By Steve Rhodes
The incredibly shrinking book reviews at our two daily papers have made this feature nearly impossible to continue in its current form because, quite simply, there isn’t much to review. Still, we’ll soldier on with a weekly look at the book reviews laying around Beachwood HQ and continue to point you to the good, the bad and the ugly, as well as trying to expand the outlets under our consideration. This feature is also open to submissions or even someone else willing to take it under their wing. Contact me if you’re interested.
*
Top Gun
“If you read Andrew Morton’s unauthorized biography of Tom Cruise with a fan’s curiosity in one hand and a thinking person’s skepticism in the other you’ll likely end up in the same place you were before you read it: not all that interested,” Teresa Budasi writes in her Sun-Times books column.
“Because as fascinating as the book can be – mostly when Morton gets into the inner workings of Scientology and its effect on Cruise – there’s always a nagging question as to what’s true and what isn’t.”
Sort of like Scientology itself.
Budasi may be lukewarm on a book that certainly has an almost irresistible voyeuristic appeal, but that doesn’t mean the book didn’t make at least a little bit of an impression on her.
For example, she observes that “We all know people who are never single – never without a boyfriend or girlfriend on their arm. Cruise is one of those people, and when you lay out his relationship history, as Morton does here, there doesn’t seem to be any gaps.
“What’s more interesting is that for a guy whom Scientology is a reported deal-breaker – if you’re not on board, don’t expect long-term – Cruise has only seriously pursued Catholic women since his 1990 divorce from Mimi Rogers, the woman who introduced Cruise to Scientology in the first place.”
Manhattan Calling
Thomas Conner’s Q & A with former Chicago boy Adam Langer, whose third novel, Ellington Boulevard, is named after the Manhattan street where he now lives, includes this question: Is it a rite of passage for an author to shift from writing about the idealized past to trying to capture the and distill the present?
Read the whole thing to find out why Langer’s answer includes the revelation that for a time he wouldn’t listen to any music made after 1980.
State of Mines
“The coal industry employs far fewer people by simply blowing up entire hillsides – mountain-ectomies,” Timothy Egan of The New York Times writes in his review of Coal River, Michael Shnayerson’s “narrative of outrage directed at [West Virginia’s] largest industry.”
Siegel’s Folly
“In Against the Machine, the swaggeringly abrasive cultural critic Lee Siegel pays a visit to Starbucks,” Janet Maslin writes. “He sits down. He looks around. And he finds himself surrounded by Internet zombies, laptop-addicted creatures who have so grievously lost their capacity for human interaction ‘that social space has been contracted into isolated points of wanting, all locked into separate phases of inwardness.’ How long until they wake up and smell the coffee?
“Mr. Siegel’s field trip illustrates several things, not least that Starbucks is today’s most hackneyed reportorial setting.”
And that’s just for starters.
Siegel is the latest cliched commentator to opine wildly about a medium – the Internet – he doesn’t understand. Just to take the example used by Maslin to open her review, does Siegel suppose there was a time when folks in a coffeehouse gathered for deep philosophical discussion and witty repartee constituting an intellectual public sphere that has now been destroyed by MySpace and instant messaging? (Well, maybe, but only in the coffeehouses long ago destroyed by Starbucks.)
In fact, a coffeehouse full of Internet users is far more social than one filled with folks whose heads are buried in their books. Reading books is a solitary pursuit, and there’s no reason to do it in public. On the other hand, “laptop-addicted creatures” have the freedom to work and play in public; if the technology had come along sooner we might have more coffeehouses around that would have survived the Starbucks onslaught.
Aw, don’t get me started. Lewis Lazare of the Sun-Times called me the other day to complain (again) that the Internet is dumbing people down. I asked him how often he uses the Internet. Well, see, he really doesn’t. I asked him if he’d ever actually seen Facebook after he complained about social networking. No, he actually never had.
So, yes, the Internet is dumbing people down – those not familiar with it.
Siegel is just the latest; it’s too bad his sort and the folks who run the book reviews at our papers don’t see how the Internet is a boon – and maybe even a savior – for books. Amazon, anyone?
*
Speaking of which, visit me at Goodreads. And check out the new goodies at the University of Chicago Press’s fine blog, including an excerpt from On The Make: The Hustle of Urban Nightlife.
*
CHARTS
1. Michael Pollan
2. Stephen Colbert
3. Steve Martin
4. Glenn Beck
5. Tom Brokaw
6. The Supreme Court
7. Tony Dungy
8. Eric clapton
9. Free Lunch by David Cay Johnston: “How lobbyists and lawyers have wangled government subsidies for the wealthy.”
10. A dog named Sprite.
*
Comments welcome. You must include a real, full name to be considered for publication.
Posted on January 21, 2008