Summer: Books and iced americanos amiright. Here's how I wiled away my splendid underemployment and hedonistic afternoons sweating in public.
Persepolis II, (2001) Embroideries (2006) and Chicken With Plums (2006), Marjane Satrapi
I know, global politics are not that sexy. Until you've met Satrapi. Her graphic novel Persepolis breathes humor and humanity into the Iranian revolution with the intimacy of a friendly conversation. Embroideries is an afternoon spent with her aunts and mother's friends as they chat about sex and love, and Chicken is an elegy to her late uncle that manages to be touching and funny. Satrapi is a rare storyteller of heart and wit.
I Thought My Father Was God: And Other True Tales From NPR's National Story Project, edited by Paul Auster (2000)
A lengthy collection of non-fiction short stories from Americans of every demographic. Some pieces are powerful, some aren't, but together they form a wide view of American life in the past half century. Not a particularly hard-hitting collection; racism is mentioned approximately once in this version of American history and sexism, classism, etc, not at all. But perhaps the collection is most successful when the reader eschews all notions of what "America" means and instead listens to the voices of these ordinary people.
Agee: Film Writing and Selected Journalism, James Agee (2005)
Agee: not an ordinary American. The author of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and the Pulitzer-prize winning A Death In The Family was also an extremely prolific critic and essayist. His essays on film here from the 1940s and 50s are insightful, honest and art in themselves. In the era of blockbusters, or when all you need to sell a movie is tits and terrorists, it's hard to believe that American cinema was once an art form. Does anyone take movies seriously anymore? Peter Travers doesn't count.
Everyone Loves You When You're Dead, Neil Strauss (2011)
A collection of interviews by a marathon journalist. He deals mostly in the music business, and covers every pop and rock star you've ever heard of, plus a few stray CIA agents and lawyers. Because his subjects include the Britneys and Robert Plants of the world, there isn't too much in this volume in the way of existential truths. But it is compulsively readable and Strauss is sneakily ruthless in exposing his subjects as vapid, drug-addled, self-obsessed children, which of course most of them are. Except for Springsteen, but that goes without saying.
How They See Us: Meditations On America, edited by James Atlas (2010)
A collection of essays about America by international writers. There are a variety of sentiments on display here: America has stolen an Iraqi author's homeland and history, America has given a Chinese writer the freedom to realize his artistic ambition. America has failed the world, America has redeemed itself with Obama, America is a "tyrannical prom queen" (as one Nigerian writer's contribution states). One overarching theme materializes: America is everywhere. It does not know cartographical boundaries but instead has permeated the entire globe with its influence and hamburgers. If reality is informed by perception, all Americans need to read this book to discover exactly what "we" are in the 21st century.
And The Pursuit Of Happiness, Maira Kalman (2010)
Instead of the question of whether America is "good" or "bad," Kalman explores what America is. The daughter of Israeli immigrants, New Yorker Kalman spends a year exploring American history and notions of democracy in an attempt to discover if the founding fathers would be satisfied with what their vision has become. She travels around New York, to Washington, to California exploring the government, schools, farms. Most importantly, though, this book is completely illustrated in beautiful full color by Kalman. She paints Jefferson, she paints her lunch. The type is her handwriting, and she incorporates her own musings into the facts she picks up. The book is charming and whimsical but it's not simple.
Pushcart Prize XXXV: Best Of The Small Presses, edited by Bill Henderson with the Pushcart Prize Editors (2011)
I want to marry this book. It's smart, sensitive, brutal, sharp, sweet, bearded... um what? The title sums it up: a collection of the best non-fiction, fiction and poems from small, independent publishers. Over a hundred pieces form the collection and while the subjects and voices are all unique, they are all united in their sheer truth and power. This volume has done nothing less than actually inspire excitement in me to live in a world where art of this caliber is being created by so many people. This book is a gift.
Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace, David Lipsky (2010)
Oh, David.
In 1996, David Foster Wallace was 35 and had just published Infinite Jest to international acclaim. After seeing a photo of Wallace in his trademark scruff and bandana, Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone decided he was "one of them" and sent David Lipsky to follow Wallace on his book tour. Lipsky spent three days with Wallace, smoking, eating, driving and talking. After Wallace's 2008 suicide, Lipsky published the complete transcript of the interview. For the small but fervent world of Wallace-philes, this is a rare conversational glimpse into Wallace's world, but part of Wallace's unique genius (and hence his devout followers) was that his prose was a direct route to every corner of his unique, crazy, gifted, super-human beautiful mind. Nothing he says here comes as a complete surprise; it serves as more of an addendum to his essays and fiction. Lipsky himself takes some liberties with the format and inserts some commentary which comes off as extremely clunky (to say nothing of the strange feeling one gets that this is Lipsky's attempt to cash in on Wallace's suicide, finding that these three days has suddenly appreciated a shit-ton of value). But those who love Wallace's writing, and his humanity, really, will take any scrap they throw at us, and end feeling a little emptier knowing that the supply is always diminishing.
Next Season: Foucault and more Wallace, the Vietnam War, probably some Sweet Valley High.
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