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Corpse Of Freedom: An American Novel
Author: Dax Gardner & Lloyd Gardner
Publisher: Books On Fire
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 207
Retail Price: 9.99
Buy on Amazon.com: link
This is the Gardner Brothers’ debut novel and it shows. A revisiting of suburban high school life, the book follows a small group of unlikable teens as they dig up a corpse for kicks, exchange irritating banter, and generally be obnoxious.
The sad thing is that I don’t think the characters are meant to be unlikable. You get the sense that this is one of those “I’m in my 20s and writing about myself in high school, only my character will be self-assured, gettin’ laid from hot, crazy chicks, and saying all the cool, witty things I wish I had said back then.” If the main character is indeed a stand-in for one or both of the Gardners, I feel bad for their former classmates.
Besides the ridiculously unrealistic dialogue and two-dimensional characters (the only female characters are crazy bitches or sluts), the plot is also insipid and lacking any real commentary. This could’ve been a satire on disaffected and violence-numb suburban youth (cue Neil Peart: “Subdivisions!”), but any attempt at substance beyond angst is laughable. The corpse left a diary, which isn’t a bad device to impact the story or provide social commentary, but unfortunately, the diary is a hackneyed, cheesed-out riff on Holden Caulfield. The main character, perhaps to his credit, doesn’t change or grow at all from it. If anything, he becomes even more of an asshole.
If this book has any value, it’s to remind us of the shittiness of high school. The Gardners, however, seem to be reliving it in all its alpha-jock glory.
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Pocketful Of History: Four Hundred Years of America – One State Quarter At A Time
Author: Jim Noles
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Genre: History
Pages: 324
Retail Price: 0.00
Buy on Amazon.com: link
As a United States citizen, I am duty bound to know absolutely nothing about United States history. However, 10 years ago, Congress decided to do something about it. They decided to teach its citizens about their great country by targeting the one thing we universally love: money. And so the 50 State Quarters Program was born, with new quarters popping up every year commemorating the varying historical importance and questionably interesting attributes of each state, allowing us to contemplate patriotically as we do our laundry or play slots.
In A Pocketful of History, Jim Noles tells the story behind each shiny depiction and representation. The book is organized by state, in order of each state’s inclusion into the Union. Each chapter is 5-7 pages that describes why such and such design was selected for the state and what it represents.
The book is written well if breezily and for a popular audience, and Noles does his best given the source material. You see, to be honest, the 50 State Quarters Program didn’t quite live up to being the ideal teaching aid to provide, in Noles’ words, “the scale and sweep of America’s history.”
Noles himself seems dejected in his introduction, hoping the program would create “a set of coins that… would speak of discovery, exploration, colonization, revolution, evolution, immigration, emancipation, and migration. Of civil war, civil reconciliation, and civil rights… Of an Industrial Age, a Gilded Age, a Jazz Age, a Space Age, and an Information Age.” But instead we mostly got the usual iconic cliches and a whole lot of birds, horses, mountains, and buffalo.
The inside flap showcases some of my favorite examples of the inanity of some of the design decisions and Noles’ attempts to make them interesting:
“Jim Noles… looks at each quarter in turn to answer these curious questions: Who is Caesar Rodney and why is he riding a horse on Delaware’s quarter? What happened to New Hampshire’s symbol, the “Old Man in the Mountain,” three years after its quarter was minted? What famous racecourse is memorialized on the quarter from the state known as the ‘Crossroads of America’?”
I can’t think of questions I care less about. But this book really makes the point – unintentionally – that what distinguishes or defines a state rarely has anything to do with its historical achievement. I mean, Georgia chose a peach, Vermont has maple trees and syrup, Maine has a lighthouse, and – my favorite – Rhode Island is represented by a yacht. Did these things really contribute to the survival and fabric of the country (besides maple syrup, which is awesome)?
To be fair, there is some historical reasoning behind many of the stranger designs. For instance, Mississippi’s magnolia leaves are a very slight, indirect reference to the Civil War (and by the way – the Civil War isn’t depicted or inferred on any coin). But magnolia leaves instead of something about the civil rights era? (Alabama is also quiet on the matter, depicting Helen Keller, which all things considered, is better than a jug of moonshine.)
But anyway, these are critiques of the Program and not of the book, which is fun to read and educational in its own way. And if you collect the coins, this book will provide a ton of context. For me, the coins are simply soda machine fodder. Except for Bicentennials. Those I keep.
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A Time Of Angels
Author: Patricia Schonstein
Publisher: William Morrow
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 224
Retail Price: 7.99
Buy on Amazon.com: link
Written in that vague, fuzzy-headed prose of magical realism, but clumsily failing, A Time Of Angels attempts to be the Italian food version of Chocolat. The narrative, set in South Africa, is the basic theme of love triangles and betrayal, but confusing flashbacks and flimsy characters bog down and convolute the reading experience. Simply, it’s a mess.
The author seems to enjoy herself most when she weaves in Italian cuisine, but the self-conscious hedonism doesn’t translate well into the sensuality she’s hoping for. This is more the Joy of Cooking than the Joy of Sex. In any case, there’s not much joy in reading this.
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Coffeeshop Crushes
Author: Nicole J. Georges and Jon Van
Publisher: Microcosm
Genre: Zine
Pages: 36
Retail Price: 2.00
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Zinesters and coffeeshops go together like tapeworms and my ass: they fit perfectly, dreamily, like kittens in mittens, whiling away the hours gulping caffeine, looking cute, and jotting down BIG THOUGHTS. (My tapeworms are very smart.)
It’s almost a cliche that zinesters – urban and suburban – sit around in coffeeshops, dreaming up unrequited crushes so they can write about them, or at least writing about sitting in coffeeshops, since coffeeshops tend to be more romantic on paper than actually wasting your time and money in one. Sure, I’m cynical. But I’ve also been to plenty of coffeeshops in my life, and not to ogle the mediocre-looking baristas, but to GET A FUCKING CUP OF COFFEE BEFORE I GO ON A MURDEROUS RAMPAGE.
That said, cuteness is cuteness, and Coffeeshop Crushes is Cute. Many one-page short stories (or shorter), mostly by girls, are on frequenting the local cafe just to stare at the flustered, squirrely indie boy behind the counter who wears thick glasses and nervously gets the order wrong. Cute! It almost makes me wonder if I’ve chosen the wrong career path.
The zine relies on many contributors so writing quality varies, but cuteness abounds. There are also a number of comics interspersed, including a good one from Shawn Granton and, of course, Too Much Coffee Man.
(Funny enough, one of the only male contributors offers a short, blunt piece about the benefits of a successful coffeeshop crush – the hot caffeine-fueled sex and, equally important, the free coffee!)
I like my zines the way I like my coffee – dark, bitter, and ground up and stored in my freezer. But don’t get me wrong – this is a sweet, frothy collaboration that will warm you up and get you going in the morning. Just like a nice, hot cup of pickle juice.
For more information, go to Microcosm Publishing.
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Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World
Author: Justin Marozzi
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Genre: History
Pages: 480
Retail Price: 9.99
Buy on Amazon.com: link
Tamerlane is an interesting historical character. Soon after the exploits of Genghis Khan, Tamerlane – also a Mongol leader – conquered most of the known Eastern world, ruthlessly amassing more victories and land than Alexander the Great or Genghis. And yet I’d never even heard of him.
I looked forward to this book to learn more about this warlord that Western history has forgotten. Unfortunately, although exhaustive and descriptive, Marozzi fails to paint a clear picture. Jumping around chronologically and going off on tangents, including much discussion on the present-day areas and the author’s own travels, the book can be a disorganized chore. Marozzi describes battles and scenes beautifully, but I could never keep up where and when these things took place. It took a few pages into one event to realize he was talking about Genghis Khan.
I think Marozzi wanted to add modern-day context to justify the relevance of his work, and, as a result, muddies up the historical narrative. The book is somewhat interesting, but not clear enough for the reader to feel comfortable. I felt like giving up quite often and simply look up Tamerlane’s Wikipedia entry.
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Garage Band
Author: Gipi
Publisher: First Second
Genre: Graphic Novel
Pages: 130
Retail Price: 9.99
Buy on Amazon.com: link
Charming graphic novel from Italy about four punky teens who are gifted a garage to practice in. It’s a sweet and mellow story about friendship and summertime angst and hanging out together to avoid troubled home lives. Never overstated, the private lives of the kids are quietly inferred, giving the characters more depth than at first glance.
At first, I was turned off by the gawky, shaky illustrations, but combined with the soft, muted watercolors and storytelling, the art does perfectly match the story’s dreamy and nostalgic feel.
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I Got Thunder: Black Women Songwriters On Their Craft
Author: LaShonda Katrice Barnett
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Genre: Music/African-American Studies
Pages: 330
Retail Price: 9.99
Buy on Amazon.com: link
I’m probably not qualified to review this – not because I’m a white Jewish punk kid and the appeal of Dionne Warwick escapes me, but because I’m not familiar with many of the subjects in this collection of interviews. But a great interview (like a great CD or film review) can transcend lack of interest in and knowledge of the subject, and provide, through insightful writing and engaging exchange, that knowledge and interest.
I wouldn’t say Barnett consistently succeeds. Many of the questions are of the bland “What comes first – the melody or the lyric? What inspired this song? What is your songwriting process like?” variety. But there are a number of conversations that take interesting turns, particularly when Barnett and her interviewee turn away from music and toward race, culture, and gender politics. The interviews with Chaka Khan and Nina Simone are especially interesting in that regard.
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Better Looking Than A Blog / When You Can’t Stand Yourself, Walk Outside
Author: Shawn Granton
Publisher: TFR Industries
Genre: Mini-Comic
Pages: 50
Retail Price: 2.00
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One of my fave mini-comic’ers, Shawn Granton, got into the blog-my-life-by-comics game a couple of years ago. So he draws his daily events and thoughts; these two collections span Winter and Spring 2007.
Shawn’s strength is his writing, and that’s what separates this comic-journal from others. (No offense to Ben Snakepit, but the nonstop recurring panels of I Went To Work, I Went To A Show, I Got Drunk does get boring after awhile.) Even when Shawn isn’t doing anything exciting, his writing is thoughtful, reflective and honest.
He is active though – for at least 10 years, he’s been bumming around the country going to zine and comic fairs, scraping by enough to get to the next one. It’s interesting to read about his growing disillusionment with that scene and more interesting that he keeps going. (I gave up on zine fairs after my fourth or fifth; Shawn must have done hundreds.) While you can’t help but be jealous of the transient lifestyle, there’s an underlying sense of world weariness and self-doubt that makes Shawn’s comics more heartfelt than others.
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Revolution On Canvas: Poetry From The Indie Music Scene Volume 1
Author: Rich Balling, Ed.
Publisher: Warner Books
Genre: Music
Pages: 222
Retail Price: 9.99
Buy on Amazon.com: link
This might be the worst collection of poetry ever published, and that includes collections by and to benefit children with mental handicaps.
This participants are nearly all from bad current-generation emo and emocore bands like The Academy Is…, A Static Lullaby, Gatsby’s American Dream, Silverstein, Motion City Soundtrack, just make a list of the worst bands to come out in the last 10 years. But I don’t hold the suckiness of the bands against them. My only question is – could they write poetry?
Well, if you define poetry as the stuff goth girls in 8th grade write in their notebooks while blasting Nine Inch Nails and cutting themselves, then yes. But then you’re probably in an emo band too.
Shit is bad. I’ll close my eyes and pick out some passages randomly:
Gabe Saporta of Midtown:
“And we reach for what we’re missing in –
We don’t know how to let love in
Don’t you cry
For me
Because I’m already dead.”
Wow, what are you, 13 years old and just had a fight with mom and dad?
Steve Scavo of The Color Turning:
“I know your face
I’ve smelled your waste
I’ve seen your heart
And I can’t look again
For my reflection’s just as dark”
You took my heart / and tore it apart / now you are a ho / and I will watch The Crow.
Ooof, this one is REALLY bad:
Shane Told of Silverstein:
“My heart bleeds no more; now, it’s been turned to stone. Your stomach feels sick for someone else. I’ve broken both my legs falling for you. Drag me on the ground. Powerless I stand, tarnished blade, cutting through, pushed into my vein.”
Because you’re really cool / when you’re not in school / but there you are mean and i am a fool / and you want drugs / but i want hugs / and i will cut myself until the end / pain is my only friend.
Not every poem is an embarrassment. Jonathan Newby from Brazil took an intelligent, post-modern approach. Joseph Karam from The Locust wrote a cool piece that’s short but jackhammer powerful. And… that’s pretty much it. But hey, with 150 or so poems, you’re bound to have a couple of decent ones slip in by mistake.
But while I didn’t appreciate this book, others might. Specifically, young troubled girls who suddenly feel an emotional affinity with their favorite contrived, calculatingly emotional mallpunk bands comprised of sleazy 30 year olds.
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Exile On Main St.: A Season In Hell With The Rolling Stones
Author: Robert Greenfield
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Genre: Music/Biography
Pages: 260
Retail Price: 9.99
Buy on Amazon.com: link
Recorded in 1971 in the sweltering basement of a French villa, “Exile On Main St.” is one of those landmark rock albums whose creation became the stuff of legend. Author Robert Greenfield acknowledges early on that legend and fact have become intertwined due to the interviewees’ degradation of memory over time (and drug-addled memory at that), and the fact that people naturally begin believing their own legend. Like a lot of rock biographers, Greenfield gives a half-hearted stab at sorting out fact from fiction before gleefully embracing the lurid and flashy.
That’s fine with me – I’m not a historian on the Rolling Stones and I read this for two reasons: sex and drugs. The book is rarely about anything else, although Greenfield sets up his story as a play about the power and clash of two heroic, larger-than-life personalities, the old archetype of separate yet complementary mythological counterparts. In other words, Richards/Jagger, set in a swirling chaos of a purgatory-like time and place. (Interestingly, the book is rarely about the music on the album itself!)
Greenfield writes fluidly and with personality (if with a penchant for hyperbole), and the book is an enjoyable read. However, he often dips into flights of fancy as a result of his own enthusiasm and need to strengthen the mythos. It’s often times needlessly verbose in a hippie-dippie, wavy-gravy, far-out-man kind of way, as well as peppered by 60s pop cultural references (song lyrics are sometimes woven – or shoehorned – into the narrative). The book’s got flourish, but can be eye-rollingly lame, like being embarrassed by your dad in front of your friends.
That’s just a generational complaint, as children of the 60s generally annoy me. My true complaints about the book is that there is little new information – Greenfield only interviewed a handful of people. Most of the stories come from other sources, but Greenfield does take ownership of the narrative through his engaging writing style and great organization. My other complaint is that there’s practically nothing about the writing or execution of the songs or any analysis of the songs themselves. That seems a bit odd for a book about an album.
Joining the long list of recent rock bios that focus on specific classic rock albums (Dark Side of the Moon, Blood on the Tracks, etc.), “Exile” is highly readable and paints a lively picture of life at the villa. However, while it doesn’t read like a chop-shop rock bio for a quick buck, from a rock journalism perspective, I wouldn’t call it authoritative.
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Bottom Line: Sometimes more about the author than the subject, but a largely fun read.
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Mysteries of the Snake Goddess: Art, Desire, and the Forging of History
Author: Kenneth Lapatin
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Genre: History/Art
Pages: 274
Retail Price: 9.99
Buy on Amazon.com: link
Mysteries of the Snake Goddess takes a close look at the widely accepted Minoan art that has been excavated at Crete in the early 1900s, casting doubt on its authenticity. And since its authenticity is questioned, author Kenneth Lapatin argues, so should be our modern interpretations on Minoan culture that have been derived from this art.
The book is fascinating and in-depth, covering many of the famous finds at Knossos and their colorful archaeologists, and dissecting old records and letters to track down the provenance of these pieces. The focus of the book, though, is on the best known statuette, the oddly modern Snake Goddess. In surprisingly interesting detail, he weeds through the conflicting stories of its origins to conclude that it may, in fact, have been forged by artisans working at the excavation.
Lapatin, an art historian, archaeologist, and museum curator, writes persuasively and evenly, in a tone of thoughtfulness rather than overbearing opining. He offers no definitive answers, but asks the right questions, and his research is illuminating.
Why should anyone care? The book is written so well that even if you have no interest in the subject matter, it has a way of drawing you into the mystery of the story. And even if the origins of the Snake Goddess (and many other artifacts) are legitimate, this book makes you rethink the ways in which we have recreated history by juxtaposing our own modern values and ideas onto ancient civilizations. That is, even if the artifacts aren’t forgeries, our reconstruction of the past, in a sense, might be.
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Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution
Author: Howard Rheingold
Publisher: Perseus Publishing
Genre: Technology
Pages: 266
Retail Price: 0.00
Buy on Amazon.com: link
Howard Rheingold is the premier thinker on the potentials of technology and their effects on culture. In the early 80s, he wrote about PCs and predicted its widespread use and effect on work and home culture. In the 90s, he correctly predicted the huge impact of the Internet. Now he sees another technological revolution approaching: ad hoc social networks through mobile internet and communication.
Even though we’ve had cell phones for years, and they’ve really exploded since the 90s (completely changing the telecommunications industry, infrastructure, and people’s sense of decency), Rheingold envisions an already happening future when our phones, computers, and internet are one, when people can gather spontaneously and communicate in a variety of ways on the go and in clusters (this book was written and published before the phenomenon of flash mobs).
This sort of easy and cheap access leads to a lot of opportunities, both social and commercial. Most interestingly are Rheingold’s ideas of a virtual world — not our traditional ideas of putting ourselves INTO a virtual world, but overlaying one on the existing physical world, and augmenting it. Meaning, if our Palms or cells can be designed to read bar codes or information chips, and chips were planted all around the world, we can point our handheld at a restaurant and their menu and rating will pop up on the screen. We can point it at a street sign and a map will print out. Zapping a movie theater with it can bring up their showings and times. With GPS technology added to our phones/Palms, we’ll always know where we are, where our friends are, and how to get to where we’re going. And with WiFi hotspots, people can be constantly hooked up to the internet, a virtual reality, while moving around in the physical world. But with opportunities come threats to our individuality and privacy, which Rheingold also discusses.
The book begins with the popularity of text messaging (texting) in different parts of the world, but it’s the later chapters that are extremely thought-provoking: the sociological and technological implications of virtual reality, wearable computers, and WiFi, as well as an out-of-place but still fascinating history of cooperation theory. As his ideas begin popping up in the marketplace and elsewhere, this book looks increasingly like a necessary blueprint of the future shapes of our social structures.
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