“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed into a giant insect.” – Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis (1915)
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz I didn’t finish it, I’m slightly ashamed to say. It’s sort of a Dominican version of Catcher in the Rye. Four or five chapters in I started to feel like I was reading an assignment for an ethnic studies class. Feelings like that are off-putting enough, but what really turned me off was the constant interjection of Spanish smack talk and the self-conscious appropriation of “nigger” to describe poor Dominican immigrants. I’ve read plenty of books like this and don’t really need to finish this one, however good it undoubtedly is. |
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No Angel: My Harrowing Undercover Journey to the Inner Circle of the Hells Angels, by Jay Dobyns You won’t be able to put this book down once you’ve started. If you’re like me, you’ll read it with a mixture of admiration and disgust. Admiration for the ATF agents’ guts, working undercover amidst the very enemy they’re trying to snare; disgust over the depths to which American law enforcement has sunk, running entrapment operations and engaging in criminality themselves in order to catch a few lowlifes, then coming up short because the evidence they manage to gather is so contaminated by their own involvement in the illegal acts.These guys and girls ran a year-long infiltration of the Hells Angels clubs in Arizona, gradually working their way into the very heart of the group, yet ultimately failed in their goal. A few small fry are tried and convicted; I think all of them are now out of prison and back in the life; the agent at the center of the story nearly destroyed his life, his marriage, and his career; and everything today is much as it was before: the Hells Angels still run their operations in Arizona; the ATF really can’t do anything about it; and what was it all for?It was interesting to read about people I know or have met — Mac, the HA who runs a tattoo shop in Tucson, once challenged me about my Harriers MC patch when I was having a beer at the Bashful Bandit, a biker bar; Hank Watkins was a Harley-riding buddy back in 1999-2000, before he joined the Sun Riders and then over the next few years worked his way into the Red Devils MC and then the HA itself. Mac and Hank were both among the small fry rounded up in the ATF sting operation; I was wondering why I hadn’t seen those guys around lately! Admiration and disgust. That was my reaction. A very disturbing book, and a compelling read. |
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Angela’s Ashes, by Frank McCourt Tis a sad thing to grow up poor in Limerick, och, aye . . . when Frank McCourt died recently NPR’s Terry Gross ran an archived interview, featuring him reading the first several paragraphs of Angela’s Ashes. I was immediately hooked, so I ordered the book and then devoured it when it came. After reading this lovely, sad chronicle of poverty, drunkenness, and religious intolerance and superstition, I’ve decided that if I ever find myself in a locked room with poverty, drink, and the Church, and I happen to have in hand a pistol with two bullets in it, I’ll shoot the Church. Twice. |
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Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival, by Norman Ollestad A remarkable story told by an honest and insightful man. A good writer, too, direct and to the point. It’s a story of a driven father who pushes his son to be the best, the son’s many doubts and fears, and a harrowing survival experience after a plane crash on a snow- and ice-covered mountain. And it’s a story about growing up to be a father with a son of his own, trying to push him also to be the best. I could not put the book down. I loved it. |
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Just Before Dark, by Jim Harrison Somewhere on the jacket, Jim Harrison is described as “one of the last high-test males.” Maybe so . . . he certainly seems to have lived life fully . . . but his writing is to too self-consciously rich and full of detail, as if he is trying to impress. To be fair, I will read some of Jim Harrison’s fiction . . . this book is a collection of non-fiction essays and may not be representative of his fiction. But when someone brags about hiking to a remote cabin in the woods alone in order to make himself a wild game dinner featuring a sauce made from the reduction of a bottle of burgundy and the blood of 18 ducks, I cannot help thinking he’s showing off writing about it, and want to say “Couldn’t you have just eaten the one duck, asshole?” |
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The English Major: A Novel, by Jim Harrison I’m new to Jim Harrison. I recently read & reviewed Just Before Dark, a collection of non-fiction essays I didn’t much like, but I promised to give his fiction a go, hoping it would be better. Now I have, and will be back for more.This story reminds me of two others, Netherland by Joseph O’Neill and Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck. There’s a good bit of Philip Roth in it as well. Netherland with regard to the painful winding down of a marriage; Travels with Charley for the road trip motif; almost anything by Roth for brutally honest self-examination. Some readers may not warm to the protagonist, Cliff, but I think that’s rather Harrison’s point. Cliff could be any of us at 60, knocked around by life but trying to hang onto what’s important. The man has rough edges, but his sense of what’s important resonates with me, and he is not a man to hold onto anger about things he cannot change. And I, for one, welcome his grand scheme of renaming American states after indigenous Indian tribes. Arizona to Apache? Love it! |