Books being read on the New York City subway a few days ago: The Cider House Rules by John Irving, White Teeth: A Novel by Zadie Smith, and Everything’s Eventual : 14 Dark Tales by Stephen King.
On the Road
Appearing Elsewhere
The Pacific Standard Fiction Series rolls on tonight at 7 p.m. with a reading by Colson Whitehead and Christopher Sorrentino. If you’re in or near Brooklyn area and are free, it would be great to see you. The Pacific Standard website has directions.
An Oral History of Baseball
My soon-to-be-father-in-law has a huge collection of radio programs that he has taped and cataloged over the last two or three decades, and recently he gave me a couple of interesting tapes from the late 80’s. They contain a recorded performance of a baseball-themed show put on by the late baseball commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti and one of my favorite writers, Roger Angell. The show, which is about two hours long, consists of readings of baseball essays, stories, and poetry. The work of John Updike is represented as is that of Garrison Keillor. I was most interested in an excerpt from a book called The Glory of Their Times: The Story of Baseball Told By the Men Who Played It, a book that was put together by Lawrence Ritter, an economics professor at NYU. Ritter also happens to be a baseball fan, and shortly after Ty Cobb’s death in 1961, inspired by the outpouring of myth and legend that occasioned Cobb’s passing, Ritter decided to record for posterity an oral history of the early years of professional baseball. Over the next several years Ritter traveled 75,000 miles, crisscrossing the country, tape recorder in hand, seeking out the game’s grizzled veterans. The result is a book that is, I am now learning, cherished by aficionados of baseball literature, and since, I suppose, I must consider myself a member of this group, my copy should be arriving via post shortly.An AddendaI knew I had forgotten at least one of the books I read last year, and I think I forgot because I didn’t actually read it; I listened to it. Thanks to a friend who gave me a copy, Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion’s World Series of Poker by James McManus was my driving companion for a week or so, which both doubled my reading output and made that much more tolerable the vast amount of time that I, like any Angeleno, must spend in his car.
David Foster Wallace and The Pale King
It can only be with mixed feelings that we reiterate what you’ve probably already heard: David Foster Wallace was indeed well into a new novel at the time of his death last fall. At The New Yorker, D.T. Max’s long fact piece (accompanied by an excerpt) reports that the novel was to be called The Pale King and concerned the I.R.S., as we had speculated last year. “Good People,” which appeared in The New Yorker, and “The Compliance Branch” (whose publication in Harper’s triggered those speculations) were both parts of the novel-in-progress.The Howling Fantods (the preeminent website for Wallace readers) lists a couple of other fragments that may or may not have been linked to this longer work. Of the uncollected Wallace fiction I’ve read, “Three fragments from a longer thing” and especially the “Peoria” pieces from TriQuarterly (which I don’t think anyone has connected to the longer manuscript) strike me as remarkable, and thematically of a piece. That the “Three fragments” are no longer available online suggests they are part of the incomplete Pale King manuscript, which Little, Brown will publish next year. The resulting book will probably be more like The Arcades Project than 2666 – a blueprint, rather than a raised edifice. The fact that Wallace was already reading and publishing from it may allay some of the queasiness associated with posthumous publication. Still, as of this writing, that seems at best a complicated kind form consolation.See also: David Foster Wallace 1962 – 2008
The Media and the War
The role of media in war has long been big and complicated, but by the time Iraq rolled around the media had become both more and less powerful. TV news has been beset by falling ratings, aging viewers, and a sense that the national newscasts and their anchors are less and less relevant. At the same time, for many Americans, the network news and their cable counterparts are the only points of contact with perhaps the most important geopolitical event of a generation. Our newsmen and women are both weak and powerful.This dynamic fascinates me, which is why I’m intrigued by a newly released book by Washington Post columnist Howard Kurtz. Reality Show: Inside the Last Great Television News War is a chronicle of how the network news operations have dealt with covering an unpopular war that put employees in physical danger and forced executives to toe the line between “patriotism” and dissent. The Washington Post has an excerpt from the book. It’s worth checking out for anyone interested in the topic:Two months before the 2004 election, when she was still at NBC’s “Today” show, [Katie] Couric had asked Condoleezza Rice whether she agreed with Vice President Cheney’s declaration that the country would be at greater risk for terrorist attacks if John Kerry won the White House. Rice sidestepped the question, saying that any president had to fight aggressively against terrorism.Couric interrupted and asked the question again. Would a Kerry victory put America at greater risk? Rice ducked again, saying that the issue should not be personalized.Soon afterward, Couric got an e-mail from Robert Wright, the NBC president. He was forwarding a note from an Atlanta woman who complained that Couric had been too confrontational with Rice.What was the message here? Couric felt that Wright must be telling her to back off. She wrote him a note, saying that she tried to be persistent and elicit good answers in all her interviews, regardless of the political views of her guests. If Wright had a problem with that, she would like to discuss it with him personally. Wright wrote back that such protest letters usually came in batches, but that he had passed along this one because it seemed different.See Also: Instant News: Bob Woodruff Back from the Brink
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Hurricane help
Colleen (a regular contributor at Bookslut) sent me an email about a program she’s working on to help kids displaced by Hurricane Katrina. It sounds like a great plan; here are the details:I’m working with a group in Baton Rouge who are helping children sheltered with their families at Southern University. We have put together a couple of wish lists of books and games that the folks at Parkview Baptist Church will happily deliver to the SU kids and other area shelter kids. Feel free to buy off the lists, and send the links on to everyone you know and pass on my email to anyone who has any questions. We’ve had some success so far and several publishers, authors, illustrators and reviewers are all kicking in copies of books they are sending direct. If any of your readers would like to do that, I can provide the mailing address.
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