First, go read this. It's brilliant.
Next, if you wish, you can read my stuff every other day at www.jamietrecker.com or on the front page of Fox Sports. Be warned: I write about soccer (there); my other stuff is, well, elsewhere.
STUFF I AM READING:
Hoo boy. Been kinda junking out lately; my pal Claire and I have been trading back the Dark Horse reprints of "Conan the Barbarian" from the Thomas/Buscema run back in the ld, soggy newsprint days of Marvel Comics circa 1972. If anything says "hesher" more than this book, I dunno what it is. Still, reading it without chemical aids, I can tell you that it's a pretty diverting run. I read a couple of issues a night, fall asleep and then a few weeks later _ having totally forgotten about them, go back and re-read the stories of The Black Corsairs, Belit and the guy in a loincloth. All I need now is a bong, a tube driven stereo and a few worn-out copies of Rainbow's first LP.
KILL ALL YOUR DARLINGS, Luc Sante - Big Fan. Sante and I have a lot in common, which may be why I get what he does, and enjoy it so much. He was raised abroad (Belgium), grew up on Tintin, moved to NYC in the dark days of the early 80s, and saw both the broken city, and the lost New York that once hid in plain sight, just waiting for someone with a crowbar to pull off the plywood. This book collects his essays for the Voice, the NYRB, various and sundry fishwraps that no longer exist, all under one cover. It's tour-de-force that highlights Sante's impressive, obsessive research into the minutiae of the past and the wreckage of the present. Less trenchant than Mike Davis, but just as urgent and as necessary, Sante explores loss and ephemera with precision and intelligence, using the artifacts of the everyday to illuminate the unconscious present. Where Davis (read him, too: Planet of Slums) writes with a barely-contained rage that he uses to focus on the lost cities and the emerging third world, Sante writes about worlds that truly never existed _ the utopias and dystopias of "Gotham." Brilliant stuff.
THE WORLD WITHOUT US; Alan Weisman: This thin book is a look at how quickly the planet would revert to forest, etc. if all the humans suddenly disappeared. It's well-written, plausible and of course, utterly unprovable. And, it's non-fiction; or perhaps "speculative reporting," if you prefer. If you think this is an oxymoron, you're right, but Weisman takes the hook of countless sci-fi tales and uses it to tell a story about how the stuff civilizations leave behind gets there in the first place_ kind of an ur-archeology, if you get my drift. It's interesting if predictable, and worth checking out of the library.
ANYONE BUT ENGLAND, Mike Marqusee
ON AND OFF THE FIELD, Ed Smith - Two books on cricket; one written by an American Marxist; the other by one of 15 Smiths to play for England but the only one to have written a book on baseball. Both created a sensation in the turgid world of English sport when they came out, and both are must-reads for anyone interested in the English class system, sport and sociology, and what it's like to be a sportsman.
I especially admired Marqusee's book, because (unbeknownst to me) he attempted much the same thing I did with my book: Using his sport to explore larger questions of society and power, as well as detail and how his sport has changed, and in doing so, altered the surrounding landscape. I'm not going to pretend that there are many (or any?) cricket fans who might read this blog, but the first three chapters of the book are worth looking at by people who have no idea what a "gully" or a "mid-on" is. Marqusee, who still writes for the Guardian, is an incisive commentator, and it's worth noting that this book really caused the self-appointed toffs who run English cricket to shit their pants. Again, that's worth the price of admission alone.
Smith's book is a diary of one year toiling in "county cricket," which is basically the professional league and top pro level in the sport. He is an interesting fellow: While brought up through the same public school (that's private school in the UK, BTW) system that has kept England's landed aristocracy in power, and at the top of the sport, for good or ill, he's worldly. He travels to India to train and learn from what is currently the best cricket-playing nation. He is fond of American sport, and keen on learning. And, he's disarmingly plain-spoken and revealing. This isn't "Ball Four," but it also isn't one of those ridiculous sports hagiographies. It's revealing about how your average, unremarkable professional sportsman thinks and plays, and it's a candid look at how these folks look at their season. In short, it's a "sports book" for people who don't care much about sport, and, for the same reason I admired Marqusse's book, I admire this one too. I guess I have a weakness for books about sport that really aren't "sports books."
THE DRIVER, Alexander Roy - Here's another "sports book" that's not really a sports book. Of the three in this post, this probably would also have made the best Loaded/Playboy/Penthouse/Maxim feature, which isn't a compliment. In a nutshell: Roy's father, who was a rogue and a car importer, dies, confiding on his deathbed that he raced in the Cannonball Run. The real one. Following 9/11, Roy decides that he is going to do the same, on the pretense of tracking down a mysterious figure called "the Driver" that his father had spoken of. Of course, cross-country rallies are a) illegal and b) deadly, but this doesn't stop Roy, who adopts a brash and jokey persona and proceeds to enter _ and win _ the Gumball 3000 and a number of other underground rallies. Roy's writing is serviceable and given to the kind of laddish excess that usually characterizes such tales of latter-day derring-do. At one time, this sort of thing might have been charming, but rich white guys "breaking the rules" gets old pretty quickly, and Roy is clearly infatuated with his cleverness. (The latter is easier to forgive than the former.) But, like a pithy magazine article, it is a page-turner, and some of his tales aren't bad. The question is: Do you want to read about very rich guys acting irresponsibly on public roads? If so, here you go.
CITY OF NIGHT, John Rechy Just started reading this after seeing a good review of it in the NYRB. It is considered the beginning of the new "gay literature," and it's basically Midnight Cowboy, but ten years earlier. I'll keep ya posted.
Next, if you wish, you can read my stuff every other day at www.jamietrecker.com or on the front page of Fox Sports. Be warned: I write about soccer (there); my other stuff is, well, elsewhere.
STUFF I AM READING:
Hoo boy. Been kinda junking out lately; my pal Claire and I have been trading back the Dark Horse reprints of "Conan the Barbarian" from the Thomas/Buscema run back in the ld, soggy newsprint days of Marvel Comics circa 1972. If anything says "hesher" more than this book, I dunno what it is. Still, reading it without chemical aids, I can tell you that it's a pretty diverting run. I read a couple of issues a night, fall asleep and then a few weeks later _ having totally forgotten about them, go back and re-read the stories of The Black Corsairs, Belit and the guy in a loincloth. All I need now is a bong, a tube driven stereo and a few worn-out copies of Rainbow's first LP.
KILL ALL YOUR DARLINGS, Luc Sante - Big Fan. Sante and I have a lot in common, which may be why I get what he does, and enjoy it so much. He was raised abroad (Belgium), grew up on Tintin, moved to NYC in the dark days of the early 80s, and saw both the broken city, and the lost New York that once hid in plain sight, just waiting for someone with a crowbar to pull off the plywood. This book collects his essays for the Voice, the NYRB, various and sundry fishwraps that no longer exist, all under one cover. It's tour-de-force that highlights Sante's impressive, obsessive research into the minutiae of the past and the wreckage of the present. Less trenchant than Mike Davis, but just as urgent and as necessary, Sante explores loss and ephemera with precision and intelligence, using the artifacts of the everyday to illuminate the unconscious present. Where Davis (read him, too: Planet of Slums) writes with a barely-contained rage that he uses to focus on the lost cities and the emerging third world, Sante writes about worlds that truly never existed _ the utopias and dystopias of "Gotham." Brilliant stuff.
THE WORLD WITHOUT US; Alan Weisman: This thin book is a look at how quickly the planet would revert to forest, etc. if all the humans suddenly disappeared. It's well-written, plausible and of course, utterly unprovable. And, it's non-fiction; or perhaps "speculative reporting," if you prefer. If you think this is an oxymoron, you're right, but Weisman takes the hook of countless sci-fi tales and uses it to tell a story about how the stuff civilizations leave behind gets there in the first place_ kind of an ur-archeology, if you get my drift. It's interesting if predictable, and worth checking out of the library.
ANYONE BUT ENGLAND, Mike Marqusee
ON AND OFF THE FIELD, Ed Smith - Two books on cricket; one written by an American Marxist; the other by one of 15 Smiths to play for England but the only one to have written a book on baseball. Both created a sensation in the turgid world of English sport when they came out, and both are must-reads for anyone interested in the English class system, sport and sociology, and what it's like to be a sportsman.
I especially admired Marqusee's book, because (unbeknownst to me) he attempted much the same thing I did with my book: Using his sport to explore larger questions of society and power, as well as detail and how his sport has changed, and in doing so, altered the surrounding landscape. I'm not going to pretend that there are many (or any?) cricket fans who might read this blog, but the first three chapters of the book are worth looking at by people who have no idea what a "gully" or a "mid-on" is. Marqusee, who still writes for the Guardian, is an incisive commentator, and it's worth noting that this book really caused the self-appointed toffs who run English cricket to shit their pants. Again, that's worth the price of admission alone.
Smith's book is a diary of one year toiling in "county cricket," which is basically the professional league and top pro level in the sport. He is an interesting fellow: While brought up through the same public school (that's private school in the UK, BTW) system that has kept England's landed aristocracy in power, and at the top of the sport, for good or ill, he's worldly. He travels to India to train and learn from what is currently the best cricket-playing nation. He is fond of American sport, and keen on learning. And, he's disarmingly plain-spoken and revealing. This isn't "Ball Four," but it also isn't one of those ridiculous sports hagiographies. It's revealing about how your average, unremarkable professional sportsman thinks and plays, and it's a candid look at how these folks look at their season. In short, it's a "sports book" for people who don't care much about sport, and, for the same reason I admired Marqusse's book, I admire this one too. I guess I have a weakness for books about sport that really aren't "sports books."
THE DRIVER, Alexander Roy - Here's another "sports book" that's not really a sports book. Of the three in this post, this probably would also have made the best Loaded/Playboy/Penthouse/Maxim feature, which isn't a compliment. In a nutshell: Roy's father, who was a rogue and a car importer, dies, confiding on his deathbed that he raced in the Cannonball Run. The real one. Following 9/11, Roy decides that he is going to do the same, on the pretense of tracking down a mysterious figure called "the Driver" that his father had spoken of. Of course, cross-country rallies are a) illegal and b) deadly, but this doesn't stop Roy, who adopts a brash and jokey persona and proceeds to enter _ and win _ the Gumball 3000 and a number of other underground rallies. Roy's writing is serviceable and given to the kind of laddish excess that usually characterizes such tales of latter-day derring-do. At one time, this sort of thing might have been charming, but rich white guys "breaking the rules" gets old pretty quickly, and Roy is clearly infatuated with his cleverness. (The latter is easier to forgive than the former.) But, like a pithy magazine article, it is a page-turner, and some of his tales aren't bad. The question is: Do you want to read about very rich guys acting irresponsibly on public roads? If so, here you go.
CITY OF NIGHT, John Rechy Just started reading this after seeing a good review of it in the NYRB. It is considered the beginning of the new "gay literature," and it's basically Midnight Cowboy, but ten years earlier. I'll keep ya posted.
VIEW 12 of 12 COMMENTS
I dont remeember quite what it said, but right now what Im thinking is that its unusual that youre so into sports and we seem to get along well
Then again, Im not into wiping old peoples butts, but Ive been paying my rent by it.
I guess I might have proven myself wrong now...