Savages

 Savages

By Don Winslow

Another Anthony Jeselnik recommendation. It was very different from the rest of his list. As one Reddit

reviewer wrote: It was one star and five stars simultaneously.

Why one star? Because so much of it seemed pretty god-awful. The main characters are one dimensional and don't really evolve or change through the novel. And the premise is ridiculous: A couple of California weed growers try to take on a Mexican cartel and (kind of) succeed. It's set in Orange County. One of the main characters, O (for Ophelia) is a sex-crazed stoner with unlimited funds and appetites. She is best friends-with-benefits of Chon, an ex-Seal who did several stints in Afghanistan, and Ben, the genius grower. They were happily making millions off their product when the cartel decides it wants to take some. The author also makes some weird stylistic choices, like every now and again moving into movie-script mode, changing "chapters" every page or so, using line breaks like a poet, and trying a bit too hard to make the book seem "hard boiled".

Why Five? Because I couldn't put it down. I ripped through it. The pacing and action is pretty much non-stop. I've read online that maybe some of his other books are better; perhaps I'll check out another one when I need something engrossing and quick. 

Something We Said

 Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me

By Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor

I first heard the author, who is Richard Pryor's daughter, on Fresh Air. I am glad I picked up the book.

First of all: Being Richard Pryor's daughter sounds like it was a pretty wild experience. I am somewhat familiar with Pryor's work, mainly through his collaborations with Mel Brooks, but knew very little about him outside of that. He was a complicated figure to say the least. He was raised in a Chicago-area brothel. It was a violent, traumatic upbringing that seems pretty clearly connected to some of his "hang ups", as he described them, later in life. The first was his relationship to women. He was never with one very long, and fathered children by lots of them. To his credit, he seemed willing to maintain relationships with the mothers of his children, but infidelity and conflict were constants in his love life. The second, of course, was drugs. Cocaine and alcohol were a big part of his life until the infamous night that he lit himself on fire -- whether intentionally or as a result of a free-basing accident I still don't know -- and, in the painful aftermath, went sober.

All of this turmoil makes you wonder how he was able to maintain enough time and energy for his pretty significant creative output.

But that's not what this book is about. It's about the author's complicated relationship to her father and, to a lesser extent her mother, particularly in light of his pioneering use of what we now can call the N-word. Using it -- the full IT -- was a mainstay of his comedy; it was part of what made him groundbreaking and edgy. During the first part of his career, Pryor's use of it was a kind of re-appropriation, a way to harness the power of the word and use it as a way to fight against racism rather than gird it up. That changed, though, after a trip to Africa, where he realized that, despite being surrounded by black people, the N-word was absent. He disavowed it, explaining that using it, even in the context of re-appropriation, still somehow reinforced America's peculiar racial hierarchy.

Liz, as she is known, traces not only her father's use of the word, but her very personal experience with it. She switches between vignettes about her childhood, her first days teaching at Smith College, and the historical progression of the word and its meaning. All of it is powerful. She does a great job of highlighting what are, now, shameful moments and explaining what she learned and how she grew from them. As a teacher, I was particularly struck by her initial reaction to and subsequent reflection on the first time she heard a student -- and a white student at that -- use it in her classroom; it was a quotation from Richard Pryor's role in Blazing Saddles. In the moment, she basically did nothing. But it set her on a path of figuring out how to do better. I am not black, have never been called the N-word -- but I still can identify with this.

I was also fascinated by the historical "Interludes". I learned a lot about the N-word -- such as the fact that the "N-word" as a way to refer to it became popular as a result of the prosecutor's use of it during the OJ Simpson trial. Huh?! And that there is a historical record of black people re-appropriating the word as far back as the 1800s. I'm hoping to use some of these in my class next year. 

Anyway -- a great, thought-provoking read.

Magnificence

 Magnificence

By Lydia Millet

The last in the trio of books featuring T., a development tycoon who, in the last book, found a change of

heart in the jungle of Belize. That novel was told from the point of view of Hal, the husband of T.'s secretaries, Susan, who agrees to go find T. as a way to escape his discovery that his wife was having an affair. It ends with him bleeding on the sidewalk after being stabbed during a robbery. Will he make it?

No, he will not. And so this book is written from the point of view of Susan, his wife. Turns out, she'd been having lots of affairs. While Hal responded to the accident that left his daughter, Casey, paralyzed by fretting over her, Susan responded with adultery. Hal's death put her in a tailspin. She is, she decides, a murderer; Hal never would have gone to Belize if he hadn't found her out. She is lost, and listless.

Until, one day, she receives a call from a lawyer. Her great uncle has died, and left her a large estate in Pasadena. There is no money, but a trust has been set up to pay for it's upkeep. When she arrives, it is larger than the even imagined. And, strangely, stuffed with taxidermy; heads are everywhere.

She does some research, and finds that her uncle loved to hunt, and, in fact, headed a hunting organization. With little else to do, she throws herself into the house, reorganizing the stuffed animals based on plans of famous natural history museums. It too will be a museum, she decides. There is a chance I am wrong, but it seems to me that her uncle's hunting in some ways matched Susan's infidelities; she, too, was seeking trophies of a kind, and Hal's death has her organizing them in her head.

There is not much of a propulsive plot in this book. A minor conflict arises in the form of Susan's cousins, who are jealous of her inheritance and sue to overturn the uncle's will. It seems obvious from the reader's point of view that she will prevail, but there is tension nevertheless. In addition, this threat spurs Susan to learn even more about the house, and a new mystery arises. The original plans contained a large basement, yet Susan has seen no evidence of it.

A search leads her to a manhole. It doesn't belong to the city. A backhoe is hired to remove the lid, and when Susan descends into the cavern it uncovers, she finds even more animals. At first, it just seems like overflow from the main "collection". But there are strange dates, and then she connects the dots: they are all extinct. There is even a room dedicated to a dodo skeleton. And then, farther on, a different room. It's contents? The remains of humans who were the last of their tribes. 

What does it all mean? I don't know, but it speaks to human's odd relationship to endangered species. We are fascinated by them, hyper focused on their potential demise to the point, perhaps, of ignoring the animals right nearby, who, if we aren't careful, will also end up on the list.

I've really enjoyed delving into Millet. I hope she writes another book.

Ruthie Fear

 Ruthie Fear

By Maxim Lukutoff

Sickel gave this to me during our visit to the cabin this summer. He'd meant to mail it, and inside was a
note that said: "This book is crazy!" Obviously, I was intrigued.

To be honest, I didn't find it all that crazy -- for most of it. It is the story of the titular character, Ruthie Fear, who lives in a trailer in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana with her father, Rutherford. One of the main themes of the book is the gentrification of the area by outsiders while longtime residents see their lives upended. This particularly grates on Rutherford, who simmers not-so-silently with rage. They were technically poor, but with all the public land around, they were rich -- until the really rich started taking that land away. Rutherford is particularly incensed when a country music star moves into the valley and starts baiting ducks near a public pond. Why? Because it is illegal to shoot baited ducks. 

We watch Ruthie struggle in the valley to find a life of meaning and, it seems, upward mobility. She is torn, both loving and despising the insularity of Montana mountain life. She briefly attempts to flee to Las Vegas, inspired by a poster of the city her father brought back from his only trip out of Montana. But she can't quite make it, and winds up robbing a tourist for bus fare back.

It's all pretty ordinary, if disturbing. Except. One day when she was seven years old, Ruthie saw a creature. It had no head, spindly "insect" legs, and a kidney-shaped body covered with feathers. Rutherford believed it to be a figment of her imagination, but Ruthie held fast. She build a blind so she could see it again. But it never appeared. 

Until. One morning she was duck hunting, and there it was. And then there was another. And another. Gun shots rang out through the valley. Hundreds of the creatures had appeared, and been killed. They brought them to the local dump, where the fire warden was waiting for approval to light the pile of carcasses up. But when he did, they gave off a noxious smoke that killed everyone whose nostrils it entered. All along, it had been posited that the valley would be better off with fewer people. And now there were.

The creatures were obviously a metaphor for something. The author certainly seems unsympathetic to the Big Sky-ification of Montana. What, exactly, they stand for I'm not quite sure. But this was a good read, propulsive till the end.