In last week’s newsletter, I wrote about almost stopping.
5 good books I read this winter
It was a light, lovely winter for me (well, most of it) and I spent it reading at whim.
Here are five books that stand out:
A Little History of the World
E.H. Gombrich
Gombrich is probably best known for his art history survey, The Story of Art, but he wrote this book before, in pre-Nazi Germany. When a textbook publisher hired him to translate a history book for kids, he thought it was so bad he could write a better one himself. So he read all day and wrote a chapter each night until the book was done. I love the way he starts and begins the book with visual metaphors to help kids picture history. [Buy indie]
Boom Town
Sam Anderson
Sam is one of my favorite working writers, but I didn’t really care much about Oklahoma City or basketball when I picked it up. And yet, I loved this book. While reading it I was like, “Is this as good as I think it is or is Sam nuts in the same way I am nuts or have I been driven nuts by reading it?” One thing I cannot get enough of is the sense when you’re reading a book that the author had a blast writing it — that they let themselves get carried away and went for the ride and wrangled the thing in just the right way so you could strap in, too. [Buy indie]
Normal People
Sally Rooney
Every year I try to read a bestseller that everybody’s talking about. Last year it was Educated, this year it was Normal People. It’s easy to see why Educated was a hit — it’s written well, it has an Oprah-style arc de triumph, and it confirms the dominant cultural narrative about the importance of formal education. But this book? The whole time I read this book, I was thinking, “Why am I so into this?” I think it’s the way Rooney manages to describe contemporary emotions (ew), but, like Educated, I also think there’s magic in the pacing and the chunking. Hey man, no need to overthink it: If you’re turning the pages, it’s good. [Buy indie]
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
Olga Tokarczuk
Combination detective story and fairy tale with a huge dose of astrology and William Blake thrown in. (It gets its title from Proverbs of Hell.) A great winter’s tale. Definitely picking up her novel Flights soon — loved this excerpt. [Buy indie]
Mystery Train
Greil Marcus
If I had read this book when I was 19, it would probably hold a super high place in my personal canon. The thing that holds me back from outright adoration is my (perhaps unreasonably) low opinion of Elvis. I love the parts about the tension between artist and audience. I will probably go back and try to get through Lipstick Traces again this year. [Buy indie]
It strikes me, looking at this list, that every single one of these books was read on my Kindle. I think this is the first time this has happened and I don’t know how to feel about it. On the one hand, I much prefer reading on paper, with a pencil, but on the other, ebooks are so convenient, they allow me to flit and flirt and read promiscuously.
By the way, here are 5 other good books I read this winter:
- David Carr’s The Night of the Gun
- John O’Connell’s Bowie’s Bookshelf: The Hundred Books that Changed David Bowie’s Life
- Jennifer Keishin Armstrong’s Seinfeldia: How A Show About Nothing Changed Everything
- Alan Jacobs’ Breaking Bread with the Dead (galley)
- Elisa Gabbert’s The Unreality of Memory (galley)
More of my reading years here.
A fine line between stupid and clever
I put on This Is Spinal Tap last night and it was just as funny as I remembered. Maybe even funnier. I love all the stories about rock stars who watched it and didn’t laugh because it was too real. (The Edge said, “I didn’t laugh, I wept. It was so close to the truth.”)
The movie has an extra edge for me, too, because I’m headed out on tour soon, and life on the road, even as a boring author, has a certain kind of absurdity and indignity to it. (“Dignity! Always dignity!” Gene Kelly quips in Singin’ in the Rain, which, come to think of it, is another essential and brilliant sendup of show business. They might make a good double feature.)
The line that most stood out to me on this viewing was Michael McKean’s: “It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.”
Every artist knows the truth in this. I often know an idea is worth working on if I honestly can’t tell if it’s incredibly stupid or absolutely brilliant. (“This idea is so dumb,” I’ll think. “I bet everyone will love it.”)
Stupid ideas turn out to be clever and clever ideas turn out to be stupid.
Sometimes a stupid idea is the very thing you need to get started.
“You take a stupid idea,” says cartoonist Tom Gauld, “but then you are very serious about it.”
It’s a fine line between stupid and clever.
Shook
A bomb exploded in my neighborhood last night on a sidewalk I walk every morning with my wife and two sons. We’re all okay. The boys are oblivious, thankfully, but my wife and I are a little shook. I wanted to get down a couple thoughts:
1. Breaking news is not only borderline useless, it can be downright harmful in a crisis situation like this. Any useful, reliable information we got last night was from the official Twitter feeds of the Austin Police Department and Austin-Travis County EMS.
At one point, I watched a Facebook livestream by local news station KXAN, which was literally just a camera pointed at lights and sirens while a reporter asked witnesses for personal information offscreen. The people in the chat were sharing the phone numbers they heard, joking about calling the witness themselves to get the lowdown. Later, KXAN reported that the neighborhood was going to be evacuated, which was inaccurate and caused unnecessary alarm.
We’ve received text alerts and phone calls on our landline over the past 12+ hours to stay home indoors. Nothing other than those official alerts has been crucial for keeping our family calm or safe.
In the future, if I’m in a situation like this, I plan on making sure my crew is safe, then tuning into official sources until things calm down.
2. Our neighborhood NextDoor has proven to have all the good and bad features of any social media site. The main thread in which neighbors are sharing information was posted by a neighbor immediately after she went outside and was told to get back in the house because there was a bomb. Other threads have popped up, but the software gives you no way to combine threads, so things have gotten chaotic. Posts there have cycled between being helpful (“An FBI agent came to the door and told me…”) to selfish (“When can I leave for work?”) to alarmist (“My guns are loaded!”) to agenda-pushing (“It’s time to go back to a gated community!”) Regardless of the spirit in which they were posted, I’m not sure I could call any of the posts there absolutely essential, save for the official messages. Reading most of the posts, if anything, just made me more anxious and confused. It’s so tempting to seek out and share more information, but more information doesn’t necessarily help.
3. Nature doesn’t care. It’s such a beautiful day outside right now. The neighborhood is still officially locked down, so we missed our morning walk. I walked the perimeter of our house, checked our cars and every corner, and then we went into the backyard and my youngest and I sat in the hammock with the sun on our faces while my wife did a little gardening. The police chopper circled around and around, and at one point, the hawk that flies through the neighborhood seemed to chase it. Life goes on and we’ll go on.
PARENTHOOD
ASSASSINATION FEARS
DAVID SIMON, CREATOR OF THE WIRE, AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS
Last night we went over to the Austin City Limits studio to see a Q&A with David Simon, former newspaper reporter and creator of the TV show The Wire. John Pierson was the moderator, and he did a really great job— he asked Simon intelligent questions and then sat and listened while Simon gave intelligent answers.
Discussed topics: the decline of the newspaper industry, journalism and Homer Bigart (“his method: ‘Hi, I’m an idiot and I can’t talk…please help me'”), dumbass editors looking for lame stories about “Dickensian” children (“Pulitzer Sniffing”), Iraq, No Child Left Behind, stealing from Greek Tragedy, the drug war, jury nullification, creative writing students (“my god, you guys are an industry”), books he hasn’t read (Brothers Karamazov), the creative use of profanity, The America That Got Left Behind, and of course, Baltimore (“my favorite character”), and The Wire.
As usual, I doodled and took a lot of notes:
Really cool night, and awesome to finally see the Austin City Limits studio. Thanks to Janet for inviting us!
Links:
UPDATE:
I wanted to point out Amanda Marcotte‘s post about the evening (relayed to me by Gerry Canavan):
Awards: A good excuse for fan wanking disguised as academic inquiry
It was a productive hour and a half of discussion, which is somewhat surprising, since they opened the floor to questions, which is usually an invitation for a bunch of assholes to pretend that everyone showed up to hear them talk instead of the speaker. There were a couple of people who asked questions where the question was a minor pretense for them to bloviate, but on the whole, the question askers were respectable and the questions were good.
It’s such a perfect, hilarious observation, a subject that Meg and I constantly complain about: too often Q&As are just a huge waste of time. This one wasn’t, but I drew a cartoon about it last night, anyways…I just didn’t post it. Here it is, now:
ADVENTURES IN THE BATSUIT
I had one [pitch] where Batman went completely broke. His corporation went completely broke. He was like, ‘should I throw this Batarang? These cost me $550 each. I’m not really sure I can afford to throw it. I should probably just run.’ And he had to sell all his cars and ride a bicycle around. If anyone sees him on a bicycle with his costume on, they’ll catch him, so he can’t even wear that anymore. He just has to wear a t-shirt and run around. They said, “no, we’re not going to do that” [laughs]. I’d like to do a story about the real Batman, what a real Batman would be like. Just some guy, who’s not really that rich. He’d just run around and try to figure out where the crime is. In my neighborhood, all he’d be doing is running up to cars where they’re selling drugs out the window.”
—Tony Millionaire, interview