Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Our favorite sportswriter from New Yawk is back to share a few more advance looks at what's hitting the stacks soon. I don't know about you guys, but I'm digging Frank and his work so far. If you like what you're reading, give him a shout and let him know. Frank... take it away.
IT'S NOT A SECRET IF I DON'T TELL ANYONE
By Frank Bascombe
EMPIRE FALLS by Richard Russo
America has disappeared, moved into the suburbs, vanished into their SUV’s, behind the tinted safety glass and auto locks. There was a time when friends could meet in the town square, or a local diner, when you could hang with your local high school friends, all grown up and running the drug store or managing the True Value hardware store. Your children played against each other in high school sporting events and drank beer by the lake on Friday nights. Your sister would marry the local high school sports legend who had missed the big time with a career ending injury, returning to teach Phys. Ed to your children at the same school where you sowed your oats. This time has passed, and it’s gone like so many of our memories. Everything from schools to local business has been privatized, and sold to the highest offshore bidder. The inexperienced and the conversationally-challenged are what's standing between you and what you want, and they have no interest in anything other than taking your money. In turn, they take their paychecks and send them home. That’s all they're interested in, sending it home. More importantly, the manners, morals, and histories of regular human interaction have vaporized like so much spit on the sidewalk of a hot summer’s afternoon. America has been handed off to the have-not’s, and with a big smile, no less.
If you’d like to capture a small slice of America lost, the place you could easily call home, where those fond memories can still be visited in vivid color, then pick up any of Richard Russo’s novels, starting with MOHAWK, THE RISK POOL, STRAIGHT MAN or NOBODY'S FOOL, the last of which was made into a brilliant film with Paul Newman giving the best performance of his legendary career as Sully, the main ball-breaker and center of all things in Bath, Maine. Russo writes like a blast of wind; he’s everywhere all at once, and you're constantly one step behind him. He's the all-knowing all-seeing narrator, the maestro of events; in short, he’s the right man for the job. In his new novel, EMPIRE FALLS, he embraces America, especially the small town, the place you grew up. He maintains a tangible feel of innocence and lust for life. The devil is in the details and Russo is hitting them harder than Sammy Sosa. The center of business in Empire Falls is the local shirt factory, but it’s not the building or the products that are important to the town; it’s the family that owns it. Their ties to the community are tight, and their hooks are in deep. Everyone's gotten used to having that particular hand in that particular spot, and if a total stranger put it there, they’d call the cops. The Whitings go way back... way, way back to the day when if cops got called in on a domestic beef, they’d let the family work it out, even if it degenerated to violence involving the business end of a shovel. Mrs. Whiting oversees all that is relevant and even things that are not, like matters of the heart. She’s smarter than everyone else only because she says she is, and has convinced everyone else to believe it.
Miles Roby, the fortunate son (unfortunate if you asked him) is stuck in Empire Falls, managing the local diner for Mrs. Whiting. You don’t run your life, it runs you. Miles also has a daughter to worry about and a brother, a broken down former high school sports star, flipping burgers for him. This town is a place where its inhabitants live out the sins of their fathers, and the history is strong. Miles, well-liked, capably strong-willed, and always a gracious eater of dirt, lives along those historical lines. Early on, we find out through flashbacks (which only work for a few writers) that Miles and his mother vacationed on Martha’s Vineyard each summer. Miles' father is a drunk layabout, and can barely be counted on to earn a living, never mind accompany his son and wife on vacation. Russo bases most characters on events from the past, remembrances if you will. What made them who they are can be attributed to these things they lived through, and the things they're living through now. He spends chapters laying out this elaborate tapestry, and it’s a great payoff when you finally do see it all come together. He did it for Sully in NOBODY'S FOOL, and he does it again here for Miles. His ability to draw such a perfectly realized character is his hallmark; he’s just so good at it. Miles’ mother, whom wants so desperately to be the wealthy Mrs. Whiting in the early parts of the story, almost becomes Mrs. Whiting’s chief spoiler for her pristine and privileged life. Miles’ mother finds herself drawn into a relationship too close to the Whiting fortune. It’s up for grabs as to what might have really happened, and having the entire vacation told through Miles' point of view, you get the feeling that the story is soured by a child’s perspective.
That’s how it’s done in Russo’s America.
Proper and diligent delivery of information is the best way around a long complicated story, and Russo is at the height of his powers with this opus, whether it's describing the town down to the last stoplight or rendering each and every character in full with rich details and hysterical anecdotes. Throughout the story, funny fables and stories are sprinkled and left like little gifts, sure to surprise and thrill. There’s even a joke about “The Goddess of Books” Oprah Winfrey that will bring a smile to anyone who reads more than the Sunday comics.
HOW TO BE GOOD by Nick Hornby
It’s safe to say Nick Hornby knows what he’s doing.
This is his fourth novel, and when it arrives in stores, it will get as much praise as an Oasis live performance. People around the globe, especially in England, go ga-ga for the guy. Somewhere along the line, while paying for his pints and grinding out word after word while listening to his favorite tunes, he developed a kick-ass prose style. Don’t think for a minute that he didn’t keep a shark’s eye view on the movie adaptation of HIGH FIDELITY. That book was praised to the highest rafters by everyone who’s ever been in a bookstore, so when the movie rights got snatched up... well, if a shark stops swimming he dies, and Hornby is no dead shark.
HOW TO BE GOOD is an immediate slap in the face. Our heroine is Katie, mother of two, wife of a typical late thirties bland mash potato sandwich husband. What’s interesting, the real punch to what Hornby has pulled here, is that he’s writing her book, a role reversal, and it works. Once you realize that the story he is telling should be told from the husband’s perspective, you look a little closer at the details he's providing. You’ll be offended at just how well this guy can write a female character, especially one this strong, and Hornby doesn’t need lots of scotch tape or smoke and mirrors to hold it up. Katie is taking the high road through life. She’s got feelings, opinions, and a moral universe that may be screwy, but at least it’s hers. She's fed up with her husband, who hates all people and every material thing around him, too. Most interior monologues that cover a profound transformation or realization over the course of book, especially one about a married couple and infidelity and hopelessness, are usually told from the man’s point of view. Instead, Hornby has you witness these changes through Katie’s eyes, through her set of filters. You feel like a woman should be writing this story from the wife’s point of view, and there's something incredibly refreshing about the fact that it’s not. Katie’s husband David has begun a shedding of material objects that will amuse almost everyone who’s ever been in a relationship. He meets a weird guru named DJGOODNEWS along the way who becomes the catalyst for everything to come. This book not only covers family, class, and the personality of modern England, but it seems to be drilling into the identity of the self and what it takes to hold onto that identity while being bombarded by the information deluge of the world today. Hornby has a firm grip on his style, and he’s taken the funny and wicked from everyday life and made it his own. From here, there is nowhere else to go but up.
UP IN THE AIR by Walter Kirn
The fastest way to get around this country of ours is by plane. Everyone flies. Some of us use commercial airliners, others private jets, and certainly some of us fly better than others. Air travel has become like going to the local convenience store for a six-pack of Diet Dr. Pepper and some beef jerky. You drive over, wait on line, get what you want, then get the hell out of there, always getting where you wanted to go. It’s really that simple. Big corporations have made it very easy. Everyone lives in their own little vacuum, and if you travel anywhere in the country, it all looks like a strip mall by now. Along the way you meet people, most of the time in line at the departure gate where you exchange glances. Sometimes, it's in horror, but mostly out of sheer boredom. You strike up conversations with people in line around you if only to share your mutual disdain for the entire process, and your irritation for those at the front of the line. Everyone loves to bitch, and when you find a total stranger to do it with, so much the better. What’s most pleasing about Walter Kirn’s latest novel is that he loves to bitch, too. It’s a national past time, sure, but it’s his stock and trade. Our hero, Ryan Bingham, has one goal: to attain one million miles logged while traveling in a plane and become a member of the “million mile club”. He’s got one problem: he’s an obsessive/compulsive disorderly freak. Every little bump and grind is measured out perfectly to get every possible mile out of the airline he is traveling. From rental cars that gain him miles to purchases in duty free, he does it all, leaving nothing to chance. As in THUMBSUCKER, Kirn’s last novel, he spends time with Religion, specifically the Mormons. He almost always finds himself trapped by it, and his family has successfully extruded his sister through the faith meat grinder. This is not a book about being a Mormon, and thankfully it’s left in the margins, but his sister has been trying to keep it in the family, which Kirn makes subtly clear.
Kirn has mastered the over-wordy parts of the English language, but it fits the freakish Ryan like a Gap pocket-T. What he does with $50 words that would only fluster us regular folks if we read them in our local newspaper, his verbal gymnastics, are great and used to profound effect that almost leave you in blushed awe. He’s got something to say, and it’s actually very interesting if you can stay above the semantics. Ryan wants his million miles. It’s the only goal he has ever wanted to reach, and after some time in his presence, you think that he made it up to give his life some purpose. While attaining his goal, Mr. O.C.D. is a consultant for a Denver based management firm, his title Career Transition Counselor. He helps companies all over the country fire staff. He's a down-sizer, as depressing a job as there is. And he’s not sitting back in the shadows giving instructions, either. He’s actually the hatchet man. It’s a tough and brutal job, and Kirn has the bravery to get Ryan to do it. From city to city he flies, gaining miles like the nameless narrator in FIGHT CLUB, everything single-serving along the way. As he goes from company to company, he is thrilled to log all his miles, and eventually gets his life in order to the point where he has no home and lives completely in the air, or in near by airport hotels. On one of his jags about society, Ryan riffs about personal privacy, and it’s one of the most inspired sections of the book:
“A zip code is something I’d rather do without. Zip codes are how they find you, how they track you. They start with five numbers and finish with a profile, down to the movies you're liable to go see and the pizza toppings you prefer. I’m not paranoid, but I am my father’s son, and much of my fascination with marketing stems from my fear of being the big boy’s patsy. Sure, today we live in a democracy, and yes, for the most part it leaves us to ourselves, but there are ambitious people who’d like to change this and some who boast that they’ve already succeeded. I’m like the guy I met flying out of Memphis who told me he’d joined the local police force because he'd lived next to a drug house for a time and seen how thoroughly the cops had watched the place. True privacy, he concluded, was only possible inside a squad car.”
Kirn’s brilliance is in delivery. He’s really good at telling a joke, anecdote, or a small fable or story. His short bursts of smarts mix well, like wet cat food and the dry kitty chow, and it’s sharper than any knife you’d find in your kitchen drawer. Ryan Bingham has reached the pinnacle; he’s the textbook definition of “living in a vacuum”. Ultimately UP IN THE AIR leaves you right there, in the center seat, next to the guy working silently on his laptop, drinking his $7 cup of coffee, and talking on the cell phone remote cable hanging from his lapel. This book is so focused on the facts that it almost gets lost in the perfection of air travel. As troublesome as that may be, it would seem the only way to see America anymore is from 35,000 feet.
