds of that salary, which is the first time he offends protocol, but not the last. As Larson explains, diplomats are traditionally wealthy men of great style – valets, fancy chauffeured cars, fine wines, grand balls and the like – and make up what Larson quotes one diplomat as calling a “pretty good club.” Dodd will fail to fit into this club, and will, to the aggravation of all, criticize it throughout his tenure.

Martha is a sultry young woman very comfortable with her charms and her ability to wield her sexuality as a weapon against the men in her world; she enjoys men, and sex, and is in the process of ending a secret marriage even when she sets sail for Germany. When she gets there, she is charmed by the Nazis, handsome and blonde and polite and uniformed, and is not unhappy to be characterized as a “little Nazi” herself. Among the lovers we assume she took in Germany (Larson points out what we don’t know for sure, but makes a strong case) are a Gestapo leader, a French diplomat, a close assistant to Hitler, and eventually a Russian diplomatic assistant who turns out to be a Soviet spy. She is even at one point asked to be “Hitler’s woman,” and introduced to him, but nothing comes of it (not for lack of her attraction to the man of power, however). By the end of the Dodds’ years in Berlin, however, she has noted the evils of the Third Reich and flirts with becoming a spy for Stalin, herself.

Larson’s fine work here is in bringing a time and a place to life, and it raises goosebumps. Hitler’s Berlin is chilling, in large part because we, the modern readers, have the benefit of hindsight, and it is deeply disturbing to watch humanly flawed men and women walk around that time and place without realizing just how bad things are going to get. There is willful ignorance, naturally, as well as antisemitism in varying degrees: the Dodds share this prejudice with many of their contemporaries, and it helps them to excuse Hitler’s regime longer than they should… but again, this is all with the 20/20 vision we possess today. It’s difficult to imagine the tolerance shown by the United States, and Dodd, and the world, for Hitler; but this is history.

The decision to showcase Martha alongside Dodd was a fine one. They are two very different characters, both tending to minimize Germany’s faults at the start of the story but both (very differently) eventually coming to understand and fear the changes to come. When the Dodds left Berlin in 1937, the United States were yet years from a war with Germany, but Dodd had begun to prophecy some of the terrors to come.

Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts (poetically named for the literal translation of Tiergarten, a garden & neighborhood in Berlin where the Dodds lived) is to my tastes a great way to read history. The story electrifies, brings the past to life, and promises to faithfully follow the sources available. An enjoyable and worthwhile, if unnerving, read (or listen).

Rating: 7 breaches of protocol.

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Inés of My Soul by Isabel Allende (audio)

Posted on February 28, 2013 by pagesofjulia

inesIsabel Allende is mostly a well-respected name to me; I had only read her Daughter of Fortune before this one, and found it interesting and enjoyable, but it doesn’t seem to stand out in my memory. (It’s been years.) I picked up Inés of My Soul as I pick up at least half my audiobooks: opportunistically. Because audio is not as plentiful as hardcopy, I take what I can find, in the library or from friends & family. This one came from my mother, and I’m glad I happened upon it, because I found it fascinating and entertaining.

Inés of My Soul is the story of the founding of Chile, told first-person by Inés de Suárez, a real historical figure; or perhaps more accurately it is the life story of Inés, inextricably tied with the founding of Chile, which she (at least in the novel) considers her life’s work. This is a work of historical fiction; Inés really lived but we don’t know everything about her, so Allende necessarily fills in the gaps.

Inés was born in Extremadura, in Spain, in 1507. She married Juan de Mélaga for love (or for lust), but their marriage was troubled; their fiery sexual passion also led to fierce fights, and they failed to conceive the child Inés wanted, and Juan eventually sailed for the New World in search of gold and fortune. She follows, not out of love for her husband – that was mostly dead – but because, as a “widow of the New World,” her horizons in Extremadura were extremely limited, and she sought adventure just as Juan did. Inés travels around Peru, making her living as she did in Spain: sewing clothes and cooking her famous empanadas, which she is careful to provide to the hungry as well as her paying customers. After learning that Juan is dead, she is plagued by men who desire her, and who intend to have her by any means, with or without her consent; and she picks up a housekeeper who will become a lifelong friend & helpmate, Catalina, an Indian woman skilled in healing and with the power to see the future. Catalina foretells an important man to come into Inés’s life and recognizes him when he does: Pedro de Valdivia, a fellow native of Extremadura and a soldier from a long line of soldiers. Their relationship is full of fire and chemistry, as was her initial time with Juan de Mélaga, but will mature into a deeply loving and cooperative partnership. They will never marry, because Pedro has a wife, Marina, back in Spain, and all three are Catholic.

Pedro and Inés travel together to Chile, an area still unconquered by Europeans and especially intimidating because of an earlier failed attempt. They have a small but mostly loyal cadre of soldiers with them and intend to be the founders of a new country there. As partners they fight the Indians and establish the city of Santiago and several more small towns; they live through good times and bad. There is a fascinating subplot involving a young Indian boy who joins their settlement, which I will leave mostly untouched for the sake of spoilers. After ten years of loving cohabitation, during which Inés contributes substantially to the successful founding of Santiago, even in combat against the Indians, Pedro throws her aside. He has grown from the strong & cooperative man she loved into an aging, arrogant, cruel, unhealthy ruler, but his rejection still hurts. Inés then takes a second husband: Rodrigo de Quiroga, a captain in Pedro’s army and a good man with whom she finds another beautifully healthy and loving relationship, also raising his daughter Isabel, to whom this story is narrated.

Inés of My Soul is the diary of an elderly Inés who wants to record her fascinating and important life for the sake of posterity. She is sad that she never conceived a child, but loves her stepdaughter very much and chides her lovingly throughout this narration. She writes more than half of it herself, but by the end is dictating to Isabel, as her age catches up with her; she says she sees death coming very soon, and is not sad, as she looks forward to joining Rodrigo, her final love of 30 years, recently dead.

Again, this is a story of the conquest and founding of Chile, complete with scenes of battle, heroism, victory, glory, and gold. There is plenty of statement on the evils of colonialism: Inés praises the natives of Chile, respects their choice to fight to the death rather than be enslaved, and notes their strengths. She also laments the unnecessary cruelties of the conquerors, including her Pedro. But it is also very much a love story. Inés has three loves in her life, and I think she is lucky (and considers herself so) to have shared passions with three very different men. While not terribly explicit, there is sex, told in an appropriately heated, sensual tone, with some acknowledgment of Isabel’s presumed discomfort where her father is concerned. (Inés also offers to give Isabel advice, in case the latter’s husband proves overly eager or otherwise fails to give pleasure.)

There are obvious links to Like Water for Chocolate, in the fiery, sensual telling of lust, passion, and fine food in the voice of a strong Latina woman, and in Inés’s implicit feminism when she declares her own place in history and her substantial contributions to the new country of Chile. This is an engrossing tale of a woman’s life, and a country’s birth, intertwined. I loved both Inés – a passionate and strong woman – and the history of Chile. Having grown up in mid-south Texas, I have long had an appreciation of Spanish-speaking cultures; I am most familiar with Mexico but have always been interested in traveling further south too. Chile was on my list – it’s so far away and therefore feels exotic and remote – but now it’s an even higher priority. And reading this fictionalized history of the founding of conquered Chile makes me more interested in its history, too. I did do a little Wikipedia reading on Inés de Suárez, the historical figure, enough to know that she was indeed lover to Pedro de Valdivia and involved in the conquest.

Finally, I cannot stress enough the pleasurable experience of listening to this narrator, Blair Brown, tell this story in a musical, lyrical, emotive, accented voice; there is no other way to enjoy it. Allende renders nuanced, very real characters in a lovely tone (aside from the lovely reading Brown gives); she makes a bloody history of conquest appropriately ambiguous; and the remarkable achievement of blending love and passion with war and subjugation is riveting. I highly recommend this story, and I highly recommend Brown’s reading of it.

Rating: 9 empanadas.

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Still Alice by Lisa Genova (audio)

Posted on February 15, 2013 by pagesofjulia

stillaliceI have a favorite book of the year so far, you guys. Still Alice is one of the most remarkable books I’ve read in some time. I enjoyed Lisa Genova’s second novel, Left Neglected, very much. (I listened to that one as an audiobook, too.) But Still Alice gripped me from the first lines, and never let me go – I was riveted. Let me tell you more.

The two books have more than a few threads in common. Both feature married women, with three children, in male-dominated fields with all the requisite toughness and work ethic but also with plenty of feminine soft spots, struggling to reconcile the two; both live in Boston. One could easily surmise that these are attributes shared by the author, a Harvard-educated neuroscientist-turned-novelist. Where Sarah of Left Neglected had young children, though, Alice Howland has grown children: one lawyer trying to get pregnant, one doctor just finishing his medical training, and one relatively wayward daughter who has scorned college in favor of acting. Alice is a Harvard professor of psychology, and her husband John is also a Harvard doc, working with human cells & a possible cure for cancer. She is nearing her 50th birthday when the book opens, and shortly after it, she is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. The story is concerned with the progression of her disease, the changes it wreaks on her life and the lives of her husband and three children, and their struggles (independently and as a family unit) to handle these changes. It is also centrally about Alice herself, as a person, what Alzheimer’s does to her and her reactions & dealings with that disease. Again, the author is a neuroscientist, so while I (thankfully) don’t have any experience with Alzheimer’s disease by which to judge this portrayal, I trust Genova’s ability to tell it truly.

I became deeply engrossed in this story from the very beginning. Although told in the third person, we are very much inside Alice’s head (call it third person limited, for which I like this explanation because of the example chosen!). Alice felt very much like a real, flawed-but-likeable person. I was occasionally exasperated with her choices: to fight with Lydia over her acting career, to fail to appreciate her, and to put off telling her husband about her diagnosis. But I always sympathized, and liked her throughout. I would like to spend a day or a week with this woman. In fact, in telling Husband about this story as I listened to it, I referred to her as my friend. This is not something I normally do with fictional characters.

I was deeply emotionally involved. If I was angry with Alice for not telling John she had Alzheimer’s right away, I was even angrier with John for his reaction, and his repeated failures to be supportive. I wanted to cry when they began considering their future. And I did cry, often, as the disease progressed and Alice’s family was – still flawed and imperfect, but earnest and effortful and loving in their handling of these events. I hope it’s not too much of a spoiler to say that I was charmed by the silver-lining aspect, where Alice’s relationship with Lydia grew stronger in this time of sickness. I pondered whether it was a bit too fictional-happy, to insert such a silver lining, and decided it wasn’t.

This is a sad story, certainly, and I cried more than a few times. (I finished this book in the gym, and it took great effort not to weep on the elliptical machine. What would people have thought?) But there is love, and hope, and strength; Alice keeps a certain dignity that made me love her more as she got sicker. I can see how this would be a painful read for someone whose own life has been affected by Alzheimer’s, but I’m inclined to think it might be worth the pain for the beauty it expresses.

If you’ve read the book or don’t care to, highlight the white text to read my spoiler-y discussion below; but if you intend to read this book, don’t.

I was saddened by Alice’s decision to plan her suicide, but I respected it. When she got so sick that she couldn’t execute her own plans, I found that sadder still. I wondered a little at Genova’s decision to end the story the way she did, with Alice fading into gray; I would have liked to know her final fate, when and how she died, whether John moved her to a place she never wanted to be (a “home,” or New York), but I think this way was for the best. That fade-to-gray is probably most like the end of Alice’s own understanding of things – most like Alzheimer’s disease.

Unlike Left Neglected, this book is read by the author, and when I heard that I was thrilled, because my author-narrated audiobook experiences have so far been 100% wonderful. Still Alice is no exception. Genova’s goodreads page tells us she’s an actress as well as a neuroscientist and novelist, so perhaps it’s no surprise that she delivers her characters feelingly (or that she wrote a lovely, passionate actress character into this book). For the record, I really enjoyed the audio reading of Left Neglected, too, but I would never pass up an author-read version, and highly, highly recommend this audio version of Still Alice.

This is without a doubt going to make my list of best books read in 2013. I am so relieved to see that Genova has a third novel out already, Love Anthony, and is working on a fourth – whew! I can’t say enough good things about this book. I love Alice.

Rating: 9 thingies.

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Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin (audio)

Posted on February 6, 2013 by pagesofjulia

teamofrivalsMostly I read books first and then (maybe) watch the movie, later. This time I did it backwards: I recently saw the new movie Lincoln (with Daniel Day Lewis), and then began listening to this book on audio, on which the movie was based. Not that there’s any shortage of Lincoln histories out there; but this is the one Spielberg turned into film. So please forgive me if this review is a little heavy on comparisons to the movie…

Beginning with which, the movie begins on the eve of the battle to ratify the 13th amendment, but the book starts much earlier, with Lincoln struggling to get the Republican Party’s nomination for presidential candidate. We follow Lincoln through his nomination, his campaign, and the setting up of his cabinet. The title of the book, appropriately, describes its subject: not Lincoln himself so much (as in the movie), but his skillful political alignment of his rivals for the Republican nomination in his cabinet. We get to know these other characters much better in the book than we did in the movie (which was also appropriately titled. Its focus was different). As this book effectively communicates, one of Lincoln’s political strengths was in placing his rivals where their strong points could best play to his administration’s advantage, and where their animosity toward him could best be neutralized.

Just as with the movie, I worried a little about an overly patriotic, positive portrayal of Lincoln. As in the movie, he is depicted as being strongly concerned about the black man or woman’s natural right to liberty; and while this is a sentiment we applaud today, I am afraid it was not at the center of the Civil War or Lincoln’s personal priorities. In other words, it’s something we love to think about our lauded 16th president today, but it’s not entirely historically accurate. Along these lines, I noted repeatedly that Goodwin uses rather many superlatives, which decreased my confidence in her neutrality slightly.

These concerns aside, I enjoyed the story. Not only Lincoln and his wife and children, but the characters (along with their families) of Bates, Chase, and Seward are evoked, and it made this critical moment in my nation’s history come alive. It was an absolutely entertaining story to listen to; and Goodwin’s great reputation (she has a Pulitzer to her name) and the reasoned pace & structure give me confidence that this is a responsible piece of historical writing… but I still felt that there was some positive slant, as above.

The audio narration by Richard Thomas was everything it should have been. This is a fine book, very readable, which makes Lincoln’s White House history accessible and makes the story come alive. But it might not be hard-edged journalism, for what that’s worth.

Rating: 6 machinations.

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The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough (audio)

Posted on January 29, 2013 by pagesofjulia

greaterjourneyThis is my first experience with the very well-respected David McCullough. “Americans in Paris” is a huge topic; but if anyone can do it justice, we’re told, McCullough might be that one. This feels like a quite comprehensive study of Americans in Paris in the 1800’s, complete with name-dropping and historical context. (I say “feels like” because I don’t have the historical knowledge myself to confirm or question McCullough’s comprehensiveness!)

McCullough follows Americans in Paris more or less chronologically, starting with the 1830’s and following through the end of the century. His subjects range over various disciplines and the story he tells seems to ramble, from art & literature, to medicine, to culture, war, and back to art. In the 1830’s we meet those who were among the first to make the journey, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Fenimore Cooper, Samuel Morse, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. A number of chapters are devoted to visual artists and writers, and the artistic superiority of France and the Continent which was only beginning to be challenged by Americans. Samuel Morse not only painted his masterpiece in Paris, but began work on what would become the telegraph; Harriet Beecher Stowe sought escape from the publicity following Uncle Tom’s Cabin; the first American female medical students studied there; and Charles Sumner’s observation of black students in Paris would lead him to a new understanding of black Americans’ abilities, and help him become one of our first abolitionist Congressmen. Rather fewer chapters* are devoted to the medicals, but I enjoyed very much McCullough’s descriptions of the École de Médecine and the American students who studied there. At the time, France was the place to study medicine, and the personalities who taught it loomed large; their role in this section of the book was very entertaining to me. (Also, I thought of The Lady and Her Monsters as McCullough discussed the dissection of cadavers, and their sources.)

Moving forward a few decades, later waves of American visitors to Paris would more commonly bring their families with them to live a fuller life than that of the student or artist; and there would be many more of them. One of the strongest sections of The Greater Journey describes the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), and the role of American ambassador Elihu Washburne. He was the only ambassador who stayed, and he saved innumerable Americans as well as Germans, helping them evacuate and generally organizing and supporting – literally, in many cases, as he fed & boarded a number of the displaced. He was well regarded for this work, above and beyond the call of duty. The Franco-Prussian War (which felt vaguely familiar to me from my recent readings of de Maupassant), is well told; and McCullough’s description the Paris Commune is evocative and powerful.

Another figure that receives personal attention is sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, an Irish-American kid from a family of decidedly modest means who travels to Paris and becomes a world-renowned artist. You may know him for his bronze Robert Gould Shaw Memorial on Boston Common and his statue of William Tecumseh Sherman at a corner in New York’s Central Park. Saint-Gaudens’ life is examined from his youth through his old age and death; I found this study of an artist to be a very interesting sub-story within The Greater Journey. Likewise the life of Mary Cassatt, an American painter famous for Impressionism who was significantly shaped by Paris.

In other words, while McCullough seems almost to ramble amongst various people, disciplines, and issues, each of his individual subjects is well-treated and fascinating; and any seeming lack of structure is happily tolerated because all the stories are so enjoyable. It’s not really that the book lacks structure, only that following Parisian Americans chronologically takes us through all these twists and turns. The whole is highly readable and a good primer in French/American history in the 1800’s. For example, one consistent thread throughout is the close relationship shared by our two countries during this century, beginning with General Lafayette’s support of the American Revolution in 1776.

The Greater Journey is an interesting and enjoyable read, a good central place to learn a number of individual facts and anecdotes about Americans traveling and living in Paris in 1830-1900. I have the impression that McCullough’s research is good; I am charmed.

*I am not entirely clear on the proportions of the book devoted to each subject, because I listened to the audio and thus could not grab chunks of pages for visual comparison. It is a shortcoming of the audio format. You get only my impressions.

Rating: 7 croissants.

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Rain Gods by James Lee Burke (audio)

Posted on December 17, 2012 by pagesofjulia

raingodsJames Lee Burke is best known for his series of mysteries starring Detective Dave Robicheaux, who makes his home in New Iberia, Louisiana and whose adventures mostly take place there (or in New Orleans, or – in one case that I know of – in Montana). But he does write other books: I read a western a while back. Rain Gods is the first Burke I’ve read that stars Hackberry Holland, sheriff of a small Texas border town that I am pretty sure remains unnamed.

As the book opens, Hack has just discovered a shallow grave filled with illegal immigrants behind a church, and a young man named Pete Flores, a veteran of the war in Iraq, flees town with his girlfriend Vikki. They fear the team of professional criminals that were involved with the shooting, but the threads of the case are quickly so thoroughly intertwined that Pete himself doesn’t know who they’re running from. Between a New Orleans crime boss, a bumbling Texas strip club owner, a psychopathic hit man who thinks he’s the left hand of God, and a couple of young lackeys whose loyalties are yet to be tried, Hack and his deputy Pam Tibbs have their hands full in trying to solve the murder and protect Pete and Vikki. And they may still be working out the relationship they share, to boot.

As in any good mystery story, some subplots come out sooner than others. The man they call “Preacher,” who somehow thinks God is supportive of the mayhem he creates, is an enigma of pure evil; but he’s not the only one whose motives are unclear (or irrational). The romance that Pete and Vikki share is a welcome sweet note; and Hackberry’s storied past and accumulated guilt are a familiar but still satisfying facet. The fact that both Pete and Hack are still processing their experiences in war (Iraq and Korea, respectively) is a sobering note of reality that draws the two generations together effectively.

I don’t feel that Rain Gods is Burke’s finest work; I found it a little bit slow-paced. But it had all the hallmarks that I come to Burke for. Our hero is damaged and has committed great wrongs, but is essentially good. The setting is strongly evoked – and I liked it particularly, as the plot mostly takes place in West Texas borderlands, a location I’m fond of and fairly familiar with. And Preacher’s character is quite frightening – as he was intended to be.

The audio narration by Tom Stechschulte is excellent. I love the different voices he does – especially because there’s such a collection of characters featured here, with different accents and tones of voice that express emotions and pain and insanity. This audio format deserved a fine portrayal, and it got one.

I will be reading more James Lee Burke. But I may prioritize the Robicheaux novels.

Rating: 6 delusions.

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Teaser Tuesdays: Rain Gods by James Lee Burke

Posted on December 11, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!

raingods

James Lee Burke is always wonderful. Of all the attractive quotations to tease you with, I couldn’t resist this literary allusion…

Cassandra had been given knowledge of the future and simultaneously condemned to a lifetime of being disbelieved and rejected. The wearisome preoccupation of the elderly – namely, the conviction that they had already seen the show but could never pass on the lessons they had learned from it – was not unlike Cassandra’s burden, except the anger and bitterness of old people was not the stuff of Homeric epics.

…especially when fused with wistful musings on age and its trials.

What are you reading this week?

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The Adventures of Sam Spade (audio)

Posted on December 10, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Here’s an interesting one for you. I had to do a little research to figure out exactly what I have here, and I’m still unclear on a few issues. Please pardon my rather lengthy introductory remarks.

Sam Spade is a character created by Dashiell Hammett in The Maltese Falcon, which I have not read but very much want to. Dashiell Hammett shares some early pulp-classic mystery genre credit with Raymond Chandler, who I have read (just a little) and enjoyed; also, Hammett was partner to Lillian Hellman for some 30 years. “The Adventures of Sam Spade” was a radio series in the 1940’s through 1951, based on Hammett’s character, but I think that Hammett was uninvolved (or marginally involved) in the radio version. His name (says Wikipedia) was removed from the show when his association with the Communist Party became known.

This three-cd set presents six episodes of the radio show, “digitally remastered” and “including never-before-released episodes” – I take it to mean these are original recordings, then, although I haven’t been able to confirm that in my (casual) online research. They do include advertisements for Wildroot Creme Oil, a hair product that was the show’s sponsor. These advertisements are initially somewhat charming in being period pieces, but they are many, and like any advertisement, they get old. Again, this speaks to the authentic feel of the production.

So what about the stories? The six episodes are… “The Insomnia Caper” (1948), “Sam and the Psyche” (1946), “Love Letter” (1949), “The Overjord Caper” (1949), “The Bow Window Caper” (1947), and “The Charogagogmanchogagogchabuna-mungamog Caper” (1949). Howard Duff plays Sam Spade and Lurene Tuttle plays his secretary Effie. These are radio shows rather than your average audiobook, so they include sound effects – gunshots, breaking glass, revving engines, traffic noise – and not just reading of the stories; rather than a single narrator doing voices for different characters, various actors play each character. This is classic pulp stuff, and it’s great fun. There is a definite element of tongue-in-cheek (at least that’s my reading, I can’t speak to the original intent, and the 1940’s are pretty remote to me, but surely…?) in Sam’s character: he is the exemplar of the wise-cracking, hard-boiled, tough-guy detective.

Each story tends to involve a person hiring Sam as a PI, often against Sam’s own wishes: in “Love Letter”, he gets a love letter from a woman he doesn’t know and heads to the assigned meeting point to find himself immediately involved in a situation he’d rather have avoided. His clients are as dodgy as any other character in the story; and there is often a woman who tries to seduce (or seduces) Sam, as a means of distracting him from a plot. Howard Duff’s gruff playing of the role is a large part of the effective mood of these stories.

While the plot of each is formulaic and somewhat forgettable, and the characters are rather stock, that needn’t detract from the fun of these stories. Formulas are often successful and that’s why they’re repeated (think about Agatha Christie). As a regular listener to audiobooks, this radio format that came with multiple actors and sound effects was a refreshing change. The Adventures of Sam Spade is a little simplistic, and definitely easy listening, but great fun, and different from the usual fare.

Rating: 6 double crosses.

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The Man Called Cash: The Life, Love, and Faith of an American Legend by Steve Turner (audio)

Posted on November 19, 2012 by pagesofjulia

How could a biography of Johnny Cash not be extraordinary? (Well, the question of whether we seek out biographies of interesting people, versus interesting biographies of any old people, is another blog post.) I was excited to start this one. But warning, folks: it hits hard, and early. The first chapter is about the death of June Carter Cash after 35 years of marriage to the Man in Black, and I cried.

Johnny Cash is truly larger-than-life, as a celebrity and a public figure as well as in his music career. I’m a fan, but not a scholar of Cash’s life: prior to this book, what I knew of him was general cultural knowledge, or gleaned from his songs and the movie Walk the Line (which I enjoyed). So now I know a great deal more.

He was born in Arkansas and grew up in a town called Dyess (which Cash jokingly refers to as a socialist experiment – it was designed under FDR’s New Deal) in the midst of the Great Depression, and after high school, joined the Air Force and served in Germany; he returned to the South to marry a girl named Vivian whom he had met just weeks before shipping out. Cash and Vivian would have four daughters.

His music career came about in an interesting way. Cash had always been passionate about music, from childhood; his mother shared and inspired this love. He was not particularly gifted as a singer, and he was a mediocre guitar player who mostly learned from his Air Force buddies; but his songwriting did impress his peers from the beginning. Back in the southern US, he teamed up with a few coworkers of his brother’s, and formed Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two, recorded his first single apparently on the strength of will alone, and… things took off from there. Names like Carl Perkins, Sam Phillips, and Elvis Presley figure in the early years of his career.

The shape of his musical career surprised me the most in the story of Cash’s life. He was always an innovator: he played an integral role in the birth of rock-n-roll; he blended styles and approached subject matter previously deemed inappropriate; and even in the final years before his death broke new ground. But I never realized how sort of unguided and hesitant those innovations were. He needed musicians, producers, and sound engineers around him to help shape his creativity. I say none of this to take away from the genius of Johnny Cash: he was unique, and his art remains unparalleled. I just hadn’t realized that he didn’t do what he did in a vacuum, that he had no great image or plan for his work, that he didn’t see the bigger picture himself. He needed help for that.

On tour in the 1960’s, Cash became close to fellow musical artist June Carter; they carried on an affair until Cash’s divorce from Vivian. During the same period, he struggled with methamphetamine addiction, and June wouldn’t marry him until he was clean, which turned out to be 1968. The drug use came and went for many years, but his marriage to June was steady. They had one child together, John Carter Cash.

I enjoyed learning about Johnny Cash. As it turned out, for me, this book’s greatest strength was its subject: rather than being an excellent biography, it detailed an excellent life. One minor gripe I have is in its handling of Cash’s religious life. Now, let it be said, Christianity played a huge role in Cash’s life: he was devout as a young man; struggled with his faith during the years of drug abuse and adultery; found a stronger religious foundation in his years of happy marriage to June; made a great deal of religious music and spoke publicly of his faith; and in many ways led a truly Christian life in terms of charity, compassion, and standing up for the disadvantaged. Handling Cash’s religious life is obligatory in any biography of the man. However, this biography approaches it from a certain perspective: it takes for granted that Christianity is good, and any strayings from the church are bad. See mentions of Billy Graham as an absolutely virtuous figure; praise of June Carter Cash for her total devotion to her husband (with religious references); and straightforward use of “light” and “dark” or “good times and bad” in reference to Cash’s more and less religious periods.

Author Steve Turner never takes on a voice of his own in his book; and I think that, if he were going to take a religious position as he has, that he should have spoken to that in his own voice. Does that make sense? To write as a Christian is not to write from a journalistically neutral place. The fact is that not all Turner’s readers are Christians; and he has done them a disservice in failing to zoom out to a neutral position from which to view his subject. I feel it would have been more honest to acknowledge a personal perspective.

The Christian leaning did not ruin this book for me; but I noticed it. And in noticing it, I was distracted from the fascinating story Turner had to tell. I guess I should have taken warning from the subtitle of the book: The Man Called Cash: The Life, Love, and Faith of an American Legend. Ah well. Silly me: I thought faith could be covered from a faith-neutral perspective. My final judgment on this question is that if you’re seeking a neutral and non-faith-based reading of Johnny Cash’s life, you should seek elsewhere. There are far too many biographies of this enormous figure to settle for one with such a bias.

Similarly, Turner’s perspective assumes that Cash was basically a good man. His mistakes, his “sins” if you will, his lapses, are all forgiven in advance. Turner turns a fundamentally uncritical eye on his subject. This bothered me far less than the Christian angle; in fact I noticed it far less, for the vital fact that I am a Cash fan who was sympathetic to the assumption that he was a force of good. But that doesn’t make it any less an error of journalistic neutrality. Again, there are different ways to skin this horse. Christians may appreciate this reading; fans may appreciate this reading. Those seeking a neutral and critical examination of Cash’s life should seek elsewhere. The Man Called Cash is a fan’s biography.

How about the narration? Rex Linn reads this book for us, and his deep voice and southern vowel sounds evoke Cash, which is pleasant. But he doesn’t do different voices for different characters at all; and some of the pauses between phrases are disjointed. I got the feeling that there may be some sloppy audio-editing involved. It was fine, but not the finest audio narration I’ve encountered, by a long shot.

I have made three criticisms here: two on the biased perspective of the author as a Christian and as a fan of Cash, and one on the audio reading. I feel these are worth noting. But I still enjoyed the book, again, mainly for the strength of Cash’s life. I recommend it with qualifications. If the issues I’ve outlined here bother you, by all means look for another Cash biographer as there are plenty! But this one does the job, too.

I’ll end with a strength. As I said, the book opens with the death of June Carter Cash in 2003. Her final weeks and those following her death are detailed finely; we get to know the Cash family as affected by losing its matriarch, and it is a beautiful and thorough and moving introduction. Its emotional impact opens the story forcefully. From here, we rewind to Cash’s origins, and then follow his life chronologically; when we come back to June’s death again, we can pass over it more quickly, having studied it earlier, and focus more on its impact on Cash himself. I found this structure very effective and powerful, and I am impressed by Turner’s planning in this regard.

Final verdict: obviously mixed. Draw your own conclusions.

Rating: 5 hit singles.

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