BookEnds

This blog got me thinking (which I guess is exactly what it’s supposed to do) about what books from our time will be considered classics generations from now — providing, of course, that people still read and don’t just have info shoved into their brain through a computer chip embedded in their skull.

For me, an absolute modern classic that deserves to be read for years and years and years is “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” by Michael Chabon.

I realize I’m not going out on any great limb here. Chabon, and this book in particular, have been roundly praised. But it has stayed with me longer than anything I’ve read in a long, long time. Not just the book itself, but also the actual experience of reading it, the continual, jaw-dropping wonder at the sheer talent jumping off every page.

I tend to prefer writers who don’t let their words get in the way of the story they’re telling. But this was one of the rare times I enjoyed a book as much for the writing itself as for the story the words told (which, by the way, is extraordinary.) What it feels like to be able to use the language the way Chabon does I can only imagine, but it’s thrilling to witness. It’s worth reading him just to see the metaphors and similes he creates.

Plus the book deals with some of my favorite subjects: the immigrant experience; past eras of New York City; and, most of all, comic books.

What are some of the books written in the last 10 years or so that you think deserve to be considered classics years from now?

Hi guys….Yes I did get a note from Monica freeing me from A-Rod. I’m happy to say the book has been passed on to a Yankees fan recovering from knee surgery. Not sure I did him a favor.

On a much happier note, I started Michael Connelly’s new book, The Scarecrow. One of my favorite authors, a former journalist and in the first 60 pages there is some heavy editorializing on the current state of the newspaper business. You go Michael!

Elizabeth, it looks like Dave has left us. He is on vacation this week, but didn’t leave before asking me if I expected him to read and blog about A-Rod while he was gone. I told him I did not. I don’t want to read this on vacation either.

In the meantime, I’ve gotten through about half the book, to chapter 8, “The Trophy Date.” A-Rod has been traded to the Yankees after his unprecedented $252 million/10 year deal with the Texas Rangers.

Leaving aside for a moment the shadily sourced accusations of cheating as a Rangers shortstop and Jose Canseco’s conjectures (even though A-Rod’s already admitted to using steroids now, and we don’t need Canseco telling us something he doesn’t know) I have a big question for you: why is the subtitle “The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez?” So far there’s only one life.  That life has just changed over time. Maybe he’s a conflicted person, but he doesn’t seem to have multiple personalities. And I only have about 100 pages left, so I think, at most, Roberts has room to make the case for dual personalities. And even duality would be tough in 100 pages.

There were also a few spots where I felt as though I was stepping out of time and space to read Roberts actually criticizing her own book. She brings up Stuart Smalley, the Al Franken “Saturday Night Live,” I had compared her vision of A-Rod to in a previous post. She says the following at the beginning of chapter 5, “The Perfectionist:”

Alex Rodriguez was suffering from a writer’s block of sorts in forming his own baseball identity, wanting badly for his career to be a living folktale but comparatively frozen on how to start the narrative.

Oh no, Selena. Did you mean to put that in, or was that a note to someone about you writing this book?

Click to continue reading

ABOVE: Ernest Murrell, right, of the Stamford CC, and Rahul Francois, of St. John’s CC during a friendly last year.

6/27/2009

STAMFORD – Sitting at a picnic table in Lione Park, brown bagging a tall-boy as the cricketers in their starched whites ran about the pitch, I couldn’t help but think of Joseph O’Neill’s “Netherland.”

The 2008 novel is ostensibly a post-9/11 story of New York, of its citizens grappling with life in the months after the devastating terrorist attacks, but it is so much more than that. The elegant prose is so precise and crafted it is an absolute pleasure to read – a quality all too often forgotten in modern fiction.

Hans van den Broek, the novel’s narrator, is a Dutch financial analyst living in New York with his wife and young son when the attacks of 9/11 force them to move from Lower Manhattan to a residential hotel in Midtown. Unable to cope with this new life, his family returns to Europe without him and the despondent van den Broek seeks friendship and the consolation of familiarity on the cricket pitch.

It is here, on the cricket grounds of the outer boroughs, that he falls in with men from the West Indies and the Asian Subcontinent, revealing a world within New York unseen from his life on Wall Street. With men more familiar with bookmaking than the oil futures market, who suit up in brilliant white and take the field each week for the love of a game that took hold on every island, every colony, every outpost once touched by the British Empire.

Likewise, in Stamford, members of the local cricket clubs gather on the West Side for matches, putting aside national rivalries to play overs on the new synthetic-turf field. Most of the players here hail from Jamaica, Barbados and other island nations, but India, Pakistan and occasionally England, Ireland and Australia are represented. Their national origins are evidenced by the colors on the caps many of the men wear, not officially part of the uniform, yet proudly displayed. In Lione park these men keep alive traditions first formalized in the 18th century.

The world of cricket in “Netherland” is rendered in vivid detail; the slow, humid Sundays of midsummer provide a rich backdrop for the dueling plot lines which explore not only the implosion of van der Broek’s personal life but also the Gatsby-esque tale that unfolds when he befriends a Trinidadian con-man with ambitions to build a world-class cricket stadium on an abandoned airfield in Brooklyn.

Comparisons to the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic – a paragon of American fiction – are not to be taken lightly, but O’Neill’s book stands up to this praise in many ways. O’Neill, Irish by birth, ultimately comes closer to the “Great American Novel,” than most American writers could ever hope.

–CP

NOTE: “Netherland” recently won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction after being a finalist in the National Book Awards and is now out in paperback.

In order to get started on our book club choice, Roberts’s A-Rod biography, I had to finish the mammoth 1,160-page book that I had started in April, “The Power Broker” by Robert Moses. The book had been sitting in an accusatory spot on my bookshelf since I bought in 2004. I was supposed to read it before I started grad school. I did not.

I can’t recommend the book highly enough, but that’s not why I’m writing. Sprinkled throughout the book are references to the Regional Plan Association, a nonprofit planning group that covers the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut region. Not only does the RPA still exist, but it helped Stamford organize the Master Plan adopted by the city in 2002 and has since helped the Glenbrook and Springdale community groups write new zoning rules that residents feel will improve the feel of their neighborhoods.

What the RPA was asking for from Robert Moses (or as his men called him, RM) was something that would affect my everyday life in a massive way.

Moses was a master planner, wielding power throughout New York City and the state for about 40 years to build the public works he wanted built. He started out building much needed public parks on Long Island, and acquired an overwhelming amount of WPA funds during the Depression to build highways into and out of the city. He also used proceeds from toll revenues, and bonds backed by future proceeds, to build highways. The Cross-Bronx, the West Side Highway, the Hutchinson Parkway, The Saw Mill, the B.Q.E. Highways, but never train tracks, which by the 1930s were, it was clear to most planners, necessary to take the vehicle burden off the roads. Reformers began begging for some share of the money for mass transit, arguing that a little extra money and space would help alleviate the traffic problem. Moses believed the solution for road problems was more roads. The desire to bridge toll revenues with mass transit funding is part of what undid his power under the Rockefeller administration.

In the late 1930s, Moses was building the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge to alleviate the traffic problems that started almost immediately after the Triborough — now RFK — opened. RPA asked Moses to consider building the Whitestone strong enough to carry a train as well. Even if he didn’t build the tracks right away, they asked him to build it strong enough for it to happen later. He did not. All of it’s right there on page 519.

Out of curiosity, I asked David Kooris, an RPA vice president and head of the Connecticut office, in Stamford, whether a train over the Whitestone could ever be possible.

Click to read what Kooris said

That’s the question that I keep asking myself as I read through some of the truly wince-worthy passages that Monica has already quoted in her earlier post. The prose is laughably cliche in some places–”He loved the game, and it loved him right back”–and the psychological profile doesn’t have the strong reporting to back it up. And Dave, I’m completely with you when you write that you’re completely bored and that the most intriguing figure is actually Scott Boras. When is that book coming out?

But getting back to my original response, as someone whose read Roberts when she wrote for the Times, I find this entire book stunning. As sleep-inducing as it is, the first chapter devoted to A-Rod’s dad makes me suspect she began this project with an earnest attempt to delve into his family history and get at some close sources. Did she simply run out of time? I agree with Monica about the prologue coming off as less than satisfying. If she’s going to lay it all out on the line, she might as well give us a narrative of how she reported the entire book, not just a glimpse into a confrontation with A-Rod at a gym. It’s a little too showy, like “Look at me! I’m a real reporter, doggedly pursuing my subject.”

Click to continue reading

Well I have spent a good part of the evening putting on my rally cap to try and catch up with Monica in reading “A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez. I have to admit, it hasn’t been easy.

Let me say that so far I have no problem with Selena Roberts’ reportorial skills; I think she has been thorough in her research. Maybe too much so. I have to admit that the section on A-Rod’s childhood, particularly the profiling of his father, Victor, is laborious, to the point that I had to start skimming through pages. There was just not a lot there that interested me, and Roberts is so intent on beating you over the head with her point that A-Rod constantly craves attention and acceptance that it becomes overkill.

But what is growing more apparent to me is that the problem with the book is less the author and more the subject. If not for the steroid allegations, would anyone really have interest in a book on A-Rod?

He is not a compelling figure. He lacks a vibrant personality. Truth be told, he is an excellent baseball player totally devoid of any charisma.

The best sports — non-fiction — books have been about figures who are complex or larger than life: Bobby Knight and Vince Lombardi, to name a pair. A-Rod is neither.

This is perhaps best dramatized when Roberts includes a segment on Scott Boras, A-Rod’s agent. Boras is a magnet for controversy, known for trying to extract every last penny for his clients and holding teams hostage at the negotiating table. After Roberts finished up writing about Boras, I found myself wishing that the book was about him instead of A-Rod.

Without yet getting to the parts that are the main reason behind the book, I also think part of the problem is fans are fed up with the whole steroid issue. It is everywhere, and has clouded our enjoyment of baseball because we no longer know which statistics are legitimate and which are artificially inflated.

I think it is somewhat telling that there was more hype leading up to the release of the book than there was after it hit the stands.

As I put down the book for the night, I find myself wishing that Roberts had discovered that Boras took steroids.

I had hoped to get deeper into the book last night than I did, but I got caught up doing other work, didn’t start reading until 1 a.m. and only made it through the prologue before falling alseep.

Thus, I don’t have a lot to add to the conversation just yet other than to agree with Monica on prologues, or at least this one. It seems like Roberts is trying to establish herself as an insider, as if she needs to prove to the reader that she has the credibility to write the book. We shall see.

I also agree with Monica that Roberts is trying to stick herself into the story from the outset, rather than establish the reason for writing about A-Rod from a general viewpoint. There is also nothing new yet in establishing A-Rod’s personality that even the most general baseball fan — or tabloid reader — doesn’t already know.

As I stated in my last post, the sole impetus for reading this book is to help a friend start her blog. Thus far I can’t say that I can’t wait to pick the book up again, but I hope I’ll be surprised.

At least this project forced me to sit down and finally finish Elmore Leonard’s great new book!