Anger’s volume (the first of two), complete with lots of photos including crime scenes and contrastingly beautiful head shots, was originally published almost like a zine in France in 1959. So many people were enthralled by the lurid gossip in its pages that it gained quite a cult following before it was published here in the US in 1965.
Drawing outrage for decades, the book has been blasted for its possibly false accusations, plagiarism, and lack of taste–particularly in the bloody photos. You could also add hypocrisy to the list. With all the book's disdain for the gossip columnists of the time–one of whom is lovingly referred as “that syndicated, sob-sister, mutant, deadline hunting pecker”–Anger himself is just as bad (if not worse) in his exploitation of movie stars' and starlets' biggest heart breaks.
While the scandals and the public's insatiable need to hear about them haven’t changed much since the days of Fatty Arbuckle and Frances Farmer, one significant development has occurred. Now a days, the number of Kenneth Angers out there is innumerable, anybody on the street can be a gossip columnist, all he/she needs is a celebrity sighting and within minutes it can be on Gawker stalker. Also, it used to be that the studio system would try to hide the shame of drug addiction, ugly breakups, and madness. These days, celebrities are more than willing to sell the dirtthemselves.
So in a way Hollywood Babylon, with all its lurid and tasteless gossip, is a bit like a stroll down memory lane, to–unbelievably, a slightly more dignified era. But really, it’s just vintage Star magazine stuff written with a much more snobby and charming tone.
Tapping the Source is celebrated as an ultimate surfer novel. Kem Nunn gives us the world of Huntington Beach circa 1984, a world where the old ideals of riding the waves has been drug through the filth ridden sand, where surfers, bikers, drugs and sex collide, making it also an ultimate novel about innocence lost.
Ike is a hick from a depressing dessert town. He’s an expert at fixing bikes and pretty much nothing else, so when his sexy wild sister, Ellen, disappears after running away, he feels totally helpless. Then, one day a surfer rides into town, scared and angry with a list of names – the names of the three men Ellen headed to Mexico with and never came back. They reside in Huntington Beach, so Ike heads out there to find them.
It’s a great noir set up with a decidedly non-typical noir protagonist. Far from a jaw-busting hero, Ike is really just a naive kid, constantly failing and bumbling his “investigation”. He finds help in the unexpected friendship with a man named Preston. Preston is now a rowdy, delinquent biker but once ruled the beach as a top surfer with Hound Adams, Ike’s top suspect for the possible murder of his sister.
Together the two unlike guys form a bond, a bond that just might, with the help of some killer waves and the spirit of surfing, turn them back on the the right path in life. Sadly, sin wins, and they fall very fast onto much darker paths. The tone of the book shifts to the very seedy and exploitive with some pretty explicit scenes and ultimately total whacked out craziness.
It’s not a light hearted read, but it is one that’s tons of exploitation fun and it’s really made me curious about author Nunn, even prompting me to give his ill fated HBO show John from Cincinnati a chance - which was a mistake - stick to his novels.
The Lovely Bones, the surprise 2002 hit from then up-and-comer Alice Sebold was a book I resisted for a long time (too many Book Club endorsements just make me lose interest), so I was surprised when Jim began the book and got all excited, making comparisons to Donna Tartt's misunderstood gem, The Little Friend.
The story is narrated by Susie Salmon, a young girl who looks down from heaven on those she loves in the aftermath of her brutal rape and murder. It's a fine line to walk since it could easily tip to the exploitative, real crimey side of things or land on the overly saccharine heaveny side but, to her credit, Sebold manages, for the most part, to balance everything beautifully.
For the first 250 pages or so, your nights will be long as it’s really hard to put down. The horrific crime is ingeniously tempered by the non-sacchrine knowledge that the victim/narrator is someplace better; the depiction of heaven is also pretty brilliant and, to my joy, totally non-denominational.
But there's a significant shift in the latter part of the book, a shift that has certainly helped to set the book apart from the hundreds of movie-like thrillers published every month, a shift that I'm sure Sebold decided to go with in an attempt to defy people that wanted a movie-like thriller. I'm sorry to say that, in my own opinion, this is where the book looses a lot of its momentum. Focusing on the long term realistic loose ends of the surviving loved ones' pain and recovery, the ache of injustice and the difficulty of moving on, the conclusion is decent and fair thematically, I just wish I was more engagegd.
But enough nitpicking the ending, The Lovely Bones is still a pretty phenomenal book and worth a read if you’re not one of the millions that have have. Sebold has a clear and unique voice that deserves all the praise its earned.
I was fascinated with long haired, silver clawed geek god Alan Moore long before I ever read a word he’s written. Now, after completing his magnum opus Watchmen, I'm just as obsessed as the everybody else whose read this book. It’s the mostly highly praised graphic novel of all time, often called “the Citizen Kane of comic books”; it’s the only graphic novel to land a spot on TIME Magazines “100 best English-language novels” and to win the coveted Hugo award. And yes, it’s about superheroes.
My expectations were high and they were met. I started it at JFK and read it straight through the flight, finishing right as I landed in Texas. It was the quickest four hours ever.
The plot, with its multiple shifts in time, numerous mysteries, dystopic politics, pages from a pirate comic book called Tales of the Black Freighter (which is read by a minor character), and chapters excerpted from a super hero tell-all called Under the Hood is, to say the least, complex. But it's also morally complex: the superheroes here are far from infallible; one in particular, The Comedian, is actually a sadistic rapist as well as a government-funded war hero. And the guy you sometimes end up rooting for is a ruthless vigilante weirdo who is beyond bitter towards the humans he has tried to save.
In direct revolt against the traditional super hero comic book, Watchmen is bleak, pessimistic, and harsh–in fact, there's a major part in the ending that I think audiences will have a very difficult time dealing with if it remains unchanged in the upcoming film adaptation. It's also an homage to the genre that so inspired it, Moore and artist David Gibbons are just taking the whole history of comics and running all the way with it; pushing the boundaries of the graphic novel itself, as well as our perceptions of good and evil.
It’s not totally perfect, the end has too much direct exposition for my taste, but it comes pretty close, and it's certainly as good as they all say. Which is why all the fans are worried about the upcoming movie. Moore himself has already taken his name off the production (twice bitten by Heather Graham and Natalie Portman) and passing on all his royalties to Dave Gibbons. In the articles I've read (in EW) director Zack Snyder (a fan himself) swears his film is as true to its source material as possible–a claim I might have bought if he hadn't changed the book's tights and brights costumes to "more menacing" modern looking slick black materials. Idiot.
We've been finding just so much inspiration at work from the compilation Play Pen: New Children’s Book Illustration by Martin Salisbury. It’s irresistible bright yellow cover (with a bold Marc Boutavant illustration) holds inside some of the most creative and appealing talents working today, and many of them might not be familiar to you.
Boutavant, for instance, is a French artist who’s work is simply amazing. His happy illustrations have appeared in The Times, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Martha Stewart, et al; but his work featured in Play Pen (including this spectacular drawing for a jigsaw puzzle) are from lesser known sources.
Other favorites include: Meng Chia Lai with her eerie, messy and child-like non digital pieces; Kveta Pacovska’s bold, funky, almost deconstructivist work; the vivid woodblock prints of Isabelle Vandenabeele; and the outstanding paper collages from Istvan Schritter; I could go on and on.
The greatest thing about this book is seeing all the unique voices. Sure there are trends (retro, paper cutouts, photo montage to name a few), but it’s nice to see so many people working in their very own styles, which is sometimes a rarity in the art world.
Originally serialize in twelve parts by Fantagraphics, Charles Burns’s Black Hole has finally been compiled into one volume. The result was dubbed by TIME Magazine, “one of the most stunning graphic novels yet published” (an honor I'd actually bestow on Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron), and I agree that there's a lot here to wow you. My only complaint is that I miss the full color covers of the original comics which I wish had been included.
The art, in stark black and white, is bold, explicit, and uncomfortable–which works perfectly for a tale of sex, drugs, mutants, and murder. While the murder mystery itself might not have the most satisfying conclusion, it’s part of a bigger world that is satisfyingly eerie. Set in the 1970s in the suburbs of Seattle, an STD is making literal monsters out of teenagers. It’s an exaggerated version of the already horrifying and alienating experience of adolescence taken to new heights–or are they lows?
Burns began writing the series in the early 1990s, so it may also be a reflection of a world dealing with AIDS as no longer just am incurable “gay” disease, but one that could effect anybody.
The story shifts narrators, hints at the unexplained and, with such overpowering art, at times a single page can be almost too much to take in. Also, the characters changing hairstyles can, at first, make it difficult to realize exactly who is who. But even at 352 pages, it's a quick and absorbing read–perhaps to the chagrin of Burns, who took ten years to author it–though the impact will haunt you for quite some time.
I'm With the Band: Confessions of a Groupie has been on my list of must reads for a while and my only regret is not reading it sooner. What a fantastic summer read! A read full of sex, drugs and rock and roll. But unlike my other favorite autobiography on the same subjects, The Dirt this one has a feminine heart made of pure gold.
Her crushes are genuine and earth shattering, and are described often in excerpts from her actual teenage diary like this (about Nick St. Nicholas):
"I can't believe I saw him. So near me. I touched him and felt his nearness to me and saw the green greenness of his fantastic eyes... I loved him so much when he slept. I got to touch him everywhere, listen to heart beating, kiss his hair"
"Oh my sweet blonde head is forever in fluffy pink clouds of make believe. God help me as I go though another empty month of trying too hard to forget his beautiful black-as-night hair and his incomparable loveliness created in God's finest hand..."
She even makes giving blow jobs sound kind of fairly innocent:
"I showed my affection for the opposite sex in those days by giving them head, and I as very popular indeed. I tried not to think of myself as being cheap or easy or any of those other terms that were used to describe loose, free, peace-loving girls; I just wanted to show my appreciation for their music, for their taste in clothes, for their heads, hands, and hearts. I found myself in many broom closets and backseats with my head buried in many pairs of satin trousers"
Yes, it was quite a scene she got mixed up in as a kid in California, living often at the Zappa's house, where she and her gang of Groupies called the GTO's nearly made it themselves to super stardom. It's almost unbelievable how many now legendary men she encountered, inspired, or merely drooled over.
And lucky for us, she gives us all the dirt, though "dirt" is perhaps the wrong word for a book so optimistic, girlish, wide eyed, glittery and fantastically fun as this book is.
The wonderful world of Maira Kalman is both new and old to me. As a kid I loved the David Byrne children’s book Stay Up Late that she illustrated; recently I rediscovered her work when a friend recommended her fantastic book, The Principles of Uncertainty.
Theses musings and illustrations were originally published as a column in the New York Times, which I'm afraid I missed (that’s right, I only read Entertainment Weekly and New York Magazine–much like the lone sixth grade who, despite almost insurmountable peer pressure, refuses to read the Harry Potter books).
It stretches the boundaries and definition of novel, graphic novel, art book, and journal. A series of sometimes rambling, often profound reveries and observations, the book teeters on some very iffy ground for me: a navel gazing journal of a middle age zen like woman who philosophizes on the meaning of existence and revels in the mundane? It could easily be a mawkish journey that is simply not my thing at this point in my life–and yet, I was mesmerized and swayed by her honesty and her art.
I feel like it’s a book that I could come back to at different ages of my life and be affected by in new ways each time. Her soft, squishy paintings of family members, discarded furniture, wealthy women from the past and fruit offer unique, intimate experiences. It’s a very special book that is just beautiful to look at, and beautiful to read.
It’s been years since I read John Updike’s ultimate midlife crisis asshole man novel Rabbit, Run but it’s such an intense experience that I just couldn’t bring myself to read it again even to freshen my memory for this blog entry. But, because it's such an intense experience, I really didn’t have to, the story and its characters have been ingrained in my mind forever. The antics of Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom; his pregnant and blubbery boozy wife Janice; Marty Tothero, his old high school basketball coach; Ruth, the prostitute he stays with for a while; Jack, the minister who tries to steer the situation into some kind of compromise; and the parents and in-laws all leave an impression.
I’d hate to give too much away plot-wise, but for just a taste this was the tag line for the forgotten 1970 film adaptation: "3 months ago Rabbit Angstrom ran out to buy his wife cigarettes. He hasn't come home yet."
Part of an epic quartet which includes Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit At Rest, and the novella Rabbit Remembered, this was not only culturally significant in its blunt examination of the perceived traps of modern life (it’s included in TIME’s alltime greatest 100 novels), but I just read that it was also one of the first novels to use the present tense. Updike, what a visionary you are!
Don’t let the intensity scare you. I’ll be honest, it’s not a cheerful read, but it is a brilliant one.
Naked Civil Servant, the autobiography of the ultimate gay icon Quentin Crisp, is a compelling read about bravery and individuality. In a time where the concept of being gay was totally unaccepted and in fact illegal, Crisp was open about his sexuality, and even braved angry mobs on the streets as he waltzed about in full make-up and extravagant (and clearly not “straight”) fashions.
Sadly, some of his wit is lost on me simply due to the fact that some of the references are a bit dated. The book begins before the first World War and explores Crisp’s role as a complete outsider, not only to his peers, but to world events. He drifts through life very much like a gay Scarlett O'Hara, relying on the kindness of others. He openly admits his faults (his inability to hold down a job, his extreme vanity, etc) and his refreshingly honest and very funny voice is so charming and irresistible, it’s easy to understand how he became an such a legendary icon just by being himself.
"As soon as I stepped out of my mother's womb onto dry land, I
realized that I had made a mistake–that I shouldn't have come, but the
trouble with children is that they are not returnable. I felt that the
invitation had really been intended for someone else. In this I was
wrong. There had been no invitation at all, either for me or for the
brother born thirteen months earlier."
"There are three reasons
for becoming a writer. The first is that you need the money; the
second, that you have something to say that you think the world should
know; and the third is that you can't think what to do with the long
winter evenings. I expect the liveliest books are written for a
combination of all three reasons."
Published in 1968, during the sexual revolution, it probably was less controversial then than it would be now a days in these sadly homophobic times. But controversy aside, it’s a great story of staying true to one’s self. Crisp, who became a cultural phenomenon when the BBC adaptation of Naked Civil Servant (starring John Hurt) was produced in 1981, might be recognizable to younger people from his role in the trippy Orlando adaptation from 1992. He passed away at age 90 in 1999.
