The Chainbreaker Bike Book by Shelley Lynn Jackson and Ethan Clark
Since moving to Austin in 2006, I've relied almost exclusively on bicycles for transportation, but for most of that time, my understanding of my vehicle was spotty at best. This year marked a big leap forward for me, both in terms of mechanical know-how and depth of appreciation for these most brilliant of machines, and The Chainbreaker Bike Book put both the education and the emotions into print perfectly. The first half of the book constitutes the "Rough Guide to Bicycle Maintenance" advertised on the cover, and it's exactly that, done wonderfully. Far from an exhaustive, in-depth manual (the authors repeatedly suggest picking up one of those, too), Chainbreaker sticks to the basics, explaining them in straightforward, conversational style, illustrated by hand-drawn sketches rather than photos. Shelley and Ethan were both volunteers at the Plan B Bike Project, New Orleans' community shop equivalent to Yellow Bike, and it comes across in spades. Their instructions are never dry or difficult to follow, but rather capture the tone, patience, and humor of a great shop coordinator, providing the kind of confidence and enthusiasm that can help dissolve a beginner's fears about wrenching.
If Chainbreaker were only that, it would be a great volume, but it's so much more. The second half of the book is a collection of reprinted articles from Shelley's original Chainbreaker zines. Running the gamut from historical snapshots to DIY pannier instructions to diatribes against sexism, this is some of the finest zine content I've ever seen on any subject, and the most thoughtful, affectionate, multi-dimensional examination of the bicycle I've ever seen anywhere. The great pieces about Maya Pedal and cycling in India look at the broad utility that imagination and necessity can unleash; there are hilarious tales of food delivery in New Orleans (that city's primary paid cycling position); essays unlock the democratic, equalizing, anti-capitalist potential the bicycle contains. If the repair portion of Chainbreaker is mostly geared towards less experienced mechanics, the additional material is likely to penetrate the heart of even the most hardened veteran. A fabulous book unlike anything else out there, Chainbreaker is a must read for everyone who has ever found joy in spinning the pedals, and a great guide to keeping those pedals spinning right.
Going Postal by Mark Ames
Mark Ames takes a long, hard look at the horrifying workplace and schoolyard massacres that have so thoroughly disturbed modern America, and posits a theory that many would find as shocking as the murders themselves: our offices and schools are to blame. An insightful, incendiary read revolving around a thesis that "controversial" doesn't even begin to describe, Going Postal demands reassessment of environs we take for granted, staring past the mundane and monotonous to discover so much tension and torture underneath the fluorescent light fixtures. Ames goes out on some long limbs, especially in comparing rage-murders to the slave uprisings of the 19th century; but then again, when 19th century media accounts of random, inexplicable, and unexpected acts of violence sound so familiar, you can't help but admit he's on to something, far-fetched as it may seem. Ultimately, these comparative leaps serve less as persuasion and more as a catalyst for witnessing the present in a different light, and it's difficult to come away from Ames' meticulously researched accounts of various bloodbaths without seeing them a little differently as a whole. Perhaps the most troubling fact is that the rage-murderer lacks any distinct profile; perhaps the most infuriating is that, in a strange, recurring joke of fate, the bosses and bullies who push them over the edge are quite often absent when they snap. Take from it what you will, but you'd have to be one confident worker bee to read Going Postal and not wonder if a post-Reagan world of uncompromising productivity hasn't put us all in a dangerously unstable place.
Babylon by Bus by Ray LeMoine and Jeff Neumann
Trudging towards the sixth anniversary of Shock and Awe, those first few months of the war in Iraq can be difficult to recollect. The brief window of time when there was still a chance for the Bush administration to prove us all wrong and actually improve things in that country is mostly visible in retrospect as a whirlwind of damaging, deadly mismanagement. In 2008, the premise of Babylon by Bus seems almost too innocent and impish to believe: two shiftless twentysomething pals give up their lucrative racket slinging "Yankees Suck" t-shirts outside Fenway and travel to Iraq to lend an inexperienced and uninvited hand. It sounds like something the screenwriters for Harold and Kumar might've kicked around before deciding it was too ridiculous, but Ray LeMoine and Jeff Neumann actually did it. Their account of the journey sheds a unique light on everything that went wrong, and the depth of the resulting tragedy. From Coalition Provisional Authority job fairs to open bars in the Green Zone, from lounging around hookahs to intense exchanges in Sadr City, this book removes the distance between here and Baghdad in a way that little other journalism has, their dazed wanderings reconstructing a city as palpable as any in America. It's informal and impolite, but without shying away from the weight of its own reality and the responsibility of telling it. That two drunken dropouts did more for Iraqis thrown into a state of chaos than a lot of the people in charge did is funny for a moment, and painful forever after that.
Nonconformity by Nelson Algren
Subtitled "Writing on Writing," this long essay by Nelson Algren doesn't so much give specific insight into his own brilliant craftsmanship as it does point out the pitfalls facing the squeamish or subservient author. Penned in the wake of his masterpiece The Man with the Golden Arm and largely a reaction to the growing shadow McCarthyism was casting over America, Nonconformity remains a powerful indictment of the hypocrisy and emptiness of liberalism. As a result, what feigns being a criticism of artists or authors who only go halfway ends up striking a considerably wider chord. "Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than at present," wrote a discouraged Algren, "and here in the United States. Genuine belief seems to have left us. The underlying principles of the States are not honestly believ'd in (for all this hectic glow, and these melodramatic screamings), nor is humanity itself believ'd in. What penetrating eye does not everywhere see through the mask?" If Algren's fiction can sometimes seem like an epitaph for last hopes, this essay is a desperate rally cry.
Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell
Giving my honest opinion of this book is going to make me feel terrible. I love Sarah Vowell. Love her. Every time I listen to an episode of This American Life, and Ira's ticking off the acts, and her name comes up, I'm all a-titter. In fact, quite possibly my favorite episode ever (most definitely one of my top five) is "Trail of Tears," in which Sarah and her twin sister retrace the fatal march of their Cherokee ancestors, visiting the rather nonfatal attractions that mark their path today. That I am so enthralled by this piece of historical tourism made my lukewarm feelings toward Assassination Vacation seem downright icy. Maybe if I were a bigger Lincoln buff it would have done it for me, but I don't think even that could make up for the disjointedness of it all, bouncing from gift shop to obscure footnote to gift shop until you start to feel as road-weary as the friend who doesn't give a damn about McKinley but still agrees to drive Sarah to the museum. I don't find myself any less affectionate towards her on the radio, but I'm still not sure about going out on a second print date.
Banana by Dan Koeppel
In spite of the gargantuan quantity of bananas that I consume, I knew next to nothing about them before I picked up Dan Koeppel's book. I was hardly alone; while bananas are the most popular fruit in the United States, outselling apples and oranges combined, we're quite far removed from them - although bananas were evidently the first cultivated crop in human history, North America appears to have been nearly the last stop on their global journey, and lacks a suitable climate for growing. Yet somehow, this highly perishable, easily damaged tropical harvest that must be shipped in vast amounts over vast distances has become a less expensive and more beloved staple of our diet than anything on the trees in our own backyards. Banana traces the bizarre, colorful, bloody path of this strange international trade, but neither starts nor stops there. Riddled with great trivia (it turns out that it probably wasn't an apple that Eve bit into at all), mouth-watering descriptions of myriad varieties that will leave you cursing our American limitation to the single Cavendish, and history both bio- and anthropological, Koeppel's work culminates in an urgent warning: bananas are in deep, deep trouble, and we need to do something about it, fast. You'll never take the perfect food for granted ever again.
The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
Although his philosophies on our food system have placed Michael Pollan in the national spotlight, he is, first and foremost, an extremely talented writer. A former editor of Harper's, I am convinced that the sentences Pollan so artfully strings together could make damn near any subject sound absolutely arresting. His mastery of language combines and his palpable sense of curiosity draw you in, making you as interested in whatever he's studying as he so obviously is. Pollan's current arc didn't begin with just any subject, though, but with one that has been near and dear to him since childhood: gardening. From this rather banal starting point, he's constructed a canon that journeys from the soil to our stomachs and everywhere in between.
The Botany of Desire reveals Pollan's brilliant grasp of perspective in its very premise: how have the plants we've controlled also controlled us? Pollan's belief in the infinite complexity of the natural world transcends simple acknowledgment by changing points of view not only between humans, but species as well, and even ideals: he portrays domestication not as simple resignation to order, but as a delicate dance between the civilized and the wild in both plant and animal. Split into four segments about four plants and the four human wants they fulfill, Botany is eye-opening and impossible to put down throughout, whether focusing on food as he does in his more recent work (the apple and the potato), or on more abstract but no less powerful desires (beauty and the tulip, intoxication and marijuana). Whether weaving the weird true story of Johnny Appleseed or taking a tastebud-tickling walk through an heirloom apple orchard, whether marveling at the intricately controlled environment of a cannabis grow-room or the nearly opposite effects that its flora yields, whether speaking of the tulip enthralling the Dutch to the point of madness or Monsanto manipulating the very genetic makeup of the potato, Pollan's prose is kaleidoscopic and wide-eyed, thirsting for a more complete understanding with the knowledge that complete understanding is impossible.
Most writing about our modern food chain begins with an opinion, and it is not difficult to see why. The systematic exploitation from the slaughterhouse to the field hand to the very soil itself is undeniable and inescapable, and razor-penned writers such as Eric Schlosser are badly needed to open our eyes to that. Unfortunately, for the average eater, authors who take a deep look at the dark side of their meal can be, well, rather unappetizing. Perhaps that's why Michael Pollan's unfailingly multi-faceted way of looking at things has made him such a unifying figure amongst food reformers, and why The Omnivore's Dilemma is so goddamn popular and so goddamn important. Not unlike the four-plant structure of Botany, Pollan builds the book around four meals from four sources: the McDonald's drive-thru; the industrial-organic, "Supermarket Pastoral" of Whole Foods; a small "beyond organic" family farm; and hunted, gathered, and gardened self-reliance. Within this framework, Pollan explores our relationship with the food we eat with remarkable depth and scope. Rather than being governed by its agenda, The Omnivore's Dilemma derives its lessons from its discoveries. As a result, Pollan is able to balance the deplorable horrors of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations with the delectable quality of a humane free-range egg, or the disturbing empire of corn with the untamed mystery of wild mushrooms. Most importantly, while delving into all of its disparate elements, Pollan never forgets what too many food reformists do: the pleasure of a delicious meal. That pleasure is present here, an appetizer for absolutely essential reading.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Friday, December 26, 2008
BOOKS! The 2008 Reading List, Part I: Fiction
Let me admit, right off the bat, I was not the most voracious reader in 2008. Last year, I set an arbitrary (but nonetheless worthwhile) goal: two books per month, 24 books per year. Unfortunately, even with a lot of svelte page counts, that leaves my literary clock about halfway through October. I suppose I could cop out and bitch and moan about the detrimental effect six 100 degree months has on the attention span, but that would be, well, a cop out. Austin is both consistently hot and consistently well-read, and for a good chunk of this year I was consistently lazy about making time to read. Lame, lame.
But enough! You aren't here for my bad habits, you're here for:
THE 2008 READING LIST, PART I: FICTION
(+ poetry)
Flight and Ten Little Indians by Sherman Alexie
That Sherman Alexie is already so established in English departments throughout the country is almost as heartening as his ghettoization is frustrating. Sure, his stories, on the rez or off, largely revolve around the American Indian experience, but that's not the point: calling him "a great Native American author" is like calling J.D. Salinger "a great Manhattan-born, spiritually confused recluse author." It's simply unnecessary. Alexie's one of the best storytellers of our time, bar none.
Flight is a quantum-leaping, idol-incinerating short novel, preceded by an invocation from Slaughterhouse-Five and then making good on the promise. Zits, the zit-faced narrator, has it bad, and his blemishes are just the start: hopscotching between foster families, on a first name basis with the cops, he's smart enough to see he's got nothing to live for and so is too smart for his own good. Zits meets an ethereal white kid named Justice who shares his intelligence and disillusionment, quickly becoming his role model and leading Zits towards a radicalized, violent fate. But that's just the exposition, as a moment of terror and rage suddenly sends Zits ricocheting through time and space, his underdog righteousness forced to face the reality that his losing-side antiheroes could be just as capable of cruelty as the victors. Alexie lays waste to Zits' mythologies and our own, and it would be almost too jarring to take if every word he wrote wasn't coursing with humanity and humor and hope. Exploding all the easy answers and making it feel alright is a hell of a trick; making it a thoroughly entertaining novel is even more impressive.
As fine a work as Flight is, I think that Alexie's most indispensable writing has been in short story form, and Ten Little Indians is nothing if not indispensable. None of the nine tales within fall short of greatness, and many of them surpass any superlatives I can muster right now. Peeking at the copyright date, I can hardly understand how "Lawyer's League" was published in 2003; it influenced my perspective on the Obama campaign so profoundly, I'd forced myself to believe this story about politics, basketball, and race was written at the start of the primaries. "Can I Get a Witness?" turns a pile of suicide bomber rubble into a pile of existential rubble, goodwill crumbling into sharp shards of jagged loneliness. "Do Not Go Gentle" is, I guarantee, the funniest story ever set in a children's hospital, and "Do You Know Where I Am?" is one of the most beautiful love stories I've ever read, flawed and honest and heartbreaking. I could just keep going like this, but I'd rather implore you to pick this one up yourself. You won't be able to put it down, and you won't be able to forget it. If any other author is coming close to this right now, please let me know, because I can't name one.
Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut
Speaking of Vonnegut, I'm not nearly as well-versed in his catalog as I could be, and I like to think of this as a good thing. I know lots of people voraciously tear through his entire output in their youth, and in a way I feel lucky. I'm pacing myself, and as a result, whenever I pick up one of his books it's a special little reminder of how goddamn great he was, and how many more times I'll get to laugh at things that shouldn't be funny.
It's also nice because I get to go into a novel like Bluebeard without burdening it with comparison. Though, for the sake of such, it's certainly different from other Vonnegut I've read, on the very basic level of not being all science-fiction-y. It's pretty damn realist by his standards, and that works perfectly, because it's also pretty damn vulnerable and personal by his standards. That's not to say Slaughterhouse-Five isn't steeped in the personal; just that it's maybe less guarded coming from Rabo Karabekian. And I guess, after all, letting the guards down is what Bluebeard is about, as refracted through 20th century art and lonely old curmudgeons growing ever-so-slightly wistful. Think of this book as the utter debunking of every bit of garbage Fox News spewed in Vonnegut's obituary. Oh, happy meat. Oh, happy soul.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Writing my own little blurb about a Nobel Prize winner seems a little like... I dunno, running up the down escalator? Pretty much everything I could say has probably been said, with considerably more depth and scholarship. It's certainly the most fantastical novel I've read in years, and at the same time, furthered my knowledge of one of the most interesting, dynamic parts of the world in a way that only fiction can. (Banana author Dan Koeppel's citation of One Hundred Years as a life-changing read came as little surprise.)
That said, for all the breadth and detail of Marquez's Macondo, I think the thing that has stayed with me the most is the enchanted discomfort that hides below any empathy for the characters. After all, each is tragically flawed in such a way that the flaw becomes central, not unlike Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg grotesques. Seeing something of yourself in the first Jose Arcadio Buendia's fluctuations between productivity and knowledge-obsessed insanity, or Colonel Aureliano Buendia and his little golden fish, is engrossing and unnerving all at once, and I can't help but feel that it's absolutely impossible for anyone to read this book without experiencing this strange sensation towards a given Buendia or two. Perhaps that's exactly why it's so widely loved.
Candide by Voltaire
Yeah, this one would definitely be running up the down escalator. I've been meaning to read it since tenth grade, and whaddya know? It didn't disappoint. In fact, I don't think history class at all prepared me for just how fucked up Voltaire's sense of humor was. Dude's sadistic with a capital S. I guess that's what it takes sometimes to prove to the stubbornly complacent that maybe, just maybe, they do not live in the best of all possible worlds. But seriously, did that lesson require so many limbs to be lost?
Shampoo Planet by Douglas Coupland
After seeing Coupland's name popping up pretty frequently, I picked his second novel up at the library. It's... meh. It's not bad by any means, and if I had read it at a much, much younger age, it may have done a bit more for me. There just wasn't much to sink my teeth into here. The people and the plot are kind of two-dimensional, vaguely resembling reality but never quite making the jump, leaving themselves stranded at a depth more fitting for television or a movie than a really good read. There's a solid sense of irony and post-modernist humor (as you'd hope for from someone whose first work was titled Generation X), and the writing's good enough to keep you going when things get less than believable, but... yeah. If there are any Coupland fans out there with a better suggestion, please, pass it along.
Queer by William S. Burroughs
As much as I wish I could speak no ill of Ol' Bill Lee, this one kinda let me down as well. Written around the time of the vastly superior Junky and sharing most of that book's stylistic leanings, Queer is... strange. Not strange in a Naked Lunch sort of way, but rather strange in an uncomfortable-bar-discussion sort of way. Where Junky turned Burroughs' personal addictions into a microcosm of the entire narcotics experience (and power structures in general), Queer is self-involved and confessional in a way the author never really was at any other time. Frankly, it didn't suit him terribly well. The best parts of the book are the hard-nosed descriptions of Mexico City's seedy underbelly; it's prime, sinister Burroughs, and for fans, it'll make the whole book worth it. Unfortunately, there's just something about hearing the most acidic tongue of the twentieth century moaning and groaning over unrequited love and unfulfilling lovers that ends up sounding like Hemingway contemplating vegetarianism. Later on, Burroughs learned how to confront personal insecurities under the crass, ruthless x-rays that yielded Naked Lunch and everything after; I think everyone's better off for it.
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
An antiwar novel about World War I, written during World War II, adapted for film during Vietnam, and praised today by folks like Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan, Johnny Got His Gun is as much a part of the pacifist canon as 1984 and Brave New World are part of the dystopian one. Like those, it can seem heavy-handed at times, its message overwhelming its substance; but also like those, it ultimately transcends its themes and stands on its own legs as moving work of art. Take away the bombs and the bullets, and there's still so much there about what it means to be human, about the boundaries between the conscious and the subconscious and life and death. Early in the book, there's celebration of the wonder in the mundane that can only come after being ripped away from it; as the book tumbles towards its climax, there's the tap-tap-tapping, Joe Bonham's desperate refusal to give up while there's one last, lonely muscle that he can keep twitching. It's obvious from the start that there will be no happy ending for the soldier blown to nearly nothing, and yet when that happy ending never comes, it still feels so barbaric.
Ask the Dust by John Fante, Slouching Toward Nirvana by Charles Bukowski
It's easy to see why Charles Bukowski was so hugely influenced by John Fante's Ask the Dust, even if the reasons won't endear Fante's book to many. In fact, everything Hank loved about Arturo Bandini probably mirrored what most people hated so much about Hank. A struggling but talented writer with a nasty, conceited attitude, who becomes entangled in a fraught, loveless affair with a certifiably insane Mexican waitress? Fante handed Bukowski the key to the dilapidated Los Angeles he was already living in. Though his more floral prose falls flat next to his apprentice's hyper-economic frankness, Fante still manages to turn the trick that Bukowski would build his entire career around: taking an autobiographical character with perhaps no redeeming qualities and somehow making you give a damn about him. I'm still not sure why I did, but by the end, I did, even if Fante's self-aggrandizing Bandini lacks the everyman qualities that make Chinaski so appealing, and the fuck-all bravado that makes us wish we could be half as honest and careless as he is.
Of course, if Hank Chinaski was really just an everyman with fuck-all bravado, Charles Bukowski's words would not be as enduring as they are, and underneath the wine-drunk stench and the thick, scarred skin, there's a tragic creature somehow capable of boiling down the most complicated of emotions into just a few harsh syllables. Slouching Toward Nirvana, one of the ever-increasing posthumous collections of Bukowski's late work, is proof of that. Self-deprecating or more confident than ever, fat and satisfied or tortured by writer's block,unstoppable as a dinosaur or dying like one, these poems are proof that Bukowski's gift wasn't extinguished by age and success, even if that's what he would have had you believe. It may not be his best work, but it'll still win a drunken fistfight with most everything else. Ask the Dust obscures whatever writing it was that gave Arturo Bandini so much literary pride, but everything Bukowski ever composed reinforced Hank Chinaski's self-assurance, lifting it from barstool proclamation to legend.
The Devil's Stocking by Nelson Algren
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Nelson Algren was one of the greatest American writers, ever, period. The Man with the Golden Arm should be taught alongside The Great Gatsby. That I had never read him until last year is a dirty rotten shame; that his output was fairly slim is an even greater one.
The Devil's Stocking was Algren's last work, published after his death. Begun as journalistic coverage of the Rubin "Hurricane" Carter case, but ultimately fictionalized into novel form (the protagonist's name is Ruby Calhoun), The Devil's Stocking is admittedly marred by many of the problems that often plague final novels. It is uneven at times and herky-jerky in its pacing (particularly towards the beginning), and Algren's talent for razor-sharp stabs of prose-poetry can make the less impressive moments look that much worse. For all its missteps, though, The Devil's Stocking contains everything that makes Nelson Algren so important. The strange cast of down-and-out, troubled people transcend the picaresque and come off the page as real as flesh. The fabulous gift for translating boxing to print is, of course, on display. And, perhaps most crucial to Algren's writing, the novel is drenched simultaneously in morality and moral ambiguity. His drive to shine all lights on the dehumanization of unlucky men and women was never oversimplified, and always took into account those unlucky men and women's capacity for being cruel, conniving bastards. His unwavering insistence upon seeing both sides of the coin might be best summed up here in a section where he lambastes the late-arrival, early-departure, cause du jour outcry over the trials. Brutally skewering a song I'm actually quite fond of:
But enough! You aren't here for my bad habits, you're here for:
THE 2008 READING LIST, PART I: FICTION
(+ poetry)
Flight and Ten Little Indians by Sherman Alexie
That Sherman Alexie is already so established in English departments throughout the country is almost as heartening as his ghettoization is frustrating. Sure, his stories, on the rez or off, largely revolve around the American Indian experience, but that's not the point: calling him "a great Native American author" is like calling J.D. Salinger "a great Manhattan-born, spiritually confused recluse author." It's simply unnecessary. Alexie's one of the best storytellers of our time, bar none.
Flight is a quantum-leaping, idol-incinerating short novel, preceded by an invocation from Slaughterhouse-Five and then making good on the promise. Zits, the zit-faced narrator, has it bad, and his blemishes are just the start: hopscotching between foster families, on a first name basis with the cops, he's smart enough to see he's got nothing to live for and so is too smart for his own good. Zits meets an ethereal white kid named Justice who shares his intelligence and disillusionment, quickly becoming his role model and leading Zits towards a radicalized, violent fate. But that's just the exposition, as a moment of terror and rage suddenly sends Zits ricocheting through time and space, his underdog righteousness forced to face the reality that his losing-side antiheroes could be just as capable of cruelty as the victors. Alexie lays waste to Zits' mythologies and our own, and it would be almost too jarring to take if every word he wrote wasn't coursing with humanity and humor and hope. Exploding all the easy answers and making it feel alright is a hell of a trick; making it a thoroughly entertaining novel is even more impressive.
As fine a work as Flight is, I think that Alexie's most indispensable writing has been in short story form, and Ten Little Indians is nothing if not indispensable. None of the nine tales within fall short of greatness, and many of them surpass any superlatives I can muster right now. Peeking at the copyright date, I can hardly understand how "Lawyer's League" was published in 2003; it influenced my perspective on the Obama campaign so profoundly, I'd forced myself to believe this story about politics, basketball, and race was written at the start of the primaries. "Can I Get a Witness?" turns a pile of suicide bomber rubble into a pile of existential rubble, goodwill crumbling into sharp shards of jagged loneliness. "Do Not Go Gentle" is, I guarantee, the funniest story ever set in a children's hospital, and "Do You Know Where I Am?" is one of the most beautiful love stories I've ever read, flawed and honest and heartbreaking. I could just keep going like this, but I'd rather implore you to pick this one up yourself. You won't be able to put it down, and you won't be able to forget it. If any other author is coming close to this right now, please let me know, because I can't name one.
Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut
Speaking of Vonnegut, I'm not nearly as well-versed in his catalog as I could be, and I like to think of this as a good thing. I know lots of people voraciously tear through his entire output in their youth, and in a way I feel lucky. I'm pacing myself, and as a result, whenever I pick up one of his books it's a special little reminder of how goddamn great he was, and how many more times I'll get to laugh at things that shouldn't be funny.
It's also nice because I get to go into a novel like Bluebeard without burdening it with comparison. Though, for the sake of such, it's certainly different from other Vonnegut I've read, on the very basic level of not being all science-fiction-y. It's pretty damn realist by his standards, and that works perfectly, because it's also pretty damn vulnerable and personal by his standards. That's not to say Slaughterhouse-Five isn't steeped in the personal; just that it's maybe less guarded coming from Rabo Karabekian. And I guess, after all, letting the guards down is what Bluebeard is about, as refracted through 20th century art and lonely old curmudgeons growing ever-so-slightly wistful. Think of this book as the utter debunking of every bit of garbage Fox News spewed in Vonnegut's obituary. Oh, happy meat. Oh, happy soul.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Writing my own little blurb about a Nobel Prize winner seems a little like... I dunno, running up the down escalator? Pretty much everything I could say has probably been said, with considerably more depth and scholarship. It's certainly the most fantastical novel I've read in years, and at the same time, furthered my knowledge of one of the most interesting, dynamic parts of the world in a way that only fiction can. (Banana author Dan Koeppel's citation of One Hundred Years as a life-changing read came as little surprise.)
That said, for all the breadth and detail of Marquez's Macondo, I think the thing that has stayed with me the most is the enchanted discomfort that hides below any empathy for the characters. After all, each is tragically flawed in such a way that the flaw becomes central, not unlike Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg grotesques. Seeing something of yourself in the first Jose Arcadio Buendia's fluctuations between productivity and knowledge-obsessed insanity, or Colonel Aureliano Buendia and his little golden fish, is engrossing and unnerving all at once, and I can't help but feel that it's absolutely impossible for anyone to read this book without experiencing this strange sensation towards a given Buendia or two. Perhaps that's exactly why it's so widely loved.
Candide by Voltaire
Yeah, this one would definitely be running up the down escalator. I've been meaning to read it since tenth grade, and whaddya know? It didn't disappoint. In fact, I don't think history class at all prepared me for just how fucked up Voltaire's sense of humor was. Dude's sadistic with a capital S. I guess that's what it takes sometimes to prove to the stubbornly complacent that maybe, just maybe, they do not live in the best of all possible worlds. But seriously, did that lesson require so many limbs to be lost?
Shampoo Planet by Douglas Coupland
After seeing Coupland's name popping up pretty frequently, I picked his second novel up at the library. It's... meh. It's not bad by any means, and if I had read it at a much, much younger age, it may have done a bit more for me. There just wasn't much to sink my teeth into here. The people and the plot are kind of two-dimensional, vaguely resembling reality but never quite making the jump, leaving themselves stranded at a depth more fitting for television or a movie than a really good read. There's a solid sense of irony and post-modernist humor (as you'd hope for from someone whose first work was titled Generation X), and the writing's good enough to keep you going when things get less than believable, but... yeah. If there are any Coupland fans out there with a better suggestion, please, pass it along.
Queer by William S. Burroughs
As much as I wish I could speak no ill of Ol' Bill Lee, this one kinda let me down as well. Written around the time of the vastly superior Junky and sharing most of that book's stylistic leanings, Queer is... strange. Not strange in a Naked Lunch sort of way, but rather strange in an uncomfortable-bar-discussion sort of way. Where Junky turned Burroughs' personal addictions into a microcosm of the entire narcotics experience (and power structures in general), Queer is self-involved and confessional in a way the author never really was at any other time. Frankly, it didn't suit him terribly well. The best parts of the book are the hard-nosed descriptions of Mexico City's seedy underbelly; it's prime, sinister Burroughs, and for fans, it'll make the whole book worth it. Unfortunately, there's just something about hearing the most acidic tongue of the twentieth century moaning and groaning over unrequited love and unfulfilling lovers that ends up sounding like Hemingway contemplating vegetarianism. Later on, Burroughs learned how to confront personal insecurities under the crass, ruthless x-rays that yielded Naked Lunch and everything after; I think everyone's better off for it.
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
An antiwar novel about World War I, written during World War II, adapted for film during Vietnam, and praised today by folks like Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan, Johnny Got His Gun is as much a part of the pacifist canon as 1984 and Brave New World are part of the dystopian one. Like those, it can seem heavy-handed at times, its message overwhelming its substance; but also like those, it ultimately transcends its themes and stands on its own legs as moving work of art. Take away the bombs and the bullets, and there's still so much there about what it means to be human, about the boundaries between the conscious and the subconscious and life and death. Early in the book, there's celebration of the wonder in the mundane that can only come after being ripped away from it; as the book tumbles towards its climax, there's the tap-tap-tapping, Joe Bonham's desperate refusal to give up while there's one last, lonely muscle that he can keep twitching. It's obvious from the start that there will be no happy ending for the soldier blown to nearly nothing, and yet when that happy ending never comes, it still feels so barbaric.
Ask the Dust by John Fante, Slouching Toward Nirvana by Charles Bukowski
It's easy to see why Charles Bukowski was so hugely influenced by John Fante's Ask the Dust, even if the reasons won't endear Fante's book to many. In fact, everything Hank loved about Arturo Bandini probably mirrored what most people hated so much about Hank. A struggling but talented writer with a nasty, conceited attitude, who becomes entangled in a fraught, loveless affair with a certifiably insane Mexican waitress? Fante handed Bukowski the key to the dilapidated Los Angeles he was already living in. Though his more floral prose falls flat next to his apprentice's hyper-economic frankness, Fante still manages to turn the trick that Bukowski would build his entire career around: taking an autobiographical character with perhaps no redeeming qualities and somehow making you give a damn about him. I'm still not sure why I did, but by the end, I did, even if Fante's self-aggrandizing Bandini lacks the everyman qualities that make Chinaski so appealing, and the fuck-all bravado that makes us wish we could be half as honest and careless as he is.
Of course, if Hank Chinaski was really just an everyman with fuck-all bravado, Charles Bukowski's words would not be as enduring as they are, and underneath the wine-drunk stench and the thick, scarred skin, there's a tragic creature somehow capable of boiling down the most complicated of emotions into just a few harsh syllables. Slouching Toward Nirvana, one of the ever-increasing posthumous collections of Bukowski's late work, is proof of that. Self-deprecating or more confident than ever, fat and satisfied or tortured by writer's block,unstoppable as a dinosaur or dying like one, these poems are proof that Bukowski's gift wasn't extinguished by age and success, even if that's what he would have had you believe. It may not be his best work, but it'll still win a drunken fistfight with most everything else. Ask the Dust obscures whatever writing it was that gave Arturo Bandini so much literary pride, but everything Bukowski ever composed reinforced Hank Chinaski's self-assurance, lifting it from barstool proclamation to legend.
The Devil's Stocking by Nelson Algren
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Nelson Algren was one of the greatest American writers, ever, period. The Man with the Golden Arm should be taught alongside The Great Gatsby. That I had never read him until last year is a dirty rotten shame; that his output was fairly slim is an even greater one.
The Devil's Stocking was Algren's last work, published after his death. Begun as journalistic coverage of the Rubin "Hurricane" Carter case, but ultimately fictionalized into novel form (the protagonist's name is Ruby Calhoun), The Devil's Stocking is admittedly marred by many of the problems that often plague final novels. It is uneven at times and herky-jerky in its pacing (particularly towards the beginning), and Algren's talent for razor-sharp stabs of prose-poetry can make the less impressive moments look that much worse. For all its missteps, though, The Devil's Stocking contains everything that makes Nelson Algren so important. The strange cast of down-and-out, troubled people transcend the picaresque and come off the page as real as flesh. The fabulous gift for translating boxing to print is, of course, on display. And, perhaps most crucial to Algren's writing, the novel is drenched simultaneously in morality and moral ambiguity. His drive to shine all lights on the dehumanization of unlucky men and women was never oversimplified, and always took into account those unlucky men and women's capacity for being cruel, conniving bastards. His unwavering insistence upon seeing both sides of the coin might be best summed up here in a section where he lambastes the late-arrival, early-departure, cause du jour outcry over the trials. Brutally skewering a song I'm actually quite fond of:
Bob Dylan, whose poverty of spirit could be sensed in the emptiness of his voice, slapped a few words together, called it a lyric and sang it to a packed house in Madison Square:Algren plays the entire drama tight to his chest, and that Calhoun never comes off even slightly like the "Buddha in a ten-foot cell" Dylan would have him be is both more honest and more enthralling. Add to that a counterpoint about a prostitute capable of eclipsing the main theme, and The Devil's Stocking becomes, if not a masterpiece, a worthy farewell from a writer we badly need to give his due.Jedge said you crazy niggerand when he entitled this wheezing whinny "Calhoun" a million liberals bought it before he could get to the bank.
Woo-woo
You done pulled the trigger
Woo-woo...
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
BAH HUMBUG! Or, how many "Carol of the Bells" recordings can John Aielli dig up?
Seriously, I was trying to sleep in for a while after Morning Edition, but dude just kept going. Meh. At least if the tune's epic grandeur got really, really grating well before the thirtieth time the theme rolled back around, I suppose its minor-keyed foreboding aligns with my feelings about Christmas better than, say, "Run, Run Rudolph," or all those upbeat numbers about snow. (I haven't determined yet whether happy songs about blizzards make less sense in Texas, where this year's holiday low will be a brisk 60 degrees, or Upstate New York, where nine months of winter result in a decidedly less-than-joyous populous. Did Bing Crosby have a coke habit or something?)
In any case, it's been quite some time since I posted, so I wanted to take a moment to wish you and yours a quick and painless Christmas. May there be enough alcohol on hand to survive whatever strange manifestations the Curse of Jesus's Birth visits upon you this year. With a refrigerator full of beer and a warm, sunny tomorrow bereft of traffic, I think I'm gonna enjoy this one in spite of myself.
Perhaps at this point you're already nibbling on your fingernails, thinking about the uniquely yet universally depressing stretch of time between December 25 and January 1. If so, I can't promise you relief from the holiday blues, but I can promise you that my Favorite Reads of 2008 are just around the corner, and that I'm going to make my inexcusably small literary intake up to you by gettin' all in-depth on that shit. Should you find yourself completely crippled by seasonal affective disorder at the dawn of 2009, at least you'll know of a few good books to shut yourself in with.
Anyhoos, averse to tradition as I may pretend to be, I've got some of my own, and there are a few sparsely-populated watering holes calling my name right now. Merry Thursday to all, and to all a good night.
In any case, it's been quite some time since I posted, so I wanted to take a moment to wish you and yours a quick and painless Christmas. May there be enough alcohol on hand to survive whatever strange manifestations the Curse of Jesus's Birth visits upon you this year. With a refrigerator full of beer and a warm, sunny tomorrow bereft of traffic, I think I'm gonna enjoy this one in spite of myself.
Perhaps at this point you're already nibbling on your fingernails, thinking about the uniquely yet universally depressing stretch of time between December 25 and January 1. If so, I can't promise you relief from the holiday blues, but I can promise you that my Favorite Reads of 2008 are just around the corner, and that I'm going to make my inexcusably small literary intake up to you by gettin' all in-depth on that shit. Should you find yourself completely crippled by seasonal affective disorder at the dawn of 2009, at least you'll know of a few good books to shut yourself in with.
Anyhoos, averse to tradition as I may pretend to be, I've got some of my own, and there are a few sparsely-populated watering holes calling my name right now. Merry Thursday to all, and to all a good night.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
BOOKS and BITES! Big organic, small stores, and some of the paradoxes of the food cooperative.
I'm about halfway through The Omnivore's Dilemma, and the two things I will say about it as a whole are this: I'm almost ashamed that I work at a grocery store and I haven't read it already, and it should be required reading for every eater in America. My year-end best books review (revue?) is creeping up soon, so I'll save up my gushing praise for Michael Pollan's prose a few weeks longer. For now, I'd like to interrupt my reading to take a closer look at Chapter Nine, and its subject's prominent influence upon my profession.
"Big Organic," is, after all, a supply chain in which I am the penultimate link. (For those of you who aren't aware, I make my living stocking groceries at Wheatsville.) Although I've never shelved the Cascadian Farm organic frozen TV dinner Pollan has for lunch at the end of the chapter, I've certainly spent plenty of time slinging bags of their frozen vegetables, gingerly maneuvering jars of their fruit spreads, and neatly aligning their boxed cereals. One of the simplest facts presented about Cascadian Farm had somehow never caught my attention, yet it only forms the tip of the slippery-sloped ideological iceberg the chapter presents: Cascadian, one of the biggest names in organic food, is a full subsidiary of cereal monolith General Mills. That fact, in and of itself, is not necessarily of much consequence. That Cascadian Farm began its existence very much like the organic food movement itself, with all of its back-to-the-land hippie trappings, is.
Cascadian Farm (originally the New Cascadian Survival and Reclamation Project), along with spring mix pioneers Earthbound Farm, fill a narrative niche in Pollan's book that traces "organic" from its origins as part of a more holistic movement, beginning in the late Sixties and early Seventies, to its considerably narrowed, USDA-certified definition today. It's a lineage that also follows the distribution of organics from tiny, idealistic, "anticapitalist" food co-ops, "where sorry-looking organic produce was the rule for many years," to today's "Supermarket Pastoral" giants like Whole Foods. It is, of course, a history that Wheatsville is intimately familiar with, very much a part of, and, precariously if optimistically, still helping to write.
Indeed, that Wheatsville remained standing and continued to flourish while other food co-ops in Austin failed is very much because, not unlike Cascadian and Earthbound, it was willing to break with some of the strictures of the movement it came out of. It's no secret; ask any manager which one word in our Mission Statement holds the key to our unique success, and I can all but guarantee they'll say "non-doctrinaire." This is not to say, of course, that the level or scale of change that has occurred at Wheatsville actually mirrors Cascadian's; far from it. In fact, while that company's metamorphosis appears to show a quite radical shift in values, Wheatsville's chartered inclusivity brings it perhaps even more in line with the democratic nature of cooperative principles than, say, a strictly vegetarian co-op could ever really be. Furthermore, as the owner population grows and diversifies, Wheatsville becomes less and less doctrinaire, no longer as much by design, but by default. As a result, those with harder-line views on farming methods, labor practices, distribution, diet, et al can still have a lot of their demands met in our store; they just won't necessarily be excited by every product they see.
Tangentially, though, Wheatsville's survival depends very much on a willingness to compromise where its core values are concerned. As a small, independent store, the extent to which we can provide "goods and services, using efficient methods that avoid manipulation of the consumers, and minimize exploitation of the producers or damage to the environment" is entirely dependent on the extent to which these goods are made available. To wildly understate it, these qualities are difficult to find in our modern industrial food chain. Take away the massive expenditures of nonrenewable energies, the misleading labels of both marketers and policy-makers, the sub-minimum wage labor of itinerant workers, and the depleted soils of dense monocrops, and you may have a clean conscience, but you won't have any groceries. A moral stance does not alter the reality that stance is taken in. It's the first step towards altering that reality, certainly, and as a thriving cooperative, we're even able to take a lot of second steps, whether it's buying directly from progressive, sustainable, and all-around superior local farms and processors, supporting community organizations like Urban Roots, boycotting animal-tested products, or providing decent benefits for employees (thanks). Within our little microcosm, these steps seem substantial, but in the larger scheme of things, we're still playing industrial food's game, by industrial food's rules. We simply cannot stock our shelves without yielding to their imbalances and injustices.
This makes our relationship with the Cascadians of the world (and even the Whole Foods, for that matter) all the more complex and interesting. In many ways, the farming methods of Cascadian's suppliers or Earthbound or Cal-Organic are very difficult to differentiate from those that yield conventional crops. Indeed, most certified organic produce is grown right alongside its conventional counterpart (largely in California's Salinas Valley), under the management of the same growers, in nearly identical rows harvested by the same migrant workers making the same small wage as on the other side of the fence. The difference can seem miniscule, but it's far from nonexistent: every acre of land devoted to meeting the demand for "organics" is an acre spared from chemical fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, and antibiotics. The margins can sometimes be slim, but even the most industrial-esque organic farm means less environmental damage than the alternative. So, while some might accuse Gene Kahn's company of selling out, of using General Mills' influence on USDA policy to water down and lay waste to the definition of "organic," Gene Kahn might point to a whole lot of land that hasn't been poisoned by petroleum and say that it's better than it was before. Similarly, a lot of Wheatsville's owners might take exception to the business practices of Cascadian, but they, along with lots of other owners and shoppers, are still going to demand frozen broccoli and granola bars, and without industrial-organic, the only way they're going to get them is just plain industrial. Whether we like it or not, what might seem like backwards leaps ideologically can often end up being yet another small step towards something better in reality. Similarly, on a grocery-to-grocery level, we might look at a company like Whole Foods and think of it as an aberration, a corporation co-opting and cashing in on the natural foods market purely for the sake of profit. On the other hand, the existence of companies selling goods similar to our own on the scale that they sell them puts pressure on suppliers to make those goods more readily available; we might not be able to order a case of that organic TV dinner if Whole Foods wasn't ordering a pallet. And, whether the idea of an organic TV dinner makes your eyeballs cross or not, it does make a minute but measurable difference within the big picture. Plus, when someone comes into Wheatsville because they don't feel like driving to Whole Foods for that TV dinner, and ends up leaving with an heirloom tomato and a dozen Alexander Family Farm eggs as well, the whole web becomes that much more complex.
That this is just a little snippet of the many thoughts rolling around in my mind as a result of a single chapter should certainly stand as another whole-hearted endorsment of Pollan's work. I could probably go on forever like this, but seeing as how I still have another 200 pages to digest, we'll leave the philosophical labyrinth where we stand for now. Ultimately, though, what makes all this worth thinking about, in such detail, is that food really is the most important part of any civilization; before even shelter, it is the basis of our survival; it is inextricable from any culture, human or otherwise. To take what we eat for granted, to not explore it beyond simple consumption, is to lack curiosity about our very foundation. So think about it, because it's as interesting as anything.
"Big Organic," is, after all, a supply chain in which I am the penultimate link. (For those of you who aren't aware, I make my living stocking groceries at Wheatsville.) Although I've never shelved the Cascadian Farm organic frozen TV dinner Pollan has for lunch at the end of the chapter, I've certainly spent plenty of time slinging bags of their frozen vegetables, gingerly maneuvering jars of their fruit spreads, and neatly aligning their boxed cereals. One of the simplest facts presented about Cascadian Farm had somehow never caught my attention, yet it only forms the tip of the slippery-sloped ideological iceberg the chapter presents: Cascadian, one of the biggest names in organic food, is a full subsidiary of cereal monolith General Mills. That fact, in and of itself, is not necessarily of much consequence. That Cascadian Farm began its existence very much like the organic food movement itself, with all of its back-to-the-land hippie trappings, is.
Cascadian Farm (originally the New Cascadian Survival and Reclamation Project), along with spring mix pioneers Earthbound Farm, fill a narrative niche in Pollan's book that traces "organic" from its origins as part of a more holistic movement, beginning in the late Sixties and early Seventies, to its considerably narrowed, USDA-certified definition today. It's a lineage that also follows the distribution of organics from tiny, idealistic, "anticapitalist" food co-ops, "where sorry-looking organic produce was the rule for many years," to today's "Supermarket Pastoral" giants like Whole Foods. It is, of course, a history that Wheatsville is intimately familiar with, very much a part of, and, precariously if optimistically, still helping to write.
Indeed, that Wheatsville remained standing and continued to flourish while other food co-ops in Austin failed is very much because, not unlike Cascadian and Earthbound, it was willing to break with some of the strictures of the movement it came out of. It's no secret; ask any manager which one word in our Mission Statement holds the key to our unique success, and I can all but guarantee they'll say "non-doctrinaire." This is not to say, of course, that the level or scale of change that has occurred at Wheatsville actually mirrors Cascadian's; far from it. In fact, while that company's metamorphosis appears to show a quite radical shift in values, Wheatsville's chartered inclusivity brings it perhaps even more in line with the democratic nature of cooperative principles than, say, a strictly vegetarian co-op could ever really be. Furthermore, as the owner population grows and diversifies, Wheatsville becomes less and less doctrinaire, no longer as much by design, but by default. As a result, those with harder-line views on farming methods, labor practices, distribution, diet, et al can still have a lot of their demands met in our store; they just won't necessarily be excited by every product they see.
Tangentially, though, Wheatsville's survival depends very much on a willingness to compromise where its core values are concerned. As a small, independent store, the extent to which we can provide "goods and services, using efficient methods that avoid manipulation of the consumers, and minimize exploitation of the producers or damage to the environment" is entirely dependent on the extent to which these goods are made available. To wildly understate it, these qualities are difficult to find in our modern industrial food chain. Take away the massive expenditures of nonrenewable energies, the misleading labels of both marketers and policy-makers, the sub-minimum wage labor of itinerant workers, and the depleted soils of dense monocrops, and you may have a clean conscience, but you won't have any groceries. A moral stance does not alter the reality that stance is taken in. It's the first step towards altering that reality, certainly, and as a thriving cooperative, we're even able to take a lot of second steps, whether it's buying directly from progressive, sustainable, and all-around superior local farms and processors, supporting community organizations like Urban Roots, boycotting animal-tested products, or providing decent benefits for employees (thanks). Within our little microcosm, these steps seem substantial, but in the larger scheme of things, we're still playing industrial food's game, by industrial food's rules. We simply cannot stock our shelves without yielding to their imbalances and injustices.
This makes our relationship with the Cascadians of the world (and even the Whole Foods, for that matter) all the more complex and interesting. In many ways, the farming methods of Cascadian's suppliers or Earthbound or Cal-Organic are very difficult to differentiate from those that yield conventional crops. Indeed, most certified organic produce is grown right alongside its conventional counterpart (largely in California's Salinas Valley), under the management of the same growers, in nearly identical rows harvested by the same migrant workers making the same small wage as on the other side of the fence. The difference can seem miniscule, but it's far from nonexistent: every acre of land devoted to meeting the demand for "organics" is an acre spared from chemical fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, and antibiotics. The margins can sometimes be slim, but even the most industrial-esque organic farm means less environmental damage than the alternative. So, while some might accuse Gene Kahn's company of selling out, of using General Mills' influence on USDA policy to water down and lay waste to the definition of "organic," Gene Kahn might point to a whole lot of land that hasn't been poisoned by petroleum and say that it's better than it was before. Similarly, a lot of Wheatsville's owners might take exception to the business practices of Cascadian, but they, along with lots of other owners and shoppers, are still going to demand frozen broccoli and granola bars, and without industrial-organic, the only way they're going to get them is just plain industrial. Whether we like it or not, what might seem like backwards leaps ideologically can often end up being yet another small step towards something better in reality. Similarly, on a grocery-to-grocery level, we might look at a company like Whole Foods and think of it as an aberration, a corporation co-opting and cashing in on the natural foods market purely for the sake of profit. On the other hand, the existence of companies selling goods similar to our own on the scale that they sell them puts pressure on suppliers to make those goods more readily available; we might not be able to order a case of that organic TV dinner if Whole Foods wasn't ordering a pallet. And, whether the idea of an organic TV dinner makes your eyeballs cross or not, it does make a minute but measurable difference within the big picture. Plus, when someone comes into Wheatsville because they don't feel like driving to Whole Foods for that TV dinner, and ends up leaving with an heirloom tomato and a dozen Alexander Family Farm eggs as well, the whole web becomes that much more complex.
That this is just a little snippet of the many thoughts rolling around in my mind as a result of a single chapter should certainly stand as another whole-hearted endorsment of Pollan's work. I could probably go on forever like this, but seeing as how I still have another 200 pages to digest, we'll leave the philosophical labyrinth where we stand for now. Ultimately, though, what makes all this worth thinking about, in such detail, is that food really is the most important part of any civilization; before even shelter, it is the basis of our survival; it is inextricable from any culture, human or otherwise. To take what we eat for granted, to not explore it beyond simple consumption, is to lack curiosity about our very foundation. So think about it, because it's as interesting as anything.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
BLOCKS, BOOKS, and BANANAS! Tales of the Fitful Typist.
Seems I've followed up an entry about not blogging enough by blogging even less. Funny how that works, huh? I kept trying to bang out something about Black Friday, but I just couldn't find the right words to express all the tragedy in a big, strong man being stomped to death so that people could shop at Wal-Mart. Ugly.
Anyways, this tends to be a sparse season where my public outcrying is concerned, so I probably oughta warn you right now to expect more of the same. Over the next couple weeks I may or may not attempt to bang out something for the Chronicle's short story contest, but aside from that, the rest of the month's gonna be input rather than output mode for the most part. I'm once again reaching for my goal of reading a certain, arbitrary number of books annually, although I've been lagging in the back half of the year. Expect thickening glasses and wormier behavior until 2009.
Speaking of books, I just finished Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World. It was an extremely interesting read, digging deep into the fruit's colorful, troubled history while laying out why we're dangerously close to losing it altogether, and what needs to be done to prevent that. (While bananas are simply the most popular of the many fruits available to us in the United States, they are the entire foundation of the food supply in many parts of the world, making the search for solutions considerably more urgent.) The 'Ville's own produce manager/bearded weirdo had the opportunity to interview author Dan Koeppel recently. Whether or not you have time to read the book, it's an extraordinarily enlightening discussion, and it's been published in this month's issue of the Breeze in its entirety. Check it out, there's an awful lot you ought to know about this plant we take for granted.
Anyways, this tends to be a sparse season where my public outcrying is concerned, so I probably oughta warn you right now to expect more of the same. Over the next couple weeks I may or may not attempt to bang out something for the Chronicle's short story contest, but aside from that, the rest of the month's gonna be input rather than output mode for the most part. I'm once again reaching for my goal of reading a certain, arbitrary number of books annually, although I've been lagging in the back half of the year. Expect thickening glasses and wormier behavior until 2009.
Speaking of books, I just finished Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World. It was an extremely interesting read, digging deep into the fruit's colorful, troubled history while laying out why we're dangerously close to losing it altogether, and what needs to be done to prevent that. (While bananas are simply the most popular of the many fruits available to us in the United States, they are the entire foundation of the food supply in many parts of the world, making the search for solutions considerably more urgent.) The 'Ville's own produce manager/bearded weirdo had the opportunity to interview author Dan Koeppel recently. Whether or not you have time to read the book, it's an extraordinarily enlightening discussion, and it's been published in this month's issue of the Breeze in its entirety. Check it out, there's an awful lot you ought to know about this plant we take for granted.
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