The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan

For something so basic and necessary, it is easy to take food for granted. Doing so enables many of us to ignore the chain of social, economic, petrochemical, pharmacological and loose regulatory causality that goes into putting a meal on our plate. For example, the meat most of us eat is the end product of an industrial food chain driven not so much by our collective hunger for burgers and chicken as it is by the mountainous — and ever growing — surplus of corn. Similarly, while the term “organic” conjures up comforting thoughts of healthful food grown in pastoral settings, the reality of the industrial organic business model in place today benefits from regulations that define organic food in the broadest possible terms while charging a premium for them in the marketplace.

In The Ominvore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan tracks his way through four food chains to see where our food comes from, and to identify the true costs and tradeoffs that come of eating in different ways. He explores the complicated, corn- and petroleum-based food economy, culminating in a McDonald’s meal. He investigates the organic food movement, and discovers that the process by which organic chicken and baby greens get to boutique markets require similar economies of scale and comparable tradeoffs to the industrial food mainstream. He spends time working on a farm that produces its food in as close a harmony with natural systems as something as interventionist as agriculture allows. Finally, he learns to hunt and forage, and cooks a meal gathered entirely by the effort of his own hands.

Ultimately, few of us are in a position to feed ourselves and our families as pure hunter-gatherers. Even if we were, the reality is that there is not enough forage out there to feed a nation of scavengers. While the book presents the facts and implications of each of the different food systems Mr. Pollan explores, the lesson of The Ominvore’s Dilemma has more to do with mindfulness — of knowing what you are eating, where it came from, and the benefits, costs, and tradeoffs inherent in that food system — than with changing readers’ ways of thinking or acting.

I’m not sure I wouldn’t be happier not thinking about where my chicken came from, or the evolutionary tinkering that goes into feeding ruminant cattle a corn-intensive diet in order to fatten them up in order to yield more burgers per animal, or even about the reality that undelies the pastoral image on the box of my supposedly organic cereal. I suspect that from this point on, I will have a much more difficult time being casually ignorant; ignoring these realities will now require an act of will.

Kirby: King of Comics, by Mark Evanier

I’m not sure I can remember the first Jack Kirby comic I ever read. It was probably in a mass market paperback sized reprint edition of the Fantastic Four, but maybe I’m overlooking a standalone issue of something. For years after that, I was aware of Jack Kirby among the pantheon of comics greats, just one more name among a group of legendary names. Not fully knowing why he was special meant that I didn’t comprehend how much of the visual architecture of the comics I read during my first great comics awakening in the 1970s and 80s was sunk into the bedrock of Jack’s Kirby’s work.

It wasn’t until I read the Kirby tribute issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that I began to understand that he was a breed apart within his field. I know that the first time I read a Jack Kirby comic and really got it was in my early 20s when I got my hands on a copy of a Marvel anthology that included “This Man…This Monster” from Fantastic Four #51.

I also know this makes me a bandwagon jumping poseur — it’s sort of like acclaiming Groucho as one’s favorite Marx Brother, as though 95% of the world didn’t share that view — but there is a reason that certain things are acknowledged for their greatness.

There is a lot of greatness on display in Mark Evanier’s oversize biography of Mr. Kirby. First of all, the dimensions of the book, more coffee table book than traditional biography, allows the reproductions of Mr. Kirby’s work to be shown to great effect. Showcasing early comic strips drawn under a series of aliases in a range of styles to pin ups, commissioned pieces from late in his career, and countless stops in between, the art in Kirby: King of Comics almost makes the story of Mr. Kirby’s life and work superfluous. Almost.

Mr. Evanier, Mr. Kirby’s former studio assistant and friend, writes something more akin to a biographical sketch than to an exhaustive exhumation of every facet of Mr. Kirby’s life. It is a narrative that seeks to illustrate the illustrations it accompanies, or perhaps the illustrations are intended to narrate the narrative. Either way, like great comics, the text and image complement each other and convey a more comprehensive sense of story than either alone might have accomplished.

Because this is a book written by an interested party, it is largely favorable, but also seems largely honest while still doing honor to its subject. If Mr. Evanier avoids putting Jack Kirby on a pedestal (if only because Mr. Kirby’s drawing table is a more appropriate venue) he similarly refrains from casting a cartoonishly villainous light onto any of Mr. Kirby’s collaborators and employers. While Mr. Kirby failed to share in the financial rewards his work generated for his employer, especially in the area of derivative and licensed work, Mr. Evanier is honest that this resulted not only from ungenerous business practices on their part, but also from Mr. Kirby’s lack of business acumen. But these controversies, while noteworthy and significant, are in some ways extraneous to the powerful, dynamic work Mr. Kirby produced, or the ways that work defined — and continues to define — a medium.

The Jack Kirby story as presented by Mr. Evanier seems tailor made for the sort of biopic treatment Hollywood has given to individuals such as Ray Charles and Bobby Darin. His life had the arc on which such films so often rely; humble beginnings, personal drive, early struggles paving the way for tremendous success, mastery of chosen profession conflicting with the unkind realities of the biz, the ebb and flow of the later career culminating in acknowledgement of the proper place in the history of his craft. The only difference is that Mr. Kirby seems not to have needed to tame his personal demons in the same way as these performers.
While his life would be fodder for a film, I personally hope such an endeavor does not come to pass. Perhaps the recent success of films based on Marvel Comics properties (with more to come now that the success of Iron Man validated the profitability of the Marvel Studios financing endeavor) will limit interest in such a project. To tell Mr. Kirby’s story in the Hollywood way would necessitate exploring his relationship with Marvel, and the — how to say this diplomatically? — disproportionate nature of his compensation relative to his contributions. Such a story carries with it the sort of controversy that large companies seek to avoid in order to ensure or improve profitability. Thus, were such a film ever proposed, it’s not difficult to imagine Marvel’s owners attempting to derail the effort in order to keep the grazing pastures for their herd of cash cows verdant.

If superhero comics are a form of modern mythology — at its best, Mr. Kirby’s talent certainly elevated the characters and stories he depicted to that level, both explicitly (Thor, New Gods) and implicitly (X-Men) — it is equally the case that Mr. Kirby’s own life and work embodied a uniquely American mythology. As work, his career reflected the defining ethos of the 20th century: work hard, make money, provide for your family, don’t rock the boat too much, ensure your family’s security after you’re gone. As art, his work continues to fuel the production and articulation of new mythologies. Not bad for a kid from Yancy Delancey Street.

We interrupt this broadcast

I don’t receive many comments to the Bowleg, and I’m rather draconian in my moderation of those few comments that come my way. I can’t imagine censoring comments that disagree with me, so long as such comments are interesting, challenging, or creative in their challenge to my point of view. As I see it, disagreements implies that a reader not only read what I wrote, but was sufficiently affected by it to express an opinion. That’s all to the good.

Disagreements that bore me, on the other hand, aren’t worth my time or attention.

In realty, such disagreements as arise are few and far between. Most comments that I receive and subsequently delete fall into two categories: obvious spam and advertising/self promotion. I don’t have ads on the Bowleg, and I don’t see a need to let someone else use my soapbox to sell their soap.

Earlier this week, I received a comment from the author of a recently-released novel inquiring whether I ever did book reviews for local authors (presumably on the basis of the fact I occasionaly write about Berkshire County). My first impulse was to consider this gentleman’s query more soapselling and delete it out of hand. On reflection, though, I decided his comment deserved more of a considered response.

Having pondered the matter, I’m disinclined to review this book for several reasons:

1) I write about books, not very well. I write about food, not very well. I write about movies, and comics, and current events, and art, and museums, and life in the Berkshires, not very well. As you can see, while the subject matter of my writing tends to vary, there is a common theme that ties it all together: it’s not very good.

For an author, it’s hard enough to actively promote your own work without having to also do damage control because some pinhead with a blog completely missed the point of what you were trying to accomplish with your work.

2) While I have written reviews in the past, I don’t consider the things I currently write, which are primarily for my own edification, to be reviews. They’re observations, opinions, and digressions, with limited critical benefit. By and large, I try to capture a quick impression of the books I happen to read, without much effort or thought put into coherent analysis.

Again, I feel it would be a disservice to this author to subject his work to my usual half-assed and slapdash criticism. Besides, a review written at the direction of the author is fraught with pitfalls. Write a glowing review, and I’ll seem like a shill. Write a negative review, and I’m picking on someone who never did me any harm. Write a balanced review, and I’m too chicken%$#@ to commit to an opinion. Any way you slice it, it doesn’t end well for me.

3) When I have written reviews in the past, they have come about in one of two ways; either an editor has assigned me a particular book to review, or the editor has provided a list of advance reader copies or new releases they happen to have on hand, and asked their reviewers to claim treasure from the trove. Without an editor, my book selection is based largely on whim and word of mouth. While this author’s communication arguably qualifies as word of mouth, we’re back to the whole question of soapselling.

4) Bart Modern is demonstrably not an opinion maker. On its best day, the Bowleg received 63 hits. As of this morning, it has received just over 3,650 hits over the course of almost 18 months. Contrast this with a popular blog like John Scalzi’s Whatever. In May of this year, Mr. Scalzi received just shy of one million hits to the Whatever (999,808 to be scrupulously exact). That’s an average of over 32,000 hits per day, over 1,300 hits per hour on average. To put it another way, John Scalzi attracts more visitors in three hours than the Bowleg has received in its entire life to date.

This is not to suggest that this author should necessarily run straight to the Whatever to promote himself and his work, merely that anyone in his position should focus their effort on maximizing the ripple effect by making sure they throw their stone into the right pond. There are only so many hours in a day, and limited opportunities to reach a potential audience. The puddle maintained by a guy who gets a handful of hits a day is to shallow to produce meaningful ripples.

Still, I admire this gentleman’s tenacity. He wrote a book, and that counts for something in my book. He obviously believes in his work, and is putting in the effort to get it in front of as many people as he can through as many channels as he can. I don’t think I’m the best person to help him do it, but I also believe his effort deserves some acknowledgement.

So, Bowleggers, at the risk of selling some soap, here’s the deal: there’s this guy name of Peter Clenott who wrote a book called Hunting the King. Make of this information what you will.

Hold Tight, by Harlan Coben

I’ve been a fan of Mr. Coben’s books since friends of mine who used to own a bookstore recommended his first Myron Bolitar novel, Deal Breaker, to me. I generally enjoy both the Bolitar series and Mr. Coben’s other, largely standalone, thrillers. Like people who complain that they like Woody Allen’s funnier movies best, I have a slight preference for some of Mr. Coben’s earlier works, which are lighter in tone and substance than his more recent fare, but even his darker stories are engaging (if that sort of thing appeals to you).

[Digression: I can't prove it, but I suspect the influence of all the procedural shows on television raises -- or possibly lowers, depending on your point of view -- the bar for thrillers. Part of crafting effective procedurals week after week is coming up with new mysteries to unravel, or finding a new angle on the old mysteries that make them fresh enough to keep the audience coming back week after week. One of the ways to twist the mystery is to make it more shocking, and to plumb the depths of human depradation and inhuman morality. As this has become the norm on television, it seems it has pushed print authors in the same direction.]

Mr. Coben’s latest thriller continues his strong track record. At the same time, I take slight exception with the book. Mr. Coben is an alumnus of Amherst College, although I try not to hold that against him when I read his work, much as I can appreciate the achievement of Mark Helprin’s A Winter’s Tale despite Mr. Helprin having written speeches for Senator Bob Dole during the 1996 presidential campaign.

However, as a resident of Berkshire County, and as someone who has a theoretical rooting interest in certain of this region’s institutions, I take slight exception to the sociopath/villain/narrative instigator of Hold Tight being an alumnus of Williams College. It’s not so much the sociopathy that bothers me as much as the cut-rate, cartoonish nature of it.

Bookdump

I fell out of my habit of obsessively documenting every book I read, as though there was some inherent merit in the act of such documentation. In case there is, here is a quick catch up on some of what I’ve read lately:

• SHAZAM! The Monster Society of Evil (collected edition), written and drawn by Jeff Smith: For all the hype this mini series generated when it came out, I was expecting something more. The story is fun, in a way that too few comics are fun these days. It is appropriate for younger readers without being childish or condescending. It definitely has respect for its original source material, the Captain Marvel comics of the 1940s; it’s firmly rooted in the history and conventions of those stories, while giving the whole thing a thin veneer of modernization to bring the good Captain and his exploits into a more contemporary setting. Taken separately, these are all great accomplishments. Collectively, they promise more than they deliver. Maybe on some wacky meta-level, that is the triumph of the series: it hearkens back to the days when comics were disposable culture, when stories were meant to be read and set aside in preparation for the next issue’s adventure. Of course, if that was part of the goal, it’s hard to understand how to reconcile disposable culture with a $25 price point for the collected edition (which I borrowed from the library).
• Harlan Ellison’s Watching, by Harlan Ellison: This collection of essays on film from the 1970s and 1980s are didactic, opinionated, and unapologetic. They’re also damn good reading, made so because Mr. Ellison has the chops to back up his opinions. Like reading all the best critics, one may not always agree, but there is value in trying to see a film from such a critic’s point of view. If there is a weakness in the collection, it is that like all writers, Mr. Ellison has certain tics of phrasing and stock quotations he turns to with some regularity. When these essays came out months and years apart in the publications for which Mr. Ellison wrote them, such repetition was likely all but unnoticeable to any but the most keen-eyed readers. In a collected edition read over the span of a few days, these phrases become…conspicuous.
• My Boring-Ass Life: The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith, by Kevin Smith: More than most people want to know about Mr. Smith’s copulatory, eliminatory, and gustatory life, his work, and his poker-playing fortunes. The book, reprinted from Mr. Smith’s online diary is a comprehensive catalogue of daily minutia, from his first morning trip to the bathroom, to the film or television show to which he fell asleep on a given day. Only here’s the thing: such detail should be incredibly boring, and queasily intimate, but it’s fascinating nevertheless. I don’t think it’s so much a voyeuristic fascination as it is an appreciation of Mr. Smith’s willingness to be so candid. It raises the question of where the public persona ends, and the authentic person, the one that only his inner circle of close family and friends ever sees, begins.
• Fragile Things, by Neil Gaiman: Short stories by Neil Gaiman. Mr. Gaiman writes good short stories.
• Careless in Red, by Elizabeth George: Ms. George’s Inspector Lynley mysteries are less about the stone of murder being dropped into a still pond (home, office, family, community) and far more about the ripples caused by the crime. Many times, the identity of the killer becomes the least interesting puzzle to solve among all the secrets, lies, conflicting loyalties, and destructive revelations that come out about the victim, and those whose orbit intersected theirs. Some people are destroyed by what the crime brings to light. Others find resolve, strength, and liberation through the investigation. Often, the people who are destroyed are the ones who seem most in need of saving, and vice versa. This book is no exception.
• Storm Front, Fool Moon, and Grave Peril, by Jim Butcher: These are the first three books in Mr. Butcher’s Dresden Files series about Chicago-based freelance wizard Harry Dresden. The stories are entertaining, and well thought-out, with interesting — or at least not annoying — twists on werewolves, vampires, demons, ghosts, and fairies, along with a nicely noir sensibility. It is clear that Mr. Butcher has a plan, and is building slowly (too slowly in some cases, with plot setups and secrets teased a bit too much without developing [yet] into anything satisfyingly substantial) toward an epic story. The books work best because the main character is engaging. Harry Dresden is heroic, but also not immune to making mistakes. The mistakes are what help to set up the epic, the (flawed) heroism is what will hopefully keep the character from falling to far.

The Conclave of Shadows (series), by Raymond E. Feist

Hey, kids! Do you like fantasy stories?

How about a good revenge story?

And redemption stories; how do you feel about them?

If these are the sort of things that ring your literary bell, you could do worse than to check out this series (comprising Talon of the Silver Hawk, King of Foxes, and Exile’s Return) set in Raymond E. Feist’s Midkemia. This is the severalth series of Mr. Feist’s that takes place in that world, but encyclopedic prior knowledge is not required to follow or enjoy these books. Personally, while I have read the Riftwar series, I have not read any of the intervening Midkemia books; although the Conclave of Shadows books make reference to events in the earlier books, I found these references came with enough context that I could either understand or infer the necessary details.

The books make for quick and entertaining reading, if fantasy is your kind of thing. While the series is self-contained, it ends with a cliffhanger that sets up the next Midkemia series. Indeed, the ending plays like the season finale of a fantasy or science fiction television series, with a reveal that just begs for a To be continued…

The Year of Eating Dangerously, by Tom Parker Bowles

It’s always dangerous to conflate a writer’s literary persona with their true personality. At the same time, in a work of nonfiction the reader has to assume that the persona with whom they interacts is the one on which the writer wishes to be evaluated. Based on this standard, Tom Parker Bowles reminds me of that old friend you haven’t seen in a while, the one of whom you have great memories of good times shared, but who, when you reconnect with them after a period of years seems like a bit of a jackass.

I’m not casting aspersions here. I suspect that some friends with whom I’ve lost touch over the years would feel the same way about me if we were to reunite. My insight into Mr. Parker Bowles character is therefore based on a clear-eyed assessment of my own.

As he presents himself in the book, Mr. Parker Bowles is someone who talks big, drinks copiously, and mistakes awareness of his own character flaws for deep insight. Basically, he is Anthony Bourdain with none of the chefly chops and one tenth the charm.

There is very little danger to be found in Mr. Parker Bowles culinary tour, aside from the danger to his ego of having his assumptions challenged and his preconceptions shattered. The rest is gloss. A few days in China here, a New Mexico chile pepper odyssey there, a taste of fugu in Tokyo over there, judging a barbecue contest (complete with the obligatory digression into the realm of the Arawak barbacoa to provide the necessary context for his porcine indulgence) in that other chapter. At best, he merely scratches the surface of the cuisines and cultures he explores. There is nothing wrong with that. Any of the subjects addressed in passing in each chapter would provide fodder for a book twice the size of The Year of Eating Dangerously.

The later chapters in the book are the most fascinating. His trip to Korea in order to eat dog reveals finds him wrestling with the cultural baggage of dog as protein (something for which he claims historical antecedents even in the West) versus dog as man’s best friend. Counterbalancing this is his extensive chapter on Laos. Again, he barely scratches the surface of the country, its people, or its culinary traditions, but it is clear that he was enchanted, if somewhat caught up in the dregs of 20th century imperialist fantasy, by his visit.

Ultimately, the greatest danger for the author or the reader is to take this book too seriously.

Over 1,000? Really?

I may have found the single most pointles and unnecessary book on the planet: The Ultimate Little Martini Book, by Ray Foley.

The cover of the book promises that it contains over 1,000 martini recipes. I find that interesting, given there is only one way to make a martini:

Gin plus dry vermouth in whatever ratio appeals to the imbiber’s palate, blended (shaken, stirred, or otherwise agitated) in a cocktail shaker with ice, strained into a martini glass or served over the rocks, and garnished with some number of olives, the quantity determined by the bartender, or a twist of lemon if the drinker prefers.

That’s it.

There are only three acceptable variants:

The vodka martini: replace the gin with vodka. If you must.

The Vesper, as concocted by James Bond in Casino Royale: 3 parts gin; 1 part vodka; 1/2 part Kina Lillet; shaken and garnished with lemon.

The dirty martini: the standard martini plus a measure of olive brine.

That’s it. Anything beyond that is a gin or vodka cocktail, but it is not a martini. Once you pick up a book with 1,000 recipes and start messing with apple or chocolate, or anise or orange you are no longer in martini territory. It’s a fair bet that any establishment that pretends otherwise, and offers a rainbow assortment of ersatz martinis, is a place where you won’t find a good rendition of the real McCoy.

The Stoatsack Dispatch #1: The Children of Men, by P.D. James

Toward the end of last year, my friend the Stoat came for a visit. One of the (many) reasons we’ve sustained our friendship down through the years is a shared love of, and largely complimentary taste in, books. Her shelves regularly serve as an extended foster care facility for portions of my collection, and some of her books sublet space on my shelves. Books one of us has obtained, read, and enjoyed enough to recommend get passed along, along with the responsibility for their final dispensation (continued passing down a chain of readers, donated to a library book sale, consigned to moulder in a box in the closet).

Our taste is similar enough that most things one of us likes will appeal to both of us. We’re individual enough that sometimes our tastes diverge in interesting ways. This is good. After all, if all we encountered were people who simply mirrored ourselves back to us, how much less interesting a world would we live in? Finally, there are times when a recommendation backfires: in my defense, I thought Make Love* (*the Bruce Campbell Way) was a thoughtful gift. I was wrong. While I yield to no geek in my appreciation of Mr. Campbell’s work, this book was unfinishably unfortunate.

During the visit in question, my friend brought me a largeish paper bag full of books (the eponymous Stoatsack). It’s an interesting assortment: some mystery, some fantasy, a swashbuckling pirate tale, and a few others. I decided to use the Stoatsack as a strategic reading reserve, something to dip into when I’m between books or when nothing on my reading pile grabs my interest.

Faced with both of these requirements recently, and garnished with an impending airplane trip, I started the Stoatsack odyssey with P.D. James’s The Children of Men. I’ll admit I was not a tremendous fan of Ms. James going into this book; I’ve started a few of her mystery novels over the years, but never managed to finish one. In addition, my interest in reading this book was motivated more by wanting to see the film adaptation (I try to adhere to the rule of not seeing the movie until I read the book) than in any real desire to give Ms. James one more try.

Having completed the novel, I look forward to watching the movie. I can’t say I feel any particular sense of urgency about picking up another P.D. James novel.

The book presents a world in which the birth rate has declined to zero as a result of collective male infertility. The cause of this condition is never revealed. Indeed, it is somewhat beside the point, as the novel chronicles the consequences of this reality, rather than the condition itself.

Faced with the impending extinction of the human race, global society has largely collapsed. England is largely immune from chaos, due to the machinations of its seemingly benign dictator, the Warden Xan.

Xan’s cousin, Theo Faron, becomes involved with a group of revolutionaries who want to force Xan to practice the democracy he claims to champion. Through his involvement with the group, Theo, a historian and academic content to allow the ending of the world unfold as long as it does not impinge on his solitude, finds a reason to abandon his passive stance, and becomes central to a struggle — and a secret — that may herald a new status quo.

The book is about its themes more than its content. It is about how society responds to the collapse of established order. In Ms. James case, this collapse comes in the form of the absence of children. It could just as well come in the form of rising sea levels, or atomic devastation, or any other extinction event, and the questions would be the same. How does the human race go on beyond hope? Why does the race go on? How can faith survive? Who will maintain order, and what liberties will they sacrifice in the name of order? What happens to those who refuse to look away, or to those forced to look at truths they prefer to avoid? What is worth dying for? What is worth living for? How thin is the line between these imperatives?

About ten years back, during one of my periodic re-readings of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I noticed something that had never occurred to me previously. Great swaths of the story are conveyed in exposition. Mr. Tolkien’s sense of place and attention to detail meant that the characters’ journeys where documented in exhaustive detail, with every feature of the landscape given attention perhaps beyond its due. This same level of meticulous taxonomy plagues the later sections of The Children of Men. As the novel builds toward its conclusion, the pace of the story becomes (frustratingly) tempered with descriptions of forests, and bridges, lakes, and lodges.

Detail is important. Ms. James is quite effective at establishing that while the forests and lakes will abide, the bridges and lodges will outlast their creators if nothing fundamental changes. When the change comes, why delay its arrival through fidelity to the extraneous?

Down and Out in Paris and London, by George Orwell

Follow along; this one takes some explaining.

A few weeks back, a friend of mine mentioned he was involved in a community project. He indicated that my name had come up among the group responsible for the project as someone who should be involved in the organization of the project.

I thought about it for a while, both because I would like the project to succeed, and because I have a tendency to be so flattered by invitations that I fail to give sufficient consideration to what I’m being asked to do. Or, to put it more theatrically, “I’m jest a girl who cain’t say no.”

Fortunately, in this case, I spent enough time in reflection to realize that: a) I don’t have the time to get involved in another project right now; b) I lack the skill set required for the role I was being asked to play, and; c) while I have every expectation that this undertaking will succeed, the person in the position about which I was approached would be the obvious fall guy should anything go wrong.

I shared these conclusions with my friend. He responded by saying in effect, “The fact you put thought into the reasons you don’t want to do X is part of the reason I think you ought to do Y.”

This reminded me of the sequence in Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential about people who got into the restaurant game for all the wrong reasons. In particular, my friend’s encouragement (gratifying as it was) was reminiscent of the budding restauranteurs who were flattered into the business with praise for their ability to throw wonderful dinner parties, or their extensive knowledge of French wines, or their antique collections. In these cases, people who emprically have no business running a business allow ego, flattery, and the machinations of friends hoping to cadge free drinks and meals to blind them to reality. I have just enough understanding of reality to understand why my friend’s suggestion would be a Bad Idea, but enough ego that it’s hard to ignore that little, “Weeellll, maybe,” voice in the back of my head; the voice that would almost assuredly lead me to ruin.

Reflecting on this part of Kitchen Confidential compelled me to reread the book, which in turn brought me to Down and Out In Paris and London, a novel which Mr. Bourdain recommends.

In the first half of the book, Mr. Orwell’s nameless, autobiographical, narrator lives on the boundary between poverty and homelessness. He manages to pay rent, but must often go wthout food to do so. He pawns his clothes to pay his basic expenses. Eventually, he ekes out a subsitence living as a plongeur, or kitchen slave (dishwasher, and general factotum) in a Paris hotel. His insights about the inner workings of restaurants are a product of their time in many ways, but the social, cultural, and economic divide between the people who prepare restaurant food and those who consume it has a truth that transcends time and setting.

The second half of the book recounts the narrator’s experiences as a homeless tramp in London. As presented, this is a bleak existence bounded by nights in shelters, and endless cups of tea with bread and margarine, the diet of those whose welfare comes from the state. While Mr. Orwell’s surrogate views his fellows with a humanist’s eye, there is no denying their existence is dehumanizing.

Both the Paris and London sections are rich in detail, and demonstrate a keen understanding of the realities, and inequities, of class in society.

Spider Kiss, by Harlan Ellison

While many aspects of the world — musical styles, fashion, communications technology, and the patois of youth culture, to name just a few — have changed since Mr. Ellison’s novel was published in 1961, the role of celebrity in popular culture remains constant. Names and faces change. The pace of that change seems faster every year; projected worship has an ever shorter shelf life. However fleeting, fame is a commodity that never goes out of style.

As a result, while specific details of Spider Kiss are a product of their time, the underlying truth applies as much today as it did over forty-five years ago.

The novel presents the story of the rise and fall rock and roll star Stag Preston (a.k.a. Luther Sellers), who achieves fame and finds it the ideal vehicle for acting on his basest instincts. Paralleling this story is the struggle for redemption of his public relations man and enabler Shelly Morgenstern, who helps set Preston loose on the world, and must then try to contain the havoc wrought by his creation.

While they may have been more shocking to a 1961 audience, Stag Preston’s excesses are all too familiar to contemporary readers exposed to a 24-hour news cycle. Sexual excess? Whose video tape do you want to see? Wrecked car? Are you interested in a sports car or an SUV? Celebrities getting away with murder? Seems I’ve seen that happen before.

In a world where the custody battle following the death of a D-list celebrity is mistaken for national news, and where every slurred utterance, desperate cry for attention, and all too public meltdown of an idol for whom the spotlight has drifted a bit too far off center is dissected in print, television, and online in real time, Stag Preston seems simultaneously common and quaint.

Regardless of the time or the individual, fame has less to do with talent than with packaging. It’s about finding a vehicle that can bear up (for however long) under the spotlight, and promoting that individual in a way that enables — even commands — an investment of attention from the faithful just looking for the next focus for their devotion. In such a marketplace, the most one can do is try to limit the damage when the star burns out.

Our Gods Wear Spandex: The Secret History of Comic Book Heroes, by Christopher Knowles, with illustrations by Joseph Michael Linsner

Mr. Knowles has strong opinions. Show me a comic book fan who doesn’t. Like too many fans, Mr. Knowles often mistakes his opinions for facts. He falls into the trap of investing his blanket statements (particularly statements of subjective judgment) with the force of fact and truth.

In discussing the X-Men, Mr. Knowles writes,

Later in the 80s, The Uncanny X-Men became nothing more than a revolving showcase for the hot artist du jour. This process reached its apotheosis with the arrival of Jim Lee. Lee’s tendency to disregard Claremont’s plots rendered the book completely unreadable, but no one seemed to care because the art was so gorgeous. (page 176)

The tail end of Chris Claremont’s run on X-Men was weaker than his reputation-making collaboration with John Byrne. While the elevation of the comic book artist during the 1990s changed the storytelling balance, there are quality moments throughout Mr. Claremont’s later run. A larger problem with the coherence of later X-Men stories was the number of multi-title crossover stories that became common during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Writers like Mr. Claremont had to not only advance their own storytelling vision, but also advance plot threads inherited from other writers. This tension, combined with the increased prominence of marquee artists, worked in tandem to dilute, but not eclipse, coherence and creativity.

When Mr. Knowles isn’t grinding his numerous critical axes (against Rob Liefield, Image comics, and comic books in the 1990s generally), Our Gods Wear Spandex is rife with factual errors. In particular, Mr. Knowles has a problem with chronology. Consider:

Batman and Robin, the nearly unwatchable 1997 film directed by Joel Schumacher, brought the Batman franchise to its knees and nearly took the Warner Brothers empire down with it. This was followed by a string of superhero flops like Judge Dredd, Tank Girl, and The Phantom that threatened the future of the entire “comic book movie” genre.(page 7)

I have no objection to a bit of hyperbole in the service of making one’s point. Batman and Robin was both a bad Batman movie and a bad movie, period. The problem is, whatever cinematic crimes can be laid at Mr. Schumacher’s feet, inspiring “a string of superhero flops” is not one of them. Both Judge Dredd and Tank Girl were released in 19954. The Phantom disappeared from screens as quickly as it appeared in 1996.

Later, in discussing Alan Moore’s career, Mr. Knowles writes,

Rejuvenated by his occult awakening, Moore reentered the industry mainstream, hijacking Rob Liefeld’s Superman knockoff Supreme and turning it into a paean to the innocence of the Silver Age heroes. He followed this with a mini-series that paid tribute to the Silver Age called 1963. (page 201)

Again, that old devil linear time plays havoc with Mr. Knowles’s assertions. Mr. Moore’s 1963 commenced in 1993. Mr. Moore took over Supreme (which launched in 1992) with issue 41.

While I admit a preference for The Comic Book Heroes by Gerard Jones and Will Jacobs, Our Gods Wear Spandex is perfectly serviceable history of the American comic book. When Mr. Knowles sticks to the facts, his work is solid. When he stretches to make a point, shore up a pet opinion, or to force the facts to fit his occult thesis, the book suffers.

Bone (The Complete Cartoon Epic in One Volume edition), by Jeff Smith

It took me slightly longer to read this entire series than it took Mr. Smith to write and illustrate it. I believe I picked up the first trade collection in 1994 or 1995, enjoyed it quite a bit, followed book one with books two and three in rapid succession and then just sort of petered out. I believe that book three was as far as the story went in collected form at that time and somehow I never came back around to the series once subsequent volumes were released. It wasn’t for lack of interest so much as due to competing interests.

Fast forward a few years to the release of the One Volume edition. Friends of mine who owned a bookstore carried the omnibus, and while I was tempted to throw the business their way, the $40 price point was always daunting. I never had objections to dropping a double double sawbuck on them at any given time, but faced with the choice between one big book or five to six smaller size books at the same price point, I somehow always opted for a diversified literary investment strategy.

Fast forward again. The store is gone (moment of silence), the One Volume edition has gone out of and back into print, and the recently completed gift card giving season changed the value proposition for this book. Between the largesse of friends and a deep online retailer discount, that $40 book set me back a grand total of $1.37. At that price, how could I refuse?

The story of Bone concerns the (mis)adventures of the three Bone cousins: Fone Bone (the hero), Phoney Bone (the rogue) and Smiley Bone (the not so holy fool). Physically, the Bones stand out among the largely human cast of the novel. They are the most cartoonish characters in the story. They are short, bald, pure white, with large bulbous noses and no externally visible ears.

Exiled from their home and lost in the desert, they find themselves in a valley (cleverly called The Valley) where they encounter dragons, monsters, magic, warriors, royals, and cows, among other things. They get caught up in a war, go an various quests, get separated, regroup, and (like good viewpoint characters since time immemorial) both witness and influence epic happenings.

While I remembered the general shape of the first three books, I was light on specifics, so I approached the story in something approaching a state of grace. The first three books encompass Act One of a larger story. There is a lot of set up, introduction of characters, establishment of the general characteristics of the players, hints at the larger plot, but the tone is lighter than what comes later. There is humor throughout the book, but in general, Mr. Smith limits the broad comedy and the outright slapstick to this first section.

As the book progresses, the tone gets more serious, and the art style gets more detailed. At the same time, there is a simplicity, even a gentleness to the story. Bone isn’t a fairy tale, exactly, but it’s also not a ponderous high fantasy. It exists somewhere in the middle, engaging and accessible and familiar. It’s appropriate for children without being childish. This is a strength; the story covers a lot of territory, both geographic and narrative, but moves at a good pace without getting bogged down with minutia and pretention.

This is also a weakness in some places. Bone is a Hero Story; in fact it is at least two Hero Stories intertwined with one another, specifically those of Fone Bone and his friend Thorn. One, Fone Bone’s, is a story about doing the right thing. The other, Thorn’s, is a story about identity, and about applying the lessons of self-knowledge and revelation to world-changing situations. The lighter tone and fast pace serves the first type of story well. Applied to the second type of story, this light tone occasionally results in a sort of narrative shorthand; if you know the storytelling beats of the standard coming of age/quest fantasy, it’s possible to fill in the blanks. If not, the story may feel like a gloss. On the other hand, readers who are not familiar with the conventions of the form may not recognize that they’re missing out on anything.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, by Cory Doctorow

Future Disney World
Preserve the Haunted Mansion
Murder and intrigue

Dzur, by Steven Brust

Vlad Taltos returns
Interferes with the Jhereg
Enjoys a great meal

The Year of Living Biblically, by A.J. Jacobs

Marge, just about everything is a sin. [holds up the Bible] Y’ever sat down and read this thing? technically, we’re not allowed to go to the bathroom.

— Reverend Lovejoy, “Secrets of a Successful Marriage,” The Simpsons

A.J. Jacobs spent a year trying to follow the Bible as literally as possible. He took every rule, law, and precept at face value, and structured his life according to those dictates. The result is a deeply personal exploration of what it means to be a person of faith, or at least to inhabit the guise of a person of faith for a year.

Along the way, Mr. Jacobs wrestles with purity laws, dietary laws, laws governing clothing, child discipline, ritual, habit, and a host of other strictures related to conducting oneself in the sacred and secular worlds. He engages with a variety of Biblical faith communities from Orthodox Jews and evangelical Christians to snake handlers and progressive evangelicals. He approaches each group with an open mind (although he is honest about the places where he mind is less open), and finds something positive — sometimes something unexpected — in each encounter. And, like any man with a hobby, his alternately irritates his wife, and gives her reasons to take the wind out of the sails of his obsession.

No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy

Another book in which the author declines to use quotation marks. I seem to be making an unconscious habit of these.

Mr. McCarthy also gives the apostrophe a pass. On the one hand, I want to go through the entire book with a red pen making corrections. On the other, No County for Old Men is so spare and stripped down that I forgive his stylistic indulgence. This is storytelling and characterization reduced to their bare essentials, with meaning occupying the spaces between the words rather than being inherent in them. This is not a criticism.

No Country for Old Men tells the story of a drug deal gone wrong, and the people caught up in its aftermath. It’s a story that begins with one character’s bad decision, which sets a killer on his path. This in turn brings a Texas sheriff into the story, and to confront not only a series of crimes, but a type of criminal beyond the scope of his understanding.

The last fifth of the book is more about the sheriff’s meditations on a changing world than about the circumstances that require such meditation. This sequence is an essential part of the story, but exists at a remove from the rest of the action. In some ways, parts of this segment of the book read more like short stories (I’m thinking in particular of a confessional conversation the sheriff has with his uncle) than a continuation of the narrative, but they are necessary to complete the story.

I suspect that when I see the film based on this novel, I will find the execution to be similar; what the characters don’t say, and how they say what they do, will carry more weight than the actual words.

Earlier this year, I read Mr. McCarthy’s novel The Road. I did not care for it. At the time, I made the mistake of assuming I did not care for Mr. McCarthy’s style, which seemed overly bleak. Now I’m not so sure. I still don’t care for the story told in The Road, but I’m no longer willing to fault Mr. McCarthy’s style. It takes great skill and equal confidence to tell complex stories so simply. In particular, it takes tremendous confidence to show the resolution of one character’s story as elliptically as Mr. McCarthy chose to do, to build toward a showdown and then look away at the last moment. His confidence was justified.

A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey

I wonder: would I have believed the story contained in this book had I read it before the revelation that Mr. Frey fabricated portions of his rehab memoir? Like everyone, I like to believe I have a strong bullshit detector, and in retrospect there is more than a whiff of bovine effluvium wafting off this story. While some elements of the story seem fantastic — the alliance between fellow patients who operate on either side of the law that spares Mr. Frey serious jail time, his rule-breaking romance with another patient, the revelation of a childhood trauma that may have contributed to his addictive behaviors, the persistence of his recovery despite rejecting twelve step programs — and others strain credulity — his late-night infiltration of a crack den to rescue his girlfriend, a revelation of attempted abuse — life is often fantastic and credulity-straining. That may explain why people were taken in by the story initially — it’s believable from a weird world point of view.

It’s not the individual threads that make Mr. Frey’s story suspect (to a reader primed to suspect it), but the entirety of the tapestry. Taken together, the pieces don’t quite fit. They’re authentic, but a little too pat. As a novel, I would read this and believe, because fiction demands belief. As a memoir, I’m left with doubt. But again, I brought that doubt with me. Without external knowledge to justify my doubt, would I believe?

Truth and lies aside, I will also note that the format of the book — lack of quotation marks around dialogue, an insistence on capitalizing common Nouns — may well reflect the unstructured nature of the addictive thought process, but as a Reader, I found it trying.

The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson (Haiku Review)

Builder and killer
Destinies shaped by the Fair
Chicago’s moment

Black Dossier, by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill

All the cool kids and smart people have weighed in on this already, but I needed time to reflect. Saying anything sooner would have been like trying to deconstruct a multi-course gourmet meal while your stomach is still full. It’s possible to break down the experience, but you’re still to close to it. Better to get some rest, have a Bromo, and wait until the concept of food is no longer so uncomfortably immediate.

That Alan Moore creates on his own special level, there can be no doubt. That Kevin O’Neill is an equal partner in chronicling the case history of the League(s) of Extraordinary Gentlemen is equally self-evident.

That’s the first thing; there’s just a hell of a lot going on in this book, which covers thousands of years of public (and not so public) domain stories, stitched together by Mr. Moore’s and Mr. O’Neill’s imagination and creativity. I would call this a crazy quilt, but the seams between each panel are too neat and tight, and the panels themselves so internally consistent and true to the various source materials to which they owe credit, that the result is something damned impressive, and also damned frustrating.

Personally, while I’m impressed with Mr. Moore’s setting for the framing story that serves as the foundation for Black Dossier — a jump forward in time from the end of the second League of Extraordinary Gentlemen volume — I miss the earlier turn of the century steampunk wonder of the earlier stories. Seeing Allan Quatermain and Mina Murray rejuvenated in a post-Orwellian England is interesting, to be sure, but it’s difficult to connect these eponymous characters with their precursors.

The various accounts of Leagues past are hit or miss. I quite liked Mr. Moore’s ability to write in a credible Shakespearean idiom in the “lost” play Fairy’s Fortune’s Founded, while also connecting Prospero from The Tempest to a stalwart of contemporary popular fiction. “What Ho, Gods of the Abyss,” a synthesis of H.P Lovecraft and P.G. Wodehouse, is similarly compelling, while maintaining absolute fidelity to its respective source materials. On the other hand, the extract from the faux Beat novel The Crazy Wilde Forever is all but unreadable for any reason other than sheer bloody-mindedness.

The other extracts are equally effective, but of less interest to me personally. Depending on how you score such things, that is either a strength or a weakness of the book. I suspect any reader willing to make the investment of time and attention — as funnybooks go, Black Dossier is text-intensive, with quite a lot of text packed into each page — will find something to appeal. At the same time, the book as a whole does not add up to a single coherent narrative, which may frustrate readers who find themselves engaging with some aspect of the story only to be swept into another mode with little transition between them.

My pal Scott tells me there’s a TARDIS hidden somewhere in the final sequence of the book, but I haven’t managed to locate it yet.

Stone Cold, by Robert B. Parker

And so I return after a brief hiatus to the world of Jesse Stone. Having returned, I again ask myself, “Why?”

I’m truly puzzled. While I like the main character, and several of the supporting characters, the central relationship in the book (between Stone and his ex-but-not-out-of-his-life-although-she’s-thoroughly-unlikeable wife) is a lead weight that drags down an otherwise interesting enough to keep my coming back despite myself series.

Thursday Next in First Among Sequels, by Jasper Fforde

Forget the story, which provides the usual blend of puns, word play, time travel, and social commentary. If you enjoy these things, and can overlook the author’s occasional tendency to get overly precious and smug, you’ll enjoy the book. If you enjoy these things and aren’t familiar with the Thursday Next series, I refer you to The Eyre Affair, the first novel in the series.

What really matters here is that Mr. Fforde slipped one past me. He set up a joke I was predicting in a way that eluded me until I reached the payoff. I would like to say this was a testament to his cleverness and skill, but it was really a case of my being insufficently observant. Bastard.

Assassination Vacation, by Sarah Vowell

I admire true obsessives. There is something pure, and simultaneously frightening and awe inspiring about people who are able to give themselves over to the comprehensive study of minutia relating to a single topic. Taken to an extreme, such behavior is addictive and unhealthy, but as long as the obessive keeps a stray brain cell or two attuned to the occasional tracking signal from Earth, it’s ultimately harmless.

Personally, I lack the commitment it takes to get wholly fixated about any one particular thing. I have friends who immerse themselves in the statistical ebb and flow of baseball, but I’ve always been more interested in the point in time experience of watching a good game, divorced as much as possible from the deeper meaning. It’s why my fantasy baseball team remains mired in mediocrity season after season; I care enough to keep from sinking all the way into the basement, while not giving nearly enough of a damn to be a contender. I like comics, and science fiction, and stories featuring axe wielding dwarves. I even enjoy getting my geek on by talking about such things with friends occasionally. But when I put down the book, or when our conversation drifts to other topics, I don’t feel the need to steer things back that way. I like poker, but aside from the occasional game — which is itself as much an excuse to drink a couple of beers and socialize as it is about the thrill and risk inherent in games of chance — it doesn’t occupy much of my time.

For Sarah Vowell, presidential assassination is among her pet obsessions. Assassination Vacation presents a survey of the people, places, and details surrounding the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. While she romanticizes neither the acts nor the respective perpetrators of those acts, she has a definite fascination with this aspect of American history. The result is interesting, to be sure, but also almost uncomfortably personal. At times, Ms. Vowell’s accounts feel more like reading someone’s diary, but without all the voyeuristic fun that implies.

Presidential Courage, by Michael Beschloss

“Courage” may not be the correct term for Mr. Beschloss’s collection of presidential defining moments. His use of the word echoes John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage, but I’m not convinced it is the correct description for the stories he tells. In some cases, he recounts cases of presidential pragmatism (as with Presidents Lincoln and Truman, and their respective decisions to make emanciaption a condition for ending the Civil War and to recognize the state of Israel at its founding), presidential willingness to pick a fight (as with President Jackson versus the Bank of the United States and President Theodore Roosevelt versus the trusts), and presidential being dragged kicking and screaming into bowing to the inevitable (President Kennedy’s slow response to civil rights).

As a result, the reader is left with the sense that leadership is a reactive, rather than a visionary, undertaking. If there is vision to be found, it is the purview of history and historians to bestow that quality.

Like You’d Understand, Anyway, by Jim Shepard

I go back and forth with short stories. Most of the time, I prefer longer form fiction. When I read short stories, I find that I’m too aware of the craft to really appreciate the application of the author’s tools. I get too engrossed in trying to determine the position of the mirror to appreciate the performance behind the illusion. In longer fiction, it’s usually easier to focus on the story first, and the structure later.

In the case of Jim Shepard’s latest collection of stories, I suffer that same problem. Reading the book, I was so wrapped up in the package, that I occasionally lost my appreciation of the contents. No matter, though, because Mr. Shepard can write the living @#$% out of a story. The technique and the precision are masterful. You get the steak and the sizzle, the flash and the substance. Actually, that’s not entirely fair. Flash and sizzle imply distraction from the content. In this case, it’s a question of mass and heft. It’s picking the apple off the tree, and knowing that the first bite will exceed the promise of the object in hand.

Read this book.