Loot and New Jersey

I Black Friday-ed this year, I pray you pardon me. The scene of the crime was the Chatham Bookseller in Madison, New Jersey, a really stellar crammed shop with a $3 paperback fiction shelf that's better than yours. From there I picked up a copy of Richard Russo's BRIDGE OF SIGHS and Iris Murdoch's THE SEA, THE SEA. I almost bit the bullet on a John Updike collection of criticism just because of its amazing cover (holy shorts tan!) but then remembered I was supposed to be buying presents for other people.


There were a lot of Richard Ford books around, which didn't strike me as weird the more I thought about it.

Later we went to a nearby comics store where I didn't buy anything but ogled Arne Bellsdorf's graphic novel BABY'S IN BLACK about the early years of the Beatles, and the giant box containing Chris Ware's BUILDING STORIES. What I hear about Comics These Days is that nobody particularly likes The New 52 and Green Lantern has been unfairly maligned by its terrible 2011 adaptation.

On the train back to New York I read part of Daniel Wolff's THE FIGHT FOR HOME, about rebuilding in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. I picked this up at the library after reading an op-ed the author wrote about Hurricane Sandy and Asbury Park, and was originally looking for his book about that city, but now there's some common ground (sadly) between them.

Reading on the Road: Lonely and dreaming of the West Coast

By the time you read this I'll already be on the way to a few glorious days in Washington, Idaho and California. I heard that it's been cool and pleasant most of the summer and is supposed to be fiery hot death starting today, but hey, what can you do.

I'm feeling the need to have a stack of paperbacks to work through on the planes -- call it an analog craving -- so I'm toting Jonathan Franzen's debut THE TWENTY-SEVENTH CITY, John Updike's RABBIT, RUN and Matt Long's THE LONG RUN with plans to resupply at one of my favorite bookstores.

Photo: pdxdiver

And they all fell under their spell

"Puritanism had landed smack on that rock and after regaining its strength at the expense of the soft-hearted Indians had thrown its steeples and stone walls all across Connecticut, leaving Rhode Island to the Quakers and Jews and antinomians and women."

I cannot lie, I picked up this book because of TV. As mentioned in my library queue post, I had to watch the pilot of "Eastwick," which I enjoyed slightly at best, and began to question that this premise had fueled not only a novel but also a movie, a play, a musical and two TV pilots prior to this one. The show has since been canceled, but I resolved not to judge author John Updike's work based on, for example, being asked to pretend that Lindsay Price is unattractive when she has her hair up and her glasses on. (Come on!)

The first surprise waiting for me in THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK was that it was set in my former home state of Rhode Island. The second, that this book is very funny and cutting. And the third, that this book isn't really about witches at all. You already knew that, because you're smart, but I'm just getting there now.

It's true that Alexandra, Jane and Sukie, three friends in the bucolic town of Eastwick, are all witches. But their neighbors don't suspect and dislike them because of their powers, but rather because they're all divorcées rumored to be sleeping with some of the town's married men. In fact, they all are, and continue to do so after the appearance of wealthy stranger Daryl Van Horne, who -- spoiler, because I feel like it -- embarks on separate affairs with all three after a Halloween night to remember in which they all get high and have a foursome in his custom hot tub. (Speaking of Bad Sex in Fiction though! Like the other sex scenes in the book, I found this one alternately funny and over-detailed; I think the author goes out of his way to make them untitillating.)

While carrying a moderate load of scorn for the radicalism outside their borders, especially after one of their lovers runs away with a teenage girl and goes underground, the witches participate in it in this trickle-down capacity, mostly heedless of the consequences until their arrangement with Van Horne goes awry. Updike attributes this to their desire to heal others, which I read as a fairly tongue-in-cheek summation of their own justifications for the affairs, although from reading around I see the debate over how the author really regards these women has been going on more or less since it was published. In some ways, they're far ahead of their fellow citizens, but prove to be just as petty and mean as them when they have to be.

Maybe it's embarrassingly on the nose to use images of witchcraft to portray these three working single mothers, standard bearers of feminist change -- and in case you don't get it, Updike finally delivers the sanctimonious stay-at-home mother saying of them, "I don't know why those women bother to go on living, whores to half the town and not even getting paid. And those poor neglected children of theirs, it's a positive crime." (To be fair, her husband was having an affair with one of them.) But I thought it was clever. This book in fact spills over with cleverness; one potent image contained both a dirty joke and a semiotician's dream of an analogy. The author flirts with obviousness -- a late scene set in a church contains a Randishly pompous, interminable speech -- but doesn't fall in love with it.

My exposure to Updike before this has been slim but I own RABBIT, RUN and am looking forward to checking out more of his books. At the same time, I'm not all that curious about the 1987 movie or the 2008 sequel to this book, THE WIDOWS OF EASTWICK; I guess I'm satisfied with the ending of the story as presented here.

FTC cover-assery: This was a library book and the back cover copy (this edition) calls it a "hexy, sexy novel." Oh, the wrongness.

Post-Its: Smiling while reading aloud edition

Endearing if done right; more than a little creepy if done wrong.

Widener is still overrated: Harvard just dropped an unspecified amount of money on John Updike's personal papers, including letters, review copies with his notes in them and golf score cards(1). The author, who graduated 1954 but according to the Globe only set one short story at his alma mater, used Widener Library to research several of his books including 2006's TERRORIST. Well, to each his own. (Boston Globe)

In other news, water wet, sky blue: As in pretty much every sector save H1N1 vaccines, consumer spending on books is down right now, because Dan Brown failed to save the publishing industry he was previously accused of killing. Burn him! (NY Times)

This game is a metaphor for the decline of contemporary culture: Can you tell Dustin "Screech" Diamond's memoir BEHIND THE BELL from Ernest Hemingway's FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS(2)? (The Daily Beast)

Still two months left to be good: One of the items in the legendary/scary Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog is a $200,000 "Algonquin round table experience," in which you get a scintillating dinner party with writers(3) like Christopher Buckley, Adam Gopnik and Malcolm Gladwell. On the bright side, the proceeds from this ridiculous expenditure(4) will be donated to a great charity called First Book. (Via WSJ)

Believe the hype: This may just be ancestral pride shining through but I am super excited that a Swedish (5) adaptation of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO will hit theatres here next year. It had looked for a while that an American company was going to buy it only to remake it, and that was worrying. (Variety)

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(1) RABBIT, ROUGH?
(2) In an earlier version of this post it read FROM WHOM THE BELL TOLLS. It tolls from thee! Ernest, turn off thy ringtone!
(3) The catalog guarantees eight authors will be there, as if the experience weren't commodified enough already.
(4) Insider tip: You can have dessert in the Round Table Room at the Algonquin any day for way, way, way, way less than this, although it's exorbitant when compared to a normal restaurant. Get the tiramisu.
(5) I have heard your blonde joke, and it sucks.

Scene from a library queue

As of this morning:

Note: There is debate whether the above proves that the library hates geeks or nerds, and having been subjected to several other pilots in the past few weeks, I can confidently say that "Eastwick" was not the worst.

Scenes from a library queue

This probably won't be of interest to any of you all, but I'm putting it up as a sort of artifact anyway:



NOTES
1. Missing from this list is ORYX AND CRAKE, which I wanted to read before YEAR OF THE FLOOD.
2. I was reading a paper I wrote on EL DESORDEN DE TU NOMBRE (THE DISORDER OF YOUR NAME) and nothing about the book jogged my memory. Reading begets re-reading, or fear of loss of long-term memory?
3. Clarice Lispector's book wasn't actually reviewed in the Times; it was a review of a biography of her that piqued my interest.
4. "Know" is a strong word; he's actually my editor at a certain publishing trade magazine. No, he didn't ask or force me to read his book, and yes, this means I probably won't blog about it either way.
5. Apparently living in NYC and owning a full set of SANDMAN is mutually exclusive. I've been meaning to do this for a while, so I guess I can wait a little longer.
6. Through machinations too complicated to be explained here, I was exposed to the new television adaptation "Eastwick," which... well... half a thumb up for Rebecca Romijn and Lindsay Price who turn on the charm despite being ridiculously miscast. Anyway, I was talking about the premise with a coworker and thought I should give Updike the benefit of the doubt that he wrote a better book than ABC could make a show.
7. On the first recommendation I already sat up and took notice, but the second time this book was recommended to me inside of a month I started seriously scrounging around for a copy.
8. I usually have one blockbuster rotting away in my queue at all times -- you can't see it, but I'm 241st of 246 holds. Good thing I'm in no hurry.

As Heard At The 2009 Brooklyn Book Festival

Six panels and two fun events later...

"I'm not even sure people are reading INFINITE JEST now."
--Lev Grossman, getting his BHD status revoked for never having heard of Infinite Summer. This was only the third most insane thing I heard at this panel on David Foster Wallace and John Updike, actually.

"If there are people out there who want me to co-write a vampire or zombie novel, I'm down."
--T Cooper: Novelist whose work I most want to get into after hearing him speak.

"When people get ahold of technology, they're bound to do something stupid with it."
--Keith Gessen of n+1 (who backed up this claim with an example from Philip Roth, so at least he was keeping the brow high). Same panel as T Cooper, and unfortunately they were both mowed down by a fellow panelist who used the opportunity to complain that she wasn't a famous best-selling author yet. Sorry, guys!

"It's the difference betwen having sex with a person and having sex with a piece of technology."
--John Freeman of Granta on e-books. Freeman was incredibly insightful on a panel moderated by blogger Maud Newton, but this analogy is questionable on a few levels.

"Bonobos laugh when they see something weird -- as if to say, 'That's weird, but it's okay now.' Satire is the opposite. It's seeing something perfectly normal and it scares the hell out of you."
--Jeffrey Rotter (THE UNKNOWN KNOWNS*) holding his own against seriously funny co-panelists Sloane Crosley and Gary Shteyngart.

"I think in five years this will be the Brooklyn Blogging Festival."
--Rabbi Simcha Weinstein is probably right, but that is still sad.

"We should start blogs. We could get famous through our blogs."
--girl behind me at the Crossroads coffee stand. It's already starting! Noooooooooo... (She went on to say, "I have a burlesque blog"--pause while I struggle mightily not to turn around, 'cause wouldn't you?--"but I haven't been to any performances recently." A burlesque review blog! The world is so full of a number of things.)

"I have never kissed a man onstage."
--David Cross checked that one off his list at the Happy Ending event with the help of Jonathan Ames. Just thought the Internet should know one way or the other. And there is video (not shot by me).

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*Correction: I incorrectly referred to the title of Jeffrey Rotter's book earlier as THE KNOWN UNKNOWNS. Sorry, Mr. Rotter.

Remembering Updike at the register

Permit me to parade my own ignorance once more: When I was away last weekend, as is my custom, I went into a few bookstores. Well, if you count airport varieties, six to be exact. Of those six, only one seemed to have any interest in selling more Updike in the wake of the announcement of his passing -- and maybe it was just coincidence that THE WIDOWS OF EASTWICK was in the front next to other new hardcovers like 2666.

I browsed at two airport bookstores (large and small), 2 branches of 1 indie secondhand bookstore, 1 major chain and 1 major secondhand chain. I pray you believe me when I say I absolutely did not intend to do this research, it was just a lark. (Also I only bought two books among all these stops, and please, where is my damn medal?) One of the indie secondhand bookstores had the best selection of Updike, but you had to go all the way to the back corner to find him properly alphabetized. The small airport bookstore didn't have any; the large one had WIDOWS up front and TERRORIST in the fiction section. The major chain couldn't compete with the secondhand in terms of stock, but it was the only bookstore to have the one I would have bought if I were starting a study of Updike, RABBIT, RUN. (Maybe people in my line of thinking bought out the copies at the other locations.)

I don't think it would be disrespectful to set up a shelf, tag it "Honoring Updike" and have it where casual visitors like me would see it first. I happened to notice at the major chain the display of a writer who is not dead but whose health is a matter of discussion with all of his books -- Philip Roth. My shoppin' buddy asked what book I (though no Roth scholar) would start with, and I noticed the cover turned out on the Roth shelf was THE DYING ANIMAL from 2001. THE DYING ANIMAL is the third in a series, but it was made into a movie last year (with applicable tie-in edition last year. So are browsers more likely to buy the one with Ben Kingsley's name on the cover? They must be banking on it. (I suggested GOODBYE, COLUMBUS, which I prefer over PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT, by the way.)