Collected Miscellany

I don’t have anything particularly profound to add to the discussion of Checkpoint, NYTBR under Tanenhaus, and Leon Wieseltier’s review, etc (see here for some links). But I do want to point out that the resulting discussion shows literary blogs at their best: reacting, thinking, offering perspective, debating, criticizing, and adding personality. This type of extended conversation is what the nimble format of blogs allow, a sort of freewheeling debate and discussion that is emotional and intellectual, reactive and creative, personal and professional, and interesting and educational. This type of thing helps you to learn about fellow bloggers, the subject at hand, and about your own feelings and ideas by comparing and contrasting them as you go along. Throw in the satire and you have educational entertainment as horrible as that may sound.

Another issue brought this further to light. This post over at Return of the Reluctant is aother great example of the possibility of blogs. Once again you have intelligent people discussing books in a passionate and informed way. Their personalities and ideas come through and both those reading and those participating know more about each other and themselves when all is said and done. This kind of casual back and forth is rarely seen outside of blogs. Blogs allow for an informality that helps people feel comfortable throwing out ideas and perceptions without fearing that they will be taken as academic assertions of fact and attacked as such. Rather it fosters an exchange between people with the same goal. Oh sure there are trolls everywhere, but for the most part there is a remarkable amount of respect. As long as people feel you care about the written word, they seem willing to listen.

Anyway, I just thought I would point these moments out as a value added product that blogs are producing free of charge. Thanks everybody and keep up the good work!

Here are a few interviews I have run into as I attempt to catch up on my surfing after having been out of town for a few days. Some you might have already noted while others might have escaped your attention. ‘In case you have missed them, I reproduce the links as a service to my readers:

– As is par for the course for Mr. Birnbaum, his interview with Charles McCarry, author most recently of Old Boys, is interesting and thought provoking. I particularly liked this exchange:

RB: There is a sense, and it is reiterated in your novels, that the Cold War struggle against the Russians and Communists was very affirmative for the intelligence community and that there was an absolute faith they were on the right side. And after the Soviet Union collapsed there was great self-congratulation. Somewhere in Old Boys you write, “They did a lot of good in the world, little of it except through stupidity and inadvertence.”

CM: I don’t remember saying that. Some of it by inadvertence at least. I never met a stupid person in the agency. Or an assassin. Or a Republican.
RB: No Republicans? [laughs] Are you serious?

CM: I’m serious. They were, at least in the operations side where I was, there were wall-to-wall knee-jerk liberals. And they were befuddled that the left outside the agency regarded them as some sort of right-wing threat. Because they were the absolute opposite, in their own politics.

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By a Spider’s Thread is the latest Tess Monaghan mystery by Laura Lippman. Not having read the previous works in this series I can’t tell you how it stacks up. But I can tell you that Spider’s Thread is an entertaining and even thought provoking story. What makes it somewhat unique is how Lippman weaves an exploration of what it means to be an Orthodox Jew into a P.I. mystery. This allows her to take on some meatier issues than what one might find in a typical mystery.

The story centers around the family of Mark Rubin; a wealthy furrier and Orthodox Jew whose wife and kids have disappeared. Without any sign of foul play the police are unwilling to get involved so Rubin is in need of the services of a private investigator. This is where Tess Monaghan enters the picture. Tess has an Irish name but a Jewish side of the family as well (her full name is Theresa Esther Weinstein Monaghan). Her uncle recommended that Rubin hire Tess to get to the bottom of his wife and kid’s disappearance. Needing a solid source of income, Tess agrees to take the case despite her misgivings about the lack of clues and the feeling Rubin wasn’t telling her everything.

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Over at Sarah’s, Robert Ferrigno describes a Bay Area cab ride and the search for characters from actual experience.

Long before obesity was all the rage my friend Norm set out to become the largest man in the world. He needed a sedentary job with junk food potentialization.

A taxi medallion in NYC cost as much as a seat on the stock exchange. Norm scouted the NYSE only to discover the nearest hot dog vendor was down on Broadway; he became a ‘relief driver.’

A relief driver just pays rent to the medallion owner and works a shift. It’s usually a night shift unless it’s a major holiday. You pick up your taxi at the garage, pay the Danny Devito guy the rent and hit the streets. Norm would cruise Museum Row, not for fares, for hot dogs. He’d get really annoyed when people woud jump aboard and want to go somewhere.

Norm would sometimes recruit friends to drive his shift. He had three rules; no high flagging, no drinking in the cab itself, no sex in the backseat.

He never could figure out why fares wanted to have sex in the back of his cab. He’d high flag it down Second Avenue to a sound track of moans and groans. One night he had an epiphany. It’s the potholes man. Norm would careen from lane to lane in search of the best potholes NYC had to offer. They’d hit the roof in the back; twenty dollar tips flowed like water.

Of course there was no hundred million dollar bonus like Dick Grasso got for being fired from the stock exchange. And Norm wasn’t tallest to become the largest man in the world; but Estonian ballerinas rarely have orgasms on the trading floor of the NYSE. Unless it was their turn to ring the bell.

Quite a few lists I’ve seen place this work by Henry Adams as one of the best autobiographies of the last century. These lists are correct. But there are no doubt better minds, and more learned writers, who have disected this book left and right in sundry ways. So, this review will look at the experience of reading The Education of Henry Adams.

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I’m in the middle of reading Kevin Wignall’s People Die and still pondering Kevin Holtsberry’s search for faith in fiction. I’ll post a review of People Die in a few days, assuming I survive the impending writers conference. It’s going to be fun, but I dread the process. I’m as nervous as Pam Anderson’s editor. When asked the title of my work, I’d like say Apologia Pro Vita Summa or something smartass, but I won’t. Three monks cross the Libyan desert in search of love, fun, and a sandy beach in this light hearted Sixth century romp…

But no. While it may seem incongruous to mention Pam Anderson and St. Augustine in the same paragraph, I think they both used the dictation method of getting their words onto the page. Different writing styles though. St. Augustine had the Visigoths to worry about while Pam must contend with being a single mom in Los Angeles.

I’m looking forward to the latest Robert Ferrigno novel THE WAKE UP and Donna Mina’s new book. I finished CJ Box’s OPEN SEASON with mixed feelings. His Joe Pickett series has taken off; book four has just been released.

A final thought about the Inquisition. A lot of the people accused of heresy turned out to be innocent. Sorry about that, but as Michael Palin pointed out, it was completely unexpected.