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Synopsis
John Sullivan has fun meandering through history and attending races as he examines the ancient relationship between man and horse in this tribute to his father.
Review
A respected sports journalist in Kentucky, Mike Sullivan brought his son, John, with him to various sporting events, allowing him to roam the venues as he worked into the night, drinking, smoking, and beating deadlines. As his father's lifestyle began to take its toll, eventually putting him in the hospital, John began a tribute to his old man — a memoir and history of old Sully's favorite sport: horse racing.
As the subtitle suggests, Blood Horses is a series of essays loosely tied together by the common thread of horses. Part turf writing and part offbeat history lesson, the collection portrays the horse not only as the focus of one our most interesting athletic and cultural events, but also as an essential part of man's history — in war, companionship, and sports. Oddball history lessons, complete with footnotes and illustrations, show the author's uncanny ability to humor, entertain, and most impressively, turn the seemingly unrelated into the irrefutably relevant. What could the autobiography of a 19th-century alcoholic ditchdigger prone to disaster possibly have to do with Funny Cide's bid for the Triple Crown in 2003?
From Secretariat's famous run in 1973 to a thoroughbred auction on Sept. 11, 2001, Blood Horses exposes relationships with horses that are both cruel and loving. And in this endearing memoir about his father, Sullivan portrays him as only a son could — a mythologized patriarch and hero, a passionate man, and a dad who couldn't quit smoking, much less write a straightforward report on last night's game. We can't help but think that Sully would have loved this book. (JM)
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Synopsis
Unlucky and "forgotten Americans" are remembered in Ken Smith's book of tragic mini biographies.
Review
The best nonfiction tells us about people and places that we're unaware of, revealing essential information that we tend to otherwise miss. This is certainly true of Ken Smith's Raw Deal, a collection of brief stories about people who suffered unlucky fates. In life, his subjects were mostly victims — of circumstance, misfortune, or other people — and in death, they were usually forgotten.
Here, though, in engaging vignettes, Smith's subjects are remembered and even honored for their contributions: the caver who lay trapped 60 feet underground as thousands of people flocked to the carnival-like scene where his family sold pictures of him; the government biochemist who threw himself out a window after unwittingly receiving a dose of LSD from a CIA researcher; the man who discovered anesthesia but was shunned by the medical community and betrayed by his friends; the Paiute chief who was castigated by the government she struggled to unite her people with.
The stories in Smith's book aren't detailed portraits, but quick sketches in lively prose. He admits as much in his introduction, and his bibliography offers extensive sources of information about his subjects. The terse descriptions of these passed-over lives, though, bring the outrage to the surface, making it difficult to read this text without being shocked or horrified.
Smith says he wrote this book as a general warning: "perhaps you'll recognize a similar raw deal lurking in your future." However, he limits his subjects to Americans, and his underlying thesis seems to be that these stories and situations are distinctly American. Those things we value — from self-interest to secrecy to success — can easily go awry. The stories here often show the callousness with which people treat each other in pursuit of their own interests, and the tendency within our society to pick people up and later toss them aside. Smith picks these 21 people back up and makes sure that, even in death, they're remembered. (AD)
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Unless
by Carol Shields
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2002 |
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320 |
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HarperCollins |
Links:
Shields bio
Guardian review
Salon review
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Synopsis
A writer of "light" fiction and a more-or-less contented mother of three, Reta Winters is unremarkably happy until the mute rebellion of her eldest daughter compels her to reexamine the forces shaping her life.
Review
Life is good for Reta Winters. Blessed with a faithful husband, beautiful children, and an idyllic home in rural Ontario, she has always taken the "useful monotony of happiness" for granted. An upstanding member of her small community, she indulges a harmless interest in penning benign but successful works of fiction and is content with her modest achievements. Unless is the story of a chance encounter on a Toronto sidewalk that instantly shatters this contentment. The pivotal moment involves Reta's eldest daughter, Norah, who, while running an everyday errand, happens upon an anonymous Muslim woman intent on self-immolation. Traumatized by this scene, Norah retreats wordlessly from Reta and her family to beg on street a corner, holding a sign marked "goodness."
This random incident and its consequences provoke Reta to scrutinize every aspect of her existence. She speculates that Norah's silence is a result of her child awakening "in her twentieth year to her solitary state of non-belonging, understanding at last how little she would be allowed to say." Reta begins to meditate on the cultural invisibility of women and asks, in a series of caustic but unsent letters, why there is such a "lack of curiosity about great women's minds, a complete unawareness in fact."
Author Carol Shields has long been famed for her ability to happen upon extraordinariness in the lives of supposedly ordinary people. Critics wax saccharine over the small wonders she finds in the banality of everyday existence, damning her with patronizing admiration to the realm of the gentle, unchallenging "woman novelist." In Unless, her latest work, Shields responds with fierce wit and measured anger to such lazy assumptions about the female novelist's destiny. Sly and ironic in tone, startlingly sad, and surprisingly funny, Unless is a stinging but invigorating slap in the face of the literary establishment. (CK)
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Synopsis
Once the realm of middle-aged blackjack obsessives, card-counting is the game of 20-somethings in Bringing Down the House, the story of MIT students turned high-rolling gamblers. The ultimate revenge of the nerds?
Review
When MIT student/card-counting master Kevin Lewis approached writer/acquaintance Ben Mezrich to sensationalize the tale of the MIT blackjack team, he wanted a spy movie, not a moral meditation. For better or worse, he got what he wanted. While Mezrich's previous books are standard James Bland spy thrillers, Lewis' compelling story elevates Bringing Down the House above its clunky prose and painfully extracted themes. To his credit, Mezrich realizes what Lewis' story should be: not a literary treatise on luck, but a true-crime account of people creating it.
Real Genius meets Rounders — as the ensuing movie pitch undoubtedly went — Bringing Down the House is about a group of MIT dropouts, alums, and students who, under the tutelage of card-counting pioneer Micky Rosa, bilked casinos out of millions of dollars. Rosa creates an opportunity for his students to lead double lives, to transform themselves from Boston geeks into Sin City movers and shakers. Their success is due to both Rosa's innovations — primarily in making card counting a collaborative endeavor — and the fluid personalities of his crew. As the pots increase, so do the proverbial stakes, pitting team members against one another, forcing Rosa's ouster, and ultimately breaking the group apart. When the casinos finally discover what's happening, the squad goes to extreme measures to remain in the game, including hiring Hollywood makeup artists to create elaborate disguises.
Set in the early '90s, Bringing Down the House serves unexpectedly well as a sociological examination of Gen X. While many of Kevin Lewis' generation are fighting for racial, sexual, and socioeconomic equality, he and his cohorts hijack the fast track to money, girls, and high-roller glory. It's unsurprising, then, that Lewis' day job is with a dot-com startup, where his loose morals — which he unsuccessfully tries rationalizing — make him an instant success. Despite odds that the MIT team shifted considerably in its favor, mathematics cannot fully conquer luck, leaving the crew blindsided by a dealer's 21. (YS)
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| FICTION |
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Lucky Jim
by Kingsley Amis
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1954 |
| Pages: |
272 |
| Publisher: |
Penguin USA |
Links:
Amis bio
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Synopsis
A young man's attempts to find his place in postwar British society make for an uproariously funny read.
Review
Funny — Jim Dixon is never referred to as "lucky" in Lucky Jim. A junior lecturer at a small English university, he is failing spectacularly to adjust to a stuffy, upper-class academic life. As his future becomes more and more dubious with every blunder, we follow Dixon through his painful efforts to stay on the good side of the head of his department, only to butt heads with his son, Bertrand, over a girl — a conflict they both gleefully raise to the level of a class struggle. In fact, Jim seems to be in conflict with almost everyone around him, internally if not overtly. This leads to a lot of drinking, which in turn leads to the epic bumbling of a faculty lecture and a scene of unparalleled comedy. One could certainly imagine Bill Murray as our anti-hero, faking his way through the university hierarchy, as we can't help but laugh with him and at him.
There are occasional references to a time and culture obviously different from ours, and these details lend a certain charm to the novel: a full-time professor has to ration his cigarette intake, not for health but for money; nobody is sleeping with anybody unless they are married to someone else; and the deus ex machina that finally improves Jim's situation is quasi-royalty.
By the end of the novel, as things begin to turn a bit for Jim, it is his luck and wit that prevail. Outside the novel, things turned even more sharply for the author, Kingsley Amis, who met instant success with this, his first book, and launched the group of artists dubbed "Angry Young Men" into prominence. The work also came to define that generation — postwar veterans, with a justified sense of entitlement, struggling to find their place in England's irrelevant class system. Published in 1954, Lucky Jim is a seminal tale within English literature by an author who, poignant, eloquent, and laugh-out-loud funny, pokes fun at his society's old rules. Between comedic episodes, Lucky Jim is also an insightful and stylish indictment of academia, as appropriate now as it was when professors wore tweed jackets with elbow patches — something many still do today. (CH)
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Synopsis
A magnificent compilation of strange and amusing paintings that were discovered by intrepid collectors in secondhand shops, flea markets, rummage sales, and in the trash.
Review
Jim Shaw has been collecting offbeat, thrift store paintings by anonymous artists at bargain prices since the '70s. A graduate of Cal Arts, the multitalented artist — who, with pal Mike Kelley, is a member of the anti-rock band and artists' group Destroy All Monsters — has an eye for the extraordinary. In 1990, he organized his fascinating finds, along with similar discoveries by several West Coast friends, into an exhibition that formed the impetus for this volume.
Designed to look like a straightforward art book, the paintings are presented without commentary or criticism, bearing only the descriptive titles supplied by Shaw. Although most pieces are unsigned and undated, the subjects often provide clues to different eras and influences. Figurative subjects dominate, interspersed with the occasional still life or landscape such as "Purple Toilet Paper and Flower" and "Dead Tree with Giant Lemon on Chain." Many are decidedly, sometimes humorously, amateur; however, a determination shines through on every piece. Discarded or sold for little, certain works such as the surrealist "Woman Made of Pillow, Wax Lips, Green Thing" and the pop cultured "Psychedelic James Dean Portrait" seem almost masterful; in fact, they would probably be at home in any museum showing modern art.
Rumor has it that British super-collector Charles Saatchi once offered $100,000 for 100 of the gems, which Shaw reportedly declined. In 2000, Shaw's anthology was exhibited at the ICA London. Not surprisingly, the show inspired others to commence their own trash-picking programs in pursuit of unlikely fortune. We suggest you pick up a copy of the book, but don't feel pressured to start a search right away. As Shaw once told a Philadelphia City Paper reporter, "thrift store paintings are being made every day." (PL)
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FEATURE
Lance Armstrong Foundation
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For champion Lance Armstrong, luck seems irrelevant. Through healthy living, the marvels of modern medicine, and sheer willpower, Big Tex beat cancer and went on to become the world's greatest living cyclist. Now he's tuning up for an attempt at a sixth Tour de France victory. The Lance Armstrong Foundation supports patients fighting and living with cancer by providing educational information, advocating awareness, funding post-treatment programs, and sponsoring research. Here's a chance to show your support for Lance and some of the ten million people around the world surviving cancer by wearing a "Live Strong" wristband — and don't forget to cheer on America's proudest athlete in July. (NP)
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BOOK NEWS & EVENTS
A few notable bits of recent book-related reporting and events.
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Book Publisher Roger Straus Dies at 87 (New York Times)
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Co-founder and chairman of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Roger Straus published
21 Nobel Prize winners in his lifetime — and in style.
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Authors contribute lyrics for a lit-rock book and disc (Soft Skull Press)
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As Smart As We Are features lyrics by authors such as Margaret Atwood and Rick Moody, performed by Brooklyn's One Ring Zero.
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One man creates 80 personae online (The Snoozeletter)
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As the "worldwide literati mobilization network," August Highland has created more than 100,000 pieces of fiction.
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Bukowski Film Opens (flavourpill LONDON)
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The celebrated degenerate is reexamined with archived footage and anecdotes from the likes of Bono.
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The Hay-On-Wye Festival (Guardian )
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More than 80,000 avid readers and writers take over a small town in Wales, with John Updike as the keynote speaker.
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BookExpo America (C-Span)
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Chicago hosts the two-day event, featuring Ron Suskind, Maureen Dowd, Graydon Carter, Jon Stewart, Tom Wolfe, and Bill Clinton, among others.
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The Olympia Book Fair (flavourpill LONDON)
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London's largest fair of its kind is as good as it gets for the book enthusiast.
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