Book Review

Gordon Parks, 1912-2006

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Gordon Parks "once took a ride tailed by the cops with some young L.A. [Black] Panthers with guns in their laps," writes Greg Tate in today's Village Voice obituary. "One asked him if he would still choose the camera over the gun, as he'd declared in his 1967 memoir, A Choice of Weapons. Parks reiterated his belief. Two weeks later the Panther was dead." Parks, who was the first black staff photographer at Life in the '50s and the first ever to direct a studio film (The Learning Tree, in 1969), lived life alongside his subjects, from blacks in the Twin Cities to Malcolm X. Born in Kansas in 1912, the future writer, jazz musician, poet, painter, choreographer, and composer moved to St. Paul as a stunned teenager after the death of his mother, according to his autobiography Voices in the Mirror, and was promptly thrown out into the subzero weather by his brother-in-law. He spent a week homeless, "bouncing between Jim Williams's pool hall during the day and the trolley cars at night," writes Michael Tortorello in a 1998 City Pages appreciation. "One morning, hungry and broke, Parks drew a knife on one of the conductors, and then, in shame, offered to sell it to him in exchange for breakfast"...

Parks played piano in a local brothel, bused tables at the Minneapolis Club, and reluctantly dropped out of St. Paul Central High School before moving to Chicago, New York, and back again. He was working as a porter on the North Coast Limited in the '30s when he became inspired by the great Depression-era documentary photographers, whose pictures he found in train magazines. Parks invested in a used camera, what he would call "his weapon against poverty and racism," and began taking photographs for the Minneapolis Spokesman/St. Paul Recorder. 50 years of work in a half-dozen mediums followed, though he's still best known for directing Shaft--he once told City Pages it was "nowhere near blaxploitation." (Parks's film biographer, Craig Rice, says he applied to film school the day after seeing the movie.)

"I don't make my poetry or my music just for people in Harlem or Kansas or any one place in between," Parks told Rob Nelson in a 1996 City Pages interview. "I think it's about reaching as many kinds of people as you can." He stayed prolific to the end, publishing two books on Atria in 2005: A Hungry Heart : A Memoir and Eyes with Winged Thoughts: Poems and Photographs. He died last Tuesday at age 93 in New York. (Read the New York Times obituary and the one in the Kansas City Star.)

In an interview with the Spokesman-Recorder last year, Parks said: "I let my heart persuade me toward whatever I needed at the moment; that's where I went. That's why I was successful, or why I failed."

(View a video at MNStories.com, a discussion at MNSpeak.com, and more Parks photography here, here, and here.)

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at March 13, 2006 5:35 PM | Comments (1)

 

Jasper Fforde goes all CSI on Humpty Dumpty in The Big Over Easy

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Jasper Fforde is known for his four-volume Thursday Next detective series, in which Next was prone to travelling via a "Prose Portal" into novels such as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, interacting with the characters thereby alternating the plots themselves. Fforde supposedly bemoaned his cult status and hoped his current effort, The Big Over Easy, would appeal to the those without a masters degree in literature by delving into the world of nursery rhymes instead. Jack Spratt, beleaguered detective and notorious giant killer, heads up the Nursery Crime Division, and is charged with finding out who killed alcoholic womanizer Humpty Dumpty, found in a hundred pieces under his favorite sitting wall. An ambitious young detective named Mary Mary assists Spratt in interviewing witnesses and suspects such as Solomon Grundy, Wee Willie Winkie, and incarcerated mob boss Giorgio "Georgie Porgy" Porgia.

What Fforde has crafted is a hard-boiled (no pun intended) detective novel made whimsical through the use of beloved childern's book characters, with aliens, aging starlets, and a certain oversized beanstalk thrown in for good measure. It's a charming book, mostly when we witness Spratt's home life, with his beloved second wife (guess how his first wife, who could eat no lean, died) and his boarder Prometheus (yes, that Prometheus) who catches the eye of Spratt's eldest daughter, Pandora (no, not that Pandora).

Let me know if you've read the book by adding your comments below, and, if you liked it, look for Spratt and Mary to join forces once again in next year's The Fourth Bear. And if your "nursery crime" fix isn't sated, see Humpty Dumpty's murder investigated by a teddy bear named Eddie in The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse.

Posted by Corey Anderson at October 21, 2005 9:57 AM | Comments (0)

 

Books: Jesse Berrett on "Devils on the Deep Blue Sea."

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Literally or metaphorically, great muckraking aims to make your gorge rise. Consider those heartwarming scenes of men and rats ground into sausage in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, or the yummy tidbits about how much you were lovin' e.coli in Fast Food Nation. By that standard, Devils on the Deep Blue Sea: The Dreams, Schemes, and Showdowns that Built America's Cruise-Ship Empires (Viking) merits only an unpleasant belch or two.

Sure, there are appalling moments. In the industry's early days, so many elderly cruisers passed away en route that one line used its meat locker as a temporary morgue. A beleaguered Carnival Cruises broke a four-day sitdown strike in 1981 by sneaking its private SWAT team aboard, then hustling the strikers onto buses that drove them directly to the airport and instant deportation. Grungy little Majesty Cruise Lines tried desperately to avoid foreclosure on a ship in 1995 by offering up a lifeboat and one of the stewards as collateral.

But there's simply not enough to get you properly irate here. In part, the problem is tonal: Journalist Kristoffer A. Garin muffles material that should make him smack his lips. In the post-Love Boat era, passenger traffic exploded by 400 percent within a decade, and crews enjoyed a sexual wonderland. But this is his best anecdote: A senior executive, upon espying a young woman sneaking out of an officer's cabin, sees not a serious breach of the rules but another satisfied customer. "'She'll be back again,'" he says. "That was the mind-set," Garin adds. "Give the people what they want." Plop.

Devils on the Deep Blue Sea seems to believe that what the reader wants is inside-business scuttlebutt, and an awful lot of it: who went public when, whose corporate parents couldn't get along, who bought whom and why. Garin does document, in general terms, oppressive and dishonest recruitment practices for workers (owners exercise plausible deniability). And he reveals the fact that endemic bribery still greases every ship's work culture. But the balance of yuck and blab is off, and you finish the book not nearly as disgusted as you should be. Put simply: too much M&A, not enough T&A. --Jesse Berrett

Posted by Diablo Cody at August 25, 2005 10:06 AM | Comments (0)

 

50 weighs in on the literary scene

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A quick blast through the first 50 pages (in the spirit of numerological appropriateness) of 50 Cent's new autobiography "From Pieces to Weight" has been a bit of an odd experience. Tucked inside the title page is the offhand acknowledgment "This book was written with Kris Ex." That might explain who came up with such prose gems as the gangsta primer on cocaine to start things off ("Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology, called coke 'magical' and couldn't get enough of the stuff.") and odd bits of political insight ("Most politicians don't have any respect for the people who vote for them . . . but come election time, they're at the voters' mercy."). In fairness, it's a straightforward, decent read, and

it's filled with tons of details about 50's crazy upbringing and the intricacies of his well-regarded (in its time) drug franchise. Having logged some time in the murky world of the as-told-to autobiography (try as told to a tape recorder, and transcribed, and significantly embellished upon, in many cases), I know that the voice that emerges from the collaboration often bears only a passing resemblance to the voice of the "autobiographer." The book's main strength is its no-bullshit tone and a somewhat surprising restraint from self-aggrandizement. And lest you think 50 has gotten all touchy-feely, just have a look at who's among those thanked in the acknowledgments: Violator Management, Reebok, "Formula 50" Vitamin Water, and Vivendi Games. Oh, 50. You old softy.

Posted by Quinton Skinner at August 23, 2005 9:13 PM | Comments (0)

 

Books: Rod Smith on "Oh Pure and Radiant Heart"

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The atomic bomb has multiple fathers, most of them long-dead. Nobel-winning fission whiz Enrico Fermi checked out in '54. Leo Szilard, the polymath who persuaded Einstein to sign a letter to FDR stressing the weapon's necessity, joined him a decade later--three years before cancer claimed charismatic Manhattan Project director Robert Oppenheimer. Only Edward Teller made it past Y2K, handily avoiding major character status in Oh Pure and Radiant Heart (Soft Skull Press). Lydia Millet's exhaustively researched fifth novel was a work in progress by the time the megaton man passed in 2003, and libel considerations loomed.

Not so for his three colleagues: Never one to let mundane reality stand in the way of a good yarn, Millet whisks the physicists forward from the exact moment of the first nuclear detonation on July 16, 1945 to the present day, 2003. Bewildered at first, and aghast at the world they helped create, Oppenheimer, Szilard, and Fermi convene in Los Alamos. It is there that librarian protagonist Ann discovers the trio and ends up harboring them, mostly against the wishes of her skeptical husband Ben. A trip to Japan wins the quixotic crew the financial and spiritual backing of rich, middle-aged stoner Larry. Soon, they're leading a swelling caravan to Washington, D.C.--as the government becomes increasingly interested in their activities.

The scientist's game of cultural catch-up is exhilarating: "I don't know about you, but I don't want to be a fossil," Szilard declares to Oppenheimer early on. "Not when I already have being dead to contend with...Bullshit dopeass gay-ass motherfucker." But it's Millet's encyclopedic command of nuclear fact and exploration of contemporary credulousness and denial that give the story critical mass. --Rod Smith

Posted by Diablo Cody at August 10, 2005 1:05 PM | Comments (0)

 

Review: "52 Fights" by Jennifer Jeanne Patterson

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Chicklit convention dictates that marriage is the tidy, happily-ever-after endpoint of a long and infuriating quest for love. Local author Jennifer Jeanne Patterson begs to differ: In 52 Fights, a lighthearted memoir of her first year of bondage--er marriage--Patterson catalogues the petty arguments that have tested her relationship with hubby Matt.

Granted, the couple have "uptown problems": (Matt wants to buy an expensive icemaker but Jennifer balks; the pair have trouble managing their rental property; Matt horrifies frugal Jennifer by installing a $2,000 floor-heating system in the bathroom.) Though Patterson is surely aware that most newlyweds don't have the luxury of bickering about a housekeeper, she nevers really acknowledges the emotional padding afforded by this bubble of privilege. One suspects it's much easier to cohabit harmoniously when no one's donating plasma to make the car payment. That said, Patterson is a very likable narrator and she never pretends that her mini-squabbles with Matt are a significant source of angst or doubt. She's almost like a tourist reporting from a strange country, sharing clear-eyed observations about a place she's not sure she belongs. This is an appealing approach that reflects a sweetly retro sensibility; Patterson and her husband didn't live together before marriage, so the shock of the new feels authentic in this case.

One might expect a book called 52 Fights to be rife with juicy details about marital rows, but the subject matter is consistently airy. Patterson's narrative does hint at darker themes (a chapter about her attraction to an acquaintance is one of the book's best) though sometimes it seems as though she's deliberately muzzling herself to avoid exposing too much. Hence, we're denied the really choice dirt: their sexual proclivities, their personal demons, the little pockets of darkness that exist in every relationship. The pair have a bluntness and honesty to their interactions that's refreshing, and one imagines that they don't hold back behind closed doors. In today's confessional culture, a well-mannered book like this is refreshing, but at the same time, one hopes that a hypothetical sequel (perhaps about Patterson's latest role as a mom?) will deliver more of the stuff that makes us wince in recognition.

Posted by Diablo Cody at July 20, 2005 12:01 PM | Comments (1)

 

If you're looking for a good book...

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I finally started reading Norman Rush's early '90s novel Mating, and I'm loving it. Here's a little piece about it from Salon.

Posted by Dylan Hicks at June 30, 2005 11:03 AM | Comments (1)

 

Bad Bestseller of the Week

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Hidden Prey by John Sandford (Berkley, $7.99)

Russian spies running amok in Duluth? Lucas Davenport, independently wealthy homicide investigator, has his silliest crime-solving spree yet in this, the 16th Prey novel by local bestseller Sandford. Actually, it's wrong to suggest that he solves anything-- Lucas is like a hero in an old movie serial, who finally gets the bad guy after suffering 12 chapters of ass-kickings. He gets more and more terse as his failures accumulate, and his use of the adjective "fuckin'" (i.e., "Get me out of this fuckin' story") escalates until it becomes amusing. Other than the premise, it's the only funny thing about the book, since Sandford's dialogue is so drab it makes Ed McBain's forced conversations seem like Mamet.

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 12, 2005 3:34 AM