Books: A Paper Love Affair

Larry McMurtry has done many things in his life but perhaps none is as impressive as turning Archer City, Texas -a lonesome patch of Texas prairie- into one of the world’s great book towns.  And in his suitably titled Books we learn all about this labor of love as we’re granted a rare and fascinating look into the world of book collecting and book dealing.

As the bestselling author of more than 30 novels (including the 1985 Pulitzer prize winning Lonesome Dove), over a dozen works of non-fiction, and Oscar Award-winning screenplays like Terms of Endearment and The Last Picture Show, he's contributed his share to the American literary canon.  And as one of the last true book scouts and purveyors of rare and antiquated books, he’s been involved in the book trade in one way or another for the past seven decades.  That experience and longevity has yielded some fascinating stories and insight which he chronicles in his plain and engaging prose as only someone with his skill-set and résumé can.

From McMurtry’s humble farm beginnings, to his days as a book scout, to his first bookshop in Washington D.C., to the international auction circuit and beyond, the pages are peppered with larger-than-life characters and book hoarding eccentrics.  Things eventually come full circle as he returns home to Archer City; the place where his love affair began as a book-obsessed youth hoarding a ragged stash of 19 books (a sum that has since blossomed into more than 300,000 volumes).  And the endearing narrative thread throughout is that McMurtry has remained that West Texas boy for whom the written word is the “cheapest and most stable pleasure of life.”  Operating in a world that prizes books as commodities rather than art, he has never lost that perspective.

Books is written in typical McMurtry fashion with his rapid-fire burst of one and two page chapters and non-pretentious style succinctly detailing action and ideas with economy.  He seems to have an anecdote for every occasion and for a man who was on the fringe of the beat generation, palled-around with Ken Kesey (and reportedly married his widow), and has rubbed elbows with just about everyone from aristocrats to Hollywood folk, it’s not all that surprising.  And these tidbits are augmented with interesting revelations such as the struggle between his inner-writer and inner-reader and the resulting friction, which he concludes, is a benefit to both his passions. 

But more than just documenting the amazing life of a bibliophile and recounting some fascinating stories about books, there is a timeless quality and an obvious preservational importance to Books.  It’s been labeled a “memoir”, but it’s not really.  McMurtry is not the memoir type. It’s more like a postcard for posterity, a chronicling of the dying art of book dealing for future generations.  And with the rise of the Internet and EBay this world seems to vanish a little more each day.  That’s why Books is not only an interesting book, but an important one.  And it would be hard to find a more apt chronicler for the task.   

Me Talk Pretty One Day: Very Entertaining Essays

Imagine Garrsion Keillor ditching Lake Wobegon, moving to the city, his perspective dirtied by the ugliness of everyday life, and you’ve got a pretty good picture what David Sedaris is all about.  His biting, New York-infused, commentary mixed with a folksy Carolina sensibility form an improbable but illuminating insight that’s highly appealing.  In his book Me Talk Pretty One Day his talents are on full display and the result is one of the most entertaining collections of essays we’ve read in a great while.

Sedaris, who moved to North Carolina as kid and, in his own words “relentlessly made fun of [his] new neighbors and their backwards, poky way of life,” remains thoroughly grounded in this world; even after escaping to New York and progressing through various life chapters that include: failed furniture mover, failed student, failed drug abuser, failed performance artist, among other amusing endeavors.  Through it all, Raleigh remains Sedaris’ baseline, his metric of normalcy and right in whatever foreign environ.  And he is one of the few people on planet earth that can straddle between Appalachia and The Meat Packing District, with one foot deeply rooted in each terrain.

But under the veneer of humor, there’s a subtle and enduring allusion to sadness and melancholy lurking just beneath the surface.  The death of his mother, economic difficulties, concern for his family, and an apparent fear of loneliness that’s familiar to us all.  Fortunately, this buried sorrow is never overwhelming and maintaining the balance between humor and poignancy provides just the right depth and complexity to his writing.  It’s not frivolous and it’s not depressing, it’s a comfortable amalgamation of the two; funny, thoughtful and filling all at the same time.

In one of the more memorable essays (The Great Leap Forward) he chronicles the excess of New York in a hilarious recollection of his time working as an “assistant” to a wealthy Colombian heiress.  And in another (You Can’t Kill the Rooster) he tackles the subject of his mother’s death by taking us into the white trash world of his lawn-mowing brother whom is affectionately known as “The Rooster.”  And what’s remarkable is how he effortlessly he steps between the two worlds.

The author mines his family life for much of his inspiration.  Indeed, his father and siblings are central to his writing and provides a solid foundation that prevents his work from becoming simply a snarky Seinfeld episode about life in the city.  The connection to family anchors the work in compassion and provides substance to some of the more whimsical subject matter. 

David Sedaris is widely recognized for his social commentary and witty essays.  Me Talk Pretty One Day was a #1 national bestseller when released in 2000, and Time magazine named Sedaris “Humorist of the Year.”  Just about everything he writes reaches bestseller status and he’s been nominated for multiple Grammys for his readings and public radio work.  He is arguably this generation’s greatest essayist and chronicler of American life and anything he produces is worth checking out.     

The Book of Basketball: Holy Scriptures of the NBA

Very rarely is a subject so thoroughly and entertainingly encapsulated in a single text as Bill Simmons’ The Book of Basketball: The NBA according to the Sports Guy.  It is, until another writer is crazy or talented enough to attempt to do better, the definitive bible of professional basketball.  His insightful analysis, attention to basketball minutia and the absolute thoroughness of his examination make you wonder if God didn’t appear to the author as a burning bush and dictate the text.  It’s hardly high literature but it’s superbly written and offers enough –often hilarious- references to pop culture that it’s entertaining for even the most limited of basketball fans.

Simmons offers a unique and vibrant dissection of the evolution of the game over the past five decades, a thorough and well-reasoned ranking of the top 96 players ever to play the game, a chapter on the greatest teams of all time, and -in a chapter that is sure to appeal to the NBA-obsessed- he also tackles dozens of fascinating alternative histories like: “What if Len Bias hadn't overdosed?” and “What if the 1984 draft had gone differently?”  Very few stones are left unturned in this exhaustive examination. 

But what elevates The Book of Basketball from just another entertaining sports book to the pantheon of important books is that it breaks new ground by straddling genres.  When originally published in 2009 it was one of the first books that successfully navigated the intersecting terrain between sports and pop culture.  While it contains sufficient stats and jargon to sate basketball purists’ appetites, it also contains enough of the other stuff to appeal to a very broad audience.  It reads something like a well-informed blog; what one might imagine the result of cramming Sports Illustrated, The Onion and People magazine into a blender and pureeing.  And while that may not be an appealing dish for everyone, that seems to be the present state of the publishing industry.   

The Book of Basketball is also an incredibly fun reading experience as the author’s passion and child-like exuberance for the subject is highly infectious and jumps off of nearly every page.  Simmons, aka The Sports Guy, and the brains behind the popular mixed media website Grantland (The Literate Man highly recommends this site, which delves into a little bit of everything, including literature), is not only addicted to the NBA but is also a reverent student and able chronicler of the game.  He’s also compiled what might be the most engrossing and ample set of footnotes we've ever seen. 

So if you hold even a passing interest in the game of basketball do not hesitate to pick up this book.  Before you know it, you’ll be on page 300 -crunching stats and reading about Rick Barry’s hair piece and Larry Bird’s locker room beer consumption- unkempt, unshaven, and pathetic; partaking in NBA lore to levels of near depravity, wishing you’d never picked this book up.  And loving every minute of it.  

The Great Book Giveaway!

Always on the vanguard of that nebulous frontier where social media and innovation collide, The Literate Man (TLM) has crawled into the 21^st century of book blogging and we've set our sights on yet another daring first:  we’re giving the people what they want.  And what do the people want?  Why, free books of course!  So let us welcome you to the first ever TLM Free Book Giveaway!  That’s right the TLM Free Book Giveaway! It is, without a doubt, the greatest free book giveaway in the history of the universe (we wouldn't use bold font if it wasn't).  So, we got that going for us, which is nice.  And it’s even nicer for the two lucky winners of this amazing contest.  Two very special people will receive free copies of At Drake’s Command, the terrific new novel by David Wesley Hill (click here to see review).  We’re big fans of the book and we're sure you will be to.  But that's not all, act now and three lucky runner-ups will also receive an electronic version for Nook or Kindle.  That's five free books being given away, folks!   

To enter for your chance to win you must:

1.    Be a follower of our blog (scroll down this page and click the blue Join This Site button on the lower-right side)

2.    Hit the comments section of this post and tell us the next book we should review on this site and why.  The best submissions (as judged by the brilliant editors at TLM) will not only see their book suggestions reviewed on this site, but will also win a free copy of At Drake’s Command. 

Please note: This contest is open internationally. It will close on Friday, February 22 at 11:59 PM (EST) and the winners will be notified via email shortly thereafter.

This contest couldn't be any easier!  So let us know what book you’re hankering to have reviewed on TLM and win yourself a free copy of a great book.  We can’t wait to start sorting through the millions of outstanding submissions that are sure to follow.  Thanks for following and happy reading!

Author Interview Series: David Hill, At Drake's Command

One of the best things about producing The Literate Man is the opportunity to read new and interesting books submitted to us by authors.  We’re both humbled and elated at the prospect of cracking the spine on these submissions and sharing a great new book or author with the world.  At Drake’s Command by David Hill (Temurlone Press, 2012) is latest of the many excellent books we’ve received.    

At Drake’s Command is the rare kind of book that once you open it up, you’ll be planning your day around the next opportunity to pick it up again and devour its 424 pages.  It’s the story of Sir Francis Drake’s circumnavigation of the world as seen through the eyes of Peregrine James -a kitchen boy cum privateer- and it’s absolutely fascinating.  James, a novice seaman, learns the ropes as he’s reluctantly drawn into one enthralling adventure after another, culminating with the stunning climax of this first volume of a three part series. 

Hill has created a captivating vision of 16^th century at sea that weaves historical accuracy, engaging characters -both real and imagined- and an alluring plotline into a swashbuckling adventure on the high seas and lands unknown.  It holds its own as both a compelling story and as a painstakingly attentive portrait of the details of ship life.  Hill transports the reader back to the Golden Age of Exploration by cleverly re-creating the vernacular of the day and provides an intimate glimpse into the life of an English pirate.  It’s a richly layered depiction of loyalty, betrayal, intrigue and the historical geopolitics of the era.  We can’t wait for an advanced copy of the next book in the series!

Mr. Hill was kind enough to take the time to participate in our Author’s Interview Series.

(Editor's note: certain of Mr. Hill's responses were condensed by the Editor due to space constraints; any usage of seemingly out-of-place punctuation is the fault of the Editor, not Mr. Hill.) 

TLM: Why write about Sir Francis Drake’s voyage?

Hill: In 1998 I was a winner of the Writers of the Future Contest, which was created by L. Ron Hubbard, who was a science fiction writer before he founded the religion of Scientology. Each year winners of the contest are invited to Los Angeles for a black-tie awards ceremony and a week-long writing workshop conducted by a professional science fiction writer…Thus, one morning we were let loose in the aisles of the LA Library to browse the shelves in search of inspiration. I was mildly interested in pirates and began reading a facsimile edition of The World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake.

This was not written by Drake himself but published by a nephew thirty years after Drake’s death in an effort to keep alive Drake’s reputation…I said to myself, “This is utter mendacity.” So I started researching the real story of what had happened…My first inclination was to write a non-fiction book about the…affair.  I am, however, a fiction writer, so I decided to tell the tale in novel form.

The dialogue is fascinating.  How did you go about re-creating the day-to-day language of 16th century privateers?

Basically, I divided the English language into three sets:

1.       Modern English

2.       Elizabethan English

3.       Words Common to both Modern and Elizabethan English

Then I used only the words common to both Modern and Elizabethan English (although sometimes, for flavor, I would throw in a purely Elizabethan word). I also added some Shakespearean cadences, and borrowed heavily from John Dunne.

Why did you choose a kitchen boy as the protagonist for this tale?

I chose a cook rather than a sailor because I wanted to make the book accessible to the general reader rather than only nautical aficionados. Perry knows nothing about sailing and thus we learn about the sea as he does, and I'm able to explain (as one reviewer noted) “the difference between a fathom and a firkin.”

Furthermore, I know much about cooking since I worked for many years as a chef for major hotels, mostly in the South. I also briefly cooked aboard the Clearwater, a replica of a 19^th century sloop built by Pete Seeger and others, which to this day sails the Hudson River, educating people about the environment. Once, too, I cooked aboard a 50 foot vessel on a blue water delivery sail from Maryland to Florida. These experiences allowed me to bring a certain level of realism to Perry's adventures.

At Drake’s Command strikes us a story firmly rooted in historical detail.  How did you prepare for and research this writing?  What were your primary sources?

As I mentioned, I began with The World Encompassed, which, unfortunately, is a pack of lies and has been known to be such since the publication of the Cooke Account (a manuscript  written by one of the gentlemen adventurers accompanying Drake) in the mid 19th century. Most of the text is derived from the notebook of Francis Fletcher, parson to the adventure; however, Fletcher's notes were heavily edited to cast Drake in a favorable light. Still, though, The World Encompassed remains the most important available source of information about the second circumnavigation of the world.

Next I read Corbett’s Drake and the Tudor Navy, which was published in the late 19^th  century and is considered the seminal biography of Drake. Unfortunately it, too, is little more than white wash.

The best scholarly account of the circumnavigation is Wagner’s Voyage Around the World, which was published in the early 20^th century…biased, but of utmost importance, is New Light on Drake, edited by Zelia Nuttall. In the early 19th century, Ms. Nuttall scoured archives in Mexico and Spain to search out any references to Francis Drake during the voyage of circumnavigation…The Principal Navigations, by Haklyut…is an invaluable resource and contains much about Drake.

…I wrote to the British Library and had them send me photocopies of manuscripts pertinent to the voyage, and then I had to decipher the writing letter by letter, not an easy task but a thrilling one—it was an amazing experience to hold in my hands the actual signatures of the men about whom I was writing.

As I wrote the book, to get into the spirit of the period, I immersed myself in Medieval and Renaissance music, particularly the work of Orlando Gibbons, William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, and, of course, John Dowland.

How many volumes will this series encompass and how did you arrive at the decision to make it more than one book?

I originally planned a single volume but gave up this idea at the 50,000 word mark, when I realized the story needed much more room. The circumnavigation required more than two years, after all! At Drake's Command follows the adventure from Plymouth to the Cape Verde Islands. The next volume, Desperate Bankrupts, picks up the story in Africa and continues until the fleet reaches Patagonia and Thomas Doughty is executed. The final installment, Beyond Dreams of Avarice, continues the adventure until the Golden Hind returns to England laden with one of the greatest pirate treasures in history.

What are some of your favorite books –fiction or non-fiction- written about the Golden Age of Exploration?

I highly recommend Portuguese Voyages 1498-1663: Tales from the Great Age of Discovery, edited by C. D. Ley.  This is an amazing collection of original source material from the Portuguese Age of Discovery. The section, "The Furthest East", is a first-person account of a shipload of Portuguese desperadoes marooned in the China of Genghis Khan, and it's as gripping as a novel.

Another favorite of mine is The Defeat of John Hawkins, by Raynor Unwin. This is about Hawkins's disastrous slaving voyage, and it's an amazing story. Drake was there, and did not well distinguish himself. So was Pascoe Goddy, a sailor aboard the Pelican, who tells part of the tale himself while explaining his dislike for rapiers and how he lost his ear.

What is it about the Golden Age of Exploration that makes it so interesting for readers and writers?

First, I truly hope the Golden Age of Exploration is interesting for readers. When my agent was marketing At Drake's Command to major publishers, we were continually told that readers only wanted nautical adventures set in the Napoleonic era, not the 16^th century. However, by the 1800s, most of the world was mapped, while two centuries earlier most of the world remained terra incognita. This, to me, is the more interesting time, when mystery was just beyond the horizon and every voyage was a journey into the unknown. I hope many readers will feel as I do.

Patrick O’Brian, and his Aubrey Maturin series, is obviously the standard-bearer for this genre, and we’ve written plenty about his work, but how does At Drake’s Command compare with his work?

I have to admit that I've never read Patrick O'Brian. Around ten years ago I picked up a book in the middle of the series but just couldn't get into the story. I figured I should start at the beginning but before I could, I had begun writing At Drake's Command. I rarely read other people's novels while I'm working on my own. I'm afraid of allowing another author's voice into my head because sometimes a good voice will take over and I will find myself imitating the other writer. Since I suspected that comparisons between At Drake's Command and O'Brian's books would be inevitable, I was particularly careful to avoid his work, so that I could honestly claim that I was not influenced by him. I have, however, read all of the Hornblower novels, and Forester is one of my favorite authors.

Your previous work has dealt with science fiction - if we’re not mistaken.  How did you make the leap from science fiction to historical fiction?  How are they similar?

...The transition from one genre to another went fairly smoothly since in both genres the author must create for the reader a world different from our own. In this regard, historical fiction is easier to write than science fiction because the history already exists and you can take from it what you will. For a SF story, however, you must create the new world from whole cloth, a much harder task.

When can we expect part II of The Drake Circumnavigation?

It took me eight years to research and write At Drake's Command. However, now that the research is complete, Book II, Desperate Bankrupts, should take under a year. I should have it finished in late 2013 or early 2014.

David Wesley Hill is an award-winning fiction writer with more than thirty stories published in the U.S. and internationally. In 1997 he was presented with the Golden Bridge award at the International Conference on Science Fiction in Beijing, and in 1999 he placed second in the Writers of the Future contest. In 2007, 2009, and 2011 Mr. Hill was awarded residencies at the Blue Mountain Center, a writers and artists retreat in the Adirondacks. He studied under Joseph Heller and Jack Cady and received a Masters in creative writing from the City University of New York, as well as the De Jur Award, the school's highest literary honor. 

For more information about Mr. Hill and At Drake's Command visit:  http://www.amazon.com/Drakes-Command-adventures-Peregrine-circumnavigation/dp/0983611726/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1359567223&sr=8-1&keywords=at+drake%27s+command

The Sportswriter Starts Slow but Finishes Strong

We did not like The Sportswriter.  At least through the first few chapters.  And then the focus shifted from an exhaustively thorough examination of a New Jersey suburb and the protagonist’s unchecked introspection to the real-time interactions of an engrossing set of characters and we simply couldn’t put the book down.  This novel and the entire Frank Bascombe series came so highly recommended that we trudged on.  And we’re glad we did.   

The Sportswriter is the story of Bascombe, a divorced suburban WASP sportswriter in his late-thirties, who, by his own admission “just [tries] not to do any harm.”  He has no illusions about life and is able to find satisfaction in things like a cozy armchair, a well-mixed drink and no-hitters.  He takes the days as they come; an extremely self-satisfied man.  Recovering from the death of his oldest child he is slowly coming back to orbit after his life became shrouded in “dreaminess” following the tragedy.  The story unfolds over a long weekend in his beloved Haddam, New Jersey and a quick excursion to Detroit to interview an ex-football player. 

It’s easy to see why Pat Ford has a Pulitzer on his shelf (Independence Day, the third novel in the Bascombe trilogy) as his gift for finding meaning in the smallest details is evident from page one.  The way that he unearths beauty and truth in his straightforward description of small town life in the Northeast makes him something of a New Jersey Faulkner. 

But this is also perhaps the single aspect of the book that we struggled with the most.  For anyone thirsting for an exemplarily thesis on the Jersey ‘burbs, the first hundred odd pages of The Sportswriter is paydirt.  Add to that a protagonist that has been characterized as smug, even shallow by some critics, and you have cause for valid criticism.  But The Sportswriter is so much more than a man driving through his neighborhood describing what he sees out his car window.  And Bascombe is a comfortably sympathetic character -something like a white collar Springsteen for the Wall-Street commuter class- which Ford impressively employs to cover nearly every square inch of human emotional terrain in just 375 pages.    

Ford is a gifted and empathetic writer and The Sportswriter reads like a cross between The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Updike’s Rabbit novels, with a dash of baseball to spice things up.  It strikes an entertaining balance between character, story, and environment as Bascombe’s existential contemplation weaves almost seamlessly with the character interaction and clever dialogue.  Insightful observational nuggets that can be gleaned from nearly every single page and it’s the type of rewarding read that you won’t soon forget. 

Independence Day (1995) is the more celebrated book of the Bascombe trilogy but The Sportswriter is the introduction to the series and a very impressive book in its own right.  It’s difficult to walk away from this novel not being impressed by Ford’s skill as a writer and eager to read his other works.

The Big Short: And Idiot's Guide to the Financial Crisis

Michael Lewis has done it again.  And this time he has truly outdone himself.  He has taken, what is quite possibly the most boring subject on the planet earth, and made it palatable.  Not just palatable, but actually quite interesting.  And during the process he’s also managed to explain the cause of the Great Recession in terms that even book blog editors and chimpanzees can understand.

The Big Short is Lewis’ finely crafted attempt at distilling the housing market bubble and the eventual collapse of the global financial markets.  He revisits the well-trodden world of Wall Street bond trading, the subject of in his 1989 debut book, Liar’s Poker.  For the uninitiated, this area of debt derivative investing is so byzantine and obscure that the lecturing of its finer points should be banned under the Geneva Accord.  Suffice to say, this confusing and completely made-up investment universe is basically incomprehensible…by design.  Even the people immersed in this paper world of complicated bets don’t understand what’s going on most of the time, and there lies the crux of the financial market meltdown of 2008.

Fortunately, Lewis expertly guides us through the process, while providing insight, understanding and even a few laughs.  Instead of diving into the nuts and bolts of it, in typical fashion, he paints this highly pedantic subject with a humanistic flourish.  He uses a group of peculiar hedge fund managers and traders as his instruments for spicing up the dry subject matter with heroes and scoundrels.  These peculiar characters belong to an exclusive fraternity of less than two dozen or so hedge funders that actually understood what was going on.  And in the face of great ridicule from their peers -and at times themselves- actually bet against the market and made a killing while most people lost their shirts.

What makes this small group of investors extraordinary, aside from their market vision, is their idiosyncrasies and Lewis has a masterful gift for not only spotting such traits but mining them for narrative adhesive as he weaves the storyline together: an Aspergers suffering neurologist turned hedge fund manager; a pair of garage band investment nerds operating out of a shed in Berkeley, CA; a New York Jew intent on exposing the myths of the Talmud and destroying the financial system as we know it; an apocalyptic trader holed up in a survival compound in the mountains; a bond-buyer villain named Wing Chau -these are the narrative vessels that Lewis uses to deconstruct the mortgage-backed securities mess.  And without their colorful personal contributions this subject matter would be impossible for most humans to digest.

And that’s the art of Lewis’ craft.  He’s a thinker on par with Malcom Gladwell and his lively writing is reminiscent of a young Tom Wolfe.  He has a knack for taking impossible to understand, and seemingly unappealing topics, and brilliantly repackaging them into beautiful things like the The Blindside, Moneyball, and The New New Thing, among others.  With his mix of academic understanding and deft treatment of the human experience there simply isn’t’ anyone writing today with his rare skill-set.  Read anything by Lewis you can get your hands on.  You won’t be disappointed.