February 7, 2008
The shelf life of books, including my first
Calvin Trillin once noted that books "have a shelf life somewhere between milk and yogurt."
By this yardstick, my first book, An Amateur's Guide to the Planet
But somehow "Amateur" keeps rolling along, not fragile like yoghurt, maybe more like the hamburger in "Supersize Me" that refused to grow moldy after weeks in the open air ... well on second thought, that may not be the best comparison.
"Amateur" came out in 1996, and I've wanted for a while to overhaul it. It would be neat to update and freshen up some of its information and data, and also convert each of its 12 chapters into expanded, individual e-books packed with new color scans of my photos of the places visited, from China and Madagascar to Borneo and Greece.
One of the big drawbacks of the original was a Photoshop error I made in calibrating for print such that close to all the interior photos came out too dark. New color photos would bring out the full potential of the chapters.
This would take a lot of time away from progressing on new projects, so I haven't assayed this idea yet.
Given the fact that a 12-year-old book should be roughly 11.9 years past retirement, with some shock I filled a bunch of orders in December by Amazon.com.
Then "Amateur" temporarily cracked the top 80,000 ... which is kind of a bigger deal than it sounds, since the competition for any sales is fierce given a glut of 150,000 new books per year ... granted it only takes a few sales to pull out of ranking in the 700,000 to 1 million range.
The Amazon.com ranking of 'An Amateur's Guide to the Planet' circa late December.
The burst seems to have been triggered by the addition of a professor at another college using "Amateur" as required reading for geography course work.
Sure enough, in December I received significant orders from two colleges, explaining the surge.
I want to thank professor Conrad Nicoll at Cal State-Fullerton, who has begun using "Amateur" for his Global Geography course, and to Corban College in Oregon for the latest in a series of orders using "Amateur" to teach intercultural communication to its missions students.
Cal State-Fullerton brings the total to about 31 colleges and universities that have used "Amateur" to teach students (adoptions list here). It is a big wow as an author to be not only read but studied by others.
And it remains an astonishment to me that my first book is taught in colleges. I never expected this ... You always think your readers are going to be people like yourself ... in my case, Northeasterners who travel to exotic places.
Boy was I wrong. "Amateur" has proved strongest in terms of lay readers in Seattle, the Bay Area and the Colorado Front Range ... crunchy granola territory. It also did well in Madison, Wisc., Chapel Hill, N.C., and other college towns.
Nor did I have any notion I had an offbeat college course book on my hands.
"Amateur's" college adoptions list is kind of amazing, an eclectic (to say the least) mix of state universities, independent religious schools, Pacific Northwest colleges and Bible Belt academies with a focus on mission work.
The religious and Bible Belt categories arise from "Amateur's" third chapter on mission work in Borneo, I think, or maybe a later chapter on Bali and how we view Heaven. I reread the Borneo chapter recently and really enjoyed it as a reader ... one can say that as a writer because after many years, you become quite objective about something you wrote. When I reread the Burma chapter for example, I wish it went in a clearer direction as to Burma's impact on me as a tourist.
My accidental career as the author of a cultural geography/intercultural communication book began circa 1998 with a visit to the public radio show at WYSO at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. I was about to speak that night at Books and Co. in nearby Dayton, Ohio.
I had gotten over much of my public speaking phobia after numerous media appearances and about 50 bookstore talks. Further, I was playing the writing eccentric a bit, breezing into the station with my sheltie ... I can't remember where we put him ... and being further relaxed by meeting Vick Mickunas, an amiable fellow with long, wavy dark blond hair and if memory serves, a Fu Manchu. From this photo on the Web, he is now clean shaven.
I got into Vick's comfortable studio. He puts visitors at ease and asks fantastic questions, which I answered in a light-hearted manner, and during the breaks whirled in circles on my guest's swivel chair, finally in some kind of relaxed rhythm with this whole idea of being on the radio.
I think later misplaced the tape he gave me of one of my best interviews, drag! It helps the interview so much when someone actually reads and enjoys your book.
Listening to our conversation was communications professor Mike Lopez at nearby Cedarville College. When I got back home to Maryland, an e-mail awaited asking for something called a desk copy of "Amateur" so that he could use it as a possible text for his classes. I wish I remembered what I said about intercultural communication during my radio interview,but it must have been something that sounded intriguing.
From then I got the idea from Mike to get a mailing list to communications professors and sent them a flier about my book, and a related idea from my friend Jill Yesko to similarly mail fliers to cultural geography professors, and the rest is a little bit of travel book history.
Complimentary copies of "Amateur" were also used to reward more than $6,000 in donations to help tsunami victims (see my earlier blog entry, "Book aids tsunami relief"). With its cover photograph of the lovely Thai island of Ko Racha Yai, devastated by the tsunami, its description of a Thai sailing trip, and focus on additional Indian Ocean destinations, "Amateur" was an appropriate vehicle to help charitable organizations solicit help for Thailand's Phangnga Bay.
In restrospect, it all seems so obvious that I had packed my first book with almost too much information -- words, graphics, photos, large format, bibliography -- for someone to cozy into a chair with it, but it was useful for actually teaching information. Professors seemed to like most that "Amateur" was not a traditional textbook. It's organized the way a journalist would organize a newspaper article, 1, 2, 3, and jargon free ... and that is it's selling point, according to professor testimonials.
It's a blessing to see one's book have legs.
December 14, 2007
Favorite scenes from 'The Office'
OK, we are per usual behind on watching popular culture, and last night got a little further into "The Office" Season Three.
- posted by jbelliveau at 12:41 PM in Books, Music, DVDs
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January 21, 2007
Problems with book tours
Here's the latest wrinkle in book tours -- tours that do not set foot in book stores (hat tip: my travel writing buddy Beth Whitman).
From Authors on the celebrity circuit, in the Seattle Times:
When Mitch Albom, best-selling author of the new novel "For One More Day," came to town two weeks ago, his was not a typical visit of an author on a book tour.Albom began his day reading to about 600 employees at Starbucks' corporate headquarters, then answered questions from more than 250 fans at the Starbucks at Madison Park and finally read again at a candle-lit literary salon at the swanky Palace Ballroom in Belltown. Instead of folding chairs and shelves of books at the local bookshop � the customary accoutrements of book readings � these events boasted free lattes, a velvet-skirted stage, and a catered crostini bar, not to mention the presence of Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz, whose chain of thousands of coffee stores is selling Albom's book.
Albom's day of book readings, during which he never stepped foot in a bookstore, is emblematic of the way � for better or worse � that the bookselling world is changing.
Bookstores depending on a mega-author to come sign and help them make money are not pleased with this development.
But book tours can be quite problematic, as I wrote of my tours undertaken in 1997. See here for a trip down this memory lane.
- posted by jbelliveau at 2:07 PM in Books, Music, DVDs
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November 29, 2006
Martha Gellhorn's travels
Just thought I'd pass along an enjoyable review, entitled Covering Her Century, by Christopher Benfey of war correspondent Martha Gellhorn (the third wife of Ernest Hemingway).
An excerpt from this article:
Gellhorn followed Hemingway back to Cuba in February 1939, where he was writing For Whom the Bell Tolls and expected her to keep house. Instead, much to his annoyance, she flew to Helsinki to cover the Russo-Finnish conflict, which confirmed her David-and-Goliath view of war. "I promise you," she wrote to Hemingway, "that I have never yet seen the innocent and unarmed other than hunted and destroyed." She also promised him, in a half-joking document titled "Guaranty," that she would never "brutalize my present and future husband in any way whatsoever" and that she recognized "that a very fine and sensitive writer cannot be left alone for two months and sixteen days." By September 1940 she was complaining that "E wants me for himself, altogether," and that "E's book has been an agony, like having children without interruption for months and months." She married him two months later, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, with roast moose for dinner.Gellhorn and Hemingway honeymooned, if you could call it that, in Hong Kong, after Collier's hired her to cover the "Chinese army in action" -- in retreat, more accurately, from the occupying Japanese forces. The journey gave Gellhorn one of the liveliest chapters in Travels With Myself and Another, her 1978 memoir of what she called her "horror journeys." She referred to Hemingway as U.C., for "Unwilling Companion"; while he hung out in the hotel bar in Hong Kong, she explored the opium dens, the brothels, the mah-jongg parlors and sweatshops, all overrun with refugees.
I cannot recommend 
Travels with Myself and Another highly enough, with its hilarious chapter, entitled "Mr. Ma's Tigers," on the aforementioned time in Hong Kong and China. I've included in my list of Belliveau's top literary travel books.
- posted by jbelliveau at 3:01 PM in Books, Music, DVDs
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October 30, 2006
Catching up with The Boys of Baraka
We finally caught up with watching "The Boys of Baraka" last week. It's a fascinating DVD about a program that sent 20 12-year-olds from Baltimore public schools to Kenya for two years, so they could focus on learning, not slacking and fighting.
It took me a while to get a copy because of this DVD's popularity -- it was always checked out of the Canton Blockbuster, and the Enoch Pratt library had a long waiting list. I finally drove out to a Baltimore County public library and got a copy.
I was struck by two particular scenes. After their time in Kenya, the film-makers returned to Baltimore with the boys for the summer. An administrator gathers the parents for an emergency meeting to tell them that instability in Kenya would force them to cancel the second year of their sons' program (click the arrow to play):
Note the mother saying, "My son is not gonna be the next statistic ... my child is going to make it. They're not going to send my child to Calverton because that's his zone."
How do the students fare once back in the schools? One, Richard, appears lost in the chaos of his classroom. Take a look (click the arrow to play):
Why are Richard and the other students crashing around in office chairs as if they are at an amusement park?
Why does not adult seem to be present, except for the visiting Baraka recruiter?
I bought up the fact that there seems to be no adult supervising the children on a Baltimore Sun talk forum thread, Baltimore City School Woes Depicted on ABC's Nightline.
Apparently it is quite a serious disciplinary matter for a school to allow children to be unsupervised in a classroom, so I am e-mailing now Loki Films, maker of "The Boys of Baraka," both for permission to post these clips and also to clarify whether there is possibly an adult in the classroom (perhaps the figure seen fleetingly at a desk, as Richard caroms around the room?).
I wondered how typical the disorder shown in these classes is of the schools at large. So I spoke with two students, aged 11 and 9, who I have known socially for years and who attend Coldstream Park Elementary School, in Northeast Baltimore. We saw a DVD called "The Boys of Baraka" that showed kids snatching papers, talking out of turn, not writing in their notebooks, and arguing in the schools. Was this typical of their school, I asked?
They said there were fights in their classrooms, and students talking out of turn, and it was difficult for them to learn. The 11-year-old told me earnestly, "There was a fight in the cafeteria one day, and Miss J------ got knocked down and hurt her leg." We talked a bit about whether there was an alternative charter school in their neighborhood. They didn't know if there was and were fearful it would cost money they didn't have. I'll look into the matter.
I will take a look at the Baltimore Sun archives tomorrow to see if they have information on how some of the students depicted in this film are doing.
- posted by jbelliveau at 8:43 AM in Books, Music, DVDs
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September 8, 2006
RIP Arthur Lee of Love
As usual I am months/years behind on culture (we are just now watching our five-season set of The Sopranos, which first aired in 1999), but I have just now learned of the passing a month ago of Arthur Lee, frontman of the criminally neglected LA band Love.
If you haven't heard Love's 
Forever Changes LP, or don't own it ... well it is time to head straight over to Amazon.com and get it for melody, instrumentation, unforgettable lyric themes.
This clip from YouTube of the reunited Love shows them playing my favorite song from Forever Changes, "Alone Again Or," complete with violins and a horn section. This apparently comes from a 
DVD version of the entire album, Forever Changes, performed live -- well this just went on my must-get list.
I thought this was such a studio track that it would be tricky to perform live, but this is just wonderful, and Lee is amazing -- Memphis-born, California raised, he borrows everything from flamenco to surf music, personally discovered Jimi Hendrix, and heavily influenced the Doors and many punk bands.
RIP Arthur.
Appreciations from the Washington Post: The Everlasting 'Forever' Of Arthur Lee and Boisterous Rock Singer Arthur Lee: Musician Fronted '60s Band Love. From the LATimes: Arthur Lee, 61; Forceful Leader of Influential '60s Band Love and an appreciation by Doors' drummer John Densmore, 1965, the Strip and Arthur Lee.
- posted by jbelliveau at 10:02 AM in Books, Music, DVDs
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April 9, 2005
Controversial Duran Duran at the Patriot Center
My not-so-proud effort at shooting Duran Duran last night from our seats in the second-to-the-last row. This is during their first song, Reach Out for the Sunrise.
Controversy appears to be building over political comments by Duran Duran lead singer Simon le Bon at the group's performance Friday at the Patriot Center in Fairfax, Va.
He introduced the group's new single, "What Happens Tomorrow," with a bizarre statement, paraphrased: "I don't know if you remember what was happening two years ago today ... your 'wonderful' [facetious tone] president was going to begin dropping bombs on Iraq ..."
A strange noise filled the Patriot Center. I anticipated overwhelming cheering from the crowd in attendance (average age seemed to be about 21, much younger than I expected -- so I thought they would be typical liberal college kids).
But on interpretation, it seemed an angry murmur, with some flat-out booing and very scattered cheers. Didn't seem like the audience was in the mood to have a foreigner take a verbal shot at the president so near the nation's Capital.
One can only imagine that the reaction surprised Le Bon, but it was something of a grievous misstep, for several reasons.
First, he showed a tone deafness that he was in politically conservative Northern Virginia, and near the Pentagon, hit on Sept. 11.
Second, who on God's Earth goes to a Duran Duran concert to hear preachiness?
Bad enough that U2 and Springsteen think their fans look to them for political wisdom; a bunch of Birmingham, England, art school grads who flew to fame on the basis of riding a yacht around Antigua for their breakthrough "Rio" video have simply got to be kidding to think we take their views on anything weightier than best brands for blue eyeshadow very seriously.
"Simon needs to keep his political views to himself," posted Batdog on a Duran Duran fan site (a sentiment echoed by two others):
He is an entertainer not a war activist. If he hates America so much, why come here? Oh and has he forgotten who got his career off the ground? MTV and the American public started the popularity of their music. I am not saying you can not express your opinion, even he has rights under the Constitution, however quit a few of the crowd were not overjoyed in his rendition of the President. Iraq is a safer country and America is safer today then it was 4 years ago.
I almost couldn't figure out what Simon was driving at. Any applicability of the song, "What Happens Tomorrow," to the war in Iraq is certainly opaque to me, because it says:
You've got to believe
It'll be alright in the end
You've got to believe
It'll be alright again
I sat rather puzzled in my seat, knowing the song lyric's optimism fairly well, and after a while wondered if Le Bon's song dedication meant to indirectly praise Bush for leading us into Iraq, which has now conducted its first ever elections.
And the band's official Web site posts a pic of Nick Rhodes, Andy and Roger Taylor in what looks like the press room at the White House prior to the concert.
So who knows what point the remarks made. There are 219 messages on this fan message board, under the headline "Simon booed in Fairfax," but it costs $35/year to join. If anyone can forward some of the thread to me, I would be most interested!
Last December I had obtained tickets to Duran Duran, thinking it would be nice to have the concert to look forward to -- by the time April 8 rolled around, spring would be in full bloom. The Washington Post had praised their comeback album, Astronaut (see "Duran as in Durable: With 'Astronaut,' the '80s Band Recharges"), and it seemed like with a lot of hard work, the band had updated its danceable, fun sound.
Indeed, my sister and I rolled out of D.C. to what she calls "Farfax" to George Mason University's Patriot Center amid cherry blossoms and a perfect evening.
I haven't been to a concert, that I recall, since seeing George Clinton at Baltimore's Pier 6 in May 2000. Not knowing if Duran Duran would start right at 8 p.m. -- not remembering much about concert protocol at all, we took our seats in the two-thirds-empty Patriot Center, wondering if there was little market for an Eighties group. Not to worry though -- DD at this point is far more than a revival band, and we soon figured out where the fans were.
An opening act called Juliet appeared. Sharon wandered off to get bottled water and reported that the concourses were jammed by true fans. We were headed for a full house. The true fans, she said, wore DD shirts reading "Mrs. John Taylor" and "John Taylor Fan Club."
That was my ulterior motive in going, to see an absolutely beautiful man. John Taylor, who I believe lives in LA, needs to set his bandmate straight on showing some tact when addressing an American audience as a foreigner.
Le Bon has noted ("The Ridiculous Life of Simon Le Bon") that the tall bass player was once a young geek named Nigel wearing glasses:
The first time I saw him he was this speccy geek with nicotine-stained fingers, trembling with fear at the prospect of having to meet people. And his name wasn’t even John. It was Nigel. He was a Nigel with glasses, poor sod. I remember staring at his face and slowly realising that he was rather beautiful, exquisite in fact. I mean, this was the best looking guy I’d seen in years, maybe my whole life. Losing his glasses and changing his name to John was the best thing he ever did. He was a man transformed. To see him in action was incredible. He could charm the knickers off anyone.
Once we took our seats in the farthest reaches of row V, section 109, we could see (as you can tell by the above picture) only the tiny figures of the band. Note to self: Splurge on the $100, not $45, seats, next time you want to see a true rock hottie, even if you are so old you remember paying about $7 to see The Who at Merriweather in 1970.
I am not alone, a Washington Post writer named Jen noted she would be focused on the "bass god:" "If you happen to notice a woman in section 116 holding a pair of binoculars so she can get a better look at John Taylor, that would be me. Although I suspect I won't be alone."
One of the interesting aspects of such a venture back into the world of concerts is, what will be the audience be like? I had expected the grey-ponytail brigade, or older women. My amateur anthropology survey revealed that instead, the average audience age seemed to be about 21, apparently a lot of George Mason students who wanted to dance the whole time and knew every single lyric. Mostly there were swarms of pretty blond NoVa* girls, but also some couples (including many where the male half looked reluctant), and some gay fellas.
* Northern Virginia
At 8:50 p.m., Duran Duran came on to "Sunrise," off the new Astronaut CD. Excellent sound, lighting, background movies and pacing for two hours. Simon Le Bon looked like a gym rat -- the pudgy look is gone, and he struck plenty of Elvis-like straddle poses. John Taylor was having a bad hair day -- anyone as tall and skinny as him should not have hair short at the sides and piled to the top. Andy and Roger Taylor played with tons of energy, and Nick Rhodes was, as ever, a statue (he is the bottle blond who plays the Moog).
Here is the play list, from the band's Web site:
- SUNRISE -- Very energetic, great light show.
- HUNGRY LIKE THE WOLF -- How did they manage to keep up the enthusiasm after 20 years of playing this song?
- PLANET EARTH -- I think this is their first hit.
- HOLD BACK THE RAIN
- ASTRONAUT -- Good job on the title track of their most recent CD.
- I DON’T WANT YOUR LOVE -- Catchy and incredibly shallow song, "I don't want your love, to bring me down." Kind of the polar opposite of the message of the late Pope John Paul II, on what commitment in marriage means.
- COME UNDONE -- Fabulous vocal by guest singer Anna Ross, who appeared in a slinky leather outfit with mesh stockings. She and the sax player added a lot to their sound.
- WHAT HAPPENS TOMORROW -- Here was Le Bon's downfall.
- REFLEX -- Took me a while to figure out they were playing my favorite song, because it started with a new arrangement! But the kids around us knew right away.
- TIGER TIGER -- instrumental lead by the sax player.
- CHAUFFEUR
- A VIEW TO A KILL -- Their Bond theme.
- ORDINARY WORLD
- SAVE A PRAYER
- BEDROOM TOYS
- NOTORIOUS
- NICE
- CARELESS MEMORIES
- WILD BOYS -- Very loud, I have never much liked this song, but the band seemed to up their energy for this one -- seems to be their personal favorite.
Encore:
- WHITE LINES -- I've never heard this song before, but it was the most danceable of all, fabulous.
Update: Yes, in reply to the comment by Otis below, this is a cover of Grandmaster Flash's version, which I just heard on XM Radio's 80s channel ... really, this was almost the highlight of the whole night, got everyone's funk on.
- GIRLS ON FILM -- With background movie of Marlene Dietrick era models.
- RIO -- Well done, but I could tell this would be their last song, and I had wanted them to do my other favorite instead, "New Religion."
We had a lot of fun dancing to everything that was danceable, most especially "White Lines" which I hadn't heard before, watching the kids slow dance and sing along karaoke style, and seeing Simon Le Bon clamber into the crowd after introducing the other band members to demand an introduction from a college-age girl in the audience of himself, coaching her to describe him as sexy and wonderful.
On our departure, we saw the band's giant cruising bus, painted with pictures of the band from the cover of the Astronaut CD. Skanky punk girls and others were waiting to meet their idols. If I were a bit younger, I would have stayed as well to see how rock stars behave nowadays.
Rock on, dudes. Even if you're out at George Mason, having to yell "hello Fairfax" instead of "hello D.C." after your first song, the concert was a fabulous success. Kudos to Nick Rhodes for pushing to keep DD together, working to come up with a fine new album, top arrangements for the live act and a variety of visuals.
- posted by jbelliveau at 4:58 PM in Books, Music, DVDs
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January 17, 2005
2005 Favorites: Books, Music, DVDs
Books
Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Steven D. Levitt
This one's getting a lot of attention, but I agree with National Review's Jonah Goldberg that 
The Armchair Economist by Steven Landsburg is much stronger!
The Secret Man:
The Story of Watergate's Deep Throat
Bob Woodward
My personal knowledge of Bob Woodward begins with seeing him in the lobby of my high school, Richard Montgomery, in Rockville circa 1971, as he wrote an expose of the county's high school principals for the Montgomery County Sentinel. It continues with seeing him more than two decades later in his office at the Washington Post, and having him buy ice cream in huge buckets for the newsroom during one busy Saturday, perhaps just prior to the invasion of Haiti.
I had no idea that his work in the Navy brought him to the White House prior to his employment as a journalist, and it was in a corridor there that he first met Mark Felt, who was to become Deep Throat.
If you read this book, you will learn that Woodward lied to Richard Cohen, a Post columnist, who was prepared to write an article stating that Felt had to be Deep Throat; that Felt's motives will now never be known, as he is 91 and suffers from dementia; but that most likely, Felt believed (based on his service to J. Edgar Hoover) the FBI had an almost above-the-law duty to protect the country, that is, leaking information if need be to expose the corruption at the Nixon White House, or using extralegal means to capture the Weather Underground radicals.
Even though Vanity Fair scooped the Washington Post.
Garlic and Sapphires:
The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise
Ruth Reichl
Really enjoyed Reichl's opening on the bizarreness of her hiring experience a the New York Times -- no one she is visiting seems to have any clear idea of how to conduct a professional interview, and she is astonished at how filthy the newsroom is.
She shakes up the New York restaurant world by visiting hoity-toity spots in disguise and reporting frankly on shabby treatment. Whle this does not endear her to Times management, readers applaud.
One Nation Under Therapy:
How the Helping Culture Is Eroding Self-Reliance
Christina Hoff Sommers
Sally Satel
Thought-provoking look at the therapy industry and how little-trained vultures descend onto Columbine, the World Trade Center and insist that all in sight emote as if they are Sally Jesse Raphael.
Sommers writes with less pizzazz here than her earlier landmark,
Who Stole Feminism?, yet her targets are well chosen, especially Abraham Maslow, the guru who decided we all have a pyramid of needs, with self-actualization at the top. How many families have been broken up since as one parent or another decides they are more important than their kids?
Fascinating account of a pilot's 13-day hike out of the California Sierras following a crash in November 1994. Few could have survived the starvation and brutal conditions Peter DeLeo faced. He finds heavily padlocked cabins on the way, in contrast to the one-time tradition in Alaska to leave cabins stocked and open to a traveler facing an emergency. (The custom, according to John McPhee's excellent
Coming into the Country, is for the traveler to eventually restock what he takes on a return trip).
Reviews at Amazon.com note that the NTSB cited pilot error as the cause of DeLeo's crash -- that he took an ill-advised swing into a box canyon. Further, his emergency signaling device appears to not have had an antenna set up correctly, and he did not file a flight plan.
It seems the same person can be a crummy pilot and a determined survivor.
Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First
Mona Charen
You probably know the outlines of how liberals have been sympathetic to Soviet Russia, Cuba and other totalitarian regimes, but Charen connects the dots to show similar patterns toward Nicaragua and even Cambodia as it descended into genocide.
American Taboo : A Murder in the Peace Corps
Philip Weiss
Fantastic story of a young American Peace Corps volunteer murdered in Tonga by another PCV -- who essentially got off scot-free. The tale is an engrossing one, especially fine are the observations of Tongans who watch the Peace Corps bureaucracy fall in line to protect the murderer (!) and conclude that whereas a Tongan would simply confess and be hung, Americans don't mind murder so very much. I agree with the reviewers on Amazon.com that take issue with the writer's failings to explain the reappearance of characters, but still, the narrative has its own momemtum, and the writer is clearly quite good at reporting what happened.
What is perhaps more lacking is a look at why the heck we let barely formed adults in their early 20s, most hopelessly unprepared for live overseas, go around getting themselves into trouble and ultimately being "whack-evaced" home when their minds crumble. My new book, Romance on the Road, will look briefly at the issue of young female Peace Corps volunteers, who, if French speaking, are sent to West Africa, where they are likely to encounter strong, seductive men, often HIV positive. Up to five PCVs a year sero-convert to HIV.
Parents and young folks alike should think twice before deciding they are suited for the Peace Corps!
Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help (and the Rest of Us)
Mona Charen
Excellent chapters including "How Liberalism Created the Crime Wave" and "How Liberalism Created Homelessness." Charen's book blasts out of the gate with this opening sentence:
If you were inclined to assault your neighbor and steal his car in 1958, you would have to consider that neither the police nor the courts would cut you any clack because you had a deprived childhood.
How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter
Ann Coulter
Was expecting some sort of social guide to conversing with liberals, including a decent run-through of social issues high on the conservative agenda. This is actually a collection of Coulter's weekly columns. I was pleasantly surprised to find Coulter's book full of witty asides, amusing observations ("at least Saddam wasn't at Tailhook!) and with an endearing humility about her failures to crack the magazine market (many freelance writers will enjoy chapter 16, "What you Have Read If You Lived in a Free Country," a compendium of flaky rejections).
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
Lynne Truss
Great idea for a book -- a lively look at punctuation -- yet despite interesting passages on the history of the comma, this effort will confuse the reader rather than clarify. Does Truss even understand punctuation? As a former copy editor, I find the Associated Press stylebook infinitely clearer. Part of the problem is that the UK has something close to punctuation anarchy, an almost Chaucerian disregard for correct use of commas and apostrophes. And alas, this is a UK book written by a UK author primarily for a UK audience. Again, where were the editors? The rules for comma use are not so difficult, but Truss makes it appear otherwise.
On Paradise Drive : How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense
David Brooks
An editor should have sat down with Brooks to figure out what he was really trying to say about life in the American suburbs and exurbs. This reads like a description of a drive from Washington's Georgetown out to Frederick, Maryland, with bits of clever prose but no overarching point.
Things Worth Fighting for: Collected Writings
Michael Kelly
Nicer long pieces that contrast with his newspaper columns, including a profile of Jesse Jackson.
The Pythons
by the members of Monty Python,
A gold mine for someone like myself who is a big fan of the show but knows little about the background of the group.
According to the Rolling Stones
An obviously incomplete history of the band but packed with great photos.
DVDs
In Living Color
Hilarious and far more consistent than SNL.
Eight Mile
Reasonably interesting but there will be some holes in the narrative to casual viewers who are not huge Eminem fans. We are left to wonder in the early going, as Marshall flounders and chokes at rapping competitions, why his friends see such promise in him (the film gives us no clue). And my husband Lamont makes an interesting point:
I thought it was a little strange in 8-mile that Rabbit seems to have no relationship at all with black women. All his buddies except the guy who shoots himself are black, but black women play only the most peripheral role in the movie. It may be that they don't like him or he doesn't like them. It wouldn't be important except that he has completely "dysfunctional" relationships with the only three white women who show up in the movie, his mom and two girlfriends.There is an interesting twist in a sub-culture like this where there simply aren't that many potential mates within your ethnic group, so you end up either grabbing the first person like you even though you may be completely uncompatible or dating outside of your race. Years ago if you were a black professional you had this issue, so many people had to do a match-maker thing, never worked for me... Well this is never remotely explained in the movie. I kept wondering why he's getting wrapped up in these slags when there were so many sistas around.
The other thing is his outrage at the betrayal of the producer having an affair with the girl he's after. Seeing as Rabbit's only claim on her was a quickie behind the press, I wasn't sure he had any right to beat up the brother for doing the exact same thing. It almost came across as old-fashioned outrage at a black man and white woman being involved rather than outrage at a cheating girlfriend.
Whatever, not of this was made clear. It feels like M&M was either hostile to interracial relationships or he had it written in and cut it out because he was timid about what the public (his fans) or censors would think -- which seems unlikely considering the amount of profanity being thrown about and the topics of the raps.
Its inconsistent when you consider he's trying to make inroads into what has become the modern day black folk music, more reason for me to slag him off as a pretender.
- posted by jbelliveau at 2:58 PM in Books, Music, DVDs
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December 4, 2004
Tom Wolfe and I Am Charlotte Simmons
I Am Charlotte SimmonsIt may be an exaggeration, but not much of one, to say that I live for books by Tom Wolfe.
After a wait of six years since 
A Man in Full, I was the first person to check out Charlotte Simmons at the Baltimore County Library I usually patronize (Rosedale). One gets used to waiting for works by the master (11 years between 
Bonfire of the Vanities and A Man in Full, eight years between 
The Right Stuff and Bonfire of the Vanities).
I Am Charlotte Simmons depicts in full glory the waste of time a four-year university is for the jocks, the frat boys and sorority sisters and anyone deeply into the party and drinking and hook-up scene (I deal with the phenomenon of hooking up in my forthcoming book, Romance on the Road).
Wolfe describes the level of cynicism that permits These Young People Today to have not one, but three levels of Sarcasm: Sarc 1, Sarc 2 and Sarc 3.
Charlotte Simmons had been out less than one month, and already it has stirred a spirited debate over the behavior on college campuses. To whit, on National Review Online's The Corner, John Derbyshire writes:
College LifeReader responses to my Charlotte Simmons review are all over the lot, from "Wolfe doesn't tell the half of it" to "nothing like that going on at MY college."
Seems to me there is wide variation between colleges, even between high-Ivies.
But why go to college at all, to credential-up for some job that will be outsourced to Bangladesh the year after you graduate?"Mr. Derbyshire---Things are as bad as Wolfe portrays them. Following an excellent education in a private Jesuit high school in [major city] I attended and graduated from [major university]. Neither of my children will ever go near such a place. My wife (a very bright and completely decent Englishwoman) did not attend university. My neighbors (in a nice suburb of [major city]) who have the largest houses are a plumber and a builder who have managed to start and run successful enterprises without the benefit of a college education.
"College is an expensive hiatus during which young men and women experience depravity, drunkenness and depression out of sight of their parents -- who benefit from not seeing the suicides, abortions, rapes and baseness."
One can speculate how far this will lead, but I think it safe to speculate that a fair number of parents will begin to look more carefully at paying $20,000 a year for debauchery and brain-washing, both inside and outside the classroom. One even wonders if Tom Wolfe on his own will create a devaluation of the entire idea of a college education, given the sideshow campus life has apparently become. Thomas Sowell calls for greater care in evaluating who goes to college and where:
Some young people are not yet ready for coed living arrangements and the pressures and dangers that can lead to. Some are at risk on a campus with widespread drug usage. Some students can get very lonely when they just don't fit in.Sometimes there is no one to turn to and sometimes the adults they turn to on campus have nothing but psychobabble to offer.
Late adolescence and early adulthood are among the most dangerous times in people's lives, when one foolish decision can destroy everything for which parents and children have invested time and efforts and hopes for years.
In my Web surfing this morning, seeking to find out if Tom Wolfe would do a book signing in Baltimore (drat, the answer is no, and his visits to Washington have come and gone), I came across the author's Web site. Guess what -- the best 100-word essay entered in a contest thereon gets to meet the great one!
Guess I will be polishing my entry between now and the closing date. I have loved everything since 1965's
The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby and hope to think of something decent to enter in the contest.
- posted by jbelliveau at 1:03 PM in Books, Music, DVDs
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