Here are some refelections on the last five books I have read:
1. I'm your Man: A Biography of Leonard Cohen by Sylvie Simmons
I never seem to learn my lesson. I love music biographies but I am almost always disappointed by them. I pick them up on almost every artist I admire but they always end up drilling the poetry out of my hero's lives. They often resort to a mere tepid cataloguing of events, concerts and albums rather than an attempt to get at any real truth. This is a pretty decent biography and supposedly the best of the myriad of literature out there about Leonard Cohen. Although on the level of romantic interlude, I suspect it merely treads the surface. I suppose it is not the job of a biographer to get too much into the “he said she said” stories of groupies and lady friends in Leonard Cohen's wake. And I suppose Simmons has good reason: for an artist like Cohen who sings about getting a blow job in the Chelsea Hotel I suppose the man himself may have said it better and more effectively than any journalistic exploration ever could.
2. Rock Wagram by William Saroyan
This is my first venture into William Saroyan territory and I am glad I went. I enjoyed his fragmentary style although I can imagine down the road, the mining of the Armenian experience in California might prove a little one note. But so far so good and I am eager to now pick up a more celebrated work like THE HUMAN COMEDY. This is the story of an involuntary bit player in Hollywood that keeps coming back to his family and his past for comfort and for pain. Saroyan strikes me as one of those deceptively simple writers. His prose is far from ornate; it's repetitious. A little like Kerouac. Another slight fault that can sometimes be an asset is that in the matter of how people speak, everyone speaks like Saroyan himself: off the top of one's head. Free, yet pensive. It's a strange cadence of speech and not at all believable sometimes but the exhanges are witty and suprising enough that the reader often does not mind the one sidedness.
3. The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy
In France, everyone praises James Ellroy. I have a theory about this. It's the U.S. that France sees from a far. It confirms all their pessimistic suspicions. LA, even in 1948 is a dirty, deeply cynical place under the surface that only Ellroy himself can truly expose in all its ragged glory. But I don't always buy the black on black portrait. Yes, there are dark undercurrents to our society but the portrait these books paint is that it taints everything. I think this is too simple. Still I felt I owed it to Ellroy to read one of his books because the movie versions seemed quite ubiquitous for a while. Ellroy has a PHD in film noir. It is truly like he studied it like the great painters but I can't help thinking though that it has already been done, through Chandler and Hammett but I suppose the research quotient to his work elevates it. There is also the real life fact that the murder of Ellroy's own mother stoked his curiosity for such tales. I find the Buddy cop Relationship between the two boxers/policemen Lee and Bud a little hammy. It's all a little one sidedly macho. But I suppose this is his world. Still the flowery noir prose gets old after a while and I find myself yearning for a different universe. Are all cops always this witty? Like most film noirs and detective fiction, I never care who did it. I suppose for this reason alone I am too biased.
4. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
It is magical indeed how a writer like Joan Didion, simply by cataloging details about her husband's death, can turn what should be a rather turgid shopping list into something, well, more magical. It is funny because in her previous fiction I always felt she was trying too hard with her fiction. But in this naked account, I find the balance perfect. The prose is stark and honest, streamline and matter of fact. The details are what makes it crushing. There is also the self help quotient to this story. It truly is one of the rare and insightfully honest books on how one person went through not one but two family tragedies in one year. It is finally a book that seperates grief from mourning and they are different things. It is comfort without wanting to be. In fearing not the ugliness, the wrenching panic and emptiness of death, Joan Didion inadvertently teaches us how to live through it. The sad experience is beautiful.
5. Kowloon Tong by Paul Theroux
Loved this book and not just because I have an autobiographical bias. I spent three years in Hong Kong as a child and Paul Theroux really does a staggering job of capuring the bitter sweet flavor of HK at this time. The time just before the handover of the territory from British rule to Chinese. The book is about a rather pathetic soul, a certain past his prime bachelor who has inherited a factory in his father's name and has lived in the shadow of his over bearing mother all of his life. The man is a child and although he likes to fancy himself the adult, he runs from his responsibilities by taking shelter in the world of whore houses. I suppose many readers would find this protagonist's misguided seach for the perfect lady of the night pathetic, but I find it a poetic reflection of Hong Kong itself. In the end, the protagonist flirts but never commits. His mother being the primal force that shifts his life away from Hong Kong and toward a far more traditional, yet miserable future under his mother's grinding Watch back in the good old blighty. Hong Kong has been once again abandoned to the highest bidder.
1. I'm your Man: A Biography of Leonard Cohen by Sylvie Simmons
I never seem to learn my lesson. I love music biographies but I am almost always disappointed by them. I pick them up on almost every artist I admire but they always end up drilling the poetry out of my hero's lives. They often resort to a mere tepid cataloguing of events, concerts and albums rather than an attempt to get at any real truth. This is a pretty decent biography and supposedly the best of the myriad of literature out there about Leonard Cohen. Although on the level of romantic interlude, I suspect it merely treads the surface. I suppose it is not the job of a biographer to get too much into the “he said she said” stories of groupies and lady friends in Leonard Cohen's wake. And I suppose Simmons has good reason: for an artist like Cohen who sings about getting a blow job in the Chelsea Hotel I suppose the man himself may have said it better and more effectively than any journalistic exploration ever could.
2. Rock Wagram by William Saroyan
This is my first venture into William Saroyan territory and I am glad I went. I enjoyed his fragmentary style although I can imagine down the road, the mining of the Armenian experience in California might prove a little one note. But so far so good and I am eager to now pick up a more celebrated work like THE HUMAN COMEDY. This is the story of an involuntary bit player in Hollywood that keeps coming back to his family and his past for comfort and for pain. Saroyan strikes me as one of those deceptively simple writers. His prose is far from ornate; it's repetitious. A little like Kerouac. Another slight fault that can sometimes be an asset is that in the matter of how people speak, everyone speaks like Saroyan himself: off the top of one's head. Free, yet pensive. It's a strange cadence of speech and not at all believable sometimes but the exhanges are witty and suprising enough that the reader often does not mind the one sidedness.
3. The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy
In France, everyone praises James Ellroy. I have a theory about this. It's the U.S. that France sees from a far. It confirms all their pessimistic suspicions. LA, even in 1948 is a dirty, deeply cynical place under the surface that only Ellroy himself can truly expose in all its ragged glory. But I don't always buy the black on black portrait. Yes, there are dark undercurrents to our society but the portrait these books paint is that it taints everything. I think this is too simple. Still I felt I owed it to Ellroy to read one of his books because the movie versions seemed quite ubiquitous for a while. Ellroy has a PHD in film noir. It is truly like he studied it like the great painters but I can't help thinking though that it has already been done, through Chandler and Hammett but I suppose the research quotient to his work elevates it. There is also the real life fact that the murder of Ellroy's own mother stoked his curiosity for such tales. I find the Buddy cop Relationship between the two boxers/policemen Lee and Bud a little hammy. It's all a little one sidedly macho. But I suppose this is his world. Still the flowery noir prose gets old after a while and I find myself yearning for a different universe. Are all cops always this witty? Like most film noirs and detective fiction, I never care who did it. I suppose for this reason alone I am too biased.
4. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
It is magical indeed how a writer like Joan Didion, simply by cataloging details about her husband's death, can turn what should be a rather turgid shopping list into something, well, more magical. It is funny because in her previous fiction I always felt she was trying too hard with her fiction. But in this naked account, I find the balance perfect. The prose is stark and honest, streamline and matter of fact. The details are what makes it crushing. There is also the self help quotient to this story. It truly is one of the rare and insightfully honest books on how one person went through not one but two family tragedies in one year. It is finally a book that seperates grief from mourning and they are different things. It is comfort without wanting to be. In fearing not the ugliness, the wrenching panic and emptiness of death, Joan Didion inadvertently teaches us how to live through it. The sad experience is beautiful.
5. Kowloon Tong by Paul Theroux
Loved this book and not just because I have an autobiographical bias. I spent three years in Hong Kong as a child and Paul Theroux really does a staggering job of capuring the bitter sweet flavor of HK at this time. The time just before the handover of the territory from British rule to Chinese. The book is about a rather pathetic soul, a certain past his prime bachelor who has inherited a factory in his father's name and has lived in the shadow of his over bearing mother all of his life. The man is a child and although he likes to fancy himself the adult, he runs from his responsibilities by taking shelter in the world of whore houses. I suppose many readers would find this protagonist's misguided seach for the perfect lady of the night pathetic, but I find it a poetic reflection of Hong Kong itself. In the end, the protagonist flirts but never commits. His mother being the primal force that shifts his life away from Hong Kong and toward a far more traditional, yet miserable future under his mother's grinding Watch back in the good old blighty. Hong Kong has been once again abandoned to the highest bidder.
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