The Farm Report

We watched the news reports of Michael Jackson’s death and I had Elvis flashbacks.

I so clearly remember the day Elvis died. My first wife and I walked into a Wendy’s restaurant in our new hometown, Bowling Green, Ky., and the clerk behind the counter was crying. “Elvis died,” she said. “May I take your order?”

And that night, as I painted the bathroom in our new home (peach, if you want to know), I listened to hours of Elvis on the radio.

So when Michael died, I again felt the passing of a musical icon, but with mixed emotions. Elvis abused his body. Michael abused the bodies of others – of innocents.

But then I got a text message from my eldest son. And that’s when it hit me.

“Daddy! Daddy!” it began. “Fwilla!”

My son is a 27-year-old man now, a public-health professional, a responsible and dedicated citizen. But in that message, he took me back to the time when he was 2 years old and infatuated with Michael Jackson. I’d be in my study, working on my dissertation, and he would leap into the room to announce that the new Michael Jackson video, “Thriller” (Fwilla!) was on MTV. Then I’d go sit and watch it with him. He loved it and was scared by it at the same time and he needed his daddy with him. He’d stand spread-eagled in front of the television – like Tony Olivia at the plate – and begin those instinctive, involuntary dance moves. How could you listen to Michael Jackson and not dance?

When I got that message, I realized that my son’s generation has lost its Elvis.

Elvis’s death was heartbreaking. A revolutionary figure in American music and culture died at 42, in the bathroom of his mansion, reading “The Scientific Search for the Face of Jesus.” Shakespeare could not improve upon that tragedy.

Michael’s death, at 50, has other complications. As with my son watching “Thriller,” all of us felt  with Michael that we loved him and were scared by him at the same time.

I was reminded of a famous quote from American poet and physician William Carlos Williams: “The pure products of America go crazy.” Peter Guralnick, to my mind the greatest writer on popular music, often used that quote when he wrote (eloquently) about Elvis Presley.

It’s appropriate for Elvis’s son-in-law as well.

None of our friends in the press seem worried about libel and present as fact that Michael’s father, Joe Jackson, brutalized his children, setting into motion a cycle of abuse. If, as charged, Michael was a serial child molester who somehow beat the rap, then his crimes are unforgivable. There is a special place in hell for people who hurt children.

There’s much more baggage with Michael than with Elvis. Elvis was his own victim. His sloth and addictions killed him. Michael’s addictions cost his victims their innocence and their childhoods. Perhaps he used these third parties to exact revenge on his father for his own lost childhood. Forced onstage at an early age, a professional entertainer while still in single digits, it was no surprise when “adult” Michael built a fairyland in which to live. No surprise, but pathetic all the same.

Another quote comes to mind. It was said about musical savant Brian Wilson, the tortured soul behind the joyful music of the Beach Boys: “He was a genius musician, but an amateur human being.”

That, too, applies to Michael.

So I get the text message from my son, that dancing 2-year-old who is now a grown man, and I recognize this as another generational shock wave, a reminder of our mortality. If Michael, that Peter Pan of popular music, can die, then none of us is safe.

When we first saw him as a child, he sang songs that were at once nursery rhymes and  love songs. Though he obviously sang with the voice of a child, his phrasing and delivery were those of a mature singer. That was a gift.

I will remember him for “Off the Wall” and “Thriller,” one of the great one-two punches in popular music history. I will remember the charming child singing “I Want You Back.” I will remember the joy of watching him dance, of marveling that a human being could move like that. I’ll remember my little boy, standing mesmerized in front of the television, trying to emulate those moves.

And there are other things that I also can’t forget.

(From Bill McKeen’s Book Blog in Tampa’s Creative Loafing.)

LEARNING TO FLY: Maybe it doesn’t happen for everyone. But for those who love books, it’s not hard to remember that moment when they fell in love with reading.

Maybe it happened early on, with Dr. Seuss. Maybe it came later, during the early pangs of adolescence, with Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

For me, it happened when I first laid hands upon The Wind in the Willows. What a strange and wonderful world Kenneth Grahame described in his 1908 novel for children. This tale of a mole, a river rat, a badger and the officious Mr. Toad was the first major step in my lifelong reading habit. Not sure where that first copy came from: It was the 50th anniversary Scribners edition, illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard, and it came out when I was three. It was probably my older brother’s copy.

At school, I plunged into reading – Robb White’s The Lion’s Paw , a whole series of biographical books aimed at the elementary school set – but Wind in the Willows was sort of a secret. None of my other friends had read it. Maybe, I figured, it was an English thing. I’d spent my first few Wonder Years in England. Later, when I read that the book was one of John Lennon’s childhood inspirations, I felt some kind of vindication.

None of my friends here in the States had read Wind in the Willows, though they were conversant in Poohspeak. A.A. Milne’s Winnie-The-Pooh came two decades after Grahame’s book, but both books were illustrated by the same artist, Shepard, who did the Wind in the Willows I knew best.

Now, just after its 100th anniversary, Wind in the Willows is back, in the deluxe treatment. That classic Scribners editionI grew up with is still available (from Atheneum Books), butW.W. Norton, the publisher that produces the “Annotated” series of books, has turned its reverent and superb attention to this classic of children’s literaure. (Norton has produced several books in the “annotated” series. Click here for more.)

The Annotated Wind in the Willows (W.W. Norton, $39.95) fascinates and entertains on so many levels.

First of all, there’s the great story of the adventures of Mole and Rat and how they band together with Badger to assist Mr. Toad in his battle against evil. There’s also a moment of revelation about the mystic powers of language. The chapter titled “Pipers at the Gates of Dawn” struck me in ways I didn’t begin to understand as a child. Yet it took me to another level and I realized language could guide you into a dream state. (It also might have inspired my first hallucinations, but that’s another story.)
For someone who grew up with this book, it’s the “annotated” stuff that gives this beautiful volume its added value. The Shepard illustrations are here, but so are pictures from earlier editions. The notes on the creation of the book – the “Dear Mouse” letters that Grahame wrote as prelude – are fascinating. All my life, Kenneth Grahame was simply the name of the man who wrote a wonderful book. The Annotated Wind in the Willows not only gives us the book, but the story of the creator and his life and struggles.

A beautiful book. It’s a crime if you don’t read this aloud to a child in your life. Think of the door you’ll be opening.

NOT FOR THE KIDS: OK, on the opposite end of the spectrum. Don’t read this next book to kids. But it’s a lot of fun and you’ll probably feel like a big, goofy kid if you follow the writer’s instructions.

Absinthe and Flamethrowers (Chicago Review Press, $16.95) by William Gurstelle is a mash-up ofMr. Wizard and Hunter S. Thompson. Gurstelle is an engineer who has now written two books (the first was Backyard Ballistics) about controlled mayhem.

In short, he tells us how to have all kinds of dangerous fun and the science and ballistics behind this delinquency. Absinthe and Flamethrowers is a guidebook to all sorts of mischievous projects you can do yourself.

Mr. Wizard – Don Herbert, host of the old smart-kids TV show – used to show how to do things on his weekly program. “First, get a used toilet-paper roll, then …” You do need a few props here and there, but Gurstelle’s primary interest is urging his readers to take risks. To that end, he offers us tips on the best places in the country to drive fast. For those of us who’ve had 50 years of Indianapolis 500 fantasies, this may be the closest we’ll ever come.

The comparison to Mr. Wizard is apt. Gurstelle de-mystfies science and engineering and makes it fun for all. The comparison to  Thompson is also on the money. Gurstelle, like the late doctor, loves to blow up shit.

LEONARD, WE HARDLY KNEW YE: Leonard Michaels crossed my mind the other day. I was reading a particularly insightful interview he’d done with the great American novelist, Thomas McGuane. And I thought: Damn, I haven’t read anything by Leonard Michaels in a long time.

   

 

With good reason. He died in 2003. Obviously, I should have renewed my New Yorker subscription when it expired in 1982. I’m so out of it with regard to belles-lettres.

I do remember admiring Michaels’ short stories when I was a young swain, reading damn near anything I could get my hands on, trying to learn how to make money out of pecking a keyboard.

Though it’s been years since I read anything by Michaels, the memory of his work always lingered, and so I immediately glommed onto The Essays of Leonard Michaels (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26).

It makes me recall how I felt about John Updike and Philip Roth. Their fiction didn’t always hit me. Much as I loved Updike’s Couples and his Rabbit books, some of his novels fell flat, in my opinion. But man, did I love his essays. Same thing with Philip Roth – when he is good, he is very very good and when he is bad … well, he’s still better than most of humanity. But one of the most enjoyable reading experiences of my life was diving into Roth’s Reading Myself and Others.

So Michaels – whose fiction often moved me but was just as often too delicate for me – turns out to be that special novelist who is also a brilliant essayist.

Michaels’ book of essays is not a doorstop and you get the sense that the editor truly culled the greatest hits from the late writer’s archive. The first half – the critical essays, the writing about others – shows him to be as astute an observer of the literary scene as Updike, Roth, Norman Mailer or other heavyweights who also wrote reviews.

But it’s the second part, the autobiographical essays, that gives the book its tremendous heart. These stories shed the artifice of fiction and Michaels just tells us the story of his life. His greatest stories were his own. These are brilliant pieces of writing and it makes me realize how much I miss his work in my life. This book is at once thrilling and immensely sad. If you haven’t read Leonard Michaels before, you should.

(From Bill McKeen’s Book Blog at Creative Loafing.)

A TALE OF TWO MYSTERIES: Sure, it happens at the movies all the time.

Somebody jumps out of the darkness with a knife and we all shudder. A whole film genre has been based on such scares.

But when was the last time that happened to you while reading a book?

For me, that happened just last week, at the halfway point of The Scarecrow (Little, Brown, $27.99) by Michael Connelly. Even though you know something is up, the moment that makes you jump and do yourGood-God! James Brown impression hits you with the same shock and fear that grips the novel’s hero, Jack McEvoy.

Moments like that make you appreciate what a great novelist Connelly has become. His books will still be read 75 years from now in the same way that college students are required to read Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain. Connelly leaves most of his contemporaries in the dust.

The Scarecrow doesn’t feature Connelly’s main attraction, L.A. Detective Harry Bosch, but instead focuses on newspaper reporter McEvoy, the central character in Connelly’s The Poet and a supporting character in a couple of other Connelly books.

This story grows from the freak show that is the modern newspaper business. McEvoy is a dedicated and talented veteran journalist and so he is laid off from the Los Angeles Times and forced to train his young-sprout replacement, a naïve and ambitious rookie from the University of Florida. Connelly vents a lot about what’s happened to the newspaper business – he was an LA Times star for several years before becoming a novelist – but uses that heartbreak to open the door to yet another thrilling narrative. It’s a great tale about a cast-aside reporter on the trail of a bad-ass computer-whiz serial killer. That the book also shows evidence of the immorality of big-time journalism is an added bonus.

It’s a thrilling, masterful book and it reminds us of why we love to read: we love to get caught in the web by a brilliant storyteller. Connelly lives in the area and he has a few shoutouts to Florida homies that make the book even more fun.

It seems that it was just 20 minutes ago that Connelly published his last novel, The Brass Verdict,and he’s got another one – Nine Dragons, the latest Harry Bosch novel – coming out in October.Janet Maslin of the New York Times is always a tough review, but she praised The Scarecrow, then said at the end of her review that Connelly was too prolific, that he needed to slow down. But Dude – as long as the books are this good, please … please keep them coming.

We’ve said it before about Connelly: he’s so talented that he elevates the whole genre. But there’s only so much one writer can do.

Cemetery Dance (Grand Central Publishing, $26.99) by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child is hovering near the top of the New York Times best-seller list. It’s silly, far-fetched and fun and no one would mistake it for great literature. But once you start reading, you can’t put it down.

 

DOUGLAS PRESTON and LINCOLN CHILD

It comes with the required arresting opening: A happy couple relaxing at home, planning an anniversary celebration, to be followed by a Big Sex Night. Woman leaves to go pick up a surprise at the store. In her absence, a zombie shows up, carves the man to pieces and runs away … almost demandingto be seen. The zombie (zombii, we’re told it should be) is that dude from the apartment upstairs who shitcanned himself off the bridge a couple weeks back. How could a dead man be a killer?

The central attraction of Cemetery Dance is the Holmes-and-Watson pairing of effete FBI investigatorAloysius Pendergast and blue-collar Vinnie D’Agosta of the NYPD.  The interplay between these two characters and the what-is-this-shit response to the zombie stuff keep you turning the pages.

We love stories. We always have. Cemetery Dance is a fun story, no doubt about it. You learn a lot about voodoo (we’ve been spelling that wrong too) and about old New York.

But The Scarecrow . . .  whew. You can’t help but marvel how Connelly takes the concept of a mystery novel and takes it up to the next level.

BASEBALL TRAGEDY: My three little boys have discovered baseball and so we’ve at the YMCA field a couple nights a week, cheering on miniature Braves, Royals and Yankees. We play catch at home and they’ve been begging to watch Field of Dreams with me, but I always cry at the end and it might fuck up the boys to see Daddy blubbering like a baby.

But there are real tears with Heart of the Game (Ecco Press, $24.99) by S.L. Price. It’s the story of Mike Coolbaugh, a minor league coach killed by hard-line foul ball.

Price works for Sports Illustrated, America’s best-written magazine (take that, New Yorker weenies), and the sheer craft in this book is enough to wither the ambition of any poor swine who ever sits down before a keyboard of letters.

We know the ending of the story before it begins, so Price brings Coolbaugh back to life, shows us his family, his childhood, his love of the game and his eventual heartbreak at its hands. Still, as a somewhat spurned and devoted lover, Coolbaugh stays with the game and eventually it kills him.

The greatest joy often causes the greatest pain andHeart of the Game gives us evidence of that in abundance.

I might not have the boys read this one until they’re older, but I did make sure they all got new batting helmets.

TERRORISTS ‘N’ THE ‘HOOD: Two of last year’s best novels – both set in Florida – have just come out in paperback.

Andre Dubus III (rhymes with caboose) wrote The Garden of Last Days (W.W. Norton, $14.95) about what some of the 9-11 terrorists were up to in the week before they forced their way into the cockpits.

 

ANDRE DUBUS III

They spent time in South Florida strip clubs and Dubus’ brilliant and brutal novel takes us into the minds of the terrorists, a stripper and a local loser seeking refuge at the Puma Club. The shifting narrative builds tension and his insight to all the characters takes us into the dark corners of the soul.

Irvine Welsh is perhaps best known forTrainspotting, but that’s only one of his nine novels. Crime (W.W. Norton, $14.95) is a fish-out-of-water story as a transplanted Scottish detective, trying to escape the aftermath of a horrific crime back home, comes to Florida on vacation. Of course, he becomes involved in a Sunshine State crime-against-a-child and Welsh takes us into the mind of this complicated and tortured soul.

(From Bill McKeen’s Book Blog at Creative Loafing.)

Time to get caught up. As the T-shirt reminds us, “So many books, so little time.” Let’s hit the road.

AMERICA THROUGH THE WINDSHIELD:  We’re all about road trips and so imagine this: The dude who pulls up next to you at the Tastee Freeze parks a little too close. You glance at him when he gets out of the car and I’ll be damned if it isn’t the former president of the United States.

Don’t worry. W isn’t behind the wheel. This is the absolutely true story about a much-more-wonderful time when the president could move out of the White House and on to the highways.

Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure (Chicago Review Press, $24.95) by Matthew Algeo is the thoroughly charming story of how theformer president and first lady drove across country in 1953. It was for fun, not publicity. At first, you might think this book is science fiction, since the guy playing the president of the United States is so bullshit-free. But this is an all-true story.

Algeo pulls together the narrative of the trip and retraces the route in his own car. It’s part road-trip meditation and a wonderful morsel of American history. We learn all kinds of things, including that Truman was a shitty driver. He paid off the other drivers in his prolific fender benders, mostly to keep Bess Truman from chewing his ass.

Back then, ex-presidents didn’t have Secret Service protection or even a pension plan.  It was, as I say, a different world. This wonderful book allows us the opportunity to get a glimpse of that America.

THRILLERS THROUGH THE AGES: My brother-in-law was  always the easiest guy to shop for. All I needed to do each Christmas was buy him the hottest international-intrigue thriller and he was happy.

If I could find something with Nazis hiding out and still visiting evil on the Earth, then he was in heaven. But those darn Russkies would do in a pinch.

But then two horrible things happened: The Cold War ended and Robert Ludlum died. Somehow, Ludlum has continued to write books after his death, but the best we can do for paranoid-action-thrillers these days is to go back in time.

The Secret Speech by Tom Rob Smith (Grand Central, $24.95) takes us back to 1956, in the seconds after Stalinist Russia is coming to an end. Old Joe is dead and his successor,Nikita Khruschev, wants to deliver a conciliatory speech to the world. This sets into motion (of course, things are always set into a motion) a series of back-door negotiations that can alter the fate of the world.

Khruschev, for those of us who remember him, ain’t exactly a sexy character for a novel, so readers will be happy to hear that there is a great protagonist. He’s Leo Demidov, young and tormented . . . a Commie with a conscience.

My brother-in-law will love this one.

With him, the dive into fiction often sent him scrambling for the Real Stuff, so if you develop nostalgia for the Cold War, I recommend The Anti-Communist Manifestos (Norton, $27.95) by John V. Fleming. You’ll have to wait until August for this examination of four books that shaped the Cold War, including Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler and Witness by Whitaker Chambers.

SCOURGES OF THE STATE: Two books deal with those things that vex Floridans – hurricanes and tabloid journalism.

Back before hurricanes were named (yes, kids, there was such a time), a bastard of a storm ripped through the Keys, killing 400, including a bunch of pissed-off veterans camping out in the Keys, protesting President Franklin Roosevelt‘s policies. When the 225-mile-per-hour winds hit, they didn’t have a chance.

Category 5 (University Press of Florida, $29.95) by Thomas Neil Knowles tells the story in all of its pulse-quickening detail. A rather routine tropical storm picked up steam – literally and figuratively – over the Gulf Stream and wreaked holy hell on the Keys over Labor Day 1935.

Hurricane Season starts next week. Read this, then prepare.

No way to really prepare for sleaze, though, is there? We can bundle ourselves in Saran Wrap and we’re still going to get some muck on us. But for the same reason that we like to get slimed at Nickelodeon Studios or frolic in the mud after a spring rain, it’s possible to find pleasure in all of the goop.

Tabloid Valley (University Press of Florida, $24.95) by Paula Morton is both a reputable and hilarious history of those who practice the American art of sensationalism. This kind of journalism dates from our colonial era, but it’s reached new heights in the last couple of decades.

I worked at the Palm Beach Post –  near the Tabloid Valley around Lantana – and the National Enquirer hired out of our newsroom all the time. Back in the early 1970s, the Enquirer was paying copy boys $20,000 a year – back when that was astonishing money for a full-time legitimate reporter. How can you complete with that? And, as one of my friends said after going over to the dark side, “It’s unethical as hell, but man, do we have fun.”

This book is a lot of fun, particularly with capsule portraits of such characters as Eddie Clontz, theWeekly World News editor who invented the Bat Boy and brought Dead Elvis back to life. Famously, after Dan Rather’s street mugging back in the 1980s, Clontz (as columnist Ed Anger) called out the “media prettyboy” and accused him of not being a real journalist, like those dedicated souls who worked for the Weekly World News. No shortage of balls, this Eddie.

It was hard to get through an Ed Anger column without a few cascades of explosive laughter. Say what you will about the content of the tabloids – the people who worked there were excellent writers. After all, they got a largely illiterate audience to read. Even Norman Mailer couldn’t do that.