BOOKS THREAD

It's not my cup of tea, either, but the kids do think he's cool. Black and white.

 

Recently finished Bruce Feldman's "Meat Market," about college recruiting and specially Ed O. and Ole Miss. Interesting look at big-time recruiting, even though Ole Miss is terrible right now.

John Ed Bradley's "It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium" is an awesome account of playing college ball and how long it lingers with you. Great read.

Finally, Tom Perotta's "The Abstinence Teacher" is a very, very good novel.

 

Good answer.
Jed Horne's book on Katrina is still better than his, though.

 

I would. I can't find the 'what' that people love about him.

 

I second the vote for "It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium." Beautifully written thoughtful book.

Besides Bradley's lifelong struggle to move away from football, the book is about Bradley's struggle to become a writter. For many here at SJ that part of book might prove to be even more interesting than the football stuff.

 

RE: What Is The What (with spoilers, Mira)

I really think he got the voice right for Valentino. For someone who burst onto the literary scene as something of a wiseass, Eggers handled the a true-to-life biography about a Sudanese Lost Boy with incredible maturity and touching realism. There is a scene in the book where Valentino is preparing to meet his host family in Atlanta and he irons his shirt and pants four times because he's so nervous and wants them to think he is serious and grateful for their help. That really moved me. There are a lot of scenes in the book that I found extremely touching, and made me question how I could live such a privileged life without having any clue about the atrocities that occurred daily in Africa. The book is also lyrical and powerful and simple all at once. I liked the fact that it was a history of Sudan, similar, in some ways, to the way that The Poisonwood Bible was a history of The Congo and a story about the colonization of Africa.

But as far as the narrative goes, the way Eggers chose to tell the story took a lot of the dramatic tension out of the piece. All throughout Valentino's walk to Ethiopia, we know he's going to live. We know he's not going to be eaten by lions or die of starvation or be killed by the Arab militia because of the way the story is constructed. The narrator is already telling us the story from Atlanta, years later, with his present life interspersed throughout the story of his childhood.

I also have some difficulties with the final paragraph, because it was one of the few parts of the book where I thought Eggers really slipped out of Valentino and into Dave Eggers voice. I like hope and courage and dignity, but there is too much of Eggers in this paragraph for my tastes.

It reads too much like the end of HBWOSG, with the same "I say YES to life!" call to the masses.

As for what people love about Eggers, I'm assuming you read HBWOSG and did not like it. I guess what I like about him is, even though his ego is a part of it, I truly do thing he has noble ambitions and good intentions. He loves books and the idea that we can all be inspired by language, and that it's much harder to be the artist than it is the critic. And I think HBWOSG truly did capture that 20-something malaise and desperation many people of my generation feel, the confusing balance we have do at that age to become adults without letting go of every shred of our innocence. He's clearly not in the literary game for the money or the fame, and if you've every been to one of the Writer's Workshops that McSweeneys had set up around the country where they tutor kids, you'll see that there is a genuine desire to be MORE inclusive with creative writing as an art, a goal that infuriates some people, even though they won't admit it.

I think his own work is a little uneven, but McSweeneys is one of the few publishing houses that will take risks on literary fiction, especially the non-traditional kind, and that's worth admiring.

 

Double Down, thank you.

I liked "Staggering Genius" because it was different. Yeah Eggers is filled with himself a bit, well more than bit, but he dares to be different. That's refreshing. I like to see a writer of my generation going against the grain. Maybe I won't love the writing, but I respect a different twist.

I liked "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer for the same reason.

 

I don't know that I'm ready to read about Katrina, Fenian. Way gloomy and dismal, and too soon, I think, to make any real contact.

My mother mails me her consumed political books out the ass. The Republican Noise Machine is the only one I've had the courage to pick up. I don't need to read about this shit, I live it.

 

LJB -- Try "the Case Of Abraham Lincoln." It's about young Abe the lawyer and a bizarre murder case in Springfield. (Wife and lover kill hubby by slow poison and then, apparently running out of patience, club him to death with a hammer.)

 

Historical fiction?

I mowed through the Abe Was Gay book a few years back. That was some unusual reading.

 

I really like Safran Foer, mainly because of the risk taking in Everything Is Illuminated, even though the ending was a mess and didn't quite work. I think both Everything and Extremely Loud have their flaws, but I like watching a novelist who is my age stretching his legs to find his voice, and I think Foer is going to write a lot of good books before he's done.

One more thing, Mira, I wanted to add about What Is The What that I thought about last night after I posted. I think Eggers handled the material extremely well, but I also think he handcuffed himself somewhat by walking the tightrope between fiction and memoir journalism. It's obvious he wanted to be true to Valentino's story, but as a novelist I think that commitment to what "really" happened limited him somewhat in the story he could tell. It's a minor nitpick; I really did enjoy the book. But I think because he really wanted Valentino to feel like it was his story, he couldn't go places a novelist might. If that makes sense.

 

Nope.
Actual case.
It takes place just as the Whigs are falling apart and the new party is being born, so there's a lot of politicking with Abe around the trial.