To Be Young, Gifted and Black by Lorraine Hansberry

I actually just finished reading this for work (I'm officially on Facebook now but strictly as part of my job) and it was pretty great. When I first picked it up, I thought it was going to be more of a memoir. But rather, it is comprised of passages from Hansberry's plays, interviews, letters, etc, so that the structure is a bit less conventional. Which I think works in its favor. I underlined quite a few passages:

"I can be all filled up that day with three hundred years of rage so that my eyes are flashing and my flesh is trembling--and the white boys in the streets, they look at me and think of sex. They look at me and that's all they think. Baby, you could be Jesus in drag--but if you're brown they're sure you're selling!"

"Do I remain a revolutionary? Intellectually--without a doubt. But am I prepared to give my body to the struggle or even my comforts?...I think when I get my health back I shall go into the South to find out what kind of revolutionary I am." (Sadly, she did not get her health back, and died of cancer at the age of 34.)

There are a number of photographs, documents,

illustrations, newspaper clippings, and more dispersed throughout the book.

This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff

I was introduced to the work of Tobias Wolff by the movie adaptation of his memoir This Boy's Life, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Deniro. It describes the author's adolescence as he and his mother travel the country in search of a better life, fleeing one abusive husband for another one. I saw the movie by chance on TV when I was in high school so I'm not that sure if I would still be particularly moved by it today, but it inspired me to read the book, which inspired me to read the rest of his fiction. As I've said before in this blog, Wolff was a huge influence on my writing while I was in college. I haven't read anything of his in awhile but maybe it's time to pick up a short story again.

How to Talk Dirty and Influence People by Lenny Bruce

I picked up this book about a month ago in a used bookstore in Kansas City and the pages were so brittle that it literally started to crumble in my hands as I read it (hence the scotch tape on the lower left).

Published originally by Playboy at the behest of Hugh Hefner himself, this is the autobiography of legendary comedian Lenny Bruce, written just a few years before he died at age 40. It starts off with a little bit about his youth and stint in the army, but mostly focuses on his obscenity trials, including a few maddening courtroom transcripts. Parts of the book feel slightly dated, which is inevitable, but it still made me laugh.

It also made me glad that I didn't live through that era. (Watching Mad Men has the same effect.) As much as I'd love to have been able to see the Velvet Underground play Max's Kansas City or buy property in Manhattan when it was cheap (or see Lenny Bruce perform stand-up, for that matter), it's also nice to live in a world where you can say "cocksucker" in a public forum without worrying about being arrested.

Cool for You by Eileen Myles

I often see this book referred to as an "autobiographical novel," which seems like an odd term to me. The character's voice and circumstances feel awfully similar to Myles's own voice and circumstances (from what I know of them, at least)--she's a working class Irish girl growing up in Boston, a tomboy, grappling with her sexual identity, and becomes a poet--not to mention that her name is Eileen Myles. So maybe the facts aren't 100% accurate. It's still kind of a strange category. Aren't most novels a bit autobiographical, in that the author can't help but include part of themselves in it in some way? And I'll bet that most memoirs aren't wholly accurate either, simply because memory is funny in that way.

Regardless of category, whether fact or fiction, this book is moving, insightful, funny, lyrical--all those adjectives you use in book reviews. Told in a series of snapshots, moving back and forth through time, it definitely feels like a novel written by a poet (which it is, obviously), but this is a good thing.

Where I Was From by Joan Didion

I can't believe it's been nearly a month since I last posted anything here. The days have just gotten away from me, I guess...

It's probably the fact that I've never lived there, but I've always harbored a bit of an obsession with California. While my own mental picture is more on the romantic side, Joan Didion, who grew up in Sacramento and lived in L.A. for years before moving to New York, looks to her home state with both fondness and discontent. Combining reportage, memoir, and literary criticism, she sharply examines her life and work, weaving together a narrative that touches on her pioneer ancestors (incredibly, she can trace her heritage back to the 1700s*), California’s debts to railroads and aerospace, the infamous Spur posse, California writers such as Jack London, Frank Norris, and herself, "painter of light" Thomas Kinkade, and more, to create a cohesive portrait. As always, her work is shrewd and insightful, both journalistic and very personal.

*"I know nothing else about [my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother] but I have her recipe for corn bread."

Journals by Keith Haring

This new edition of Keith Haring's Journals marks the 20th anniversary of Haring's death. After a few years working in publishing, the cynic in me imagines some editor looking through the backlist catalog and saying, hey, next year we can publish a fancy new edition of this book and call it a 20th anniversary edition and sell a lot more copies! Of course, the upside is the renewed attention to Haring's work that this brings about.

Anyway, it really is a beautiful package--the drawings on the front are debossed (that is, indented into the paper), which creates a lovely tactile sensation. As for the contents of the book, the journals span from 1977 to Haring's death in 1990. But they skip about quite a bit until 1986, when Haring began writing more regularly (1983 and 1984 only take up two entries and there are none for 1985). As a result, the bulk of the book covers the years when Haring was already famous. There's not much of a gradual rise to prominence--suddenly it's just there. I would have liked to read a little more about his early years in New York, before he was running around the world creating high profile murals and museum shows; at the same time, his voice does not change from beginning to end. His opinions and feelings seem unaffected by it all. Much of the entries read like a tedious cataloging of his shows as he travels the globe to create art, but are made interesting by his observations of people, politics, and art.

Here's one of the French flaps. You can see the indentations from the debossing all the way to the right.

One of Haring's early drawings from the late 70s. I really like this one, even though it's not indicative of his more well known style.

I love this picture, how he's literally painted himself into a corner.

An illustration from 1984, in Haring's classic style.

His illness is hardly mentioned at all in his journals. It is first brought up offhandedly when a dentist accosts him for not mentioning it before he begins to work on his mouth, and then again in September 1989 (five months before he died) when he says "In light of the new information I received last week about my health, I know I owe it to myself to think for myself for a change." That is about the most in-depth he goes in expressing any worries about his illness and mortality (though I imagine he must have had much more serious thoughts about this--just not on the page). He died incredibly young, and yet he had such a prolific career, despite its brevity. And yet, one has to wonder what might have been had he lived.

Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov

This is Nabokov's memoir, an impressionistic tale of his youth—or rather, his remembrance of youth—in an aristocratic family living in Saint Petersburg and their country estate before the Russian Revolution. His family escaped from the Bolsheviks in 1918, with the book touching lightly on his European exile during the 1920s and 30s and ending with this departure for the U.S. in 1940.

The inside pages have this great map of the Nabokov estate, with a drawing of a butterfly in the upper left (obscured by the bookplate left on by a former owner).

On a Wave by Thad Ziolkowski

Thad Ziolkowski was my writing teacher during my freshman and senior years of college. He could sometimes be a bit harsh in his criticism but I learned more about writing in those two years than any other time in my life.

This book is a memoir of his adolescence, of the disintegration of his family, and growing up in Florida in the 70s. But mostly it's about his passion for and obsession with surfing. I remember reading it in two or three days--it was totally engrossing, and not just because I was reading about someone I knew. A Google search reveals that he was a Guggenheim fellow in 2008, which he used to work on a novel. I look forward to reading it when it is published.

Forced Entries by Jim Carroll

This is a kind of sequel to The Basketball Diaries, written over the course of a few years in the early 70s while Carroll was living in downtown Manhattan. Throughout its pages we catch glimpses of what it might have been like to live in that incredible moment in time--he frequents Max's Kansas City, cavorting with Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith, the Warhol factory crowd, and even Robert Smithson, does a lot of drugs, and writes with a wonderfully poetic sensibility.

Carroll says on the second page of the book, "If you haven't died by an age thought predetermined through the timing of your abuses and excesses, then what else is left but to start another diary?" When he died a few months ago I couldn't help marveling at how long he actually did live (recent photographs show a frighteningly skeletal figure). I saw him read eight or nine years ago from a novel that he had been writing for many years, and I remember it being powerful and moving. Called The Petting Zoo, I'm happy to learn that it will finally be published this November.

The Factory of Facts by Luc Sante

Luc Sante, author of Low Life and Kill All Your Darlings, among other works, writes a memoir that is barely a memoir at all. Sante was born in Belgium and moved to America as a young child, only to move back and forth between the two countries several times throughout the course of his childhood—and thus never wholly identifying with either place as his own. Sante recalls the details of his life as if sorting through old photographs or boxes of ephemera in the attic, reflecting on his Belgian heritage and adopted American attitudes, almost attempting to call up all the factors, circumstances, and elements that have contributed to the man he has become. 

As for its readworthiness, I pretty much love anything Sante writes, and this is no exception.

Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

This is actually an advance reading copy of Steve Martin's autobiography, which I found on a shelf at work, oddly enough, though I don't work for the company that published it. I was pretty excited to find it though, as I love Steve Martin's earlier work--you can't go wrong with The Jerk--which is what this book focuses on: his formative years, how he got into stand-up, and his first experiences with fame. I was a little disappointed with it though. He keeps much of his private life private, choosing not to reveal some personal details; at the same time, it's not like I was hoping for some sort of juicy tell-all. Still, there was something missing from the book, and I can't really say what that is. It wasn't necessarily a bad read--just not of the caliber I was hoping for.

There are some pretty great photos throughout the book though.

A Devil in Paradise by Henry Miller

This short book tells the story of a houseguest at Miller's home in Big Sur who has long outworn his welcome. It has the most conventional narrative of Miller's books that I've read, but is enormously entertaining. I like how someone has colored in some of the letters on this cover.

Originally published in one slender volume like this, A Devil in Paradise was later published as part of Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch. I've never read the latter book, but I might just have to now, especially after having visited the Henry Miller Memorial Library while driving through Big Sur--possibly the most beautiful place I've ever seen (I mean Big Sur, not the library, though the library is a nice place to stop for a coffee and a book)--a couple of years ago.

How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life by John Fahey

When I saw this book out on a table at one of my favorite bookstores, I was at first attracted to the title. Then when I picked it up and flipped it over, I saw the Byron Coley blurb on the back and I was really interested. Once I started reading the introduction by Jim O'Rourke and got to the part about how he punched out Antonioni (highlighted in one of the stories contained within the book), I was sold.

Fahey was a fingerstyle guitarist who pioneered the steel string guitar as a solo instrument. His stories, which are autobiographical though I imagine not without fictional elements or embellishments, are mostly about his childhood growing up in Maryland, outside of D.C. The short, choppy sentences, with some paragraphs consisting of just one word like "yes" or "very," often reach a crescendo of madness and hilarity and beauty. While all of the stories are memorable, my favorite is the last one, "The Center of Interest Will Not Hold," which is divided into sections, one of which is also the title of the book. As a child, after hearing a DJ named Don Owens play a Bill Monroe song on the radio, Fahey is hooked, must hear the song again, and goes in search of the record. A collector named Dick Spottswood turns him on to other bluegrass records, which sets him off on the path he ended up on. "So because of Dick Spottswood and Don Owens and Bill Monroe, I became a professional guitar player and composer. What the hell kind of a gig is that? I could've been a contender."

Love All the People by Bill Hicks

This collection of letters, lyrics, and routines from the late, legendary comedian Bill Hicks has recently been published as an expanded edition with a new cover* (thank God...err...hmm) and additional material. As for the latter, I hope it adds a little more variety to the text, as, while I love Bill Hicks, the book gets kind of repetitive. Much of it consists of transcripts of his comedy routines--and, no offense to Bill, but he told the same jokes often, and with little variation. So not only were they already familiar from hearing video and audio recordings of his standup, but I found myself reading over and over about rednecks and smoking and drugs and Satan.

Granted, not the worst read ever. I mean, this stuff is genius, even if it's the same genius printed up a bunch of times. Maybe it's best read a little at a time, rather than all at once. Yeah, that's it.

*Actually, I don't exactly love the new cover either but it's a step up from the muddy, slightly out of focus one on this edition.

Lost in the Funhouse: The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman by Bill Zehme

I bought this biography of Andy Kaufman not long after Man in the Moon was released. That movie was my first real introduction to Kaufman and I was intrigued. I wanted to know more. In addition to telling his life story, this book tries to get inside Kaufman's mind (to the extent that that is possible). I remember it seeming pretty effective, though who can know for sure? The man's been dead for 25 years* and I doubt that anyone really knew his thought processes while he was alive.

There are a few black and white spreads of some great archival photos like these from his early days. The top left one is especially cool--it's 14-year-old Andy entertaining some neighborhood children at a birthday party.

*There are speculations that he faked his own death to escape celebrity. I suppose anything's possible, especially given Kaufman's history. But I'm inclined to think that he is just dead. Maybe he will reveal himself and prove me wrong.

River of Shadows by Rebecca Solnit

River of Shadows is part biography of Eadweard Muybridge, an English photographer known primarily for his use of multiple cameras to capture motion, and the development of the zoopraxiscope, an early device for projecting motion pictures. But it is also a larger story about the acceleration and industrialization of everyday life in the nineteenth century, such as the birth of the railroad. Solnit uses Muybridge as way of looking at the connections between art, technology, and politics.

There's a hard to find film about Muybridge that I had the privilege of seeing a couple years ago that animates his motion studies (not, apparently, the way audiences would have seen his films via zoopraxiscope, as those had to be drawn). This book goes into a little more detail about his background, but there is little known about him. It seems he was a solitary and private man who devoted his life to his art.

The Black Veil by Rick Moody

I haven't loved all of Rick Moody's books, but The Ice Storm, Demonology , and this book are favorites of mine. (Well, maybe "favorite" is a strong word, so I'll just say "well-liked books.") The black veil of the title refers to the Nathaniel Hawthorne story "The Minister's Black Veil," which is based on the true story of a clergyman who Moody believes may be a distant relative. Partly a quest to research Hawthorne and his possible ancestor, but moreso an account of the author's personal relationship to the story of the black veil.

It is designed to look like an old decaying antique book, the cover of which has been torn off, which, while perhaps not all that original, is nonetheless appealing to me.

Lulu in Hollywood by Louise Brooks

When I was in high school I went through an "old Hollywood" phase--not sure where that came from but I watched Mysteries and Scandals on E! all the time and my room was plastered with images of James Dean, Marlon Brando, Jean Harlow, Bette Davis, Clara Bow, Louise Brooks, and so on.

I'd seen and loved some of these actors' films (The Wild One, Rebel without a Cause, All About Eve, etc) but never any of the silents from the 20s--yet I still managed to fall in love with Louise Brooks. Maybe it was her image, her story, her attitude.

Lulu in Hollywood is a collection of essays written by Brooks (she was smart! maybe that's what I liked about her) detailing her early life, experiences in Hollywood, her rejection of Hollywood (a refusal to play by the rules--another great quality that appealed to me), and her life after she stopped acting in films altogether.

I've since seen and loved Diary of a Lost Girl and purchased Pandora's Box (though I haven't watched it yet), and they are both ahead of their time.

Okay, I know I said I hadn't yet seen Pandora's Box but the above still is from one of the first (maybe the first) lesbian scenes on film--so I feel pretty confident in my assertion.

As for the book, Brooks's writing is witty, unsentimental, and fascinating.

Edie: American Girl by Jean Stein with George Plimpton

This biography of Warhol superstar Edie Sedgwick is told from the voices of dozens and dozens of family members and friends, weaved together into a cohesive tapestry. Beginning with the history of the Sedgwick family (Edie came from a long line of effed up people, let me tell you), the coverage is pretty in-depth. It's a sad tale, from her early family life to her "medical treatment" at the Manhattan State Hospital to her demise at the age of 28.


A young Edie and friend Ed Hennessey.

Edie and Andy Warhol.

The Factory entourage.

Edie on the set of Kitchen, 1965.

Edie on the set of Ciao! Manhattan, in her California home toward the end of her life.

While I do recommend this book, I cannot stress enough to skip the biopic Factory Girl. It will have you rolling your eyes for 90 minutes (or maybe trying to claw them out so as not to have to watch the monstrosity unfolding before you).

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

This was the first book by David Sedaris that I read. I can remember sitting in the cafeteria at school laughing out loud. I still think it's his best.

I like the wallpaper pattern on the spine and back.