Literary Lollapalooza, November Edition

This month marks my 34th year and I celebrate by reading whatever the hell I want to. You’ll also notice some slight changes in the ‘palooza this month, namely new categories for E-Books, Currently Reading, and I’ve changed up the Books Read reviews to start with a list of the titles for ease to browse titles and decide what reviews you’d like to read. You’re comments and suggestions are always welcome, so please feel free to comment on books or to suggest titles for me to read. Happy reading!

This is Literary Lollapalooza, November Edition.

Books Acquired:

Fiction: Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon, An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England by Brock Clarke, Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris, Gutshot Straight by Lou Berney, Blacklands by Belinda Bauer, and Osama Van Halen by Michael Muhammad Knight

Non-Fiction:

E-Books: The Great Perhaps by Joe Meno, The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens, and McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales edited by Michael Chabon

Books Borrowed:

Currently Reading: The Law of Nines by Terry Goodkind, McSweeney’s Mammoth Book of Thrilling Tales edited by Michael Chabon

Books Read This Month: Hairstyles of the Damned by Joe Meno, Big Sur by Jack Kerouac (included is a music review of One Fast Move or I’m Gone by Jay Farrar and Ben Gibbard), The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson, If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler…by Italo Calvino


Reviews of This Month’s Books:

Hairstyles of the Damned by Joe Meno

I started this book by Joe Meno two days before Halloween, thinking “really, what’s more frightening than high school?”
Hairstyles is the story of Brian, a Catholic high school malcontent, and his best friend Gretchen, a pink-haired punk rock girl. Told first person by Brian, it covers his junior year and all the confusion, desire, fear, and longing that that year contains.
This is as pitch-perfect an account of what it’s like to be a teenager as I have ever read. Centered on the need to belong and the inability to belong, this book is at times hilarious, tragic, and frighteningly close to home. Meno writes with unflinching honesty about how screwed up finding one’s own identity can be. Like Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, Brian is a whining, unhappy American teen rebelling against everything he can, but unlike Caulfield Brian comes off as likable and charming. I couldn’t help but identify with his daily high school heartbreaks (because that’s how many there are in high school).
If you like the novels of Nick Hornby you’ll like this book. If you are a fan of The Perks of Being a Wallflower you’ll like this book. If you like great young adult fiction with heart and warmth you’ll like this book. ‘Nuff said.

Big Sur by Jack Kerouac
One Fast Move or I’m Gone by Jay Farrar and Benjamin Gibbard

I started reading Big Sur again because I picked up One Fast Move or I’m Gone a cd soundtrack to a documentary film of the same name detailing the time that Kerouac and the other great Beats of San Francisco spent time at cabin in Big Sur.
The soundtrack by Ben Gibbard (of Death Cab and Postal Service) and Jay Farrar (of alt-country stalwarts Son Volt) is a musical masterpiece. Gibbard and Farrar teamed up to write and record the songs for the project using Keroauc’s own words. The result sounds like what we can imagine Kerouac is feeling. It is an astounding mix of two very different sensibilities, coming together to create an altogether unique musical collaboration. Gibbard, in his optimistic tenor, sounds wide open and free on the opening track “California Zephyr”, a feel-good song about the endless fun and possibility of travel. One can imagine a smiling Kerouac, watching the countryside fly by, mile after mile. Farrar, sounds like the weary, soul-worn Keroauc of late night drunken bouts and early morning hangover desolation. On “San Franscisco” he sings about waking up “all goopy and wobegone in the Mars Hotel” and we can see Keroauc feeling the weight of his addiction. Each track manages to evoke a different and altogether fitting aspect of “The King of the Beats”, whether it is wild kicks, or the anguish of self-deception, it’s all here, and it sounds lovely.
So I had to read Big Sur again. I first read this while in college, and my memories were vague at best. Upon rereading it I discovered a couple of things. First, it’s not nearly as well written as most of his earlier novels are. Keroauc was deep in the throes of his alcoholism when he wrote this account of his experiencing first delirium tremens, and eventually a mental breakdown at a small cabin on the California coast. It is essential reading for anyone wanting a complete picture of Kerouac, the man. It details his faults at every turn, an aged old hipster, drunk and taking advantage of everyone around him. He offends and mocks his friends, always in search of the next good time. But the heart of the book is his realization of his inability to quit drinking and settle down. He first goes to Ferlinghetti’s cabin in order to dry out and be alone after the endless promotional touring he’d been doing. He writes, “too much fame keeps a body busy”. He ends up experiencing delirium tremens and hallucinating on the sounds of the ocean. But he breaks down from loneliness and his own paranoid delusions and heads back to San Francisco where the party is never-ending when old Jack’s around. When he eventually has a complete breakdown at the end of the book, he has destroyed his friendship with Neal Cassidy, and destroyed a sad young woman named Willamine, with a young son in tow. In this haunting story, gone is the simple “goofing” that characterized On the Road and The Dharma Bums. This is a man, warts and all, looking at himself in the mirror and writing down what he sees.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson

This is the third and final book in Larsson’s Millenium trilogy. It has not been released in the States yet. I loved the first two books so much that I couldn’t wait for a US release, and ordered my copy from Amazon.uk. It was well worth it.
If you haven’t read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo yet you should. Today. Okay, maybe not, but tomorrow at the latest. Larrson has managed to create one of the best female characters ever written, the complex and dazzling computer hacker Lisbeth Salander. In this third and final part of her story, she finds herself at the center of a government conspiracy and cover up. What I find incredible is how Larsson has written three separate stand alone stories that are still so indelibly linked to the one that came before it, like a puzzle of sorts. I don’t need to say much about this. If you have read Dragon Tattoo, you’ll read Played with Fire, and this one as well. And you’ll be happier for it. This is dazzling writing from an author too soon gone.

If on a winter’s night a traveler…by Italo Calvino

This book came as a recommendation from my friend Annika.
If on a winter’s night a traveler…is not really a novel. It is ten different novels interrupted by a wrap-around story. In this ingenious little book, a reader (who knows, it could be you) picks up If on a winter’s night a traveler…starts reading it and gets about twenty pages in, and right when it’s starting to get good, it just stops. It must be a printing error. The reader goes in search of the missing rest of the book, and finds instead a mystery of literary conspiracies and mass produced cookie cutter novels and anarchist publishers.
This book is a mind-trip of the best kind. From the start it crackles with its own self-awareness, and Calvino continues twisting your expectations at every turn. It is a labyrinthine ode about the love of literature. But it’s never grandiose or condescending. With a wink of his eye Calvino let’s you know that we’re all just having fun here.


And that does it for November. I had a great birthday month, with a great new eReader from Sony (Thanks Carmen!), and a lot of great reads. Next month we’ll close out the year with more reviews and a special Best of 2009 edition. Stay tuned and keep reading!
Meno