Daniel Woodrell in a Day

Several years ago - sheesh, it must have been the mid 1990s, like 95 or so? I read a novel by Daniel Woodrell. It was one of those occasions where I started reading the book over my morning coffee and, having nothing to do that day that couldn't be out off, I simply continued reading, all day, til I had finished the novel, in one sitting. I was absolutely floored by it. It was Give Us a Kiss.

Ever since then, I'd been meaning to read more Woodrell and I finally got around to it recently on a day trip to Chicago for work. This time it was Tomato Red. Oddly, I started reading the book in the morning at the airport, continued on the cab back to the airport, the flight back, car ride home and, whattaya know, finished the whole damn thing. In a day.

What great days those were, because Daniel Woodrell is an excellent novelist. He gets a lot of praise for the subject matter he covers - he calls it "country noir," tough, thoughtful crime novels set in the Ozarks or other parts of the South - but, really, he's just a great writer with a great voice, a gift for words, subject and dialogue. His characters are Faulknerian in setting and outlook, crafty and worldly while still being backwoodsy like Faulkner's characters, but also modern and unique to Woodrell. Give Us a Kiss is about a writer who returns to his Missouri homeland and gets involved in a family fued over a pot crop. Tomato Red is about "them such as us," a smart white trash guy who falls in with a family of toughs and, due to his need to belong, to create family, follows what seems to be his tragic destiny.

Art of Manliness: Essential Adventure Library, Non-Fiction

One of my favorite blogs, The Art of Manliness, has a piece up after my heart: 50 non-fiction adventure books, part of the Essential Man's Library.

Been quiet here lately, for which I apologize. A lot of work and family life - but a lot of reading, too. More soon.

Even The Rhinos

I read Even The Rhinos Were Nymphos by Bruce Jay Friedman. A great collection of some of his magazine writing, and the title piece is worth the price of admission. In it, Friedman tries to give vivid portrait of what it was like to work on the sweats, who was reading them, and what kind of stories appealed to them.

Along with death trek and survival stories, yarns about tough cops who had embarked on county cleanups were surefire; also guaranteed to please were pieces that had anything to do with islands - storming them, hiding out on them, buying them at bargain rates, becomign GI king of them... "Breakouts" were another highly successful feature. Any story called "We Go at Dawn" or "No Prison Bars Can Hold Me" would be read with satisfaction... Another source of delight was the account of some GI who had attacked an enemy with an ingeniously devised contraption... Also popular was the revenge or "trackdown" yarn, one in which the hero caught up with someone who had behaved unattractively to him in a hellcamp (Remember me, Kraus?) and gunned him down in a postwar Ankara cafe.

I'll definitely be reading more Friedman.

The High Life

Hat tip to my buddy Rich for finding these gems, the Miller High Life TV spots by Errol Morris. I absolutely love these and, honestly, they made a High Life drinker out of me (that and the $5 price tag). A terrific celebration of characteristics of manly life that jive with me. They used to show these on ESPN Classic and the Vs. network and I was sad to see them pass out of circulation. But now here they are - all of 'em! Watch a few and you can see they've got my version of Virile Lit. all over 'em.

Advertising is a subject of interest to me because I work in the communications industry and the "beer wars" are an interesting topic in this vein, the endless struggle, fought out in creative spots on TV and in magazines, between the various mainstream brands in the U.S. I always thought Miller should stay in this direction, concentrating on sports and poker and the "everyman" appeal of its brand to weekend warriors, bowling alley lotharios and softball sluggers. It's an activity I remember from my childhood in the 70s and 80s, my dad playing softball with a bunch of guys and, dusty and grimed, hitting a friendly watering hole afterward. Are those days gone?

By the way, COD is gonna give me shit for my love of Miller High Life, Miller Lite and, yes, Budweiser (but not Bud Lite). To which I say only mea culpa! I like the craft brews, to be sure, especially this little label from my town, but, you know, steak and potatoes and all that....

I'm intrigued by you, Bruce Jay Friedman.

By Charlie

Bruce Jay Friedman is a novelist and screenwriter. I've become interested in his work since I learned the role he played in "the sweats."

An interesting interview with Friedman at Pif Magazine provides further details.

DA: One of your first jobs was as editor of several men’s adult magazines. What was that like?

BJF: For roughly a decade in the fifties and early sixties, I was editor of four men’s adventure magazines, Male, Men, Man’s World, and my favorite, True Action (as opposed to False Action.) I had to buy forty to sixty stories a a month from free-lance writers. I had three small children at the time and a long commute (three to four hours) from Glen Cove to Manhattan. I didn’t do any writing for the the magazine, just supervised. Oddly enough, I got more “serious” writing done at that time (working at night, on the train) than I do now -- when I have the entire day yawning ahead of me.

DA: You hired an assistant editor who turned out to be a well known writer in his own right.

BJF: One of my better “hires” was Mario Puzo, in 1960. He wrote literally a million words or so for the magazine -- moonlighted “The Godfather” at night. Everyone in our little group was moonlighting something. In my case, it was my first two novels, “Stern” and “A Mother’s Kisses.” We gave our all for the magazines, but we were young and must have had all that extra energy. (There is a good account of those years in a non-fiction work I wrote called “Even the Rhinos Were Nymphos”). Puzo and I, incidentally, became lifelong friends.

Purloined the image from this article.

Carroll Again

By Charlie

In between things, I took some time to re-read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

I used to read and re-read this a lot as a teenager. Like so many, I’ve always been under its spell - Through the Looking Glass, too. But it had been some time since I’d read it and I was curious to see if it would have the same enchanting effect on me.

It did. Now that I am reading it as an adult, though, I can more easily see why this book delights kids. In telling a story to children, Carroll utilizes techniques I utilize with my own. Abundant magic and uncertainty is the first, although Carroll infuses his with a logical code that may help explain why the book remains appealing to adults. Another is talking animals - kids love animals - but also his use of other symbols, settings and characters familiar to children; gardens, cats, books, the hearth, the tea table, a chess set, playing cards, lawn games, &cetera.

Perhaps the biggest element of interest to children in these, however, is the mocking tone throughout. I’ve noticed with my own kids that if you take something they know and parody it, they are thrilled. Even my two year old thinks its funny when I sing “the poopy poopy diaper” instead of “the itsy bitsy spider.” This parodying effect must have been especially true for Carroll’s audience of Victorians, who encountered nothing but didacticism in the children’s literature of their day.

I think another reason it has remained popular through the ages, though, is its particular Victorian and Carrollian aesthetic. It is simply a fine piece of 19th century fantasy literature from one of the 19th century’s most inventive and artful minds. The Tenniel illustrations are part of that.

Incidentally, I also pulled out an old tome of Carroll essays. This wasn’t as fulfilling, as the book is from the 70s and a lot more Carroll scholarship has been done since then. This is an interesting field, although excessive interest in Carroll (Charles Dodgson) threatens to take the bloom off the Wonderland white/red rose. More reading here, but one current debate is over whether Dodgson was a pedophile who never physically realized his desires, instead expressing them in his art, or whether he has been vastly misunderstood by biographers. I have no opinion, but Dodgson, like his rabbit hole, pulls one in.

Ever seen the Etch a Sketch guy?

This is simply amazing. My friend Clayton over at The Diff sent me this. He writes:

George Vlosich, the self-proclaimed "world's greatest Etch-A-Sketch artist," is back with his latest Etch-A-Sketch, this time as part of the MANIFESTHOPE: DC exhibit that’s running January 17-19, in conjunction with the Obama’s Inauguration.

You may have seen some of the other Etch-A-Sketch works from George, including the LeBron James Etch-A-Sketch, which was a bona fide YouTube viral sensation in 2007. Watching George do this in sped-up video is pretty amazing. You can actually see each hand movement and how it affects the Etch-A-Sketch screen. I think it’s really cool and hope you do too.



Clayton also mentions that in conjunction with the Inauguration and as a special bonus for viewers of this video, Fathead is offering a 10% discount and free shipping on all Barack Obama Fatheads. Just go to fathead.com/obama and enter discount code: ETCH.

And while you're at it, get some DETROIT LIONS gear, cuz we're coming back in Oh-Nine, baby! (Maybe.)