Clark's a manager over here in our Internet department above
the Annex. You may have seen him talking to Sandy on the corner. Yeah, uh huh,
the blond guy, that's him. With an armful of hardbacks he's taking home to devour
over the weekend. Clark says, These books taste great – and they're good
for you, too!
Nonfiction,
Snooty Books
S,M,L,XL
by Rem
Koolhaas
There are some books that will make you into a genius as soon as you turn
back the title page, and S,M,L,XL by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas is
certainly one of them. Once you get the hang of things, the book is a remarkable
and inspiring read, covering the past 20 years of Koolhaas's work with his
firm, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). Much like LeCourbusier
in his adamant pursuit of the abstract, Koolhaas one-ups the Modernists by
proposing that modern architecture should be aggressively livable and inter-dependent.
You may experience feelings of panic when you start flipping though the pages,
but don't worry, just take a deep breath and let the fragmented typography,
skewed photographs, napkin scribbling, and yes, pictures of buildings, wash
over you like a soothing post-modern wave. It'll be OK, just let it happen.
I don't think we have many copies of Koolhaas's other book, Delirious
New York in stock at the moment, but if I were you I would look long and
hard for this seminal text that defines Manhattan as "the arena for the terminal
stage of Western civilization." Sheer mystic insanity.
The
Shock of the New by Robert
Hughes
This book evolved as a companion to the BBC program of the same name. Telling
us that Leonardo DaVinci gave the Futurist painter Martinetti "the shits"
and comparing Andrew Wyeth's Helga paintings to "pious deodorant ads," Hughes
writes about the art of the 20th century without a hint of the preciousness
or bombast common to art critics the world over. Tracing the evolution of
so called "Modern Art" from the erection of the "mechanico-phallic" Eiffel
tower, through Futurism, Suprematism, Expressionism, Pop-art, Photo-realism,
etc., the book reads like the notes of a hyper-intelligent punk rock kid wandering
the halls of the Louvre.
A
Cloud in Trousers by Christopher
Doyle
What, you've never heard of Chris Doyle? A pity. But don't feel too bad about
it, because unless you are one of those folks (like me) who spend hours reading
the boxes in the foreign section of the local video store, Chris Doyle is
a non-entity. A non-entity who happens to be one of the best cinematographers
alive today. Working with Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar Wai, Doyle has come
up with some of the most beautiful, vibrant, stylized, and color saturated
images ever found on film. This book collects images from many of the films
that Doyle has made, as well as still photographs, writing, and other artwork.
My only warning is to avoid reading the book outside on a sunny day, as the
brilliance of the pictures can cause temporary blindness.
The
Pyrotechnic Insanitarium by Mark
Dery
For those of you whose Y2K plans are to pack a nice picnic lunch and watch
the panic from the roof of a tall building, The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium
will serve as an excellent field guide. In it Dery takes on the millennia,
from the X-files to Roscrucianism, from killer clowns to turd paintings, and
comes up with an apocalyptic vision that is far more whimper than bang. His
meandering tract begins in the flames of Dreamland, (the Cony Island amusement
park where Thomas Edison once electrocuted an aging pachyderm to the delight
of the popcorn-munching crowd) and drags us kicking and screaming through
the century that brought us the Neutron bomb, Adolph Hitler, Roswell aliens,
Bill Gates, and Teletubbies. Although determinedly hip and cynical, Dery's
book smacks of the X-files credo "I want to believe," even as he lambastes
Fox Mulder for being a superstitious techno-peasant who refuses to admit that
there isn't "someone behind all this." Maybe we should stock up on guns and
canned food after all.
The
Bridge on the Drina by Ivo
Andric
What the hell is going on in the Balkans anyway? In this era of the "global
village," of freely shared information, and of 24-hour CNN simulcasts, how
is it that a large swath of Europe has fragmented into feuding tribes and
gone completely crazy? No one really knows, but Nobel
Prize winner Andric's The Bridge on the Drina sheds some light
on the history of the region and its simmering conflicts. Written in a style
as gritty and tight as a crime novel, the book traces the history of a bridge
on the Serbian border and the events that lead to its destruction during WW1.
By writing the book as historical fiction, rather than straight history, Andric
helps us understand more clearly why the disparate groups in the area have
such animosity towards one another. Not for the faint of heart, The Bridge
on the Drina is a portrait of a nation's dysfunctional childhood, one
that has led an entire people to the paryoxsm of sociopathic madness that
we watch on TV every night.
AMERICA
by Jean
Baudrillard
Most of you will probably have heard of this fella, one of the most revered
names in the post-modern pantheon. As a philosopher, he has come up with some
fairly intriguing concepts including the "simulacra" and the "hyper-real,"
but AMERICA is more about Baudrillard the drunk driver than Baudrillard
the philosopher. In this book, Baudrillard leaves the protective walls of
whichever ecole it is that he inhabits, flies to Los Angeles, rents a Mercury
Mark IV, buys a bottle of scotch and heads across the country, looking for
whatever is there. We get his commentary on freeway cloverleaves, John Ford
films, and the cinematic sensation of doing 110 MPH across the desert with
the AC cranked and a clinking highball in hand. If you've ever wanted to grab
a solipsistic French philosopher by the hair and drag him out to the middle
of Death Valley, then this is the book for you. And you'll even avoid the
unpleasantness of assault charges.
The
Trouble with Being Born by E.M.
Cioran
The best philosophers take your pain, study it for a minute and throw it right
back at you in a way that makes it sound noble, like it's good for you. Why
else would Nietzsche's dictum "that which doesn't kill me makes me stronger"
be so popular with the masses? Cioran is an old pro at suffering, and, like
a melancholic grandfather who sets you on his comfortable, afghan-wrapped
knee, he'll regale you with sad little stories that somehow make you feel
better for having heard them. No dazzling rhetoric or inescapable logic here.
Rather, a series of disjointed aphorisms that, when taken together, make a
compelling case for staying in bed, a remedy which Cioran would happily prescribe
as a solution for most of the world's ills. The ultimate cynic, he tells us
that life would be "endurable only among a humanity which no longer has any
illusions in reserve, a humanity completely disabused and delighted to be
so." Daily affirmations for the terminally apathetic.
Love's
Body by Norman
O. Brown
In the world of the aphorism, Norman O. Brown is the undisputed grand master.
A classics professor, well steeped in the psychodrama of Greek and Roman myth,
he stumbled across the work of that perverted Viennese, Sigmund Freud, and
proceeded to lose his mind entirely. Of course in his case, madness is a damn
sight preferable to sanity. In Love's Body, the corpse of Western culture
is laid on the examining table and dissected, revealing dessicated organs,
hardened arteries, and a severe case of Alzheimer's. Perhaps the book is more
logically understandable if prefaced by his earlier work, Life
Against Death, but then again, logic was one of the incurable cancers
that finally did our poor patient in. In an attempt to revivify the dead,
Brown writes his tome in the manner of the poet or the exalted mystic, hitting
us with a diatribe as inspired as a wino preacher's streetcorner rant. These
100 proof shots are best taken with a Samuel
Beckett novel as a chaser, or perhaps as a cocktail, mixed with any of
the above books to lessen the burning feeling at the back of the throat. Careful,
or you'll be dancing on your desktop after just a few.
Fiction
The
Master and Margarita by Mikhail
Bulgakov
A six-foot tall, walking, talking cat who wields a pistol like a Wild West
stunt man? A lustful neighbor transformed into a suit-coated porker? Sure,
Satan has dropped in for a quick visit to Moscow. This is Bulgakov's best
book: satirical, snide, funny as hell, sprinkled with Biblical commentary,
and packed with subtle and sophisticated criticism of the early Soviet regime.
Written in the 1920's the book barely made it past the censors, and was only
revived and re-published in the last couple decades. An absurd, twisted, and
extremely clever read.
The
Pornographers by Akiyuki
Nozaka
A great story about bumbling Japanese businessmen trying to get ahead in their
field. Of course, the field in this case is soft-core smut peddling. The story
opens with the two main characters trying to record the sounds of a couple
coupling through the floorboards of a creaky old apartment building. The recording
is perfect and yen-signs are dancing in their heads, when suddenly, right
at the crucial moment, the woman starts complaining about moldy tofu. Nokaza
has a great time wreaking havoc with traditional Japanese mores, and creates
an empathetic little group of slimeballs that even Andrea
Dworkin would love.
Miss
Lonelyhearts & Day of the Locust by Nathanael
West
Nathaniel West certainly challenges F. Scott Fitzgerald's claim of being the
greatest literary artist of his generation. His stories are bleak, maddening,
and painfully accurate portraits of an aimless era. In Miss Lonelyhearts,
a guilt-twisted alcoholic young man writes an advice column for a New York
daily, and agonizes over his inability to help the poor idiots who write to
him. Day of the Locust drags us into the tawdry world of depression-era Hollywood,
where an infernal finale awaits the two-bit actors and casting-couch producers
who inhabit it. Funnier and more tragic than the King James Bible, these are
angst-ridden, neurotic stories that diagnose the human condition as incurable,
intractable, and largely ridiculous.
Crime Fiction
Sometimes you just feel like getting a six-pack of Pabst,
swinging by McDonald's for a sack of 49 cent cheeseburgers, and going to a
Bruce Willis matinee. Ain't it great? When I feel like a good dose of literary
junk food, I head straight for the Crime Fiction section. And hey, don't knock
it, these guys can really write.
The
Big Sleep by Raymond
Chandler
If you haven't yet read any of Chandler's stuff, I envy you. Start with The
Big Sleep and just keep on goin. By the time you are finished with all
5 of his novels and the few collections of short stories, you'll be wishing
you were back at the beginning, with a beautiful reading future ahead. Chandler's
ubergumshoe, Philip Marlowe, makes Bogart look like a shallow wimp.
Pop.
1280 by Jim
Thompson
One of the quirkiest writers in the crime fiction pantheon, Jim Thompson has
created a world inhabited by a small army of twisted anti-heroes. Writing
mostly in the early fifties, his work didn't get much acclaim until the sixties,
when Stanley Kubrick based his film The Killing on one of Thompson's
novels. In the seventies Sam Peckinpah did The Getaway, and eventually
After Dark, My Sweet and The Grifters were produced, making
him one of the most successful crime writers of the era. If you've ever seen
one of these films, you'll be happy to know that the original novels are even
more convoluted, perverse, and nail-bitingly tense. In Pop. 1280 a
small-town Texas sheriff with a lazyman's credo – "most people have a
pretty fair reason for doin' what they're doin', why should I give 'em trouble?"
– gets fed up with folks giving him a hard time, and decides that killing
is the easiest way to solve his problems.
Portrait
of a Young Man Drowning by Charles
Perry
This book will have you sitting up in bed at 3:00 AM, reading furiously and
chewing your nails. Do not pick it up if your bed-partner (assuming you have
one) is bothered by your reading light. Once the story gets rolling, it is
impossible to put down as it drives you inexorably to its truly shocking conclusion.
Shocking, really, and you can tell by my reading list that I'm not easily
shocked. To top it off, the "about the author" page contains almost as much
tragedy, plot, and surprise as the story itself. I won't tell you how the
novel ends, but I'll tell you the last word – E-X-P-L-O-S-I-O-N !
The
Shark-Infested Custard by Charles
Willeford
It's hard to avoid comparisons to Hollywood when writing about crime fiction.
I mean heck, crime fiction is what made the moguls moguls after all. So, if
Jim Thompson is Kubrick, then Willeford would have to be Tarantino. In
The Shark Infested Custard, the four main characters tell of the crimes
and killings that they inadvertently stumble into. From a 14-year old corpse
in the living room to a greengrocer moonlighting as a contract hit man, these
sleazy swingers manage to make every wrong move. Funny, pathetic, and exceedingly
human, The Shark-Infested Custard is one of the most unusual crime
novels I've ever read.
In
Cold Blood by Truman
Capote
Do I really need to say anything? If you haven't yet read this book, you are
doing yourself a disservice. Heck, take a day off work and give it the attention
it deserves.
My
Dark Places by James
Ellroy
Better by far than his gruesome novels, My Dark Places is a torturous
memoir of Ellroy's investigation into the murder of his mother in 1958. By
re-examining the evidence that surrounded her death, Ellroy dives headlong
into an emotional abyss that he has successfully repressed since childhood.
One of the most honest and disturbing memoirs I have ever come across.
Low
Life: Lures and Snares of old New York by Luc
Sante
While not crime fiction per se, Low Life is great ride through the
history of New York's underclass. Thieves, grifters, and skin-poppers abound,
colossal gang wars destroy entire boroughs, and Sante's descriptions of life
in the slums of the 1800's make modern New York seem almost tame. Among other
great anecdotes, there is a hilarious blow-by-blow of a card game swindle
that almost cost Oscar Wilde $3,500.00 while he was visiting on a book tour.
Brilliant!
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