Big Daddy's Bookstore
Updated 23 March 2001

Books Just Read, Being Read or Soon to be Read

A Few Brief Reviews...

• Home and Exile by Chinua Achebe. Achebe's latest. He seems to have given up on fiction [I recall reading somewhere that it was proving too laborious at this stage in his life - I do hope I am not misquoting him]. Born out of a series of lectures he gave at Harvard in 1998, the volume promises to be in part a reflection on his youth - to which we all think, ah, a bit of autobiography, hurray [or at least thus spake those who study African literature] - but it becomes more than anything else a rehashing of Achebe's thoughts on "colonialist criticism" and the damage done by Joseph Conrad. It is, ultimately, disappointing and brings little that is new to the table. It is, as Achebe almost unfailingly is, emminently accessible; which only makes the disappointment that much more acute - at least for those who are familiar with Achebe's work. A worthwhile introduction, however, to Achebe's critical thinking.

• The Catastrophist by Ronan Bennett. An oddly effective novel set in the latest literary "hot property": newly independent Congo. This work was actually published prior to Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible but was revived following the success of Kingsolver's work. The Congo and the transition of the Congo to independence is very much the backdrop to the story, but it is never so much a stage set: Bennett is rather adept at weaving his characters into the history without it seeming too fantastic a feat [the "gee whiz wasn't that a lucky coincidence that I just happened to be here" school of novel-writing].

• The Master of Petersburg by J.M. Coetzee. As stark and affective as any of Coetzee's work, it "feels" perhaps most like his In the Heart of the Country. Here Coetzee turns his eyes north and takes up the story of Dostoyevsky. You do have to be of a certain type to "enjoy" the stark, stripped down quality of Coetzee's style and stories. These are personal stories, and if you read to escape from yourself or your life you probably won't enjoy the skin he provides you to climb into.

• For the Time Being by Annie Dillard. Time and again, ever since my time at Georgetown and introduction to Dillard's A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Holy the Firm, I find myself looking for and picking up a Dillard book when I feel a particular type of emptiness. In some sense, and not to be too maudlin about it, Dillard's work satisfies something akin to a spiritual thirst in me. Stylistically, too, the grace and disarming simplicity of her prose is, to my mind - and rather limited knowledge - unsurpassed.

• Bearing Witness: Readers, Writers, and the Novel in Nigeria by Wendy Griswold. My, I was excited to see this published - and it shocked me that there was absolutely no discussion or even mention of it on the various listservs I am on that deal with literary and broader African studies issues. But it was, ultimately, a disappointment. It is really nothing more than a typology [as Griswold sees it] of Nigerian fiction and a subsequent summary of select works [in supposed supprt of this typology]. Considering her reading list - over 500 novels - and the extensive interviews she carried out I had hoped for more, much more [and as a general rule I expect scholars to avoid the type of statistical manipulation and mischaracterization she engages in at one point].

• The Collaborator: The Trail and Execution of Robert Brasillach by Alice Kaplan. The only Frenchmen executed for what he wrote leading up to and during the Nazi occupation, Kaplan's written a thoroughly engaging and satisfying chronicle of the particular historical moment, the complexities of the power of the word, and of Brasillach the man, the dandy, and, for some, the monster. A complex tale richly told.

• Passing Through: The Later Poems New and Selected by Stanley Kunitz. Our current poet laureate and this the winner of the National Book Award, Kunitz is a masterful portraitist in verse. I'm sure I'm missing the much of the music of his work and am not properly appreciating the structure and form, but what sticks with me, and what is most refreshing about his most successful poems, is the inimitable presense of the scenes laid out for us: the sense that we could, if only we could see like Kunitz [which we can't, hence...], but somewhere, just out our back window, dance the "stuff" of Kunitz's verse.

• NetSlaves: True Tales of Working the Web by Bill Lessard and Steve Baldwin. This book received rave reviews in the various press outlets which, coupled with my own purient interest, compelled me to run out and buy it. I wanted to know how screwed up the high-riding high-tech industry really is. The book itself seemed to me to suffer from what many non-fiction chronicles of the Moment do: a lack of coherence and guiding structure that might otherwise compel an interest in the narrative. This lack in the narrative reinforced the general impression from the "true life tales" that the industry is rife with the self-serving and immature: it is hard to muster sympathy and pity for even the most put-upon and oppressed when their own stories and lives are so characterized by pettiness and childishness. You finish this book and wonder how things ever got so hot - and you wonder that the crash didn't come sooner.

• My War Gone By, I Miss It So by Anthony Loyd. Gives a horrifying picture of the terror and war in Bosnia and Chechnya from the perspective of a self-created war correspondent. Loyd does not provide either a full or necessarily balanced account of the wars, but that's not his purpose. As a chronicle of the horror and destruction that springs from a focused and purposeful disregard for life, Loyd's is a remarkable and disturbing book. He also spends considerable time looking at and discussing his own self-destructive proclivities which prompted me to ask: does anybody learn from their mistakes anymore? Does anybody take all this self-knowledge we are so busy manufacturing and actually use it, other than to be recycled as memoir? A quibble with Loyd as he lived his life, not so much with the book.

• This House Has Fallen: Midnight in Nigeria by Karl Maier. I understand - better, much better than before - something of the situation in the once and future giant of Africa. This is not a comprehensive history of contemporary Nigeria but more a series of connected vignettes that Maier uses to paint a disturbing portrait of the problems and challenges faced by Nigeria and Nigerians in governing this huge and diverse corporate body. It holds together well, though he does repeat himself at times [which makes one think that it was originally crafted as a series of portraits that were edited together - sometimes without proper attention being paid]. But more than anything, it is suggestive rather than comprehensive, and it makes one wish that someone with Maier's storytelling sense would come along and craft that comprehensive contemporary history so that to Maier's clear-eyed vision would could bring a strong historical understanding.

• Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. This is one of the classics of American verse - for better or worse. It also practically begs to be markedup in hypertext, which has been done, at least once: Antelope E-Book - Spoon River Anthology [url: http://www.antelope-ebooks.com/Spoon/spoon.html]. There is a darkness to the work which is still somewhat disturbing. And there are weaknesses - it can get somewhat tedious at points and "The Spooniad" which closes the volume is a bit overwrought - but for anyone who cares about the development of American verse, and for those wary of poetry as somehow unconnected to life, Sppon River is well worth a visit.

• Dreambirds: The Strange History of the Ostrich in Fashion, Food, and Fortune by Rob Nixon. An intriguing and very well-written exploration of both the ins and outs of ostrich-farming through the ages and a more introspective journey through Nixon's youth in and return to South Africa, family relationships, and how all of these pieces are bound together in the guise of this rather clunky bird.

• The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, 20 volume set. The godfather of all English-language dictionaries if only by dint of the sheer weight and heft - both physically and embodied intellectual effort. This is the last, as yet published, revision and as such retains some of anachronistic definitions. But it's cheap, cheap, cheap, relativley speaking, and certainly as compared to what the third edition will cost you when it comes out. And for those three of you who haven't read it yet, be sure to check out Simon Winchester's The Professor and the Madman, a thoroughly engaging history [as biography] of the birrth of the OED.

• Sozaboy by Ken Saro-Wiwa. The late [executed] Nigerian novelist, screen writer, journalist, publisher, activist's most widely known and heralded work. It's subtitled "A novel in rotten English" and presented as a melange of Nigerian pidgin and broken down syntax, reflecting underneath it all the confusion of war. The intriguing thing is that though it does not always hold up under the emotional demands of the story, the book itself is never a chore to read. You do have to "struggle" to understand - you are decoding the language to some degree - but unless you're fixated on every single word, the story does move along at a nice clip.

• There's Treasure Everywhere: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection by Bill Watterson. It's Calvin and Hobbes! There's little to be added other than that it is, without doubt - though perhaps more for my generation than any other - one of the great cartoons of all time.

• Karl Marx: A Life by Francis Wheen. I loved this book. Despite a rather spirited and I think quite well-founded defense of Marx' essential ideas, Wheen's biography chronicles all the pecuniary, intellectual and emotional distress that so marked his very typically bourgeios, if more broadly atypical, life. Wheen neatly avoids making Marx either a figure of abject pity - the misunderstood and oppressed genius - or ridicule as the armchair revolutionary. For the fan of biography, regardless of political inclination, the neatly presented details of a dispeptic life make for a wonderful read.

• Repair: Poems by Charles Williams. I don't know; perhaps I have a tin ear. Or a dead heart. This won the Pulitzer Prize, and as is the wont these days, glorious reviews of Williams' work are scattered about the cover. I couldn't get it. It didn't reach out for me or speak to me, and I felt I couldn't speak to it. There are effective passages and lines that, on the first reading, strike you - though I can't remember any now. And there is one verse of which I'm particularly fond: to read that, click here; to understand why, click here.

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