Russo rocks with Bridge of Sighs

Books now read in ’07: 98
Title: Bridge of Sighs
Author: Richard Russo
Genre: Fiction
Date Completed: 10-16
Pages: 528

Richard Russo is a superb storyteller.

His newest novel, Bridge of Sighs, is a rich and humorous and insightful as his previous works.

The novel is the story of boyhood friends; one who stays and one who goes. The friends, Lou C. Lynch – who has the unfortunate nickname, Lucy – and Bobby Marconi – now Noonan – are both 60, as is Lou’s wife, Sarah.

Lou and Sarah have lived all their lives in Thomaston, New York, where they run a series of convenience stores. Bobby has fled America for Europe, changed his name and become a well-known painter.

In Bridge of Sighs, Russo returns to his familiar theme of small-town life as he explores the relationship between Lou, Bobby and Sarah (who loves them both) as well as the boys’ relationships to their fathers. Lou is excessively devoted to his father. Bobby loathes his.

For me, this was a novel to linger over.

Books now read in ’07: 99
Title: Julie & Julia
Author: Julie Powell
Genre: Food
Date Completed: 10-19
Pages: 307

Julie Powell’s account of how she cooked her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year is entertaining enough, but ultimately disappointing. All food analogies will be strenuously avoided.

Where there's smoke . . . there isn't always fire

Books now read in ’07: 97
Title: Tree of Smoke
Author: Denis Johnson
Genre: Fiction
Date Completed: 10-6
Pages: 614

Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke is an ambitious novel that ultimately stumbles on its own ambition.

Johnson strives for some combination of Conrad (Heart of Darkness) and Greene (The Quiet American), but ultimately achieves the brilliance of neither. His Kurtz-like Colonel is only an ineffectual drunk, while the Colonel’s guilt-ridden nephew drifts into irrelevance and piracy uncertain whether he’s a quiet American or an ugly one.

The novel opens in the Philippines in 1963 and concludes in 1983 in multiple locations including Thailand, Malaysia and America. In between, of course, the action takes place in Vietnam. There are two principal stories; the first involving the Colonel and his unauthorized efforts to place a double agent in North Vietnam and the second featuring the two Houston brothers. The stories intersect briefly, and violently.

Tree of Smoke is a big, muscular novel. Johnson was going for the fences with this book, and there are some fine passages, but the whole is not greater than a sum of the parts. Tree of Smoke has its fans. Its reviews have been uniformly generous, it was shortlisted for the National Book Award and is the likely winner of that honor. Still, I didn’t like it much.

Richard Russo on Bridge of Sighs

Well into the writing of his new novel, Bridge of Sighs, Richard Russo told his agent he thought he was writing a trilogy. The problem was that Russo had three main characters and in order tell their stories – from the past to the present – he’d written more than 600 pages “with no end in sight.”

Russo’s agent said no, the book wasn’t a trilogy. Russo simply had lots of rewriting to do, rewriting that would significantly alter the structure of the book. Russo told his agent why his suggestion wouldn’t work, then went home and began to do exactly as his agent had recommended.

The result is a complex structure (very un-Russo-like, the author admits) with a story that weaves between time – the past to the present to the past again – and space – from a small town in upstate New York to Venice.

A complex structure, but a simple story, Russo said. In its simplest terms, he said, the novel is the story of boyhood friends; one who stays and one who goes. The friends, Lou C. Lynch – who has the unfortunate nickname, Lucy – and Bobby Marconi – now Noonan – are both 60, as is Lou’s wife, Sarah. “60 is the age when you look at life,” Russo said, which is what all three characters are doing.

Lou and Sarah remained all their lives in Thomaston, New York, where they run a series of convenience stores. Bobby has fled America for Europe, changed his name and become a well-known painter. “He’s given up on marriage,” said Russo, “but not on married women.” In Bridge of Sighs, Russo returns to the theme of small-town life as he explores the relationship between Lou, Bobby and Sarah as well as the boys’ relationships to their fathers. Lou is excessively devoted to his father. Bobby loathes his.

In the present, Bobby (Noonan) is painting a picture of his father that everyone assumes is a self-portrait. The famous Venetian Bridge of Sighs is in the distance. In legend, the view from the Bridge of Sighs was the last view of Venice that convicts saw before their imprisonment. The bridge name, given by Lord Byron in the 19th century, comes from the suggestion that prisoners would sigh at their final view of beautiful Venice out the window before being taken down to their cells.

In Bridge of Sighs, Russo said he wanted to explore “that depth of feeling common to all people . . . a sense of complexity. What I’m after, if not universal, is nearly so.”

Bridge of Sighs is Russo’s six novel and seventh book. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his last novel, Empire Falls.

Russo came to writing late, only realizing in his late 20s that writing might be something he could and wanted to do. He said much of his style of writing was shaped by his reading. While would-be novelists of his acquaintance consumed contemporary literature, Russo was reading Dickens, Twain and Fitzgerald.

“I was trained as an old-school writer,” he said. Dickens taught him the importance of a large canvas and the value of minor characters. Twain showed him that if you go to dark places – racism, ignorance, brutality – that you had best go armed with humor. Twain also showed him the importance of irreverence toward authority.

From Fitzgerald, Russo learned to write about the quintessential American story, that our lives need not be determined by who our parents are or where we are from, but that we have the right to reinvent ourselves.

The lessons of those authors are all on display in Russo’s Bridge of Sighs.

National Book Award Finalists Announced

Fiction

• Fieldwork, Mischa Berlinski
• Varieties of Disturbance, Lydia Davis
• Then We Came to the End, Joshua Ferris
• Tree of Smoke, Denis Johnson
• Like You’d Understand, Anyway, Jim Shepard

Non-Fiction

• Brother, I’m Dying, Edwidge Danticat
• God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens
• Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, Woody Holton
• Ralph Ellison: A Biography, Arnold Rampersad
• Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, Tim Weiner

McMurtry examines six Western massacres

Books now read in ’07: 96
Title: Oh What A Slaughter
Author: Larry McMurtry
Genre: History
Date Completed: 10-4
Pages: 161

All six of my regular readers are aware of my penchant for the brief biography as best represented by Penguin Lives. This book, by novelist Larry McMurtry, fits squarely into that mold. With the pictures and white space, it is generous to describe it as 161 pages of narrative. (There is also an index and bibliography. Bibliographies are always welcome.)

McMurtry isn’t trying to provide a comprehensive account of six western massacres, from 1846 to 1890, which are the subject of his brief inquiry. Oh What A Slaughter is more of an essay than history, an extended rumination on the violence that man can do (and did) to fellow man in the settling of the West.

The massacres that McMurtry examines are the Sacramento River Massacre, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the Sand Creek Massacre, the Marias River Massacre, the Camp Grant Massacre and the Wounded Knee Massacre. Three – Mountains Meadows, Sand Creek and Wounded Knee – are well known. The others less so.

For my taste, McMurtry strikes exactly the right balance between too much and too little. Those who want to know more (and I don’t) can turn to the helpful bibliography at the end of the book.

New York has a great article on The Best Book You've Never Read. I've read three of the books and throughly agree these are books to add to your reading pile.

They are:

• The Accidental by Ali Smith. Compelling and creepy.
• Drama City by George Pelecanos. George is the best.
• Unless by Carol Shields. I agree with the observation that it is important the late Shields continue to be read.

Three books on the list I have not read, but about which I have something to say are:

• Mortals by Norman Rush. After reading Mating I can't bring myself to read Rush again.
• The Wife by Meg Wolitzer. No one is funnier than Wolitzer. I will seek this book out.
• The Road Home by Jim Harrison. Love Harrison. This book is in my reading pile.

On Dogs and Ann Patchett

In society, fiction lays the groundwork for a compassionate life, said author Ann Patchett, who appeared at a Borders in Northern Virginia last night to promote her new book, Run.

“The importance of fiction in society is that we need to imagine the lives of others,” Patchett said. “That is the essence of a compassionate life.”

The 43-year-old Patchett quickly engaged the audience with her disarming candor, delightful sense of humor and bold, animated reading style.

Although she is on tour to promote Run, Patchett said she has actually embarked on the “book tour of failing eyesight,” as she donned a pair of reading glasses. She attributed the need for reading glasses to William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice. Midway through the novel, she said, her eyesight began to fail. She’s currently reading the large-print version of Henry James’ The Golden Bowl.

The book tour is also about Bel Canto and Truth & Beauty, her two previous books. “People come for your last book,” she said. Bel Canto propelled Patchett into the upper ranks of American authors – it was short-listed for the National Book Critics 2001 award for fiction and won the 2002 PEN/Faulkner prize for fiction. In Truth & Beauty, Patchett turned to non-fiction – her first such effort – with a powerful memoir about her decades-long friendship with the late author, Lucy Grealy.

“I love that book,” Patchett said. “It’s where I put my memories.”

In response to audience questions, Patchett said she is never surprised by the direction her writing takes because she spends a great deal of time in preparation before she begins writing. She expressed skepticism of authors who talk airily about their characters seizing control of the narrative, suggesting it was unprofessional on their part.

When asked about writing outside her realm of personal experience – Bel Canto was about an opera singer held hostage at a Japanese embassy in South America – Patchett said, “Writing about what you know is OK if what you know is interesting . . . but there’s nothing going on with me.”

She said her work style is haphazard and that she does not write every day. “I don’t have something to say every day,” Patchett said.

Patchett received an unusual introduction. The Borders employee read a brief essay she had written for Outside magazine about the importance of making a loving commitment to a dog. Her essay concludes:

Dogs know something about love writ large. The rotten part is that their life span is so much shorter than ours. Barring some seriously bad luck, I will outlive Rose by a large margin. She is 11 now. She has cataracts, and her back legs are weak. When we take long hikes, I always wind up carrying her home on my shoulders. Rose has taught me how to be a better person. I'm not sure I've taught her anything, except how to tell me when she wants another biscuit. Rose could not be a better dog. When she dies, I imagine I will howl like her ancestors, but the inevitable end of a relationship is no reason not to go there in the first place.

During her talk, Patchett said she was glad she wrote Truth & Beauty because the writing helped her deal with the loss of her friend and that now the book gave people a reason to ask her about her feelings around the loss of Lucy. She said people want to talk about those feelings, but seldom have the opportunity.

I never do this sort of thing with an author. I never assume we’re making some sort of connection, but this must have felt like an invitation.

After the reading, as Patchett prepared to sign my copies of Run and Bel Canto, I said, I’d love talk with you about dogs. Do you have dogs? she asked. Two, I said. Black-top corgis. Gracie and Dolly. She paused between books and fished something from her purse. It was photographs of her dog, Rose.

Somehow I found myself telling Patchett about last year when I lost my mother and my beloved seven-year-old corgi, Regis, in a matter of months. I’d had five years to prepare for mom’s death from cancer, but Regis’ death came quickly and unexpectedly. I was away on business when he was put down and had no time to prepare for the loss. When my wife called with the news I was on a shuttle bus at the airport and, at 52, I sobbed. I sobbed all through a sleepless night and was morose for weeks. It’s still hard to think about him. It’s hard to explain, I said, and I feel bad, but it was harder to lose him than my mom. It was the expected vs. the unexpected.

Later, after returning home, I opened Bel Canto to the title page to see what Patchett had written. She said, “To John, From my good dog to your good dogs. I understand. Ann Patchett.”

I think she does understand, and in that understanding she derives her power as a novelist.

Lethem's comic debut this week

An interesting article on Jonathan Lethem's debut for Marvel Comics can be found at Comic Book Resources. Lethem is the author of Marvel's revival of Omega the Unknown. The book is on the stands and in the comic shops Wednesday.

Scenes from the 2007 National Book Festival

It's hard to beat the location of the National Book Festival, held annually on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Above, that, of course, is the Washington Monument. Author Terry Pratchett, was very, very popular.

Two historians -- Michael Beschloss on top and James Swanson on bottom. Swanson wrote the fine Manhunt.

Joyce Carol Oates and Mercer Mayer were also big attractions. Mayer was the illustrator for the 2007 Book Festival poster.

Offutt's short story collection, Seiffert's new novel are both superb works

Books now read in ’07: 93
Title: Kentucky Straight
Author: Chris Offutt
Genre: Fiction
Date Completed: 9-23
Pages: 167

Books now read in ’07: 94
Title: Afterwards
Author: Rachel Seiffert
Genre: Fiction
Date Completed: 9-25
Pages: 321

Books now read in ’07: 95
Title: Machiavelli, Philosopher of Power
Author: Ross King
Genre: Biograph
Date Completed: 9-26
Pages: 238

In 1992, Chris Offutt made his debut as a writer with Kentucky Straight, a collection of nine short stories set in the Appalachian region of eastern Kentucky. These stories are a powerful, sobering reflection of a section of American where superstition and ignorance hold sway and where life can be short and brutal and is as limited as the view of a patch sky overshadowed by thick stands of trees and endless hills. Offutt never matched the power and beauty of these stories in his later works. We can only hope that a new collection of stories is waiting to emerge.

Rachel Seiffert first came to my attention when her novel, The Dark Room, was short-listed for the Booker Prize. Her new novel, Afterwards, has yet to garner any prize nominations, but is a superior work and one that forces me to consider Seiffert with new respect and regard.

Afterwards is the story of Alice, a young British woman raised by her mother and grandparents. Her Gran has recently died, leaving Alice to spend more time alone with her grandfather. Alice loves her grandfather, but finds him emotionally remote and socially awkward. His emotional distance both frustrates and angers her.

Alice becomes even more disconcerted when her grandfather establishes a shaky emotional bond with her boyfriend, Joseph. Alice is slowly falling in love with Joseph, but finds that, like her grandfather, he withholds something of himself from her. He can become silent, distant and is inclined to vanish for days without explanation.

Their behavior, that of Joseph and Alice's grandfather, is shaped by their experiences in war – her grandfather in Kenya in the 1950s during the Mau Mau uprising and Joseph more recently in Northern Ireland.

Part of Seiffert’s skill as a novelist is her ability to balance the dichotomies that exist among the characters and to which she is drawn as a writer. Afterwards is a tender love story and a frank anti-war novel. Seiffert is, at once, both gentle in her treatment of her characters – there are no villains here – yet unsparingly, brutal in exposing the damage that war has wreaked upon them.

Afterwards is a profoundly sweet book. It also profoundly wise in the author’s understanding of people and how past events shape their present.

Ross King’s Machiavelli Philosopher of Power is rather humdrum. After almost eight years with Dick Cheney as Vice President, Machiavelli appears neither exceptionally evil nor preternaturally clever. King fails to make the claim for Machiavelli’s relevance today. This is a disappointing entry in HarperCollins’ Eminent Lives series of short biographies.

Finn and Glasshouse both superb books

Books now read in ’07: 90
Title: Finn
Author: Jon Clinch
Genre: Fiction
Date Completed: 9-16
Pages: 283

Books now read in ’07: 91
Title: Glasshouse
Author: Charles Stross
Genre: Science Fiction
Date Completed: 9-21
Pages: 335

Books now read in ’07: 92
Title: This Shape We’re In
Author: Jonathan Lethem
Genre: Fiction
Date Completed: 9-21
Pages: 55

Two books could not be more different than Finn and Glasshouse – Finn is set on the banks of the Mississippi in the mid-19^th Century, while Glasshouse is set several centuries in the future – yet I thoroughly enjoyed them both.

Finn is a bold re-imagining of a classic work of American literature. The Finn of the title is Huck Finn’s “Pap,” a violent, willful, doomed man. Author Jon Clinch provides the reader with both a father and a mother for Huckleberry Finn, surely one of the most iconic figures in American literature. Huck’s parentage, as envisioned by Clinch, is extraordinary, yet probable.

But this book does belong to Huck. Just as Pap had a only a cameo role in Huckleberry Finn, so Huck has only a brief appearance in Finn. This is his father’s book, and his story is given to us in a powerful, lyrical, original voice.

I hope the National Book Award judges are paying attention. This book deserves further notice.

Glasshouse is by Charles Stross, the premiere science fiction writer today. It begins – as this genre often does – on a far, distance world in a far, distant time where humans routinely back themselves up (like we do our computers) and can take virtually any shape they desire from that of a centaur to a sexy woman with four arms (and she knows how to use them).

The genius of Glasshouse is that an assortment of humans who have recently undergone memory wipes volunteer (sort of) for an experiment that results in them living under conditions similar to life in the mid-20^th Century. There’s something going on below the surface, of course, and discovering exactly what the great experiment is really about is among the joys of this entertaining book.

Ultimately, Glasshouse is not so much a space opera as an old-fashioned prison break. It is another superb effort by Charlie Stross.

As for Jonathan Lethem’s This Shape We’re In I dunno. I have no clue what it’s about.

Here's a bookseller that gets it wrong

"Fine in Fine dust jacket. This book is in fine condition in every respect except for a slight remainder mark which supposedly detracts from this books value. It does not."

Sorry, baby, but it does. I skipped this book for one twice the price. Collectors value condition and there are two things I hate: remainder marks and price-clipped dust jackets.

Shirley draws a violation in Can I Keep My Jersey?

Books now read in ’07: 89
Title: Can I Keep My Jersey?
Author: Paul Shirley
Genre: Basketball
Date Completed: 9-12
Pages: 322

I had every reason to like this book. Shirley is a Kansas kid, as am I. While he didn’t play for my alma mater, Kansas, he did earn a starting role for Big 12 rival Iowa State and I saw him play on several occasions. Too, this book was recommended by a friend with impeccable judgment in books.

So I had every reason to like Can I Keep My Jersey?, but I didn’t like it at all.

I didn’t like it for a lot of reasons. Shirley isn’t as smart or as funny as he thinks. The kid could do with a dose of self-awareness. He actually uses words like “homo” and "retard,” while blithely criticizing professional basketball players for their narcissistic ways. Shirley thinks of himself as witty, but he’s really just sarcastic – and that doesn’t make a funny book, only a sad one.

He condemns anyone with a religious faith based on the actions of a few professional basketball players – surely (no pun intended) not a sampling truly reflective of believers anywhere and which misses the point about faith in any event.

But my biggest bone of contention with Paul Shirley is on two fronts. First, he completely fails to enjoy or to appreciate adventures that most people will never have the opportunity to experience. He plays in Greece, Spain and Russia, but only offer up a litany of complaints about his foreign experiences. It’s as if none of this touches this kid in any meaningful way. It's all about Paul.

Finally, Shirley seems no different from the other professional players he is so quick to distance himself from. Shirley is an engineering major and, after graduation from college, he would certainly be well on his way to a good career and a respectable income. Instead, he shuttles about the NBA, the CBA and foreign teams in pursuit of his “dream” to play in the NBA. More accurately, Shirley doesn’t play in the NBA so much as hold down a seat on the bench and wait for a blow-out – by either team – so he can literally see a few seconds of action.

Shirley is contemptuous of the values of his fellow NBA colleagues, yet I do not see that his are so different. As for his writing, it is a lot like his play in the NBA, best in limited doses.

Books now read in ’07: 88
Title: The Accidental Time Machine
Author: Joe Haldeman
Genre: Science Fiction
Date Completed: 9-3
Pages: 276

It’s been a busy week with little time for reading. I did complete Joe Haldeman’s The Accidental Time Machine (more on it later) and I plowed through about four issues of The New Yorker (I’m now up to date). Work, which took me to Boston, consumed most of my time, although work was a bit book related.

Book related in that Doris Kearns Goodwin was the keynote speaker at my company’s meeting on Tuesday in Boston and I was her escort. Ms. Goodwin dazzled the audience, receiving a standing ovation for her discussion of Lincoln, LBJ and FDR. Her speaking skills mirror her skills as a writer -- she knows the power of a good story. I found Ms. Goodwin to be charming. It's no surprise that she is exceptionally intelligent and knowledgeable on current events. I did not expect her to be so funny.

(FYI, I have four or five first editions written by Ms. Goodwin. She signed all those last year at the National Book Festival on the Mall in Washington, D.C.)

I attended a luncheon Thursday in which Tom Brokaw was the keynote speaker. I had hoped to have two books signed by Mr. Brokaw. That did not work out. Mr. Brokaw is slightly more unapproachable than Ms. Goodwin.

I did succeed in having Bill Rodgers sign three books. Mr. Rodgers (no not that Mr. Rodgers), won the Boston Marathon in 1975, 1978, 1979 and 1980. He was, for a brief span of time, the greatest American marathon and currently, in any historical ranking of American marathon greats, would take second only to Olympic gold medal winner Frank Shorter.

The time machine in Joe Haldeman’s new book really is accidental. A push of a button and grad-school dropout Matt Fuller’s calibrator disappears only to re-appear seconds later. Another push and it disappears again.

Matt, of course, turns himself into a human guinea pig and goes along for the ride. The machine disappears for longer and longer periods of time and, since the time machine travels one way – into the future – Matt can only continue to push the button traveling farther and farther into the future in the hope of finding the technology that will allow him to return to the past.

The Accidental Time Machine is all about the journey and Matt’s is an enjoyable one.

I read so you don't need to

Books now read in ’07: 86
Title: Death of a Writer
Author: Michael Collins
Genre: Fiction
Date Completed: 8-31
Pages: 307

Books now read in ’07: 87
Title: Edith Wharton
Author: Hermione Lee
Genre: Biography
Date Completed: 9-1
Pages: 762

Give these two books a pass. If you absolutely must read Michael Collins, I recommend The Keepers of Truth. And, instead of delving into Hermione Lee’s tedious biography of Edith Wharton, I suggest, instead, that you read the novels of Mrs. Wharton. The average reader can easily read a half-dozen novels by Wharton in the same span of time it takes to slog through this biography.

Death of a Writer provides few answers to its many mysteries, but that is the least of its shortcomings. It begins as an exploration of and satire on the hypocrisy of the literary/academic world. It devolves into a confusing account of a rogue cop, who may have killed his first wife. Finally, it wants to be a serious meditation on morality and mortality, but the result is one of those tiresome novels in which the narrative is allowed to proceed in fits and starts, interrupted at every turn by the banal, philosophical musings of its characters.

Hermione Lee’s biography of Edith Wharton is overly long, largely because neither Ms. Lee nor her editors exercised any judgment in what to exclude. This biography would have benefited greatly by the excision of about 200 pages. As it stands it reads like the efforts of a doctoral student who 1) can’t decide what among her voluminous research she should exclude so, instead, decides to exclude nothing, or 2) wants to demonstrate her considerable erudition on the subject at hand by filling the book with everything.

Edith Wharton is burdened by excessive lists, especially of names, that do nothing to shed any light on Ms. Wharton. Additionally, the emphasis Ms. Lee has given to various aspects of Wharton’s life are, to put it kindly, curious. She devotes an inordinate amount of time to the topic of Edith Wharton as master gardener. I’m absolutely certain that if Edith Wharton had been only a gardener and not a writer, no one would be writing or reading her biography.

One pet peeve for this reader is the treatment of French passages within the biography. Rarely, is there a translation. Occasionally, there are end notes. More often, the reader is left to his own devices. Were it Spanish, instead of French, I might have slowly picked out a translation. As it is, I was left in the dark. Writers and editors have an obligation to offer readers clarity and consistency. This book offers neither.

Friend of the Devil is Robinson at his best -- and that is very good indeed

Books now read in ’07: 84
Title: Friend of the Devil
Author: Peter Robinson
Genre: Mystery
Date Completed: 8-24
Pages: 424

Books now read in ’07: 85
Title: Skeleton Man
Author: Tony Hillerman
Genre: Mystery
Date Completed: 8-26
Pages: 241

I once had the foolish idea that, as a writer, Peter Robinson was secondary to Ian Rankin. Any doubts as to Robinson’s ranking, firmly alongside Rankin, are put to rest in his thoroughly diverting new mystery, Friend of the Devil. What is secondary, or almost so, are the two murders that drive the narrative. The real feature of this and all of Robinson’s novels is the splendid development of his main characters, principally Inspector Banks and Annie Cabot. Robinson even manages to offer up a genuine surprise – it’s a shocker and I guarantee fans of this fine series won’t see it coming.

This is the second time I’ve read Hillerman’s Skeleton Man, and I liked it better this time. Since the first time, I’ve went back and read several of Hillerman’s books. Consequently, I now understand and care more about his characters – Leaphorn (who has only a small role here), Cowboy Dashee, Sgt. Chee and Bernie Manuelito. It’s not Hillerman’s best – but that still means it is better than most.

Gibson rocks in Spook Country

Books now read in ’07: 83
Title: Spook Country
Author: William Gibson
Genre: Fiction
Date Completed: 8-20
Pages: 371

Late in William Gibson’s new and entirely amazing new novel a character explains that he found himself engaged in a particular mission because someone was looking for a person with a “really odd skill set.” As it happens, just about everyone in Spook Country has a really odd skill set.

• There’s Hollis Henry, a journalist who was the former lead singer in a now defunct alt-rock band.
  
  
• There’s a mysterious old man with incredible connections, inside and outside the government.
  
  
• An agile, young Cuban-Chinese man with acrobatic skills who channels a stable of small “g” gods and who can call on the resources of his family, which is both a family in the sense that they are all related and a family in the sense that are a way-below-the-radar crime family.
  
  
• There’s a Russian-speaking, sedative-loving fellow who has been gang-pressed into aiding a cranky man, who is clearly the novel’s resident bad guy, trail the agile kid and translate messages passing between him and his family.
  
  
• And, certainly neither last nor least, is the brilliant but geeky Bobby Chombo who does amazing things with locative art and GPS tracking.

Gibson takes all these disparate characters, combines a seemingly random and disparate assortment of elements – locative art, GPS tracking, pirates, container shipping and just a whiff of terrorists – into an engrossing and thoroughly entertaining novel. A thrill ride if you are given to blurbs.

How Gibson makes this all work is a testament to his skill as a novelist. Gibson made his reputation writing about a not-to-distant future. He’s abandoned the future recently for the present. One suspects it’s because the present is infinitely more interesting. Or, perhaps, Gibson simply tired of the burden of the predictive – he’s given to telling fans who gush about his futurescapes – “Did you notice there were no cell phones in the future?”

Spook Country is divided into three stories: the primary one features Hollis, who has been employed by the mysterious and wonderfully named Hubertus Bigend to write an article on locative art for a magazine that doesn’t yet exist. Bigend is really interested in what Hollis can learn about Bobby Chombo and his fixation on a particular container at sea. There’s a story line with the old man and the agile young man and his family, which eventually intersects with the final story line, that of our Russian-speaking drug user and his handler. Those story lines ultimately merge with that of Hollis and Bigend and Bobby Chombo.

Trust me, it works. And it works well. Late in the novel (where have we heard that phrase?) – just before the part about really odd skill sets – there’s a discussion about laundering massive, as in billions, amounts of cash. At about that point it becomes clear where the novel is headed. But what isn’t clear, until the end, is whether this ambitious and outrageous scheme will come to pass.

No spoilers here. You have to read Spook Country for the answer. I envy you. It’s huge fun.

Happy Birthday, Ray!

Ray Bradbury is 87 today. Here's a nice story on Bradbury in the New York Times.

Yesterday, CNN.com published a story on American reading habits, or the lack thereof. It is not a pretty story.

My Girls take their back to school photos

Time out from books. This is Dolly -- she's almost four months old -- and her sister, Gracie, about 15 months old. They are Pembroke Welsh Corgis. Predominately black and white, with brown accents, they are technically tri-colors but more commonly known as black-top Corgis.

Books now read in ’07: 78
Title: Black Dogs
Author: Ian McEwan
Genre: Fiction
Date Completed: 8-5
Pages: 149

Books now read in ’07: 79
Title: Enduring Love
Author: Ian McEwan
Genre: Fiction
Date Completed: 8-8
Pages: 262

Books now read in ’07: 80
Title: The Zero
Author: Jess Walter
Genre: Fiction
Date Completed: 8-12
Pages: 326

Books now read in ’07: 81
Title: Foreign Affairs
Author: Alison Lurie
Genre: Fiction
Date Completed: 8-16
Pages: 291

Books now read in ’07: 82
Title: Saving Daylight
Author: Jim Harrison
Genre: Poetry
Date Completed: 8-19
Pages: 121

Can you forgive me, dear reader? Will you? I have broken our pact – I write, you read. Understand, all six of you have not been far from my thoughts, but it would not been easy, or convenient, to post. I have been traveling. For work. 10 days on the road. (Isn’t that a song?)

Traveling is good and bad. It allows you to visit new bookstores, attend book sales, track down authors, but it does not allow you time to post. And, more importantly, it is time away from the comforts of home. From the wife and the puppies.

I was in Iowa and Illinois. Des Moines and Chicago. The State Fair. Republican candidates for president. The straw poll. Mrs. Romney and family in first class on the flight from Des Moines to Chicago. That sort of thing, if it makes any sense at all. If it doesn’t that may be a good thing for you.

Such travel means airports, and airports mean reading. First in Washington and then in Des Moines and, finally, waiting to return home, in Chicago, where the weather was blissfully cool and free of humidity. Unlike Iowa or Washington where it was (and has been) uncomfortably hot and damnably humid.

On to the books.

Two early works by Ian McEwan. Black Dogs appeared in 1992, it is his fifth novel. Enduring Love, his seventh, appeared in 1997. I find it instructive to read an author’s early works – themes appear, stylistic tendencies, interests. You can see the writer that you love beginning to emerge from these early efforts.

Black Dogs is a study of faith vs. rationalism. A couple, united by their belief in Communism, are pushed apart soon after their marriage by the wife’s near mystical experience when she fights off two vicious black dogs. Do the dogs truly exist? The wife believes so. The husband does not.

This novel begins as a “talky,” philosophical exercise until late in the book when the dogs appear (or not). In that scene, as the wife fights for her life, while her husband is distracted by an unusual caterpillar, we witness McEwan’s emergence as a writer in command of his craft. The novelist’s techniques, still transparent in Black Dogs, become palpable and powerful in Saturday.

Enduring Love might be a less interesting novel than Black Dogs, certainly that would be true in the hands of any other writer. The protagonist finds himself joining a group of men trying to rescue a young boy from a runaway hot air balloon. In the attempt, one of the men is killed.

It seems obvious where this novel might go – who let go first? Who failed? Was it our protagonist? – and McEwan seems to be headed in that direction when Enduring Love veers into wholly unexpected terrain. One of the men engaged in the rescue attempt falls in love with our protagonist, begins to stalk him. And, yet, no one believes our protagonist. Not his wife. Not the police. Not the reader.

Enduring Love becomes, like Black Dogs, an exploration of reality. Whose experience is genuine? By the time, McEwan unveils the answer there’s a contemporary horror sitting in the living room wielding a knife. And yet the novel still refuses to follow a conventional conclusion.

Neither Enduring Love nor Black Dogs is as skillfully wrought as Amsterdam, Atonement, Saturday or McChesil Beach, but they point, solidly, in the direction of these superb novels and to an accomplished author.

The Zero by Jess Walter was shortlisted for the 2006 National Book Award for fiction. It is a weird, paranoid, ironic exploration of a cop’s life in the days following 9-11. The Zero refers to Ground Zero, and is a horrifyingly magnetic reality in the life of the cop, Brian Remy, and his comrades.

Brian has gaps in his life. He seems to be working as a special agent for one of the myriad intelligence agencies that sprang into existence in the days following 9-11. Brian flits from one scene to the next like Billy Pilgrim popping in and out of time. In his saner moments, or perhaps his maddest, he seems horrified by the work he does. Yet there seems to be nothing he can do to stop it. He leaves notes to himself. Notes that he doesn’t remember answering, yet does.

As with Being There, the film featuring Peter Sellers, Brian is like some autistic savant. Everyone thinks he knows more than he does and mistakes him for a wise man. The reader truly isn’t sure whether Brian is a wise man or Forest Gump. Our deliberate confusion is part of Walter’s skill in walking us through a confusing new world.

The Zero is deliciously ironic, and what seemed like paranoia in 2006 seems like only the most recent news report of 2007. Among the books shortlisted for the 2006 National Book Award this is the best and most interesting I’ve read so far.

Alison Lurie’s 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Foreign Affairs, is the best example I can offer for wandering away from the bestseller list. Written more than 20 years ago, Lurie’s novel is still as humorous and incisive now as the day it was written.

Something of a comedy of manners, it is the story of the love affairs of two Americans, both professors of English from Cornith University, who are in London, ostensibly for purposes of research. Fred Turner, a handsome man still in his 20s, hates London until he embarks on a love affair with an older actress. Vinnie Miner has convinced herself that her English friends do not see her as American. She believes she has been thoroughly assimilated. Thus, Vinnie’s love affair with a large and loud Tulsa engineer is an uncomfortable as it is irresistible.

Lurie’s novel, too, is irresistible. Let’s put it this way, how can you not adore a book with the following line: “A person without inner resources who splits infinitives, Vinnie thinks.” Now that’s deliciously funny as is Lurie’s novel.

Finally, a small collection of poetry by Jim Harrison. Saving Daylight is sometimes humorous, sometimes opaque as poetry should be I suppose. Considering Harrison’s age it is not surprising to note that many of the poems are concerned with the approach of death or its aftermath. Fortunately, Harrison still waxes poetic about dogs, wild birds, women and food.