Best Books of the Past 25 Years

Entertainment Weekly released its list of 100 Best Reads of the past 25 years and I didn’t fair too well – four out of 100. Here’s the breakdown:

Have Read
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien (1990)
57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987)
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984)

Have Bought and Not Read
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
84. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)

Will Probably Read Soon
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)

Might Possibly Read Sometime
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)

Would Like To Read But Most Likely Never Will
1. The Road, Cormac McCarthy (2006)
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
36. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
47. World's Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (1990)

"A Death in the Family" Revisited

We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child.

So begins one of my favorite book, "A Death in the Family," by James Agee, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1958. Agee was a tortured genius haunted by the death of his father when James was 6, and this novel, published posthumously after his death of a heart attack at age 45 in 1955, is the work of a writer in peak form.

Or so I thought. I read today in The New York Times of a "restoration" of Agee's work to it's original form.

When Agee died, he left a hand scribbled manuscript of a novel that was almost finished. The handwriting was "so crabbed that psychics should have been called in to decode it." David McDowell, Agee’s protégé and literary executor, cobbled together the version of the book that is known and loved today, a lyrical autobiographical account of Agee’s first six and a half years, ending with the death of his beloved father in a car crash.

Scholar Michael A. Lofaro spent years shuffling through the original manuscript to create "A Death in the Family: A Restoration of the Author’s Text," by "tracking down the variants, squinting at Agee’s gnarled handwriting, deciphering illegibilities, comparing drafts, speculating, emendating, annotating — and when it comes to his predecessor McDowell’s version, lacerating."


But was Lofaro able to improve on the original? Will Blythe, writing for The Times says yes:

"At last we have 'A Death in the Family' that appears closer to the author’s original intention. This tidying is good in its own right, but the main reason to celebrate the publication of this version is that it serves as a fresh reminder of the wondrous nature of Agee’s prose — unabashedly poetic, sacramental in its embrace of reality, and rhythmical as rain on a Tennessee tin roof."

I would like to heartily add an "amen" to the previous statement. Even without the novel, Agee would have been remembered for any of his many accomplishments. He was an accomplished poet and a well-regarded journalist who worked for Fortune and time Time in the 1930s. He may be best remembered for his collaboration with the great photographer Walker Evans on their book about the plight of Southern sharecroppers, "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men," but he is also considered the father of American film criticism, which he defined in his book, "Agee on Film." And, if that wasn't enough, he was the credited screenwriter on two classic films, "The African Queen" and "The Night of the Hunter."

I can't wait to read the new version of this old favorite. If you haven't spent time with Agee, seek out his work at the bookstore or library. Or even spend a moment with this overview from The New Yorker. He is an American original worth remembering.

Three Old Favorites, Continued

As I mentioned previously, The Stash Dauber has weighed in with his Three Old Favorites. Now Stash’s Philly friend Andrew from Headlock Harmony answers the bell with his list.

Three Old Favorites

My new blog friend Walnuts (who I imagine looking like the Sopranos guy) tasked me with the following endeavor: The Little-Known Favorites. Rules: List and describe three of your favorite books that other people might not be familiar with. Then tag five people. I've been tagged. So here I go.

Schoolboy Johnson by John R. Tunis. I read this 1958 book when I was a kid back in the 1970s, which probably had something to do with the beginnings of my love of all-things Mid-Century. Schoolboy is a pitcher for the Dodgers who overcomes his travails and masters the change-up under the wise and steady influence of the old veteran Speedy. And as the bookjacket says, "But it took even more than the change-up Speedy taught him, to turn the Schoolboy into a winning pitcher, and a man." Uh, OK. I know how that sounds, but I swear to God it doesn't end up like The History Boys. Anyway, flash forward from fourth grade to college. One of my great professors at Texas, Bill Stott said in passing that the works of John R. Tunis would make a great master's thesis for someone. I decided to be that person, then promptly forgot about it. Sorry, Bill. But, years later, I found this copy of the book at the flea market in Canton, helping me formulate my estate saling thesis that sometimes you find things and sometimes things find you.

Cowtown Moderne by Judith Singer Cohen. This book is a love letter to Fort Worth if there ever was one. My city is blessed with a rich architectural heritage (which you can find out more about here) and some of my favorite buildings are from the 1920s and 1930s -- the Art Deco or Moderne period. Open these pages, and you can find out the detailed history of some of Fort Worth's Art Deco gems like the Kress Building and the Sinclair Building. I first learned about this book during my UT days thanks to Jeff Meikle in the American Studies Department. I loved it and made it my mission to procure my own copy, which wasn't easy because it seems only about five were printed. I found my copy at the old Barber's Books in downtown Fort Worth. Barber's was an old Art Deco-style bookstore that was bought out by Larry McMurtry in the mid- to late-nineties. Larry moved all of the books to his book-o-plex in Archer City, but he didn't get this one. It cost me $75 in 1991, which was about 40 percent of my weekly paycheck, so you know I wanted this book REALLY bad. And I've never regretted buying it. It's a priceless resource.

Slightly Out of Focus by Robert Capa. This is an amazing book by one of the great photographers of the 20th Century. Capa, a Hungarian Jew who fled the rise of Fascism in Europe. Capa tells us about his World War II with a light tone, always displaying humor and humility. It's quite a stunning achievement for someone who was not a native English speaker. Did he have help? A ghost writer? I don't want to know. The narrative flows so easily that I imagine it being told in Capa's heavily accented English. For me, there is another, more personal reason for loving this book. My old family friend, Marcus O. Stevenson, pops up from time to time in the story -- in North Africa, in Sicily, in Normandy. Stevenson lived most of his postwar life in Dallas selling construction equipment. But during the war, he was aide-de-camp to Teddy Roosevelt Jr. and was by his side when the General won the Medal of Honor on Utah Beach on June 6, 1944. Later had the distinction of being Ernest Hemingway's chaperon during the liberation of Paris. On page 166, you find Hemingway, Capa and Stevenson tear-assing around Normandy in captured Mercedes-Benz with full ration of scotch and enough weapons to arm a full platoon. They soon found themselves caught in the middle of a German ambush that very nearly moved Papa's expiration date forward by 17 years. You want adventure? You want name-dropping? This book is full of great stories like that.

But Slightly Out of Focus is more than a gripping narrative, it's a collection of photos that capture the moments, big and small, of a war. You are there when the Americans storm Omaha Beach, but you also see a little boy sitting on top of a tank during the celebration accompanying the liberation of Paris. The full range of human emotions are there but mostly you find images of life at its most raw. Joy, happiness and exultation. Hate, fear and malice. It's all there.

Thanks for letting me play, Walnuts. Now to tag other people.

UPDATE: The Stash Dauber picks up the gantlet! Good on ya!

Joe Ely Coming Back to Cowtown

He'll be at the Borders Books on Hulen at 5 p.m. on Saturday, April 14 promoting doing an instore performance and (I'm willing to bet) promoting his new book, Bonfire of Roadmaps. See you there. If not, you can find tour stop near you.

A Message from Bill

I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to call Bill a friend, but I've met him a time or two. He's written an essay in the Star-Telegram about his favorite book, A Message To Garcia.

Take a moment to read it, because although he's talking about someone else, he could very well be talking about himself -- although he would be far too humble to do that. Bill exudes character and integrity like a Frank Capra hero, and, if anything good can come out of Iraq, it will be because of dedicated professionals like him.

Another Award

My friend Johnny D. Boggs is my hero. He's a guy who follwed his dreams and has had things work out nicely. He quit his day job wrestling with the elements of style in daily newspapering and became an award-winning writer of western fiction. He just won his second Spur Award this weekend for his book, Camp Ford. Check him out and buy a book.

Doing Indefinable Service to Mankind

Just finished Texas Literary Outlaws by Steven L. Davis, a look at how a small group of writers transformed Texas literature and the state’s vision of itself.

The nucleus of this group, I’m proud to say, enjoyed its formative years in Fort Worth. Dan Jenkins, Bud Shrake and Gary Cartwright all came of age in the sports department of the old Fort Worth Press under the tutelage of legendary sportswriter Blackie Sherrod. As an old Fort Worth sportsguy myself, I know their presence was still a powerful one even in the 1990s when I was there.

Although they are probably better know for their gonzo antics fueled by booze and pills, these guys were serious about the words. Sherrod could be a stern taskmaster gave them a strong foundation on which to build their writing. His mantra was this: hook’em with a strong lead, adopt a distinct point of view and hammer it home with a strong angle. That was the Fort Worth School of journalism.

Sherrod was an old-school, disciplined, hard-ass sports editor. But he also valued the craft of writing. He insisted that his reporter read and discuss literary journalists like Damon Runyon and Mark Twain. They dissected each other’s writing.

Sherrod believed that the games themselves were only of marginal importance. Years later, he wrote in his Dallas Morning News column that he didn’t believe that quarterbacks and shortstops were real heroes – real heroes were guys who could land a torpedo bomber on the pitching deck of a aircraft carrier. His experiences in World War II gave him a perspective – and perhaps a cynicism – that was a valuable component in his work and once that he passed on to those he worked with.

His writers learned that lesson well and throughout their careers, Jenkins, Shrake and Cartwright used sports as a departure point to discuss topics that were of far more interest to them. That’s a lot different than the attitudes of sportswriters today. ESPN has poisoned the minds of a generation of sports journalists. Today, everyone wants to be a personality – it’s all about the pose and the blather. The Sportscenterization of America has mangled the craft of sportswriting. No one cares about the words anymore, all they care about is their closeup.

One ugly truth that these guys dealt with then that hasn’t changed today is the current of anti-intellectualism and conservatism for which Texas is unfortunately famous. This book really helped me place these attitudes on a continuum and see how some things really don’t change that much. There have always been Rick Perrys.

Like their friends and colleagues Larry L. King and Billie Lee Brammer, their exploration of social, racial, sexual, musical, existential and pharmaceutical issues went against the grain. Spiritually, they had more in common with the Beat Generation than they did their peers in the newsrooms where they worked. They even coined a name for their spiritual fellow travelers – Mad Dogs, Inc. “Doing Indefinable Service to Mankind” was their tagline and their universe included Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Ann Richards.

The Mad Dogs were aware that something was different in postwar America and they were desperate to define it and discuss it. Objectivity didn’t exist; they put themselves in their stories. They may have tried to stay aloof, but they were there. They were involved.

But this journey often led them away from Texas. However, even when they left Texas, Texas didn’t leave them. They came back to these themes and topics throughout their careers.

Brammer’s novel The Gay Place is hailed as “Texas’ first urban novel” and while that is certainly true, it’s also a powerful exploration of not-so-young people grappling with mortality, lost love and broken dreams. It’s a work about existential dread as much as it is about politics and Brammer describes that ennui better than anyone else I’ve read recently.

The same could be said for another peripheral character in this book, another Fort Worth resident named Jay Milner. His memoir, Confessions of a Mad Dog, hits on all of these same topics and is a valuable supplement to Davis’ work.

I’m heartened by the perseverance of these guys as writers. Even when it didn’t seem that anyone wanted to read their work, they kept after it – they might have made good bloggers. It wasn’t easy making ends meet with families to feed and day jobs to hold down, but they still managed to make time for their work. And lots of drugs, alcohol and misbehavior which didn’t make family, work and writing any easier, but it sure seemed like fun anyway. Their search for meaning and purpose wasn’t an easy one either.

How will history judge these guys is the last question this book asks. When their work is separated from their personality, will it endure? That answer seems to be yes for now, if only because they were such keen social observers and chroniclers who record that moment when Texas really changed.

Do Justice and Let the Skies Fall

Just finished Christopher Hitchens’ Letters to a Young Contrarian, and I feel motivated and repelled by his philosophy at the same time. The best example of his ethos follows:

“So I have no peroration or clarion note on which to close. Beware the irrational, no matter how seductive. Shun the transcendent and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don’t be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will provide plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect them to live for you. (p. 140)

Hitchens believes in rational, empirical thought. He’s a cogent thinker and lucid writer. He takes no quarter and expects none. He’s a humanist and believes in the dignity of humankind. Liars, charlatans, dictators and anyone of a religious bent are apt to find themselves in his crosshairs.

But to me, the major flaw in his worldview his absence of the transcendent, the notion that there is something larger than ourselves that tie us together. There’s no God in his universe. He admires Dietrich Bonhoffer and Martin Luther King Jr., but doesn’t understand or appreciate how their faith sustained them through their dark moments. And the Dalai Lama – don’t even get him started.

A lesser flaw is that he assumes we live in a rational world. After 9-11, Abu Gharib, Hurricane Katrina and – how many seasons of Survivor and American Idol? – forgive me, but I can’t make that assumption.

Behind his veneer of cynicism, he is an idealist and a bit of a utopian, but I guess you must be in order to be a contrarian. Case in point: he’s especially wary of tribalism and any setting apart of a group for national, racial, religious, political or other reasons because it can “make people accept lethal and stupid conditions” (p. 104).

I agree with him to a point. As much as I wish everyone could see themselves as citizens of the world, people are going to view the world through the prism of their own experience, and where you are from, how you are raised and the God you pray to (or don’t pray to) will influence that for most people. People choose sides.

And even Hitchens understands this, but believes that people should choose their sides based on conscience rather than tribe:

”Dante was a sectarian and a mystic but he was right to reserve one of the fieriest corners of his inferno for those who, in time of moral crisis, try to stay neutral.”

I agree with this to the hilt. But I am also not naïve enough to think that people will always choose the moral high ground over allegiance to the group. We see this today in the moral ambivalence that many Americans have over the use of torture as an instrument of national security. If it keeps us safe, the reasoning goes, maybe a little torture isn’t so bad.

His world is not one of grays – it’s black and white. “The truth cannot lie, but if it could it would not lie somewhere in between. On some grave questions, there is no difference to be split; one does not look for a synthesis between verity and falsehood….(p. 20)” Me, I’m all about the gray. He’s right, on some questions there is no middle ground. But I think his list of questions is much longer than mine.

I admire Hitchens for his thinking, his writing and his moral compass. Taking a page out of Rilke’s book, he recognizes the value of going inside oneself on voyages of self-discovery:

”I do warn you that if you feel capable of going into internal exile and living against the stream, you can expect some dark nights of – all right – the soul. But then to undertake this and to then seek external or invisible aid would be to miss the point. A degree of solitude and resignation is necessary to begin with. Some people can’t bear solitude, let alone the idea that the heavens are empty and that we do not even succeed in troubling their deafness with our bootless cries.” (p. 66)

But where I am truly heartened by his example is when explains that being a contrarian is something you are, not something you do. I deal with this impulse in my own life – I see things a certain way and I’m not afraid to share my opinions. I can’t be any other way. It has cost me jobs, but I have never been one to pretend the emperor has no clothes.

But that’s OK, Hitchens says. Pick a side, dig in, arm yourself with facts and fight like hell. As the Romans would say, “Do justice and let the skies fall.”

Psychic Friends Network

If you’ve never heard of The Men Who Stare at Goats, consider putting it on your reading list. Actually, I haven’t read it either, but I heard Jon Ronson on Bob Edwards’ XM show and found the subject to be fascinating. Evidently, the Pentagon has put some effort into harnessing the powers of the Jedi, including feats of superhuman strength, walking through walls, out-of-body espionage, turning invisible and staring people to death. Sounds like Festivus gone horribly, horribly wrong.

The not-so-light side of all this is the innovation of things such as musical torture (for example, playing the theme to Barney the Dinosaur over and over until the subject cracks). All those tax dollars aren’t wasted as we employee these tactics from Guantanamo to Abu Gharib.