Book #9: 1984

Orwell's "MCMLXXXIV"

During my term teaching abroad, I took advantage of the AIS library and read a number of classics. The most interesting from the perspective of a history nerd was inarguably George Orwell's "Animal Farm". The parallels between the book and the Russian Revolution in particular were pretty well laid-out in a narrative sense by Orwell. I'd imagine the story had an even more profound impact as it was initially released. In any event, it quickly becamse a favorite of mine. Something about the conclusion of the story struck me as an unfamiliar mix of dread, fear, and legitimate revulsion which literature so rarely genuinely affects me beyond general interest and question-raising/asking. As a result, I thought "1984" would be an appropriate follow-up.

As a disclaimer, Orwell didn't write bright and shiny books. In these cases, the book is far from it. The story is about Winston Smith, who works in London, which has changed drastically in the days since WWII. Smith's inner conflict stems from the fact that he struggles with the fact that he still has memories of pre-Ministry London and life. This is a problem because the Party (THE party, the unquestioned authority of every facet of life), would not have any of their members having any sort of recollection; such a preposterous idea would leave the thinker subject to death, which would be fairly easy to cover up, as history is constantly being re-written to the specifications of Big Brother, the mysterious leader of the Party.

As Smith fights to feel something, anything, he is indirectly seduced by a mysterious female member of the Anti-Sex League (libido is also controlled by Big Brother). It's generally a world where every aspect of life is closely monitored, rigidly censured, and- by sheer design- impossible to buck; the thought of "other" is heresy in the highest form (sound familiar?). The three-act epic has an inescapable arc which summarizes Winston's predicament in this world which he did not ask for, and which we are led to believe did not announce itself but rather crept up on the people. Act one shows that Smith is forced to live in fear based on his every movement and thought. Act two starts with a radical idea so unthinkable, Winston's initial reaction to it (spoiler alert: love) is internally panic-filled. This love affair doesn't seem normal. It's bizzarre reading this book and feeling like love itself is a taboo subject to the extent that much of the affair between Winston and Julia is spent in such an enrapturingly awkward veil of secrecy. That unfamiliar sentiment is what makes the story all the more alluring. I found myself so badly wanting to understand HOW such a thing is possible, even in a work of fiction.

Van Halen's "1984"...significantly more of a feel-good effort.
Act three, Orwell's genius as a writer fluorishes, as he does what I consider to be a masterful job of getting inside this concept of a most disturbing world, complete with the utter and total breakdown of both Winston and Julia. Not only does he document the breakdown, but he also documents the PAINSTAKING process by which they are dismantled emotionally. It culminates with such a thorough scene of emotional, mental, and spiritual dismemberment that words hardly do it justice. It was, in short, a complete mastery of what is at the core of heartlessness and evil. It gave me chills, reading this new idea of punishment. In the end, Winston is a hollow shell of a man who comes to find that this world created and run has decimated his core of being to the point of defeat.

As dysfunctional as Oceania is made to be in this work, I found myself mesmerized by it. It's such a thought-provoking book, while at the same time, a head-scratcher and a story that forces the reader to say "what the hell was that?" It's immediately shot up to the upper echelon of books I've read. Heavy stuff, but well worth the effort for a piece of work that legitimately moves you.

Book #8: Tuck Everlasting

Tuck Everlasting: slightly less-than-inspiring cover

For my eighth book in the 100-book quest, I went back and re-read Natalie Babbitt's "Tuck Everlasting". For those unfamiliar with the story, Winne Foster is a girl in the 19th century who runs away and stumbles upon the Tuck family, who are blessed/cursed with eternal life after drinking from a spring of immortality. As a result of this, they live inconspicuously as recluses in the wood of a small town, popping up every generation or so to essentially gauge the change in social climate.

Winnie learns that the idea of living forever isn't all that it's cracked up to be. In addition, a mysterious man has been following her in order to find the source of this elixir of eternal life so that he can bottle and market this substance. Meanwhile, Winnie begins falling for the son of the Tucks, which becomes one of a few weird subplots of this book. Got it? Okay, let's dive into some reaction...

I suppose the first thing I should have taken into account when I decided to re-read it was that I HAD read it in elementary school...and couldn't remember some pretty essential details, most notably what happens to the man in the yellow suit (he doesn't adopt a monkey), and what happens to Winnie Foster (this was a source of concern both then and now, as I kept thinking of Danica McKellar and what her fate would be). While it made for good incentive to continue reading, the flow of the story did not. Perhaps I'm nitpicking a book intended for reading groups among 5th graders, but I just felt the story to lack punch. Even the Tucks' collective fate felt a little listless. If this is what Babbitt intended when dealing with a family who could never die, then it's an admirable work. Otherwise, I found myself reading for the sake of finishing a book (my own curse, since immortality seems a bit out of reach).
Could have used more monkeys to go with that suit

While the man in the yellow suit certainly made things a little more interesting, in the end it seemed a minor ripple in the pond of the story. The fate of the Tuck family and Winnie Foster was paramount to the plot of Tuck Everlasting. As for Winnie's decision to drink the water and stay with Jesse, the Tuck's son... young love in the 19th century wasn't very intriguing. The internal conflict of trying to read this from the perspective of a 5th grader was, in actuality, more intriguing than the story itself. It made for a lot of question-asking, as school children should be wont to do. Why wouldn't the Tucks work to destroy the spring if they wanted to keep people in the future from drinking the water? Why not just kill Winnie and any other witnesses to the spring? Why am I reading this?

In the end, the story wrapped up with what seemed like a well-wrapped-up story. And maybe it was just that simple. Which was ultimately what I did not like about the story. The pondering of immortality and what it may or may not entail wasn't enough to make me take hold of what Babbitt was offering here...

Winnie Cooper? MUCH more memorable than Winnie Foster.

...........and maybe that's the point. Maybe the lack of flash and bang and whatnot forces the reader to get to the bare-bones questions and deeper issues. AND, despite being written in 1975, Tuck Everlasting is still a part of reading lists to this day among elementary and middle schools. So maybe there's something to be said for this book after all. Maybe it's worth the praise it's received through all these years.

Maybe, you should give it a read for yourself.

Book #7: The Essential 55

Smart teachers know more than students..particularly in the self-marketing department...

Ron Clark has gained fame in the world of education. While I'm not sure of the statement that that makes in today's world of celebrity-at-every-turn, I am always at the very least interested in people who discuss education. This I'm sure has a great deal to do with my calling as a teacher. In any event, Ron Clark's story of bringing out the best in students from rural North Carolina as well as Harlem, NY is certainly cause for my interest in reading The Essential 55, a book of what Clark considers to be indispensable rules for creating a strong classroom of successful students.

The rules that Clark has put in place in this book range from the minute (Rule #7: "Cover your mouth when you sneeze or cough and say excuse me") to the too-broad (Rule #55: "Be the best person you can be"). I thoroughly enjoyed the tales told from Clark's past in teaching, and each rule comes with a story, and of course, the moral behind it. What made it better is that he left things a little bit open to personal interpretation; while his stories ended one way (99% happy ending), there's always the chance you could have your own story to tell, which is really the preferred way to go through life, in my opinion.

A few nitty-gritty issues I took with the book...please note that these are generally a result of my being an educator (much like military buffs question war tactics and strategies, I speak of what I know to be my area of (presumed) expertise)... the first 11 rules (20% of the rules, for those of you keeping track at home) are devoted to characteristic traits and building nice young people. While a teacher's responsibilities are myriad, I argue that these sorts of traits are things that could and should be taught before the students get into the classroom. I question whether Clark's reputation is as impressive if he merely creates strong students out of well-behaved kids...there is that level of unnecessary prompting for a sense of being a well-rounded individual that bothers me.

While Clark's resolve to help make strong individuals is commendable, I found myself wondering if many of these rules don't boil down to a simple level of respect for oneself and the people/places around them. That's one of the ultimate lessons one can learn in the world today, a point which I'm sure doesn't get absorbed by nearly as many young people as it should. But enough of my soap box rant...the book is a quick read, though not terribly applicable if you are not in or interested in the education sphere. The book also contains bonus pages for dealing with students and parents, which is nice. Also, the rules seemed to skew young. A lot of these guidelines are geared towards steering younger students in the right direction, which is fine...it just magnifies my prior argument further if in fact these are to be applied to students in a secondary school setting.


Some students are closer to being lost causes than others...

Overall, I enjoyed hearing 'war stories' from the classroom, though a lot of what Clark says requires one to consider nothing of their own circumstances. These plans are not fool-proof (though, in his defense, Clark does not make them out to be), iron-clad points, and so trying to implement them universally would be foolish without getting to know your class/audience. Include grain of salt when consuming.

Book #6: Joe Dimaggio: The Hero's Life

Over the summer, I finally opened and dove into a book that my Uncle Tom had lent to me before I skipped town last year. I had read the other books he had given to me while abroad, but never got to the DiMaggio biography among the bunch of books I read overseas. In any event, as a baseball fan, I had heard countless tales of the greatness of the Yankee Clipper. His name has endured the last 50 years of "greatest player ever" debates, at least held in the same conversation of Mantle, Williams, Aaron, Jackson, Griffey, Rodriguez, Jeter...only Mattingly sticks out as clearly better among players who played after Joe D (just wanted to make sure you were still paying attention).

Anyway, Richard Ben Cramer presents an account of what led to America's infatuation with DiMaggio, from his early days in the San Francisco bay area to his minor league dominance and eventual rise to superstardom playing center field for the New York Yankees. While the love affair with DiMaggio turned him into something of an icon, Cramer's account is that the Dago* wanted to be recognized for what he was: a great ballplayer; the rest of the attention, however, was not always wanted. DiMaggio may very well be the first player who reacted negativity to the microscope of celebrity, which perhaps make him responsible for ushering in America's collective insatiable appetite for people who are great at what they do (a concept which, by the 21st century, would extend to fellatio, getting pregnant, and having huge breasts and a well-endowed boyfriend).

The great Joltin' Joe DiMaggio, crushing another pitch

In any event, Cramer exposes DiMaggio's oft-justified desire to become the best-paid player in the game, based upon being the best player in the game. #5 comes across as fairly greedy, though ultimately helpless against the then-iron-fisted New York Yankees management. I also came out of this book thinking of DiMaggio as sort of a whiner, thought this of course comes from a third-person account that has its fair share of creative liberties.

As for the life the Yankee Clipper led after retirement, he seemed to accept the spoils while insisting that he be treated as the greatest living player....which he very well may have been. In the interim, however, he is presented as a character who very much got used to celebrity and accolades and his status as a symbol of America and yet he could not stand to be in the limelight. It's a story of control, and the misery and fury with which DiMaggio lived without it is the real tragedy of this book, and ultimately of the way Joe D went out.

DiMaggio was beloved by people all over the place, and so the author attempts to portray the hero as an "aww, shucks" kind of guy, which may very well have been true. But as his humble beginnings did not translate to enormous financial success, so too did that humility disappear as friend after friend try to get too much out of DiMaggio's friendship and kindness. It's as though DiMaggio fancied himself as a guy who would give anything if asked, but when asked AND if it benefitted someone else and not himself, he would go suddenly cold.

Don't be fooled...DiMaggio'd hate that Mantle is pictured first.
The 56-game hit streak is well-documented, as is his string of Championship runs, his wooing and terribly unhealthy relationship with Marilyn Monroe. The grief is pretty well-established, and you'd feel worse for the guy for being unable to avoid the limelight if he hadn't had such a temper on him. Ultimately, it's a mixed bag of a story of one of America's 20th century heroes. As DiMaggio got older and had lost the people whom he would have called friends, he got suckered in by people who were riding the big wave of popular culture and who, as a result, wanted to tap into the nostalgia market, which was DiMaggio all the way. Morris Engelberg, DiMaggio's lawyer in his later years, gets painted in an especially sour light, which may or may not be the result of a letter sent to the autho from Engelberg's law firm threatening suit against defamation, etc. It seemed a little petty to include that, though it certainly helds add to a general disdain for Engelberg.

All in all, a pretty good piece of work. I would very much like to read another book on DiMaggio before rushing to judgment on what I think about the man. As a player, as this book chronicles fairly well, he was dominant and effortlessly good. In that sense, the focus on his playing years seems shorter than it should have. Cramer makes no bones about discussing DiMaggio's post-career life, and so I guess he's justified in spending the second half of the book on what happened next, which is unfortunate, since the first half of DiMaggio's life justified the attention paid to the rest of Mr. DiMaggio's life. I recommend it for those with a healthy appetite for Americana, and of course Yankee fans. But if you're looking for strictly baseball, you may find yourself laboring through the second half of what can at times be pretty scandalous material.



* DiMaggio was referred to as the Dago by teammates. This served as a monstrous point of nostalgia throughout the book. Creative liberties included referring to DiMag as "the Dago" or simply, "the Dag". I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that much like dropping an N-Bomb, you can only get away with that with friends with whom you share that particular bond. Yikes.

Book #5: Downtown Owl

Chuck Klosterman is the sort of writer I would strive to be, if I had the optimistic outlook to try my hand at legitimate writing for a living. Intellectual, but not too snarky (there IS a bit of matter-of-factedness about him, though it's rarely in the context of "you should know this", but rather "I just happen to know this. It is what it is, and I have no rationalization for knowing this seemingly trivial information), Klosterman has written books that I have devoured in rapid succession before, including Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs; Fargo Rock City; IV; and his most recent release, Eating the Dinosaur (which I finished the week before I hatched this five-year plan...bummer).

His books are an infusion of music of all genres, history, and pop culture seemingly ad nauseum. There's a catch to it, though: it's all brought up and deconstructed in a way that harkens back to earning an English degree. When debating the importance (long-term) of Britney Spears' influence on the world (or at least impressionable young girls in the earliest years of the 21st century), Klosterman takes what again seems like (and- admittedly- is, in the grand scheme of things) a trivial matter and dissects it with the vigor and technical ability of a lit. theorist. What ensues is entertaining to me because of its ability to make you think about such outlandish things.

Anyway, Downtown Owl represents Klosterman's first foray into fiction. The story acts as sort of a Rules of Attraction type of novel set in the 1980s (83-84) in rural North Dakota, where the lives of three individuals who are vaguely linked in a small town where everyone knows everyone, though in what comes across as a vacuum to someone who grew up in a town of more than a few hundred people. Part of what I like about Klosterman's style in this book is that he so easily switches from the perspectives of Horace, Mitch, and Julia, while adopting their perspectives of empty and judgmental, apathetic but curious, and bewildered and longing for more, respectively. The different characters have the same sort of dismal routines with their own reasons for coming into said routines, and while none of them are outstandingly likeable, I found myself rooting for any of them to get out of Owl and into an environment which might have been more personally gratifying or rewarding.

Of course, tied into this are the essential references to MTV, Judas Priest, and other mainstays of the 80s which take Mitch in particular by surprise...amazing to think of MTV as a so-new-it's-foreign-to-a-teen concept, rather than a network which wore itself out a decade ago. If you've read any of Klosterman's non-fiction work (I suggest Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs for starters), this will read in a similar fashion, though the task for you the reader is to take that matter-of-fact tone and apply it to three fictional characters. Either way, it was a quick and fairly entertaining read. The ending caught me a little off-guard, as if his intent was to say that the main characters- consciously or not- longed for something out of the ordinary, but when it came, they had not a clue what to do.

Book #4: The Book of Basketball

I read Bill Simmons's Book of Basketball in April, and loved it. Simmons- aka The Sports Guy on ESPN.com- took the one thing he does best in the world (talk about the NBA) and ran with it, to the tune of 700 pages. Not a light read. That said, the pages turned quickly. The discussion points (why Bill Russell is better than Wilt Chamberlain is the opening argument) certainly encourage debate, though Simmons takes his opinions and spells them out, all while humorously dismantling most dissenting objections.

What I have loved most about reading his work online is the interwoven sports and pop culture references present in just about every piece he does. It makes the reading of sports writing much more enjoyable, as other writers can be purely statistically-driven. This may be interesting material, but it certainly lacks the entertainment value that Simmons provides in his name-dropping of Red and Andy from Shawshank Redemption and how Rocky Balboa ended the Cold War on his Christmas Day fight against Drago.

The Sports Guy has made a career of presenting his arguments from a fan's perspective; in The Book of Basketball, he re-structures the basketball Hall of Fame in terms of a pyramid. The catch is that players reach certain levels of exclusivity based on their performance, which is to say Kobe Bryant deserves a more prestigious level of inclusion than say, Alex English. What this does is not necessarily make the inclusion tougher, but rather reward those who are certainly more deserving of a spot in the Hall.

The best part about the book was the fact that while Simmons' sense of writing comes off as conversational (had I been better-versed in NBA knowledge, I'd argue for or against some of these point at a bar), he speaks from a lifetime's worth of fandom. His previous effort, Now I Can Die in Peace, was more meaningful to me as a baseball fan; I learned more reading this book, though. Simmons chronicles the evolution of the sport, the highs and the lows...all in his entertaining fashion.

Problems with the book include the constant evolution of players, meaning there will be revised editions to come of a 700-page behemoth. I will probably just continue reading his work online, rather than purchase another copy of the book. That said, it's a fantastic and insightful read...and a good arm workout.

Movie #1- Pulp Fiction

Without the aid of Netflix or anything of that sort, obtaining 15 of AFI's "100 Years...100 Movies" selections will probably be costly. I'm sure there'll be some borrowing going on, but in the meantime, I took a bit of birthday money and splurged on a classic I had been meaning to replace since it went a-wanderin' sometime during freshman year of college: Pulp Fiction.

Probably the best-known work of Quentin Tarantino, Pulp Fiction is chock-full of lines oft-quoted in the annals of popular culture, which just so happens to be my specialty. Not to mention perhaps the strongest cast in the 6 Degrees of Separation game this side of the eagerly-anticipated release of The Expendables.
Shoulda been Jules spouting some prophetic shit on the cover...

Anyway, to the movie...I thoroughly enjoyed the formulation of the story, coming and going from different stories that gel at the very end. While I question whether John Travolta was "Oscar good", I will say that the exchanges between Vincent and Jules are some of the most entertainingly philosophical conversations that I can recall; almost reminds me of living with Yvan. Other than the length of the movie, and what I felt was an overrated performance by Uma Thurman, there wasn't much not to like about the movie. I should back up: Uma Thurman's performance was good. Again, I have a qualm with her turning in an Oscar good performance. But that's just me. Looking back at the 1995 Oscars, only the Shawshank Redemption sticks out as a fantastic movie (Forrest Gump is always viewed in a positive, nostalgic light....but life-altering, it is not). Quiz Show sucked, and while I can't comment on Bullets Over Broadway, having not seen it, I can assume the hard-on the Academy has for Woody Allen had a large part in it being considered one of the best of the year.

Anyway, I was happy to cross off #95 on AFI's list, and will try to aim a little higher next time. On that note, I'll leave you with a classic and my favorite part of the movie (a bit cliche, of course):