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American Science Fiction: Four Classic Novels 1953-56 (Library of America #227)
Gary K. Wolfe, Frederik Pohl, C.M. Kornbluth, Theodore Sturgeon, Leigh Brackett, Richard Matheson

Pimp: The Story of My Life

Pimp: The Story of My Life - Iceberg Slim I listened to this as an audiobook, and that might have contributed to how much I enjoyed it. The reader certainly had fun with it. Iceberg Slim tells the story of his rise, fall, second rise and second fall as one of the nation's top pimps with the same sort of clever language and tongue-in-cheek bravado as 90s gangsta rap. Or I should say 90s gangsta rap is just like Iceberg Slim, because none of it would exist without him. Half the fun of this book is hearing all the slang. His story spans from the 1920s to the 60s, and the lingo evolves and changes as the times change. The violence and misogyny inherent in the pimp profession is rawly and brutaly presented, and Slim manages to stay just slightly out of the realm of pure exploitation. Just slightly.

Drunk Monkeys Originals: Volume One (Drunk Monkeys Originals #1)

Drunk Monkeys Originals: Volume One (Drunk Monkeys Originals #1) - Matthew Guerruckey,  Susan Barth,  SC Stuckey,  Lawrence Von Haelstrom,  Jeanne Scroggs,  Nathan Alan Schwartz,  MarĂ­a Cristina Mata Lawrence von Haelstrom is a twenty-first century Mark Twain--another example of the great tradition of wit and humor in American letters.

The One: The Life and Music of James Brown

The One: The Life and Music of James Brown - R.J. Smith I'm not sure if I'll get through this one. The author writes with that annoying style of rock journalism that switches from a faux-academic tone to faux-vernacular at random moments. I'm smart AND down, Mr. Smith insists on telling us. The dust jacket proposes that James Brown is more important to twentieth century music than than Elvis, Bob Dylan, and the Beatles. I agree, but from my initial skimming, RJ Smith is approaching the subject more from a socio-cultural perspective rather than a musical one. And in this particular case I don't see evidence that Mr. Smith is up to the task. He ain't got no chops, youknowhatimsayin'?

The Deerslayer (Leatherstocking Tales)

The Deerslayer - James Fenimore Cooper, Robert Tilton What can I say that Mark Twain didn't?
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/hns/indians/offense.html

"Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in "Deerslayer," and in the restricted place of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record."

And

"I may be mistaken, but it does seem to me that "Deerslayer" is not a work of art in any sense; it does seem to me that it is destitute of every detail that goes to the making of a work of art; in truth, it seems to me that "Deerslayer" is just simply a literary delirium tremens."

Twain's essay is so good that its almost worth reading the Deerslayer just to get all the jokes.

The Deerslayer was the last of Cooper's Leatherstocking tales, but the first chronologically. It's an origin tale, just like that last X-Men movie. We get to see Deerslayer/Pathfinder/Hawkeye on his first warpath. We see his first kill. (He literally talks the man to death), how he comes across his famous rifle Killdear (He loots it from a dead man), and his first refusal of a woman's declaration of undying love.

And just like in The Pathfinder, we get another shooting contest, and a whole bunch of really dumb, evil indians. (More Twain: "The difference between a Cooper Indian and the Indian that stands in front of the cigar-shop is not spacious.") The story goes nowhere--people get caught by Indians, people escape from Indians, then get caught again, then fight. (There are a couple of good fight scenes. When one main character is scalped alive, it's actually pretty exciting and surprising.)

There's chunky dialog like this:
"You are Hetty Hutter... Hurry Harry has told me of you, and I know you must be the child?"

"Yes, I'm Hetty Hutter...I'm Hetty; Judith Hutter's sister; and Thomas Hutter;s youngest daughter."

(And people don't "say" things, they more often than not "ejaculate.")

And this character, Hetty Hutter, is "feeble-minded." Cooper also describes her as "simple," "foolish," owning an "unsophistacted mind," or with a "mental darkness which, in a measure, obscured her intellect." Every moment this poor thing is on the page, Cooper reminds us how dumb she is.

Cooper as a writer is not nearly as bad as Twain says, but in at least this particular case, trotting out his best-selling Natty Bumpo character for a fourth sequel (the second after Bumpo's death in "The Prairie") he's at his most long-winded and least-focused. The Deerslayer is the 19th century literary equivalent of Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, or Police Academy 3: Back in Training.

The Pathfinder (Signet Classics)

The Pathfinder - James Fenimore Cooper, Thomas Berger, John Stauffer Abject racism aside, this a fun, action-packed (by 19th century standards) read. The Pathfinder is the American action hero prototype--amazingly skilled at everything he does, an innate sense of right and wrong, smart without any fancy book learning. There's treachery and deceit, romance, scalping, boat adventures, even a shooting skills contest. The Indians here are pure evil, savage and ruthless (except for the good ones.) They're basically orcs. When The Coop wants to be he is an amazing writer, there are some fantastic descriptions of the Great Lakes and even the dialogue, though always long winded, can be really fun and clever. Compared to someone like Melville (who would come along a few years later) The Coop is just a genre hack, but he is a very skilled one. Next up for me, The Deer Slayer.

The Fault in Our Stars

The Fault in Our Stars - John Green In the years before things like Twilight and Hunger Games made it mainstream entertainment, about 80% of YA fiction was Lurlene McDaniel-style kids-with-cancer weepies. John Green revives the trope here. Because they are John Green characters, the kids with cancer talk like hip twenty and thirty somethings with self-aware wit and panache. (That's not necessarily a criticism.) The story of a budding romance between two teenage cancer survivors moves along predictably (again not necessarily a criticism) and the inevitable tears are plentiful and well earned. The wit displayed by all the characters throughout keeps the weeping from becoming overwhelming.

As YA fiction written for its target audience, it is perfect. For bookish, slightly off-beat teenagers, these characters are more clever, more witty, more culturally aware versions of themselves. And who that age doesn't like a good cry? As an adult reader, I recognize a certain sameness in all the characters and a lack of true drama, but it's not written for me. John Green knows exactly what he's doing and that's why he's one of the best working right now.

American Poetry: The Twentieth Century (Henry Adams to Dorothy Parker)

American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, Volume One: Henry Adams to Dorothy Parker (Library of America #115) - Robert Hass, Robert Hass, John Hollander, Carolyn Kizer, Nathaniel Mackey, Marjorie Perloff Anthologies like these often get criticized for being either too Dead White Male oriented or too multiculturaly inclusive (See the criticism for the recent Rita Dove edited Penguin Anthology of 20th Century Poetry.) Library of America avoids that simply by being gigantic. Arranged by order of birthdate volume 1 and it's 900 pages only gets to the birth year of 1893. So everyone is here and well-represented. And it's not diverse just in a cultural sense, everything from Ezra Pound and his circle of inscrutables to the light verse of Dorothy Parker and song lyrics of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin are included. The big names however do receive the most representation. Robert Frost gets nearly 60 pages, Wallace Stevens 70 and Pound 80 pages. You also get just about all the Gertrude Stein a sane person can tolerate. Seriously, Gertrude Stein is the poetic equivalent of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. Revelations for me included a total rediscovery of Robert Frost, and a certain disappointment in things that I once really liked like TS Elliot. The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, aside from its amazing language, is sort of juvenile. It's the world view of a young adult with little life experience. In another music analogy, it's almost like going back to the Simon & Garfunkel songs you loved as a teenager and realizing how naive they are. And this collection caused me to go back and read Spoon River Anthology in its entirety. I don't know of a better, more inclusive anthology of American poetry. Worth reading cover to cover just for its amazing breadth.

William Faulkner: Novels, 1957-1962: The Town / The Mansion / The Reivers (Library of America)

Novels, 1957-1962 - William Faulkner, Noel Polk The last three novels of Faulkner in one volume. For the most there's no Faulknerian modernism, instead just great characters and stories. Although, in chronicling folks like Flem Snopes, he -- Faulkner-- does love to layer on the parenthetical statements. Great humor runs throughout, too. The Reivers, especially, is just funny. It's a romp of crazy characters and wacky situations. "Eleven years old and already knife-cut in a whore house brawl." That about sums it up.

The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction - Alan Jacobs A pleasant little book.

Reading is enjoyable, don't get too caught up in just wanting "to have read"--where you don't actually read anything but just finish things. But don't just read crap, either. You're special because you read.

That's the book.

American Poetry: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Library of America #178)

American Poetry: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Library of America #178) - David Sheilds This is something more of historical value than actual literary value. It could also be titled "Poems about God and/or New England and other poems." And about half of those others are poems about dead infants. It's often said that American poetry begins with Walt Whitman and nothing here disproves that notion. There are things here like Joseph Breintall's "'A plain Description of one Single Street in this City.'" Which is just that, a plain description of one single street. There's no larger metaphor, no meditation on the subject, it's just a documentation of everything on that damn street--in verse. There are some exciting things like Michael Wigglesworth's "Day of Doom"--a sort of Seventeenth Century "Left Behind," where all the sinners who have had all the fun up until that point finally get their comeupance. Also included are some cameos by famous people--John Smith, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin. None of them were great poets, but neither was anyone else living in the colonies then either, apparently. Again, as a historical document, this is something. But if you never read most of these poems, you're not missing anything.