Cheryl Truman on books

Kentucky, Kentucky’s foremost chronicler of comic culture, is going on tour for his new book, O the Clear Moment. O the Clear Moment is described as “implied autobiography” of “coming-of-age to coming-of-old-age” stories. McClanahan, the author of The Natural Man, is a stitch. You should go.

McClanahan will read on Wednesday, October 8 at 5 p.m. on the 18th floor of Patterson Office Tower at the University of Kentucky. The reading is sponsored by the UK English Department.

McClanahan’s book begins in 1950 with his “personal best great moment” – which of course involves a pair of Kentucky high school basketball players and raw eggs. This is what McClanahan does, the inspired juxtaposition of Kentucky with the ridiulously sublime. It’s not that he’s exactly laughing at Kentucky. Well, sometimes it is, but he’s doing it with great affection.

Here’s Ed’s tour schedule:

October 18: Book Passage @ 4:00pm (Corte Madera, CA)

October 21: Booksmith @ 7:30pm (San Francisco, CA)

November 5: Powell’s Books @ 7:30pm (Portland, OR)

November 7: Fact and Fiction @7:00pm (Missoula, MT)

November 13: Coffee Tree Books @ 7:00pm (Morehead, KY)

November 19: McNally Robinson @ 7:00pm (New York, NY)

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How to Raise a Superchild! Every Parent’s Simple, Step-by-Step Guide (by Ray G. Strobel “and the staff of the American Superchild Institute,” Health Communications, Inc., $12.95) may be one of the worst books I’ve ever seen, and this is being written by someone who (1) got genuinely excited about the arrival of Bret “The Hitman” Hart’s autobiography yesterday and (2) thinks the icanhascheezburger.com LOLcats book may be the answer to all my holiday giving.

So it’s not as if I can’t appreciate a little low-end pop culture, because if Bret Hart can write more than 500 pages about professional wrestling I can completely absorb that 500 pages; wrestling tell-alls are one of the underappreciated genres in literature. And while the perpetrators of this superchildren book may argue that they’re satirizing the crude mentality of the upper-income parents who alway assumes that their kids are not only rich, but brilliant — really, they just want your $12.95.

And it’s not even that I begrudge anybody $12.95 for unfunny humor (raise your child to be a celebrity chef! Pope! billionaire! chess master!), you would hope that any publisher which could manage to press paper together could also afford spell check. Because the occupational hazard of the chess master is spelled “hemorrhoids,” people, not “hemorroids.”

A better choice: Fran Lebowitz knocked off the overstriving parents genre in her short essay, “Vocational Guidance for the Truly Ambitious” now anthologized in The Fran Lebowitz Reader, available for the piddling sum of $10.17 at amazon.com. Lebowitz is a master of compact snark, and her books are things that you will in fact be proud to have on your shelves. This sets them apart from How to Raise a Superchild!, which proves only that the only truly cute chubby-cheeked toddler is the one that belongs to you.

Today’s mail brings Winging It: Dispatches from an (Almost) Empty Nest, by Catherine Goldhammer (Hudson Street Press, $21.95). As demographics go, I suspect that empty-nest memoirs are about to join the me-and-my-dawg and me-and-my-childhood category as Hot Topics for books that you probably won’t read.

And while I am always ready to be cynical, and a tiny book with a $21.95 price tag does nothing to diminish the cynicism – in particular the sentence that begins, somewhat competitively, “Harper was accepted early to her first-choice college,” because a small-minded person might infer that the book is a showcase of the author’s great parenting! a kid with a college early decision! surely no evil will ever visit this house! — Goldhammer turns a wrenching phrase here:

“I began to envision other worlds, other lives, invisible cities, trying futures on for size.  … I thought of going somewhere, visiting my imaginary dwelling places, meeting them like blind dates, listening to their stories of joy and failure, drinking their tea.”

Well, in Kentucky our blind dates don’t usually revolve around pounding down the tea, but still.

Perhaps I find this moving because I am an almost-empty nester myself, although it seems that I am the one person in America who Does Not Have a Book in Me. On the other hand? If empty nesting means that I have wheedled guilt-cash for my last vat of fund-raising cookie dough, wrapping paper or alleged discount cards, empty nesting is surely the answer to my spiritual crisis. There is a God, and His extended title is Outta My Checkbook.

And also …

The New York Times discusses the great comic novels at http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/ and writer David Kelly wonders why there are no women in this comprehensive and ingeniously blog comment-stoking survey of his fellow Times employees. (The most obvious comment-stoking these days belongs to any post about Sarah Palin. Throw up the words “Sarah Palin Sarah Palin Sarah Palin” on a blog, and it’s the automatically the gold standard of viewership. “Sarah Palin,” “Bristol Palin” and “Trig Palin,” we’re talking trifecta. If Sarah Palin had written a novel, Kelly could have readers lining up to comment.)

Because of course the answer about great comic novelists is Nancy Mitford, in Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love, although among the Southern bless-your-heart novelists the answer could also be Lee Smith and Jill Conner Browne.  In fact, if there’s a trivia question you want to ask about the 20th century, the Mitford sisters are a pretty good bet. Who was imprisoned for fascist sympathies during World War II? Diana Mitford, who had a new baby at the time. Who shot herself in the head for said sympathies? Unity Mitford. Who muckraked with the best of the muckrakers? Jessica Mitford.

But as anyone who listened to Joyce Carol Oates’ uproarious reading of her story, EDickinson Repliluxe, at the Kentucky Womens Writers conference last week will tell you: Oates works on many levels, one of them being as a completely arch and wildly ruthless social observer. In the story, Emily Dickinson (and other celebrities, among them Babe Ruth) becomes available as a sort of cross between an American Girl doll and an on-demand home companion, available at catalog outlets, warranted and possessing no civil rights. Evil and funny: That’s our Oates.

The contenders:

-Miley Cyrus: This Is Her Life (Berkley Boulevard Paperback Original, costing $16 of Mommy’s money and an untold future of humiliation when, in 2035, your now-tween daughter digs this out of your middle school trinkets and cackles like the possessed). The unauthorized biography of the world’s most successful and overexposed teenager breaks the news that other names considered before hitting upon the “Hannah Montana” platinum standard included “Anna Cabana,” “Samantha York,” and “Alexis Texas.” Also: A quiz to determine if you have what it takes to be a FOM (Friend of Miley), and pictures! So very, very many long-maned, toothy pictures!

Killer moment: Page 130-131, the quiz on “Which cause is for you?” Your choices are: visiting sick kids, going green and saving animals. Winning question: “If I see a stray animal in my neighbohood, I … A. want it! B. feel sad!” Living in the state to which Ms. Cyrus is peripherally tied, I can safely answer that if I see a stray animal in my neighborhood, it’s road kill.

Random sentence: “Dressed in supercute polka dots, she happily answered all the reporters’ question before going in to head up an autograph booth.”

Maddening moment: “It was into this tumultuous time that Destiny Hope Cyrus was born, on November 23, 1992, in Franklin, Tennessee.  This “tumultuous time” would be the post-mullet life of Miley’s father, “Achy-Breaky Heart” singer Billy Ray Cyrus.

A happier option: This is why we have People.com, people.

VS.

James Lipton: Inside Inside (New American Library Trade Paperback, $15), from the host of Inside the Actors Studio. Cringe: Lipton’s pandering to the celebrities who have sacrified so much to sit on a stage with him and talk about being Artists makes being tied to a chair during a “Hannah Montana” marathon look downright sweet. Read: Lipton badgering Hugh Grant to emote about Lipton’s beautiful wife! See: Early Lipton in ballet attire. OMG moment: Lipton is an avid pilot, which is actually interesting, because it’s not as if he uses it as a tacky excuse to trot out … oh, wait, there it is: a picture of New York’s Twin Towers from a Lipton-piloted plane!

Authentically funny section: Celebrities’ favorite curse words. Jay Leno wins for “syphilitic druid.” The rest show such a distinct lack of imagination you may find yourself wishing for a campaign to eliminate the letter “f” from the alphabet.

Random sentence: “When Jennifer Lopez accepted the invitation to come to our stage, the Purity Police mobilized in defense of the Inside the Actors Studio principles they suddenly understood and treasured — but had somehow neglected to mention or acknowledge before the perceived barbarian appeared at the gates.” It’s like motion sickness in print.

Maddening moment: Dear Lord, why not an index? Also, the first chapter, which opens with that “glady teche” quote from Chaucer that adorns infinite windowless middle-school teachers’ cinderblock walls: Because you can’t say Meg Ryan, Barbra Streisand and Robin Williams without thinking Chaucer.

A happier option: Lipton wrote a lovely reference book, An Exaltation of Larks: And 1,000 more group terms, real and fanciful, from the 12th to the 21st centuries. Really, an “unction of undertakers” should make your day (unless you’re Miley Cyrus, in which case a cinnamon-scented candle apparently does the trick).

And the winner is: The Divine Miss Cyrus. Supercute polka dots lay the smackdown on Lipton, even with Lipton’s uproarious pleas for a tattoo.

We get a lot of books here, but it has occured to me of late to categorize the most frequently received categories.

Here they are:

–Books about how your pet reveals to you the subtle truths of life itself. These include “funny” stories about pets that yawn on for tens of pages at a crack and wander eventually onto some life-affirming moment, although not until after you’ve said, geez, where is my National Enquirer; people write about their animals, but manage to keep in mind that really, it’s all about their own unbearable poignant self-awareness; and those who are convinced that Marley and Me, despite its bazillion years on the bestseller lists and upcoming movie starring Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston, was not the best, most profiable word on big foolish golden dogs. Or little spunky terriers. SUBSET: Dogs in the city!

-Stunt books that consistent entirely of the mind-numbing confessions of an individuals who would be better off reading a book rather than writing one. Reading the dictionary. Living Biblically. Attaining a bizarre level of public intimacy with your spouse. I promise you, your battles with infertility are not that fascinating, even to your in-laws.

–Lincoln. And by the way, upcoming: Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, by Fred Kaplan, in November. New on the shelves: Tried By War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief by James M. McPherson. The reddeming virtue of any book about Lincoln is that the subject matter is a man who would never have engaged in a stunt book.

–Self-published books by those convinced that their childhood was unique and should be hugely personally profitable because it was great, yet it was bad, and they faced challenges, but there were fine sunshine-soaked days. Also, their mom was the greatest ever. The thing is: Each and every person on earth, except perhaps Augusten Burroughs, had the same childhood. You don’t have to write about it: Really, we’ll just take your word.

–

Joyce Carol Oates will speak, along with Isabella Moon author Laura Benedict, at the Kentucky Women’s Writers conference free event at UK’s Memorial Hall at 7:30 p.m. Friday.

I could try to turn a phrase here, but won’t. You can call Oates’ work literary rococo, you can measure it by its tonnage: Doesn’t matter. Oates is a genius. Genius doesn’t come to town every day.

Constantine Rafinesque

State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of  America

(EccoBooks, $29.95) features essays by edgy writers on our 50 states (Dave Eggers on Illinois, Ha Jin on Georgia, Kevin Brockmeier on Arkansas). Here’s Jhumpa Lahiri on Rhode Island: “My father, a global traveler, considers Rhode Island paradise.” 

Flipping over to the state that houses us here at Humidity Central, we find John Jeremiah Sullivan writing on Kentucky, “shaped like an alligator’s head.” But really, he is writing about Constatine Rafinesque, which is simultaneouly intriguing and disappointing: intriguing, because Rafinesque’s “curse” on what is now Transylvania University when he stomped off is the stuff of legend, and disappointing, because Rafinesque stomped off, went crazy and laid down the mojo in the early 19th century. You could pretty easily infer that not much of value has happened since in our little corner of Amurca. But Rafinesque: Kentucky’s Darwin! Audubon’s travelling partner! A brilliant mind with no qualms at all about making stuff up! 

Sadly, the Aububon partnership ended rather badly, as Sullivan notes that one fine evening Audubon “woke to uproar. Hurtling through Rafinesque’s door he found the smaller man leaping naked in the dark, holding the neck of Audubon’s Stradivarius, which he’d bashed to splinters trying to stun small bats.”

So, Constantine Rafinesque: Here’s to you. Although Kentucky is known to many for truly awful reasons, your bat-bashing example humbles us.

Lexington author Ed McClanahan’s new book, O the Clear Moment (Counterpoint, $23) comes out in September, a slim (186 pages) volume of short memoirs touted as “nostalgic and tongue-in-cheek.” The book contains several glancing blows at sports, of a fashion, appropriate to note since it’s time to kick off the football season — popularly known in Kentucky as the time we huddle together in football-bound tailgates ticking down the seconds until basketball season, which sends Kentuckians a-quiver with the knowledge that the state still doesn’t star in the high school basketball soaper ”Hoosiers,” this probably won’t be the miraculous season that the UK basketball team pulls out another NCAA championship and someone out there, the unholy trinity of Bobby Knight, Christian Laettner and Mike Krzyzewski still draw breath. Laettner is a particular thorn in the commonwealth’s collective side, as he figures in our greatest state nightmare, the 1992 buzzer-beater shot in which Duke knocked Kentucky out of the NCAA tournament (which is on YouTube, should you need to refresh your misery: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY-iq58_oz4).

So yes, around here, we know something about the tongue in cheek. In part, that quality was given to me by a former boss who wandered around quoting liberally from McClanahan’s novel The Natural Man, which I would wager at one time I knew about as well as the author himself.

But back to McClanahan, one of Lexington’s most genial citizens and an oft-cited favorite in our Reader Top Ten summer swapfest of favorite books.

The kickoff essay is “Great Moments in Sports,” which is peripherally about sports but mainly about the teen pursuit of convivial company, which continues to this day, and in a manner just as classy, and when I say classy, I mean, probably involving property damage. (Yes, the teenagers have just about done me in, thank you: Every morning I wake up, grope around for the cell phone, ascertain that The Call has not come in about either of them while I slept fitfully, and then stumble into the bathroom to look for the JoBeth Williams mile-wide “Poltergeist” gray streak that I’m sure has sprouted in my hair overnight. Truly, it makes you wonder if anybody has mentioned to these Brangelina folks that all six of those little angels will be, simultaneously, teenagers, and that People magazine won’t pay 14 cents, much less $14 million, to take pictures of two hollow-cheeked parents who haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a decade and have recently spent time peering over the remains of a demolished device formerly automotive, murmuring, “And then you did what?” I’m just sayin’.)

I’m guessing the essay is even more hilarious read by McClanahan himself, and I hope to hear it, but until then just know that it concerns two Bobbys, the importance of impressing young women and, of course, eggs. Of course. McClanahan’s second take on the sporting life involves that very special period when he was a youngish activist, of sorts, and trying to make his way in a hotbed of Vietnam War-era political unrest that revolves loosely around “Bolshevik gremlins” and contains a trenchant observation about “the First Law of Revolutionary Physics, which is that tear gas is heavier than air.”

Again, hearing that one testified in person is probably even more entertaining.

In fact, come page 105, McClanahan confesses as much hisveryownself: “I expect I might as well go ahead and own up, right off the bat, to the fact that this little morsel of writing has but one ambition, which is to provide a vehicle that will allow me, when my vast audience clamors for me to read my work in public, to inflict upon them — be warned — the only three songs I’ve ever written, rendered up, strictly Acapulco, in — be doubly warned – my very own inimitable singing voice.”

And here’s McClanahan’s memory of trying to guard Cliff Hagan, who would later become UK basketball royalty: “Or the time twelve guys on our high school basketball team came down with the flu, and I was abruptly — not to say precipitously — elevated from second-string JV to the furthermost end of the varsity bench, and suddenly found myself, deep in the third quarter, not only in the game but also endeavoring to guard the great Cliff Hagan, then of Owensboro High, later of the University of Kentucky Wildcats and the St. Louis Hawks. On the first play he broke for the basket and went twinkle-toeing up my chest like he was Fred Astaire and I was the Stairway to the Stars.”

Here’s to McClanahan’s busy autumn, singing, as he puts it, Acapulco.

I’ll get to Bonner’s lengthy and thouthful list, but first: Who knew that Kentucky readers loved — and I do mean really, really love — Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety? It’s appeared on more lists than I can count, and I’m using the next long weekend I have to dig it out of its spot at my house  – you know that spot you have, that “on-deck” spot on the bedside table, where the books of your best intentions quietly gather dust and get knocked about by the cats? — and read it.

Says Bonner: “Last summer, I submitted my 10 favorite books, but did not realize they were similar to many others, and therefore, not very interesting.

“Just in case you might like to use a different kind of list, I am … submitting a ‘novel list, based on 4 categories. I could have included others (mystery, poetry, Lexington writers, etc.), but 4 seems a good way to go … for starters!”

LOVE

Leaving Cheyenne by Larry McMurtry. “First of many gems, but the most poignant by far. Tale of three friends, 2 men and a woman, whose lifetime of love and devotion never leads to any sex, marriage or favoritism. I cried at the end — not out of sadness.”

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner. “Not as celebrated as Angle of Repose, yet, a heart-wrenching and honest (to a fault) family saga of two couples reliving their pasts during a summer weekend. Mesmerizing.”

Birth of a Grandfather by May Sarton. “Lovely and moving story of a crotchety old man who finds love and meaning as he (reluctantly) becomes a grandparent. Not well-known but priceless.”

The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver. “A mother and her daughter, Turtle, on a long trip during which adventure is admixed with fear, confusion and love. The funniest open paragraph in modern literature.”

Lady by Thomas Tryon. “A heart-breaking but redeeming secret in a small New England town where taboo and sensuality meet heat on. Any further comment would give it away.”

The Awakening by Kate Chopin. “Turn of the century instrospection of a woman coming alive.”

The Grass Is Singing by Kate Chopin. “Not nearly as well-known or appreciated as The Golden Notebook but every bit as riveting and stark. Set in South Africa where an Englishman tries to tame the untameable land. He is a miserable failure, but his wife is even more desperate — until she finds redemption and sanity by way of an illicit, taboo affair.”

Beloved by Toni Morrison. “A triumph for all time. Deep and desperate love helps stay the horror and violence of a black woman’s journey to freedom near the Ohio River in Kentucky. As most well know, it is so much more than that.”

WAR

The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski. “Frightening account of a young Jewish boy during World War II who runs and hides alone for three years throughout Europe to escape capture and death. The most compelling anti-war book ever.”

Common Ground by J. Anthony Lucas. “The true account of a couple who tried honestly but unsuccessfully to disarm and diffuse the battlegrounds in three diverse adjacent Boston neighborhoods.”

Hiroshima by John Hersey. “Chilling account of the aftermath of the atomic bomb dropped on Japan in August 1945. Many others have followed but this is still the classic.”

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. “Grisly expose of the turn-of-the-century slaughterhouse industry in Chicago. Considered by experts to be the impetus for eventual FDA regulations after this famous bloody ‘war’ between owners and workers.”

Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan. “The best of many hundreds on the Vietnam War.”

Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhoads. “One of my literary passions is the Manhattan Project. In my collection there are many fascinating accounts but this is my favorite.”

AFRICAN-AMERICAN

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. “One of the first books I read that made me realize just how marginalized and ‘unseen’ minorities have been for centurities. It was an emotional rollercoaster ride.”

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. “Of Morrison’s early works, this is the most heart-breaking. It doesn’t take much to personalize and empathize with the young black girl whose identity is never her own.”

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. “When this came out, we thought, ‘No way’ … but he was prophetic and right on! Much of what he predicted came true in Watts, Detroit and other cities as race riots and protests against how blacks were treated burgeoned.”

Soul On Ice by Eldridge Cleaver. “The memory of a very angry black man in prison. Soulful and riveting. I regret that I let people borrow books like this, as I never get them back.”

Middle Passage by Charles Johnson. “A haunting account of the slave ship Armistad as it crosses from Africa to the New World. The descriptions and dialogue are vivid enough to put you right in the thick of it and make you scream with anguish as the passengers did.”

REGIONAL AND UNIVERSAL

Working by Studs Terkel. “This one is one of my all-time favorites mainly because it is so different. Terkel describes hundreds of occupations and doesn’t shy away from graphic depictions of the dangers.”

Night Comes to the Cumberlands by Harry Caudill. “The first book I ever read about Eastern Kentucky, the mountains and the coal mines. I discovered later that it was controversial in many circles but as a native of that land, he ‘told it like it was.’”

Stand Like Men by James Sherborne. “I had never heard of Bloody Harlan but was fascinated by the gutsy and fearless men and women who fought for their rights as miners in the Thirties.”

Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. “A sad and compelling story of Africa and her tragic history at the hands of colonialists.”

Chamed Circle by James Mellow. “I have always wished I had been alive at the time and been a part of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas’ (circle)  .. and all their writer/artistic friends.”

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Sora Neale Hurston. “A book to treasure now and always. … Now part of the high school canon and probably the favorite among all of Hurston’s books.”

And really, I don’t see why more book marketers don’t take to this bit of golden marketing from Semantricks:
A dictionary of words you thought  you knew.

It’s not a safe book for the kiddies, but decent pocket-sized material to haul along for a doctor’s office visit or other occasion where you have may a long wait in surroundings in which one of those DNA/babymama “Maury” editions will be on the waiting room TV and there’s only a collection of well-worn (and hence, intensely germy) old Sports Illustrated issues to read.

Example:

Carnival: Meat eaters festival.

Get it? Get it? Try to hold in those sides, lest they burst from your laughter.

Still, for pocket or bathroom, it’s not a bad mini-book — although, Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s Books? $12.95? Really? You guys must be the ones with the sense of humor.

Anyway, the wonderful foreword:

“It’s enough for us that you’ve bought this book:; no need to read it. Give it to someone you dislike. If you dislike the person a lot, give two copies. For anyone who is inclined to read it, we advise small takes. A little of this material goes a long way. And yet, paradoxically, all of it doesn’t go very far.”

Consider how often a right-up-front admission of mediocrity would save us from the purchase and dogged reading of what is, after all, very bad literature.